 Hey everyone, Chris here from IELTS Advantage and in this video, we're going to look at the one thing that will improve your task 2 essays. So if we go on to our website, you'll find more success stories than any other IELTS website in the world. And all of these success stories, so from 6.5 to a band 7, 8777, from 6.5 to a band 9, band 7, band 6.5 to 7, all of these people did one thing really, really well and we're going to share that with you today so that you can be successful too. So let's have a look at what we're going to do in this lesson. All of those students had failed the test multiple times. They were really struggling, especially with the IELTS test because they were making these mistakes. So first of all, we're going to highlight these mistakes. Last week, we did a free course where about 20,000 people were in there and we got, we seen these mistakes again and again and again and again. We got questions about these mistakes over and over and over again and none of them were focusing on this one thing that would improve their scores and when they realized this, their performance improved dramatically and their essays improved dramatically. So we're going to share these big mistakes with you so you can avoid them and then share the one thing. I'm also going to share a structure with you that encompasses this one thing. The one thing is not structure, by the way, we're going to show this to you and because we're feeling very generous this week, we're going to give you a free gift at the end of this video if you stay with us and also a free writing course, absolutely free that you can sign up today that will extend and elaborate on all of the things that we have done today. Okay, so as this is YouTube, we do not ask for any money. We don't ask you to send us money via PayPal or anything like that. If you enjoy these videos, all we ask is you give them a like or if you really like them, comment below and tell us how much you like them or if you hate them and you just want to abuse us and give us some negative feedback, feel free to comment as well. And if you want to get updates when we make new videos, please feel free to subscribe or if you want, you hate the videos and you want to leave nasty comments and you want to get notified, subscribe as well. Okay, so the biggest mistakes that we see people making every single day are these. So when we were running a free course last week, we were getting asked the same questions over and over and over again. Questions like how many words in my introduction? How many words should I put in there? How many sentences should I have in my introduction or my main body paragraphs or my conclusion or my whole essay? How many conditional should I use? Should I use the first conditional, the second conditional, the third conditional? How many high level words should I use? Is it okay to use simple words or should I use complex words? Or should I use band nine words? Which tense should I use? How should I use the passive or the active tense? And should all my sentences be complex or is it okay if some of them are complex, some of them are compound and some of them are simple? So if you're asking these questions, it's a very, very, very high likelihood that you are going to fail. And that might sound very, very strange to you because you think that all of these things are really, really important. They're not, all right? If you are focusing on how many words are in your introduction and how many conditionals to use and thinking about all these different tenses that you need to use or you think that you need to use, is it easy to write an essay thinking about all of these things? Absolutely not. It is my job to write essays. There is no way that I could do that thinking of all of these things. So number one, you're wasting your time during your preparation and you're not focusing on the things that really matter. But number two, you're going into the test thinking, okay, have I, have I enough sentences, enough words in this paragraph? Have I used enough conditionals or which tense did I use? Which, did I use passive or active? Just, you're going to go crazy. You're going to go insane. Your writing is going to be a reflection of your thinking. And if your thinking is very confused, guess what your writing is going to be, is going to look like. You're going to be in all sorts of trouble. So forget about all of these things that don't really matter and focus on the one thing that does matter. The one question that the examiners really asking themselves, when you boil it down to the absolute one question that the examiner is asking themselves when they're looking at your writing is, does this person know how to write an essay in English? Okay, there's a lot more to it than that. But if we had to boil it down to one question, does this person know how to write an essay in English? When you are writing, this is what you should be thinking about. Do I know how to write an essay in English? And how can you make yourself better at that thing? Well, we need to ask yourself the purpose of writing an essay or the purpose of writing anything. Why do we write anything? Think about that for a second. Put it in the comments. Why do we write? Most of you who are struggling for years to get the score that you need, never ask yourself that question. Why do we write anything? To clearly communicate with the reader. What's the one thing you can do to improve your scores? Clearly communicate with the reader. So let's go back here and have a look at all of these questions. How many words should be in my introduction? Does that help you clearly communicate with the reader? No. How many sentences should I have? Doesn't help you clearly communicate. How many high level words should I have? Doesn't help you. Which tenses should I use? Doesn't help you. Should I use passive or active? Doesn't help you do that. And should you use complex sentences or simple sentences? Doesn't really help you do that. In fact, a lot of these things actually stop you clearly communicating with the writer. I think about it a different way. Imagine you are writing an email in work, in your native language, or you're writing a letter to someone in work. Would you ever go into that and be thinking, I need to use the past tense and the present progressive and the future tense and I need to use 17 high level words and I need to use some passive and some active and there should be this number of paragraphs. You would never, ever, ever think that. What would you do? You would think, how can I just clearly communicate with this person who's reading the email or reading the letter? And that's the one thing that you should be doing when you were writing your essay. How can I take the ideas in my head, the argument in my head and put it clearly onto paper so that when the examiner is looking at it on test day or after test day and they're giving you your marks, am I clearly communicating with them? Do they understand what I think about this question? So let's have a look at a structure that will help us understand it. So first we need a question. So have a look at this question. In recent times, young adults are spending less time with their families and more time with friends. Why has this occurred? Do you think parents should force their children to spend time at home? If you're looking at this question and you're thinking immediately, how many big words do I need to use and how many words and how many sentences and how many different tenses, you're not actually thinking about the question. You're not actually thinking, how can I clearly answer this question? And I'm gonna give you this structure that would help you actually do that. So in your introduction, you're gonna paraphrase the question, which will allow you to demonstrate to the examiner that you've understood the question and you know how to paraphrase. Outline answers to both questions. Again, you're making it easy for the examiner to look at your writing and understand exactly what your argument is going to be, what your answers to both questions are going to be. Main body paragraph one, you're gonna answer the first question, you're gonna have a topic sentence. This is my answer to the first question. Here's why I think it. Here's evidence to support my point of view. Extremely clear, extremely easy to write and easy for the examiner to understand. Main body paragraph two, you're gonna do the same thing, but you're gonna answer the second question. Conclusion, you're gonna summarize answers to both questions. So this introduction, this main body paragraph, this main body paragraph, this conclusion, this whole structure is just geared to making it easy for you and easy for the examiner. And if you do both of those things, you're going to improve your score. And if you focus on that one thing, how can I just clearly communicate the answers to both of those questions that were in that one question, it's a double question, then you're going to do very, very well. Grammar is important, vocabulary is important, coherence and cohesion, task response, they're all really, really important. But if you focus on that one thing, your grammar is going to improve. You're not going to try and use fancy grammar that you don't know how to use. You're going to focus on writing using grammar that helps you answer the question clearly. Same with vocabulary, same with coherence and cohesion, same with task response, you're just going to focus on answering the question clearly. So if we look at that again, try and use this approach, abandon, forget about all of those other things, and just think, if I was answering this question, how could I clearly communicate with the examiner, writing an essay that is as clear and as easy to understand as possible? So your free gift, write your essay in the comments below. So in the comments section below, write your essay, type it out, and then what I'll do for you is we will send you a free PDF with a step-by-step checklist that you can apply to your essay to make sure that it is as good as it can be and also a sample answer for you to compare. So if you want that free PDF with a complete checklist and a sample answer, then write your essay, put it in the comments below, and we will be in touch to send this PDF to you. That is just a quick video. You know, it's like a 10-minute video. You're probably going to be a little bit lost at this point and have a lot of other questions and need some more detail on all of the things we've talked about. If you have any more questions and you want extra help, there is a free course. Click the link in the description below. It's either above or below this video or linked in this video. You'll be able to find it, don't worry. Click the link and you can immediately join our free course IELTS Essay Builder that will take you through all of this an incredible amount of detail and improve your IELTS essay writing capability. All right? So also, last but not least, if you need help with anything else, feel free to get in touch with us. Chris at IELTS Advantage is my personal email. Either myself or one of my team will respond to you. We answer every single email that comes through. So if you need extra help, feel free to do that. Hope you enjoyed the video. Let us know in the comments below and subscribe for future videos. Thank you. Bye-bye.