 Tell me if this sounds familiar. You study very hard for IELTS writing task two. You prepare for every single question and then on test day, you open up the paper and you have no idea what to do. And this is actually quite common. Students often do a huge amount of preparation but on test day, they get a topic they don't know or a question type that is very unusual and strange. But don't panic. This video is going to give you a step by step system that will allow you to understand and produce a very good essay for any question that you get on test day. So I asked our VIP students to help me out and I asked them for the most difficult question they've ever seen on the real task two paper and this is it. So in this lesson, we're going to show you how to analyze any question so that you fully understand it, then generate relevant specific ideas no matter what the topic and then structure your answer in a way that you can take those ideas and easily transfer them into a high level essay. And if you watch until the end, I'm going to give you a band nine sample essay so that you can see what we produced. So without further ado, let's get into the lesson. So let's look at the question first. So just pause the video if you want and have a read of this question. Now this is quite a strange question because we have three sentences, sentence one, sentence two, sentence three, before we get to our actual question statement. So the bit here that I've circled to what extent do you agree or disagree? This is the main thing that the examiner wants you to do. So this is one of the most important parts of the question because this part that I circled is going to influence your structure and the way that you answer the question. What's also quite unusual, as I already said, is there are three sentences before you actually get to the question statement. The question statement is here. So there is a bit about world peace. There is a bit about cheap and clean energy. And there is a bit about the benefits outweighing the disadvantages. So what I'd like you to do, if you've not already done, just pause the video and have a think about how you would go about answering this question. Think about what does the examiner want me to do with this question? What is the general topic? What are the subtopics or the microtopics, if you like? Then try and start thinking about how you would answer this question and then we'll get onto why this is quite a difficult question. So the first reason that this is a difficult question is it is an opinion question, not an advantages and disadvantages question. Lots of students, when they look at the question, if we go back, they see benefits outweigh disadvantages and this is the first thing they see and they automatically think advantages and disadvantages. So they just talk about all the advantages of nuclear power and all the disadvantages of nuclear power. But this isn't what the question actually asks you to do. If you go back and look at the bottom here, the most important part is to what extent do you disagree and do you? So it's asking you for your opinion. If you don't have your opinion, you're gonna find it very difficult to get a high score. Other thing is we must discuss two things. We must discuss both world peace and we must discuss clean and cheap energy. If you leave one of these out, you're really not answering the specific question that is asked. So if we go back here and we'll see world peace is our first sentence out and cheap and clean energy is the second sentence out of the first two sentences here. So if we just talked about world peace, say they give your opinion on world peace or you just talked about how nuclear energy is either cheap and clean or not cheap or clean, then you haven't really answered the specific question. And also, if you don't talk about the benefits and the disadvantages, your opinion on those, then you're not really answering the question either. So it's quite a tricky question. So the two things that you must realize here is that it is an opinion question, not a disadvantages and advantages question, and there are two separate things that you must discuss and you have to discuss these within the context of do the benefits outweigh the disadvantages. So next, we would go on to ideas trying to think of relevant ideas for this question. So we already know now that it's an opinion question. We know that we have to discuss world peace and cheap and clean energy. So now we have to think of relevant ideas. So the best thing to do would be just to take these separately, world peace and clean energy and try and think, do you agree that world peace within the context of nuclear weapons that the benefits of having nuclear weapons for world peace outweighs the disadvantages? Do you agree or disagree with that and why? And then go on to cheap and clean energy. Do you agree or disagree that the benefits of having nuclear energy outweigh the disadvantages within the context of it being cheap and clean energy? So just pause the video if you haven't done already and try and think of just one idea for world peace and one idea for cheap and clean energy. So if we go on to my ideas, world peace, I disagree that the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. Why? Because the disadvantages is the complete eradication of human beings. So that's a pretty huge disadvantage. So I completely disagree that the benefits outweigh the disadvantages. And my main idea is that we will lose ourselves or human beings if something goes wrong. So the next one, clean and cheap energy. Again, I disagree. So I'm giving my opinion. Why? Because the disadvantage is the destruction of our planet. So if something goes wrong in a nuclear power plant, a nuclear making nuclear energy, it could completely destroy the environment. So that is a huge disadvantage. So that is my main idea. So you'll notice that I am talking about disadvantages, but it isn't an advantage and disadvantages question. I'm just saying and I disagree. So this is my opinion on whether the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. So the next would be the structure. So how would you put this into a four paragraph structure? So the introduction, I'm gonna state a state if you agree or disagree for both world peace and clean or cheap energy. So in the introduction, I'm gonna make it very clear if I agree or disagree for both of these. This is gonna make it very easy for the examiner to understand my point of view. And it's also gonna make me make it easy for me because I have already thought of my ideas and my opinion is clear. So main body paragraph number one, reason why you agree or disagree about world peace. So in main body number one, I'm just going to say give my opinion on world peace. Main body number two, and then I disagree. Reason why you agree or disagree about clean and cheap energy. So I'm gonna say whether I think the advantages outweigh the disadvantages, whether I agree about that for clean and cheap energy. Conclusion summary of main ideas and then give my opinion again. So it just makes it very, very easy for the examiner to see what my ideas are again and make my opinion very, very clear. So let's just summarize the common mistakes. Answering the question like an advantages and disadvantages question and linked to that is not giving an opinion. So if you just talked about all the advantages and disadvantages and didn't actually give your opinion about whether the benefits outweigh the drawbacks or the benefits outweigh the disadvantages, then you haven't answered the question. Also, if you don't mention both world peace and energy, then you haven't really answered the question. So I hope that helped you out, but I should say that this is an extremely difficult question. Questions are not normally this long. Questions don't normally have both advantages and disadvantages and opinion. In them, questions don't normally have two separate things that you need to talk about. So the reason why I picked this question is because it is particularly difficult. So don't get down, don't get upset if you didn't understand everything and you made mistakes. The purpose of this whole exercise is for you to make mistakes and to learn about it so that if you do get a question like this in the future or a question that's just not even this difficult, you will think about it logically and think about it in the way that the examiners want you to think about it. There are two choices for you now. Number one, you can go into the description of this video and it will take you to our website and it will show you the Band 9 sample essay. So you can read it and see what we did there and model your own answer on that. Or if you wanna continue your journey throughout our YouTube channel, just click this video and it will help you on your journey and help you improve your IELTS score. Thank you very much.