123 Getting ideas for Writing Task 2 – Essays about politics.

you are now listening to the IELTS podcast learned from tutors and its examiner’s for masters of IELTS preparation your host Ben Worthington [Music] right all about getting ideas all about generating ideas for your IELTS task 2 essays now what we’re going to do okay I’ve decided sorry I decided to focus on getting ideas because I know that I ought test two is one of the biggest pain points of il students and when we’ve got a massive pain point I know from personal experience the best way to deal with this massive problem is to break it down into smaller problems and deal with each problem individually okay and specifically what we’re going to do in this one okay is focus on the point focus upon getting ideas okay now a lot of IELTS tutors say the first thing you need to do is write your introduction or the first thing you need to do is make a plan and personally I think that all wrong because the first thing you need to do is 1 understand what the question once and then generate ideas what we’re going to do in this episode is look at both of those two requirements because that’s what’s going to get you started that’s what’s going to sort of like once you eliminate these little problems understanding what the question wants then you can start to generate ideas ok and both of these are really really important because if we start off on the wrong track we didn’t understand what the question once from us then 40 minutes later we’ve written an essay about something else and that’s very very bad that’s a disaster because you’re not only going to lose points with tash response and but it’s yeah what you can write an essay about something very different the examiner can’t really give you the points so you’ve gone on lost 25% and that’s something that’s yeah they can be avoided with good training now to get the most from this podcast I strongly implore you I strongly encourage you to get a pen and work through this with me okay what we’re going to look at first is um understanding the question and they’re straight after the question we’re going to generate ideas we’re only going to look at five questions and we’re going to look at the area of politics why did I choose politics because it’s one of those essay topics that causes the most not pain but it’s one that students in my experience students are not generally super enthusiastic about okay so let’s have a look at the first question ah before we start if you need more help with this you can go to the IATA online course at seven sky.com where we go into this much more deets in much more detail and you get tasks and you get exercises and you get feedback to help you really improve and the improvement is quite radical it’s quite fast okay so let’s get started question one some people believe that politicians are the most influential in the world well others believe scientists are the most influential which side do you agree with and why provide specific reasoning for your answer so I’ll just say it again some people believe that politicians are the most influential people in the world while others believe scientists are the most influential which side do you agree with and why provide specific reasoning theory for your answer step number one what is the question asking okay what do I need to write about this is how I would understand it I’m gonna transform it into a easier sort of like sentence is just basically saying which are most influential scientists are politicians okay that’s the question that’s how I’ve transformed it now I’ve got a clear idea what I’m gonna write about and I’m gonna take the position politicians are more influential okay and because it’s 250 words and we’re going to use around 225 words for the introduction 25 words for the conclusion then I’m gonna just need two body paragraphs okay because I’ve only got 200 words left and so why am I gonna write three body paragraphs they’re going to be really skinny body paragraphs so let’s just do two body paragraphs going back to the question which are most influential politicians or scientists I would say politicians are why I’ve got to give a logical reason because they get more media attention how can I prove this how can I demonstrate that I correct well Donald Trump everybody knows Donald Trump he gets insane amounts of media coverage and so he’s obviously going to be more influential okay so that’s my idea and my example for body paragraph 1 let’s have a look at body paragraph 2 I’ll say that um scientists are not influential because they don’t affect mass media as much and no how can I prove that I am correct I could say that I don’t know I’m just gonna invent a study saying that a lot of scientists are hardly in the media because there is not that much public interest in them and it still sounds like I’m waffling okay so I’m gonna have to do now is give you a solid real world example to prove my point and I can’t think of anything I’m just gonna invent it I’m just gonna say a recent study by the Canadian Society for scientists showed that the public have very little knowledge of their work I know let’s just say showed that 70 percent of the public could hardly could could not name the three most important scientists in each given discipline and therefore and then I’ll just say that scientists due to lack of media attention very own influential are very and not influential at all okay those are my two arguments okay maybe it’s not the most believed but it is believable and if I was going to get investigated by an investigative journalist or whatever then maybe it’s not factually correct but it’s believable and it’s logical and it’s rational and that’s okay all right as I’ve said a million times before this il-6 time is supposed to be testing your language ability okay so if you just give a believable argument that’s logical that’s okay and the exam is going to be focusing on your writing ability not your um sort of like your ability to think of logical examples okay simple as let’s have a look at question 2 how can the government of a country prevent illegal drugs from entering the country explain your solution to this problem now provide specific examples and reasoning so let’s simplify the question pause the podcast I think what is that question asking me well it’s basically asking you very simple question how can it stop illegal drugs enter in the country simple very simple and so explain your solution to this problem and provide specific examples and reason so let’s see my idea for number one would be it could increase spending increase military spending I think it could develop a special government department to prevent troops from entering the country and this government department would solely operate on the borders of the country ok our extra law enforcement on the borders of the country very simple and then I would just probably give an example of I don’t know Belgium increasing border controls managed to reduce drug smuggling by 50% I don’t know if that’s true but it sounded believable so it’s fine all right body paragraph at number two let’s see what we could do another solution for preventing illegal drugs from entering the country what we could do is just reduce demand from the population by increasing the penalties associated to drug use so we could say increasing fines for people caught using drugs would reduce demand as they would be more scared from buying drugs this would reduce demand and therefore in total less drugs would be entering the country as a result of less consumers ok and then if there was space give an example ok and that’s quite simple and that’s just my logical argument for that essay now if you’re smart you would have grabbed a pen at the beginning of this podcast perhaps jotted down the questions jotted down like your interpretation the questions what they’re actually wanting and then you would have looked at my ideas are hopefully produced your own ideas and then maybe even just practice writing an essay around those ideas and getting into the habit and getting and skills because you can only learn by doing next let’s have a look and by the way if you’re in a rush and you don’t have time to do all these tutorials with me with the podcast have a look at sentence guide calm and very simple to follow system and there’s tutorials with feedback so you can get feedback from the tutor to see if you’re on the right track producing the right kind of essays and right kind of ideas and it’s just a faster way to work through what we’re doing now okay so let’s have a look at question three ah another thing with the sentence guide is there’s a whole chapter on identifying the question and basically simplifying the question okay much more detailed than this and you also get feedback from the actual exam and our examiner from the tutor so let’s go in question number three many countries have different priorities when it comes to what they spend most of that time focusing on well some countries focus on health care and education other countries focus on infrastructure employment out of these two compounded areas of focus which do you find to be the most beneficial provide ample details and examples for your answer Wow okay you can either rewind and listen to that again because there’s a lot of words and lots of distractions there okay I’m not going to repeat it again I’m just going to give you my simplified version of that question what is it what does takes I’m gonna want here what kind of essay does he want basically you wants to know which should a country focus on health care and education or infrastructure and employment okay let’s choose one and we’re gonna build one we’re gonna build our essay around that one idea I’m going to say that country should focus on health care and education and because we’ve got two topics here I’m going to be very smart about this I’m gonna say body paragraph one I’m going to see why countries should focus on health care body paragraph two why countries should focus on education okay let’s have a look so I’m going to say health care because healthy workers will spend will be able to work more often and they will be off work less a recent study by the World Health Organization showed that governments with strong and public free health care systems had 30% less absenteeism absenteeism than countries with no health care systems or with poor health care systems now can you see another example I made it up but I needed an example a real-world example so I could prove my point of what I was saying because I was it’s only an idea okay and from there I can build my whole body paragraph and it’s really easy to build the body paragraph once you’ve got a system in place they could step-by-step formula to follow and like I said if many times before you can just go to San Fran sky come and have a look at that so body paragraph two we’re going to look at education now for education I would education or why should a country focus on education because um educated workers can earn more money and there will be more taxes in the economy more and more wages are higher wages to tax which would produce more income for the government to increase the well-being of their citizens okay and for example then I’m going to give an example of when this was the case okay maybe I’ll choose Island which spends over 20 percent of its GDP on education since 1970 and has seen real income growth forest citizens at a rate of 3 percent okay now can you see in these questions and with my answers I’m using lots of topic-specific vocabulary and vocabulary I’ll give you an example absenteeism real income growth and GDP all of this type of vocabulary is essential and if you need more vocabulary like this then have a look at the already call it have a look at the IELTS podcast calm there’s a whole section on iOS vocabulary and this specific post there is a massive list of collocations which are topic specific collocations and these are absolutely essential for scoring high because they make your essay sound more natural they and it’s yeah and it’s the topic-specific vocabulary specialist vocabulary that will separate you from a band sick from a band seven eight and nine from a band six okay you cannot get higher than a band six without this vocabulary let’s have a look at the next up question the fourth question people in developing countries have a positive outlook when it comes to right economic growth while the people in developed countries do not have this same positive outlook why is this so so this question could cause a few problems for a student okay what does the examiner one here what is the examiner asking what do I need to write down to get full points in task which these are excellent questions so let’s have a look at the question again people in developing countries have a positive outlook money when it comes to economic growth while the people in developed countries do not have this same positive outlook why is this so so we’ve got two clauses there we’ve got two main ideas so as we said before usually we’re going to write with four paragraphs which means two body paragraphs and in this question we’ve got two main ideas the first idea is people in developing countries have a positive outlook when it comes to economic growth and the second idea was people in developed countries have a negative outlook basically okay so let’s put a paragraph dedicate a body paragraph to each idea of the question and we’re going to make this way we’ll make sure going to absolutely nail task response so body paragraph one why do people in power in developing countries have a positive outlook well we can say that because they have so little they can improve quickly and faster and they can also see what’s available on the horizon for example if a person if a poor person in public Guinea and only has a horse then it’s quite clear to see the next stage which could be a motorbike or a car okay so that could be my argument now I’m gonna have difficulties finding the finding an example there so I could just say um let’s see um for example a recent study showed that fifty percent of farmers in Papua New Guinea were excited and looking ahead because they knew what machinery and capital what machinery they were going to buy or they planned to purchase okay that’s it’s not a strongest example and it is not totally unbelievable but it’s it’s sufficient for the exam and like I said before it’s not the quality of your ideas here it’s the quality of your writing and the quality I’ve you’ve been able to present an argument and I presented my argument pretty well there it wasn’t easy but I’d stated my position and then I backed it up I reinforced it by giving an example about the Papua New Guinean farmers okay and of course I’ll have to reorganize those thoughts and put it in in a very coherent way probably more succinct but that’s why having a solid essay plan is essential and you can get your solid essay plan from sentence guide.com so let’s have a look at the second body paragraph why people in teeth wild people in developed countries do not have the same positive outlook okay here I’m going to say citizens and I’m going to change the vocabulary citizens in developed countries generally have a less positive outlook because they have already attained most of their material possessions and find it difficult to look forward into the future for example a recent study showed that 90% of Americans already have one house and two cars and this could be a possible reason why people in developed countries have a less positive outlook with regards to the future okay of course I’m going to reorganize those sentences but once again I don’t know if that’s true ninety percent of people in America but it sounded believable and it was kind of a logical argument okay I’m not going to get investigated by the American government I’m not going to we’re going to be challenged by the IELTS examiner he’s got about 50 exam papers he’s not going to jump on Wikipedia and check out the stats okay so question 5 final question and then worth finishing so many people in many countries prefer to shop in supermarkets as opposed to small local shops what is the developmental effect of support in supermarkets instead of local businesses and how does it affect the local economy provide specific examples and reasoning this isn’t totally easy this so let’s just read that again or maybe you want to pause it and just have a think about the question and even develop your own ideas and then your own plan or even just get a solid understanding of the question many people in many countries prefer to shop in supermarkets as opposed to small businesses at small local shops what is the developmental effects of supermarkets instead of developmental effective support of supermarkets instead of local businesses and how does it affect the local economy so once again there’s two main ideas in this question what is the developmental effect of support in supermarkets paragraph one okay and how does it affect the local economy paragraph two now now we’ve understood what the question won’t we’re going to look at what ideas can we put down there so idea number one for what is the development of effective supermarkets well I’m just going to say it’s a positive effect because they bring in a high degree of professionalism and especially related to logistics and stock planning for example a Spanish supermarket invests over 300 million euros annually in its logistics centres to improve efficiency okay I’m like body paragraph one cause I’m gonna put topic sentence and I’m gonna put a concluding sentence and all the rest of it that’s my general idea now body paragraph two how does it affect the local economy I’m going to say it’s beneficial for the local economy because they bring a high degree of professionalism and training into a local area and then I’m just going to say um she is topic-specific vocabulary cashier is somebody who worked on the tails at the checkout say and cashiers in a national Korean supermarket I have to have to attend training sessions for three months before being allowed to attend to customer requirements at the checkout okay now is that true I don’t think so was it believable yes could it be true very easily does it support my point absolutely okay so this is like the minds that we need to get into okay um we’re going to we all we have to do is communicate because this is a language exam communicate strong examples with strong reasons strong arguments okay preferably in reverse order like your idea your argument and then back it up a strong example but a strong reason okay right so if you’re in a rush to get all this if you need more help with this then check out standards guide calm because this a whole chapter about identifying the questions and we’re going to all the different question types then you get feedback for your ideas and it’s just a much faster and simpler way to improve and because you’ve got the tutor guiding you each step of the way okay and you get to put all your idea and your thoughts into practice and it’s just a much easier way to have approached the whole process okay so have a look they’re synonyms get calm and yeah all the best it’s got any questions just send me an email if you want some more questions to work with and like I said before you’re only going to get these skills by doing practice am questions and so for example if you’ve got major problem identifying the question or understanding what the question why don’t you just go through lots of questions and try and simplify them and build essay plans around them okay and then once you get that skill you probably need to know if you’re on the right track in which case you’ll probably want feedback from a tutor okay so that’s why the sentence guide is pretty good okay you can get all these questions you get the exercises to work through the questions identify them then you get feedback to see whether you’re on the right track so yeah it’s probably worth checking out if you’re struggling with your task two essays and if you need some support and some feedback and yet determined to improve and [Music] 2il footpath door [Music]