 So a common question that we get asked is for IELTS writing task two, what does a band seven or a band eight or a band nine IELTS writing task two essay actually look like. Most of you are in this range. Most of you are getting a band five, five point five, six or six point five. And you need a band seven, eight or nine in IELTS writing task two. So what I thought I would do is in this video, show you what a band five to six point five essay looks like in comparison to a band seven, eight or nine essay, because there are some very simple things that you can learn how to do that most of the students that we work with that get a band eight or a band nine in IELTS writing task two. They're doing some really simple things that we teach them and they are students regularly get a band eight or nine in their IELTS writing task two essays. And there are some things that you need to avoid at IELTS advantage. What we do is we teach you not only how to do the right things, but how to avoid the things that lead to lower scores. So without further ado, what I'm going to do is show you the main differences between this student and this student. So it all starts with the task two question. This student does little or no thinking, whereas this student thinks deeply about the question, because without really fully understanding the question, you will never be able to generate clear, relevant ideas. Without clear, relevant ideas, you will never be able to actually answer the question without really understanding the question. You will not be able to write a good essay. So it all starts with understanding the question. So this student reads the question, fully understands it, understands what the general topic is, understands what the specific things they want them to write about. And then they totally focus their mind on that. This student will read it very, very quickly and just start generating ideas or writing immediately. And the analogy I always use with my students are seeds. So seeds, you plant a seed in your garden and whatever seed you plant, you're going to get that plant or that tree. So this start, this student starts off very confused. Their seed is going to produce a confused essay. This student starts off with a very simple, clear idea in their mind as to what the examiner is looking for. Therefore, their essay is simple, clear, easy to understand. Then this student generates general or irrelevant or complex ideas. So general ideas are the student will just talk randomly or write randomly about this topic. So they won't really focus on the specific thing they want them to write about. They'll just write everything they know about sugary drinks and sugar and health and everything without really focusing on the topic. Very similar to irrelevant ideas. If they haven't thought about the question and understood the question, they will generate ideas that don't really answer the question. Or this is very common with intelligent students that we work with a lot of doctors, engineers, lawyers, people like that. And what they tend to do is try and think of the most complex idea, the most difficult idea, the most impressive idea. Again, thinking about that seed, if you start off with a complex idea, that will be difficult to explain, difficult to think of examples for, difficult to write about in general. So you will get a very complex, difficult to understand essay, which leads to failure. The band seven, eight and nine student, what they do is they generate simple ideas that directly answer the question. These ideas are easy to think of. They are relevant. They are quick to think of and they directly do what you're supposed to do, which is answer the question. Again, starting off with this seed, if your seed is simple and easy to understand, then you will understand it. You will be able to write clearly about it. And the examiner will be able to understand your idea and understand the rest of your essay. IELTS is a communications test. They are testing your ability to communicate with the examiner, communicate with the reader. By generating simple ideas, you're making your job easier and you're making the examiner's, the reader's job much easier. Then this student does little or no planning. And this student does five to 10 minutes planning. Forgive my little boo boo there. So at IELTS Advantage, we have more band seven or above success stories than any other course in the world. You can go and check that out on our website. And 90% of the students who get a band seven or above, when we ask them, what were the keys to you getting a high score, 90% of them will say that they spent five to 10 minutes planning. Why is this so important? Well, think of it as like Google Maps for your essay. If you have Google Maps, it's very easy to get to your destination. You don't have to think about how to get there. You just follow the map. This student knows exactly what to write in their essay. It's like having Google Maps for their essay. So they do all their thinking in this stage. They get everything done in terms of thinking. And then they can focus on writing. This student does little or no thinking and they have to do all of their thinking when they are down here at the writing stage. So they're writing a little bit, then thinking, then writing, then thinking, and then they get lost and then they get frustrated. They get stressed. They get lost even more. And then their essay is a complete mess. They're running out of time and they fail. In the comments, how many times has this happened to you? The more you plan, the more you invest time in planning, the easier it will be to write your essay. So let's have a look now at what our students do for their introduction. OK. So consistently, what we see with these students is useless background information or background statements. They'll consistently say things like, in the modern world or nowadays, sugary drinks are a very hot, controversial topic in the modern world or some nonsense like that. Now, this isn't really going to lower your score, but it doesn't add anything to your score. So you've just wasted a huge amount of your time doing nothing, basically. If you contrast that with the band Seven to Nine student, every single letter, every single word, every single sentence contributes to them getting that high score. This student has just memorized this or they've read so-called band nine essays that are not really band nine. And this leads to them just memorizing stuff and inserting it into their essay. The IELTS Writing Task Two test is not a memorization test. It is testing your ability to clearly communicate in writing. These do not help you communicate. The second thing they'll do is there's no clear position or ideas. It's not really clear from looking at their introduction what they think about the question. They don't really mention if they agree or disagree. And maybe if they do, they don't say why they agree or disagree. So the examiner is reading this and they don't really know what you think about the question. They are testing what you know about the question by inserting a memorized phrase and then no information about what the question is actually asking you. Are you keeping the examiner happy? No. And the third common thing that we see is lots. Of attempts. The key word there is attempts. High level, full cab and grammar. So it's very, very common that after they put in this useless background information that they just try and insert lots of big fancy high level words that they've memorized or they've seen in some YouTube video that says, you know, learn these five bad nine words and you'll get a bad nine. They attempt to use these words, but nearly always if they are trying to do this, they are using them either inaccurately or inappropriately. In order to get a high score, the vocabulary and the grammar that you use should be accurate and it should be appropriate. Memorizing phrases and big fancy words lowers your score. It does not increase your score. What about seven, eight or nine student does? The first thing they do is they paraphrase. The question, accurately. So what paraphrasing the question demonstrates to the examiner is that you fully understood the question. If you don't understand the question, then you cannot paraphrase the question. It also demonstrates that you have bad seven, eight or nine level vocabulary and grammar because you cannot paraphrase accurately and appropriately if you do not have bad seven, eight or nine vocabulary and grammar. The next thing will be a clear position. In this case, your position will be, do you agree or disagree? That will be clearly stated on clear ideas. So you'll have, for this type of question, you'll have two clear main ideas in your introduction. I agree because X and Y or I disagree because of X and Y. And your position will be clear. Your ideas will be clear, easy to understand, not complex and difficult to understand. You should be able to give this introduction to anybody in the world that speaks English, show it to them and they can clearly understand it. If you show this to anybody in the world, they will not understand it because it will be nonsense. And in general, their vocabulary and their grammar are appropriate. So this student, even though they're at a bad nine, is not thinking about complexity. They're not thinking about how to show off how amazing their grammar and vocabulary are. They are using grammar and vocabulary appropriately and accurately to help them clearly answer the question and clearly write an introduction. If they do that, they'll use some high-level words and some more complex grammar naturally, but the focus for this student is on clearly answering the question and writing a good introduction. The focus for this student is showing off how much vocabulary and grammar and phrases and all this nonsense that they have memorized. The IELTS Reading Task 2 test is not a memorization test. It is a communications test. This person, if they moved to Toronto or London or Sydney, they would not be able to clearly communicate with people. This person can. What is IELTS actually testing? Is testing, can you move to an English-speaking country and communicate with people clearly? That is the key to a band seven, eight, or nine. So let's move on to the main body paragraphs. MBP, main body paragraphs. Okay, so you're gonna have two main body paragraphs for this particular type of question. What this student does is they have multiple ideas in one paragraph and many are irrelevant. By irrelevant, they just do not answer the question. So they've lots and lots of main ideas. We would call this a shotgun approach where they are just shooting as much information as possible at the examiner. This student is not using a shotgun, they're using a sniper rifle, one shot, one kill. One idea clearly explained to the examiner and this student is clearly communicating. This student is just writing as much information about the general topic as possible. They also have a lack of idea development. So they are writing lots of ideas, but they're not explaining those ideas, they're not supporting those ideas with examples. There is also a lack of coherence and cohesion. So what does coherence mean? It means that it is clear, it is easy to understand. Useless background information, confusing. No clear position or ideas, confusing. Lots of grammar and vocabulary mistakes, very confusing, difficult to read. All of this makes it very confusing and difficult to read too. So is it clear? No, it is giving the examiner a headache. Cohesion means that do the elements in your introduction and your main body paragraphs, do they link together? Do your ideas in the introduction, for example, match up with your ideas in the main body paragraphs. Your introduction should introduce your main ideas. Your main body paragraph should take those same ideas and develop them and talk about them in detail. Often people with getting a band five, band six, 6.5, they will have different ideas here and then different ideas here. There is no cohesion. Then when it comes to vocabulary and grammar. So the vocab and grammar make it harder for the reader. So why do we write an essay? We write an essay to communicate with the reader. If your vocabulary and grammar makes it harder for the reader to understand the answer to the question. Again, we're always going back to the question. Then your vocabulary and grammar is not very good. It doesn't matter if it is high level or not. It doesn't matter if it is complex or not. Does it help the reader or not? If it doesn't help the reader, then you're going to get one of these lower scores. Let's contrast that with a band nine student. What are they doing in their main body paragraphs? So they start off with a topic sentence that helps the reader understand the main idea. Okay, so for do you agree or disagree questions? Each main body paragraph will have one main idea. Your first sentence should be your topic sentence. And what it does is it just tells the reader this is the main idea. This is what this paragraph is about. It is helping the reader. The most important thing is to help the reader understand what is going on. And it's also linked to the idea that you have in your introduction. So if your introduction has X and Y, so X is idea number one and Y is idea number two, your first topic sentence should just be X. This is the main idea. Then it clearly, and no time any times I have used the word clear, explains how main idea answers the question. Clearly answers the question. What do you need to do? You need to clearly answer the question. So you write your idea and then you clearly explain how that answers the question, clearly. Then what they do is they support main idea with evidence, otherwise known as an example. So their evidence, their example supports the main idea. It is linked to that main idea. It is just providing evidence. It is providing proof to show the examiner this is why my main idea is correct and why it answers the question. And then finally, vocab and grammar help the reader. All of their grammar and vocabulary, especially at a band nine. Especially at a band nine, the vocabulary and grammar, if you show a band nine essay to the average aisle student, they will normally say that it is a band five or a band six essay. Why is that? Because the language that a band nine essay uses, most of it, 95% of it will be understandable to the average student because 95% of the words will actually be simple, normal words. Now there will be some high level vocabulary in there but the vast majority of the words will be simple. That is because the student is focusing on just answering the question clearly. And I know many of your teachers have taught you the exact opposite to that. Well, ask yourself this question. The average score worldwide is 5.5. Most students are doing this. They're trying to show off how fancy their grammar and vocabulary is. My students just keep things simple. We run the most successful aisles course in the world. Who do you think is correct? And then finally, we need to finish with our conclusion. These students will finish off their task two essay with new ideas. So completely different from the ideas in the rest of their essay. And they'll also put in some memorized phrases. They'll often throw in some idioms that they've memorized. I've even seen proverbs and all sorts of stuff in there that doesn't actually do what a good conclusion is supposed to do. How do our band seven, eight, nine students finish off their task two essay? Well, they have a clear position. They clearly state again whether they agree or disagree. Their position should be clear throughout the entire essay and summary of main ideas. And finally, what they do is everyone makes mistakes. So they proofread. There will be lots and lots of little mistakes. So they will go through their essay, correct those mistakes and they'll have lots of time because band seven, eight, nine students, they tend to finish IELTS Rating Task Two with well before 40 minutes. These students probably won't even make it to the conclusion because they do no planning, no thinking and they get lost in here somewhere because if you look at it, it's a complete mess. That's why they're getting lost in the weeds here. This student spends about five to 10 minutes on this stage. Then they spend about 25 minutes on this stage, the writing stage, which leaves them five minutes at the end to do their checking. If you want to see everything in more detail, if you want to see example essays and for me to talk you through each of these things step by step, I put a link in the description to our free five day challenge. It's five free lessons that will take you through each of these steps and show you exactly what to do. If you enjoyed this, just let us know in the comments what do you want me to do next? If you have a suggestion, please feel free to write in the comments and how can we do better? Feel free to give us negative feedback and tell us how we can make these things better for you, how we can do things better. At IELTS Advantage, we always want to get better and help you guys improve your IELTS scores even more. Hope you enjoyed this video. If you did, give it a like. If you didn't, give it a dislike. And if you need any help with your IELTS preparation, feel free to get in touch with us. We answer 100% of the emails that we receive and you'll find my contact details done in the comments below. Thank you very much. I'll see you again soon.