 Hey guys, Chris here from IELTSAdvantes.com and today what we're going to work on is coherence and cohesion, specifically for task two writing. I thought I'd make this video because a lot of you seem to be a little bit confused about what coherence and cohesion means so I thought that I would make a video today showing you in basic practical terms with examples and everything what it actually means in real life in a real test situation. Okay so coherence and cohesion is with 25% of your total mark so it is extremely important without because it's worth a quarter of your total marks and without doing it properly you're really going to struggle to get the score that you're hoping for. So like many things on the IELTS test the problem is not that it is hard or it is difficult the problem is that most students don't understand what this means in just basic practical real terms. So in this lesson what we're going to do is we're going to take a practical approach to understanding these concepts because often what I see is students being taught it in a way of very high level theory so many teachers not criticizing teachers in any way but the way that it is taught is often talking on a theoretical basis and a lot of students find this difficult to understand so we're going to keep it really really practical today and we're going to look at what practical steps you can take to improve your coherence and cohesion score and we're going to apply what we learned to real examples but we're only going to look at task two and today we're not going to look at task one but if you want more information on task one go and check out IELTSadvantage.com and you'll see a task one section there and you can have a look there but let's just focus on one thing at a time because when I've combined task one and task two coherence and cohesion before it gets a little bit confusing so let's just focus on task two today. All right so first I want to start off with a quote from Tim Ferriss. Tim Ferriss he's a New York Times best-selling author I think his podcast is one of the like a top 10 podcasts in the world by number of downloads and I was listening to one of his podcasts I listened to every single one of them they're definitely check it out not only just to practice your listening but just they're really interesting he interviews some really really interesting people so it's called the Tim Ferriss podcast and he was talking about writing the other day and he said writing is a reflection of our thinking and I totally agree with this and in my VIP Facebook group I posted this and it resonated with a lot of my students because what happens is when students go into the test if their mind is confused if their mind is just everything in there is just really scared and they're stressed out but more importantly they've just no idea how to answer the question and everything in their head is very very very confused then that comes out on the paper that comes out in their writing but if they know exactly what they're doing and everything is nice clear coherent cohesive then that will lead to a very clear piece of writing and we're going to look at that in in much more detail in this lesson but first I want to say there's a big big big big difference between learning and doing and you are completely wasting your time today by just watching this video and not doing anything about it it is better to watch one video and actually implement what you have learned in that video and actually do the things in that video than it would be if you watched 20 videos you might be watching this on youtube you might be watching this on facebook the most important thing you can do when you read an article or watch a youtube video or whatever it is is actually take the things that you learn in it and apply it by practicing by implementing in your writing the people that do that are the people that are going to really improve the people that just watch youtube video after youtube video they're really like information junkies there's there's all the information in the world is not going to help you but implementing it practicing it applying it to your real writing is really going to help you especially for practical stuff like coherence and cohesion so what does coherence and cohesion mean so rather than get into the theory and talk about it in a very academic way just going to get yourself to ask you yourself these three questions is it easy for the examiner to understand my essay if it is not easy for the examiner to understand your essay then your coherence and cohesion need to improve and the examiner is not superwoman they cannot read your mind they cannot guess what you meant what you put on the paper is all they have to go on so if it is very confusing and difficult to read then you're not going to score very well for coherence and cohesion are my main points easy to follow so the main points in your essay is it easy to understand them did you develop them well is it easy to follow your main argument if not your coherence and cohesion needs a little bit of improvement are my main points connected in a way that makes them easy to understand and follow and we're going to look at that third point in a bit more detail with a real example in a minute so what does it that mean in a real essay so you probably that you're thinking okay Chris you've explained that but I still don't really know what that means so let's look at these eight things and that will help you understand exactly what you need to be doing in your essay so is it clear that you've understood the question if you don't understand the question there is no way that you will be able to write a clear coherent answer to the question you need to answer the question clearly the first step of that is understanding the question are your ideas relevant to the question so if your ideas just don't answer the question at all or they're about a different topic or maybe they just talk about the topic in general rather than answering the specific question then it's going to be difficult to follow your argument is your message clear throughout the essay so is your opinion clear is your argument clear are your main ideas clear have you developed your ideas properly so instead of you just you know writing 20 different ideas or you know six different ideas I see that a lot like three ideas in the first main body paragraph and three ideas in the second main body paragraph you the the reader is going to find it really difficult to understand what you mean by those ideas unless you develop them with explanations examples and we'll look at that again a little bit more detail in this video do you use structure and paragraphing in a way that aids clarity by clarity I mean is the essay easy to understand because of the structure that you used or because of the paragraphing that you used if you're you know using some structure that is very very very complicated and doesn't actually do the job that a structure is meant to do which is to make it easy to write than easy to read your essay then you might not be on the right track do you know how to write effective paragraphs so by that I mean do you know how to write an introduction do you know how to write a main body paragraph do you need to do you know how to write a conclusion each of those things has a job has a role within an essay so if you know what to put in those paragraphs then you're going to write a better essay in a very basic terms is your use of cohesive devices appropriate and accurate so we're going to look at what cohesive devices are and but the key thing is that you have to use them appropriately and accurately and does your language aid clear communication so you're going to get a you know 25 percent for grammar 25 percent for vocabulary but using vocabulary and grammar properly it should aid clear communication should help clear communication the purpose of writing is not to show off how many amazing words and phrases you know the purpose of writing is to clearly communicate with the person reading your writing and so if you're using language that is there's a lot of mistakes or languages just not correct in terms of meaning or collocations or whatever there are many many things that could go wrong there and if you're making lots of mistakes it's really difficult to understand and I'm going to show you a real example that a student sent me that I corrected to demonstrate what happens when you maybe make a few too many mistakes or do the wrong thing in terms of grammar and vocabulary so it all starts with planning all right so a lot of you do not like planning because you think it's a waste of time timing and is it is an issue for you um let me explain something to you I have never met a band eight a band 8.5 a band nine student who didn't plan for task two for at least five minutes a lot of my most successful students plan for 10 minutes and think about it this way if you were in a strange city and you were trying to find your way around the city which way would be better to have google maps and open google maps and have a look at that and invest some time in putting your details into google maps or would it be better just to run around and try and find it yourself so writing an essay planning is kind of like having google maps for your essay it shows you exactly where to go it does take a little bit of time but it saves you a huge amount of time it is really a good investment of your time so what what happens here so understanding the question if you don't understand the question you will not be able to write a coherent essay very very very simple take the time to think about what the examiner wants you to do so what I see with many of my students um when I'm dealing with students face to face and we do like mock exams and things they open the paper look at the question and immediately start writing I mean you cannot do that you have to take the time to just sit there very calmly and think about what is happening with the question think about what the examiner wants you to do think about what the question is asking you that investment of one or two minutes is really going to pay off in the rest of your essay idea development think of specific relevant ideas that answer the question so first of all you have to think of the ideas and then how are you going to develop those ideas so by development I mean how are you going to explain those ideas how are you going to support those ideas with examples an idea is only as good as how much you can develop it it doesn't matter if you think of an amazing idea if you can't develop that idea then during the planning process you should discard that idea because if you can't explain it um if you can't develop it then it's no good structure how are you going to organize your ideas so structures are are not magic they don't lead automatically to band nine or band eight even though some students believe that um really they're just a tool to help you organize your ideas in a coherent way in a cohesive way also and this should be a roadmap for your entire essay so once you've thought about the the question you've thought about your ideas what you want to do is you want to populate a structure just a very basic skeleton structure with your main ideas and maybe your explanations your examples you don't have to write full sentences or anything like that it's just planning get it all down and that really is your map for the rest of the time that you'll be writing so you're spending the planning time just thinking and planning and then your writing time is just devoted to writing rather than if you don't plan your writing then you're thinking then you're writing then you're thinking and then you get lost and then so my god i've 20 minutes left and it's not the best position to be in so do invest some time in planning and try it out yourself um if you've never planned before try planning for five minutes next time you're doing some practice tests and you'll really see a huge difference so then you need to organize your ideas why do you need to organize your ideas you organize your ideas to make it easy for the reader always think of the reader why why do we plan anything why do we organize anything it's not to show off that we need a good that we know structures or anything like that it's just to write a clear essay that's easy to understand so in the introduction here's what the essay is about this is what you are saying to the examiner here's what my essay is about and here's what i think about the question and here are my main ideas not everybody teaches introductions in a different way if you ask five different IELTS teachers they'll give you five different ways and i'm not saying any of them are wrong there are many correct ways to write an introduction i like my students to include the main ideas because i think it's easier to write it's easier to write the whole essay like that um but please don't you know comment below saying my teacher told me never to write my main ideas in the introduction that's fine if you wanted um follow that way and i'm just showing you my way the main body you're saying to the examiner here are my main ideas and your topic sentences this is how they answer the question by developing it and here are some examples to support my main points in the conclusion what you're saying to the examiner is here's a summary of the things I just talked about so you're going to write your introduction you're going to write your main body and then the conclusion is just here's a summary of everything above here so if you think about it in very simple easy to understand terms like this instead of you know whole big course that is dedicated to structures and very complicated structures um just think about it in simple terms like this and it normally helps people that way and because if you're thinking clearly if you're thinking in a straightforward way then your essay is going to be clear and it's going to be straightforward so what does that look like all right so i'm going to show you i'm not going to show you a whole aisles essay um one because it's difficult to fit a whole aisles essay on one slide and in powerpoint like i'm using right now and and two it's just really really complicated to talk about everything in an aisles essay so i'm going to use a very very simple example but i have simplified everything you are not going to be able to sorry there's just a taxi outside to pick up my little boy and my wife sorry for the background noise um i've just simplified everything so that the purpose of this essay is not to show you exactly how to write an essay it's to demonstrate the points that we've already been talking about so please don't complain that this is not a real aisles essay i know it's not i've simplified it down to its very very very bare bones so Liverpool are the best football team in the world do you agree or disagree you will not be asked a question like this all right what i'm doing with this question is using a very very very very simple example to help demonstrate these points so my introduction i don't think Liverpool are the best team in the world because they haven't won anything in years and they are currently in ninth place in the Premier League all right so what i'm doing with this introduction is i'm telling the examiner this is what the the essay is about and here are my main points so main body one Liverpool haven't won anything in years that's the main point of the paragraph this shows that many other teams are better than them that's my explanation the last time they won a major trophy was in 2005 that's my example they are currently ninth in the Premier ship this demonstrates that there are eight teams better than them in England Liverpool have not been top of the league in more than 20 years so again my second main point i've explained it i've used an example again i know some of you are typing already this is too short this is not a real IELTS essay i know it's not i'm just using a simplified version in conclusion Liverpool are nowhere near one of the best teams on the planet just because of their failure to achieve any success either this year or in the last couple of decades all right so let's look at this in a little bit more detail so let's get laser pointer here okay so i have given my opinion here and i've outlined my main points so then i've taken the first main point and i put it here in my topic sentence i've explained it and i've supported it with an example then i've taken my second main point i put it here and i put it here in my topic sentence in my second main body paragraph i've explained it i've supported it then what i've done is i've summarized these three paragraphs here in the conclusion um just done it here in Liverpool are nowhere near one of the best teams on the planet because of their failure to achieve any success either this year or in the last couple of decades so is my message clear if somebody was to read this would they know if I agree or disagree with this yes it would be very very very clear to them if somebody were to read this would it be clear why i believe that yes it would be extremely clear why i believe that have i developed my ideas so i've developed my ideas here in the first main body paragraph and here in the second main body paragraph so i've done that to make it very very easy for the reader to understand everything that i've been doing in a real isles um task two response you're obviously not going to keep it this simple you're you're going to develop everything a lot more it's going to be a lot longer but i hope just that very very practical simple example will show you how i would deal with that question um and how i would do it in a very clear coherent way um so this is a do you agree or disagree question um this is not showing you a structure for every type of task two question again sorry for going on and on and on about this but a time when i did this before lots of students complained about it um it's not a real isles essay so do you know how to write the key paragraph so by key paragraphs i'm talking about introductions main body paragraphs and conclusions so introduction paraphrase the sentence state your opinion or your main ideas depending on what um the question is asking you about main body paragraphs topic sentence explanation examples so even these three things so let me get my little laser pointer even these three things are aiding um coherence and cohesion the topic sentence is basically saying to the examiner this is what this paragraph is about here's my explanation making it very clear and here's my example supporting that so each sentence or each thing that you're doing in this paragraph is helping with coherence and cohesion and in the conclusion reiterate your opinion main ideas again that totally depends on what type of question it is um the way i teach task two is totally dependent on the type of question but this is generally very generally what you be doing so cohesive devices so often referred to as linking words or connecting words for example therefore in conclusion for example these are examples of cohesive devices some people call them linking words some people call them linkers some people call them connecting words so you must use these appropriately and accurately so accurately you're not going to say therefore and then give your or you know for example and then give a conclusion that would be inaccurate to use it and you're not going to say in conclusion and then you know in your introduction that would be inaccurate and you have to use them accurately each of the different cohesive devices has a very specific use and i'm going to give you this in a minute and show you all the different uses that they have but also you must use them appropriately one of the biggest problems that i see is a lot of students think and i don't know why i think maybe some websites or maybe some teachers have taught this that the more cohesive devices you use the more points you get or the higher score you get this is not true at all and in general band 8 band 9 students don't use these as much as band 6 band 7 students and you do not get extra points by putting one at the start of every single sentence and look at real um english look at academic reports or the news or you know some look at the guardian or the times or some quality newspaper like that and look at how often they use these types of words it's not as often as you think you do not get extra marks for using fancy or impressive cohesive devices so this is another thing that i see where students are learning very very very complex complicated cohesive devices and think that this will impress the examiner they're not giving you extra marks for this they're judging your ability to use cohesive devices appropriately and accurately that's the only thing that they're looking at really so if you want more information on cohesive devices um you can download this infographic pdf thing that i created um and just google aisles advanced or aisles cohesive devices or aisles advantage cohesive devices and it'll take you to a full article um and it will give you this like pdf download you can have a look at this um it takes a long time to explain all of this and the article does that so after the video have a look there and you can um you can really get into it there i'm not going to get into it anymore here because the video would be too long if i do that all right so the importance of grammar and vocabulary the importance of grammar and vocabulary to coherence and cohesion most of you will be surprised that this that that your language errors and the way that you use language affects your coherence and cohesion but it really really really does pause the video and and read this you will probably have a headache after it because like i look at these every day students send me these for me to correct um and the more bad use of grammar bad use of vocabulary for example let's look here since these activities are as simple as washing hands like this person is trying to use idioms you shouldn't be using idiomatic language anyway in your task two writing but not only have they you know use them inappropriately but they haven't really used them accurately either so what happens is when you have lots of grammar mistakes lots of vocabulary mistakes like this person has it makes it extremely difficult to understand what this person is trying to say so let's look at what most students do with grammar and vocabulary i'll use lots of complex high level impressive words and phrases so this is the number one thing that i see again and again and again students thinking that complex high level impressive whatever you want to call them and words are going to help them get a high score if they did everyone would get a band eight and the average score worldwide um 2015 was the last time they released statistics on that um about 5.5 for academic um writing so you know if this worked um people wouldn't be getting on average of 5.5 and they'd be getting a very high score it doesn't work step two they think that i'll use lots of complex structures complex sentences complex and phrases basically lots of complex grammar and this is really going to help you it's not the next thing they do is say all of this will really impress the examiner and i'll get a high mark that's what the average student does the average student gets about a 5.5 for academic writing um don't be the average student what really happens so most of your impressive words are inaccurate or inappropriate most of your complex sentences have errors in them some of them have small errors a lot of them have really really serious errors that stop the reader understanding what the sentence means that's very very bad if you do that the examiner finds it difficult to understand what you're trying to say this is not only lower this not only lowers your vocabulary and grammar score but lowers your coherence and cohesion because what does coherence mean coherence means is it easy to understand the essay if you're using words phrases grammar structures all of those different things incorrectly it makes it extremely difficult to understand and it lowers your coherence so in summary if i was to summarize this lesson i would say put yourself in the shoes of the reader all right always think of the reader make their job as easy as possible their job is to understand what you have just put on the paper make their job easy the main purpose of writing is clear communication the main purpose of writing is not to show how great your grammar is the main purpose of writing is not to show how many words you you memorized from a so-called band nine vocabulary list or something like that the main purpose of writing is clear communication always remember that grammar vocabulary structures cohesive devices are all just tools to aid that grammar vocabulary structures cohesive devices are all just tools to help communication to help you send a message to somebody focus on answering the question in the clearest possible way so if i was to summarize this or give one piece of advice that will help you not only with coherence and cohesion but just in general get up get the mark that you deserve focus on answering the question in the clearest possible way and that is really really going to help you okay so thank you very much guys there's a whole lot of other stuff that i could have talked about today and i try and limit these videos to about 30 minutes because after 30 minutes people kind of switch off a little bit and so if you need more help and there's my free website ialtodvantage.com where you'll find hundreds of articles videos everything you'll need there and i put new stuff nearly every day on facebook so facebook.com slash ilesadvantage make sure you go there and you like the page to keep up to date with everything uh chris at ilesadvantage.com is my email if you have any questions you need any help or if you want to work further with me if you want me to help you one on one or join one of my courses or just have any sort of iles question feel free to send me an email and i'll get back to you and youtube i'm focusing a lot more on youtube these days and trying to create a few different videos a week so go to youtube.com slash ilesadvantage if you're already on youtube please subscribe if you're on facebook please share like whatever it is you want to do thank you very much guys i really appreciate your time thanks bye bye