 Hey there, Chris here from IELTS Advantage and this is Anna. Anna recently got an amazing 8.5 in her writing. So if you consider that the average score worldwide for writing is just 5.5 and that most students struggle to even get a 7, an 8.5 is a pretty amazing thing. So I had an idea. Instead of doing a normal success story video where we talked to Anna one-on-one and talked about how she did it, I decided to do things a little bit differently and do a one-on-one interview with her. But get Anna to write out her essay, the real question that she got on the test and write it nearly exactly the same as she did in the real test. And then go through it sentence by sentence and talk about what she did, why she did that and show you guys what an 8.5 essay looks like. And we're also going to talk about how she prepared for the test, how she generated ideas, what her practice routine was, all of the things that you guys need to know to help you improve your scores. Okay, Anna. So when you saw this question for the first time, some think that only those people who have worked for a company for many years should be promoted to a higher position. Do you agree? What was going through your head? What were you thinking when you saw this one? Well, first of all, I was over the moon because that very topic was one of my favorite because immediately I realized that I did have a lot of good vocabulary and quite clear ideas because it's not something vague or something too complicated. Everyone can have good ideas about this. And then I followed your strategy, which you usually mentioned during your course, which is not to support your real viewpoints, your real perception of life. Because initially I don't think so. I do think that senior employees actually should be promoted a bit more. But I decided to stick to the ideas, which I can clearly and easily understand without spending a lot of time on just going through a lot of ideas and thinking how to put it together. So it wasn't my real opinion, but it was something which is easy to describe. Whatever makes it easy for you to write is the best choice. So you might totally disagree with that in real life, but if you agree with it and you can easily write about it because you have good ideas, good examples, good vocabulary, just use that. The examiner is not testing your personal opinion, they're testing whether you can write effectively in English. And also a good life hack, the so-called life hack, also from your course is to stick to simple ideas. So they weren't so complicated. They were obvious because I do know from your course that we should show our ability to explain, to deliver our thoughts, not our scientific knowledge. Exactly. It's not a knowledge test. And they're not testing how complex your ideas are. They're testing whether you can think of ideas that actually answer the question, which is normally the simplest ideas that come to mind. There's a game show in the UK and the US called Family Fortunes. And they ask a question and they say, we asked 100 people this question. And the game show contestants have to guess the most popular answer. Normally the most popular answers or the most straightforward or obvious answers are the easiest to use. Would you agree with that? Yeah, totally. Excellent. Excellent. So how did you generate ideas? Was there any technique or did they just pop into your head because it was a very obvious question? So I followed the strategy to stick to a one-sided opinion. First I chose my side, which was against senior employees. And then I just immediately thought about two main points, which are easy to describe. That's it. Exactly. There's a lot of strategies. Like we have the coffee shop method on the course. A lot of teachers teach brainstorming. But often sometimes you will get a question where the answers or the ideas just pop into your head. They're very obvious. And you don't need to go through that whole technique and strategy. They're helpful if you can't immediately think of what is going on. But if they pop into your head, just use those. Also, I think it's important to write a lot of essays to practice these very skill. Because before that, one year ago, it took me much more time just to think of ideas. I was really stuck looking at some essay topics. But just practicing this skill it may be developed. It's not something unique. Yeah, it's like if you wanted to learn how to play football or learn how to improve your cooking or singing, you have to do those things. Writing is a doing thing. Often people will ask me, well, why is my listening and reading very high, but my writing is very low? And I said, well, you've been listening to English your whole life, but you never write in English. And so, and even smaller things like analysing the question, idea generation, planning, these are all skills that you should practice before. So that's great advice. So did you do any planning or did you just think of the ideas and immediately start writing? Yeah, because of that practice, in quite intense practice, I didn't have to write down my ideas. It was a computer delivered test. So I did have a list of a sheet of paper to write down my ideas, but I didn't need it because they just were in my head. And in fact, I put it in my introduction. So they were in front of me. Exactly. Exactly. So you had the structure already in your head. And because you had done it so many times, you could just immediately start. Yeah. And we'll talk about that in a second where we teach you to kind of plan your essay in your introduction. And your introduction is a mini, a mini plan. Excellent. So let's get into it. And let's have a look at your first sentence. So your first sentence, there is an opinion that primarily staff members who have dedicated many years to working for a particular company should be given executive positions in a company. So what the examiner is looking for there is your ability to paraphrase. And they'll be looking at two things. Number one, does that sentence mean the same as the sentence in the question, which it does? And is your grammar and vocabulary accurate? And have you varied your vocabulary enough? And you did that perfectly. And you did an excellent job. So the examiner is looking at that and immediately they know, you know how to paraphrase, you've understood the question, your grammar is good, your vocabulary is good. So that would give the immediately give the examiner an indication that you know what you're doing. The second sentence starts off with, I disagree with this viewpoint. So what that does is it indicates to the examiner, here is my opinion. I know exactly what I want to talk about. My opinion is extremely clear from the beginning. That helps the examiner understand the viewpoint, but also helps Anna, when she's writing, stick to that viewpoint and make sure the rest of the essay links up with that and is nice and coherent and cohesive. Now, the second thing that she has done in that sentence is she has listed her two main ideas, her two reasons. In as much as younger workers may have more skills, and if not provided with an opportunity for a promotion, they will become demotivated. So Anna has put two main ideas here. Number one, younger workers have more skill. And number two, if they're not promoted, they'll become demotivated. So it's very clear to the examiner, here's my opinion. And here are the two reasons to support my opinion. And as Anna said before, that acts as a mini plan for the rest of Anna's essay. Because the first main idea, lack of skill, she's going to use that in main body paragraph one. And then the second main idea, demotivated, she's going to use that as her second main idea in her second main body paragraph. So is that what you did? Is that what you were thinking about while you were writing it, Anna? Sorry for talking so much, it's your video. It's our video. Yeah, yeah, that was exactly my approach. Excellent. Excellent. And did you proofread the introduction or did you just immediately then go into the... Yeah, it was a computer based test. That's why I used to do a lot of spelling mistakes because of my typing. When I write by hand, I don't do so many spelling mistakes, but when it comes to typing, I do have to check each sentence right on the spot. It helps me because maybe by the end of the test, I may not have any time to check it. So that's why I do it right after finishing a paragraph. Yeah, I would recommend at the end of every sentence, check your work. At the end of every paragraph, check your work. And then when you have time at the end, check your work again. So you check three times. So that would be good. So let's move on to the first main body paragraph. And what we can see here is in the very first sentence, this is Anna's topic sentence. And what the topic sentence does is it tells the examiner, this is the main idea of this paragraph. This is the main thing that I want to talk about. So she says, although senior employees have proved to be reliable and loyal, more often than not, it is novices who have a wider cluster of actual skills. So a wider cluster of actual skills that matches up with the main point that she listed in her introduction, which is younger workers may have more skills. So she's taken the main idea from her introduction and put it into her topic sentence, which is exactly what we teach on the course, because it makes everything very, very clear to the examiner and easy for Anna to write about in her main body paragraph and makes everything coherent and cohesive. Would you agree with that, Anna? Yeah, totally. And I also decided to mention that I understand the opposite viewpoint, which is about senior employees who are reliable and loyal, because it didn't take a lot of time and space. And it was clear that's why I thought it would be a good emphasis, like making a contrast. Yeah, it's fine to do that. What I would avoid doing is trying to do that in a very elaborate way. At the end of the paragraph, trying to show the opposite view or maybe have like five or six main body paragraphs that you in an agree or disagree question, you can show a balanced view, but it's very easy to mess it up. So what we teach our students is just make it really simple by agreeing with one side, either agree or disagree and just sticking to that side. Anna briefly talked about the other side, but you don't need to do that. It's not essential. It was my experiments with the language. Yeah, and it helped you with a complex sentence as well. So that was great. The other thing that Anna did very, very well was she didn't just stop there and list one idea. She then fully developed that idea by explaining her reasoning behind that. A good way to think about this is someone saying to you, well, I understand that idea, but how does it actually answer the question? Give me reasons. Give me justification. And she did that very well here. This is because young specialists exert their full effort in mastering their hard and soft skills in order to meet the requirements of today's highly competitive job market. She's explained why skills or wide range of skills are useful for the job market and then continues with that. Therefore, having been promoted, such workers may bring innovation and help to better incorporate the latest technological advances into business processes, which is irreplaceable for every company to flourish. So it explains why companies would want that. How young people with lots of skills would benefit a company and that helps to really develop her answer. What were you thinking when you were writing that bit? Frankly speaking, I was thinking how to put together everything I know about this topic and to a bit show off my vocabulary, but then I realized that actually I don't need to show it off because I already had a lot of good expressions and they come out of me naturally. So I just gave up that idea and move on explaining. And then I thought, okay, I need an example here, but I don't have time. I decided to write this essay at the end of the test because my weak side was the first part, so I started off with it. And then I had only 37 minutes for the essay. That's why I just decided to leave it there. If I had time, I would come back and then add an example, but I didn't have time. Yeah, so I've added an example in here. This is the only change that I have made to Anna's essay. I put in, for example, the average age of a new hire at Facebook is only 23 for this very purpose. Anna didn't add in an example because she was running out of time. And I think that's a really good point to make, that sometimes you have to be a little bit strategic with your timing. What happens with a lot of people is they think, I have to put an example in and they can't think of an example. And then they waste five minutes or 10 minutes or they add an example in. People often do that with vocabulary as well, especially when paraphrasing. They're like, how do I change this word? And they waste a lot of time. Anna had already developed her main body paragraph sufficiently. An example would have improved things. And I've added that in just to show how someone could add a very, very short example that would take just 30 seconds or one minute to write. But I think if Anna had added in a good example, it would have even brought it up to a nine. That's one of the reasons why I think it is at an 8.5 instead of a nine. But 8.5 is pretty good for writing. Anyway, Anna, so I don't think you should be too hard on yourself. Yeah, I also thought that I had quite explicit and well-developed explanation. That's why it might work as an example. So I decided to move on and just to finish the essay. I mean, for anybody watching, definitely do try and put a good example into each main body paragraph. But in real life, under real exam conditions, often things can go wrong. You might have to repeat a word sometimes or leave out an example or something like that. Try and make it as perfect as you can and follow the system that we're giving you. But sometimes you have to make a trade-off. You can't do everything perfectly. So let's move on to your second main body paragraph. Yet another reason why less experienced staff members should have even chances for a promotion is that otherwise, they will not be motivated to do their best. Again, so she has taken demotivated her main idea from her introduction and she has added that into her topic sentence. And we've already talked about why that is a good idea. So we can move on. Explanation, knowing that however hard they try, they still will not be given a higher position in a company. Young employees are likely to grow reluctant to go the extra mile, which may negatively affect the company's revenue and curb its development. So a good way to think about explanations is imagine somebody saying, well, so what? What does that mean? So they'll not be motivated. So what? So I used to have an English teacher in my English when I was in high school and he would walk past us and look over our shoulders when we were writing essays and he would point and say, so what? And what he was trying to get us to do was elaborate and give reasons where rather than just state our opinion, give reasons for our opinion. And I think Anna did that very, very well there. Did you use that little trick for writing explanations? Yeah, yeah. And were it not for your course, I wouldn't do it at all because I wasn't like that. I thought initially I thought, oh my gosh, one sentence is enough. Why should I write more? But when I sent like 10 or 12 essays for correction, then I realized, yeah, I have to elaborate my ideas. Yeah, I think it's the difference between speaking and writing. When you're speaking to someone, they can ask you follow up questions. They can say, what do you mean? Or so what? Or can you tell me more? But when you're writing something, the person reading that doesn't have the chance to ask you follow up questions. So you have to leave everything on the page and kind of anticipate follow up questions that they might have. One of the great things about your essay is an excellent example here in the second main body paragraph to illustrate a prominent IT entrepreneur Pavel Duruf. I don't know if I'm pronouncing that correctly, but I'm sorry if I'm mispronouncing it. Had to leave his first workplace since despite his outstanding abilities, he was not rewarded with the leading role. As a result, he has successfully set up his own business while his employer lost his company due to a lack of highly qualified workers. So is that is that a real example that you read about in a newspaper or magazine or something? I just came across Pavel Duruf's page on Instagram and I do know that he's a prominent IT specialist and he's one of the most successful entrepreneurs in the world. What I really don't know about his working background, about his story, it was just made up for just to show the example. It's a really good point because sometimes you'll be able to think of a real example that is 100% true. Sometimes you won't be able to think of a real example and in that situation you can make up an example as long as the example makes sense and it fits the question and it's not like some people write 99% of, you know, they make up some crazy statistic but yours was false but it did a very good job of exemplifying that point and so it's fine to make up examples as long as they make sense. In fact it was the most difficult part in the writing practice because it was really hard for me to come up with ideas. With examples? Yeah, ideas for example. I'm no good at all in making up things so I did a lot to master this skill. And for anybody watching this who feels the same way as Ana does, a really great way of doing this is to go on to like the BBC news or the Guardian or some good news source and you will find technology news, the environment news, education news, health news and those are the common topics that come up again and again and again for writing task two. So if you just read one newspaper article a day for, you know, two or three months while you're preparing you'll get lots of ideas and lots of examples and it'll help with vocabulary and everything. Takes, you know, 10 minutes a day, 20 minutes a day but can make a huge difference to your overall score. Before we get into their conclusion, Ana left in a spelling mistake so you've put this in red, entrepreneur. Entrepreneur is a difficult word to spell, most native English speakers mess it up as well but it was great that Ana left that in to show that she made a small mistake because a lot of people think that Band 8.5 or Band 9 like Ana got 8.5 which means that she got a Band 9 in at least two of the criteria and to get a Band 9 you can make small grammar mistakes, you can make small slips, not many of them and they're just slips, same as vocabulary, you can make a slight spelling mistake here or there, you should try and minimize those as much as possible but many people watching this, even when I post sample essays, someone will see one comma out of place and oh you made a mistake, that's terrible, it's like everyone's human, you know, you're writing under exam conditions, try and minimize your mistakes as much as possible but even Band 9 students make little slips and it even says that in the marking criteria. For most students I wouldn't focus on the small details as much as focusing on getting the big things correct, like for example, paraphrasing, your idea being clear throughout your structure looking good, clear topic sentences, clear explanations, good examples, good conclusions, the big things are the things that really matter, not things like a lot of people focus on oh you use one personal pronoun or you misspelt one word, you must be a Band 5, it's like no that's not realistic and it's not how the examiners think if you go and live in London or New York or Sydney and you listen to how native English speakers talk they make little grammar mistakes a lot as countable uncountable nouns for example or verb sub-debt agreements but they don't make them that often and that is what is referred to in the marking criteria as a slip, an occasional slip, so it wouldn't be like a massive mistake like getting a tense wrong or a systematic mistake which is you make a mistake every time you use that grammar point you make that mistake articles or prepositions is a very good example of that so somebody who has a big problem with articles especially Russian speakers every article is wrong that would be a systematic error and that would lead to a Band 6 because it just shows that your grammar is not up to the level it needs to be but if you got one article wrong in your whole essay that's no big deal that's just a slip I do live lessons all the time and I make little slips all the time you know nobody's perfect even even in class I'd be writing on the board and talking at the same time and I'd make a little mistake and some students would say oh you know nothing teacher is like no I'm human human being so that's a good point what we're looking for in the conclusion is the examiner is looking for no new ideas they don't want to see new ideas or or anything that hasn't been talked about in the in the rest of the essay the examiner is looking for a clear opinion again your opinion must be clear throughout the essay in your introduction in your main body in your conclusion so Anna did that in her conclusion and a summary of her main points so taking the same two ideas from the introduction and the same two ideas from the main body and stating them again in the conclusion and a lot of people have a problem with this every time I teach this people will say well how could you're repeating ideas like well that's what a conclusion is a conclusion is this is what I just talked about this is a summary of what I just talked about and that will improve your coherence and cohesion because everything links together and is very very clear and how you do that is you need to improve your vocabulary because you can only do that if you have a wide-ranging vocabulary and you can vary the language you should avoid repeating the same word again and again and again and again although if that happens it's not as big of a deal as people think but you can repeat the same ideas in your introduction main body paragraph and your conclusion so is that what you were thinking about you're thinking about paraphrasing whenever you got to your conclusion yeah yeah I just I used to look at my introduction just to remind myself of my of my own ideas and then I decided to put that concession which I did in the first body paragraph just to stick to you know one one rule if I made it once so I decided to repeat it to just to be on the safe side I know I could avoid this but I decided it wouldn't damage my score so I did it yeah excellent excellent so there's two more things I want to talk about before we finish talk about why this is such a good essay and why it's a such a high level the first one is grammar so the number one thing you're looking for to get a band aid to get a band line is not so much range although that's important it's accuracy the avoidance of making lots of mistakes so Anna has mostly nearly all error-free sentences and that is what the examiner is looking for they're looking for lots and lots of sentences with no grammatical errors in them whatsoever also Anna has used a range of simple and complex sentences she doesn't every sentence does not need to be complex but most of her sentences are complex and a range of different grammar structures but what what is very impressive about Anna's work is you can tell that she hasn't tried to show off her grammar she's tried to answer the question clearly and as a result of doing that she has naturally used a range of structures complex sentences and kept her her grammar extremely accurate one of the things that a lot of people say about band 9 band 8.5 essays is oh it looks very simple how can it be such a high a high band it's not about showing off and using complicated language it's about answering the question clearly is that what you tried to focus on Anna yeah and I during the exam I realized that all the time I spent on mastering my grammar actually helped me because I practiced inversions a lot and but I of course I didn't use them all the time and during this essay this inversion like knowing that however hard they try or it is noises who they just came up naturally so I wasn't thinking oh now there should be an inversion yeah or some people think I will I need to write an inversion here and then a passive sentence and then a conditional and then you know and they imagine trying to write a normal email like that you know instead of just writing an email to your boss or someone you're like I'm going to try and use the future tense and the past tense and progressive tense and it's just very confusing and difficult to do instead just answer the question focus on accuracy and the rest will take care of itself yeah and I also practiced a lot by forcing to use this complex grammar but out of my essays just in my writing practice at home yeah I did force myself before the exam a lot but during the exam I avoided this yeah that's what I suggest with grammar and vocabulary during your preparations take chances push yourself out of your comfort zone try and get better but on exam day play it safe a good analogy is when they send astronauts up into space they try and break everything before they go and it's safe on earth but when they're up in the space station they take no chances and they they play it very very safe which is a good a good way to think about about essay writing as well so finally again we'll talk about vocabulary again when people look at a band eight or a band nine essay they often say oh it's not good because the vocabulary is simple but then what I do is I highlight all the good vocabulary and then they go oh actually it is very good so if we look here staff members dedicated many years to working for a particular company executive positions younger workers provided with an opportunity for a promotion demotivated senior employees reliable and loyal novices and it just goes on and on and on and on and the the two things that are very impressive but Anna's vocabulary number one it's extremely accurate which is what you're trying to do you're not trying to use big complicated words that are wrong you're trying to use words that help you answer the question that are correct the second thing is she has an extremely wide ranging vocabulary because she's using so many topic specific words words that you only really use to talk about this specific topic such as staff members executive position younger workers senior employees reliable and loyal hard and soft skills meet the requirements highly competitive job market bring innovation business processes irreplaceable flourish you don't use those words to talk about the weather or to talk about what you did last weekend and what that demonstrates the examiner is if this person can talk about this topic with such a wide ranging vocabulary and accurate vocabulary it's a good indication that they can do that for any topic so sometimes you might get lucky and like for example if you're a doctor you might get a health question if you're a teacher you might get an education question but it is a very good indication if you can use those topic specific words that you have a wide-ranging vocabulary and did you work on your vocabulary before the test for a long time or what did you do to try and try and help you in that area it was a lot of effort from my side i i studied every day i did an exception i had a weekend like once a month and that's it i read a lot of tons of articles i've written a list of more than 2000 words and idioms and i had an english-speaking friend to bounce ideas of i really pushed it yeah most of the really successful russian students i've worked with they they really systematically like every day improves that try and do something to improve their vocabulary yeah and what what i did is that i followed the so-called bottom-up approach which means that you're learning chunks by heart and then they come out of you naturally both collocations collocations and chunks like so if we look at your your dedicated many years yeah i did with an opportunity for promotion yeah innovation meet the requirements yeah so that's how our brains normally learn vocabulary when we're children we are when we're adults as well but we don't learn single words we learn chunks of language so that's very good advice as well so it does take up a lot of time but it's a tree it's really well well worth it definitely as i said there's no tricks or tips or i can't give someone a list of words the day before their exam and say use these in the exam because you need to learn how to use them not not learn them memorize them it's not a memorization test it's a it's a writing test yeah so and i thank you so much for for sharing your essay and giving that advice it's it's such a privilege to work with a student like you who's worked very hard and now you can see the results in 8.5 and and that will hopefully lead to much success in in the future for you as well thank you chris for your association and for the course of course i will follow the videos and i will try to take up some new things so yeah i do enjoy the simplicity of your explanations and i can now i can tell everyone that the strategies really work keep it simple as i said i'm sure you're sick of hearing me say keep it simple but anyway well thank you thank you again ana and i'm sure everyone will get a lot of benefit from this video and i hope that you have the best of luck in the future