 Hi there, Chris here from IELTS Advantage with another week and another mini course. So one of the most effective ways to improve your overall IELTS scores is to improve your grammar. Grammar counts for 25% of your total writing mark, 25% of your total speaking mark and it's also important for reading and listening as well. So in order to help you guys as much as possible what we're going to do this week is we're going to do a three day mini grammar course. So let's have a look at what we're going to be doing this week. So day one, we're going to look at how grammar actually affects your score because as I already mentioned it's 25% of your total writing and your total speaking score but it also can affect other areas as well and other unexpected areas. So we'll talk about that and we'll talk a lot about how the examiners think about grammar and what they're looking for and especially for the writing test and we'll also talk about a lot of myths surrounding grammar. So we'll talk about mistakes and how that affects your score, structures, tenses, complex sentences, simple sentences, all of those different things because there's a huge number of myths surrounding grammar as there are in other parts of the test as well. So in order to understand what to do you need to understand what not to do first. So we'll be looking at that today. Day two, we've got a lot of requests for help with simple versus complex sentences. What is the difference between those, how do you make complex sentences, how do they affect your score? So we'll be looking a lot about that and not tomorrow Wednesday. So Wednesday at midday on Facebook here, we'll be having a look at that live. And then on day three, which is Friday at about 11am, we'll do it a little bit earlier on Friday, we're going to look at a grammar improvement plan. So this is a plan that you can use at home for free by yourself and you can work on improving a grammar. So we'll give you that. It's a very simple, strategic plan that you can use. So we'll give you that on Friday. Okay, so without further ado, let's have a look at how grammar actually affects your score. So it's 25% of speaking, 25% of writing. Let's have a look at writing. So here we have task achievement, 25%, coherence and cohesion, 25%, lexical resource, which is vocabulary, 25%, and grammatical range and accuracy, which is 25%. So these are the things that the examiners are going to be thinking about when they're looking at your task one and task two writing. So a very, very common thing that we see is a student might have banned seven task achievement. They've answered the question pretty well. Their coherence and cohesion, is it around a banned seven and their vocabulary, is it around banned seven? What we see a lot is with grammar, it might be at a banned six. So what a lot of students think is if I get these three at a banned seven, it doesn't matter if my grammar isn't that good, because I'm going to get a banned seven overall. Wrong. That's probably not going to happen. Let me explain why that might happen, what that probably will not happen. So if you are getting a banned six for grammar, it means you're making a lot of grammar mistakes. Pretty much every sentence has some sort of grammatical error in it. And what happens is if you're reading someone who is at a banned six level, their writing is quite difficult to understand, because there are many, many, many grammatical mistakes in it. There could be some major mistakes, but there's going to be a lot of small mistakes there. So what happens is someone who is at a banned six, their coherence and cohesion, it can actually cause your coherence and cohesion to drop down to a banned six as well. Why is that? Because coherence means can you read the essay or can you read the task one response and understand what it's saying? Is it clear? Is it easy to understand? If your grammar is at a banned six, it can cause the essay to drop down. So if your grammar is poor, you can also start making a lot of vocabulary mistakes. If you don't understand how the word operates in a sentence, then it can lead to even more grammar mistakes. Sometimes it can also lead to the examiner looking at your task two or your task one response and just not knowing whether you answered the question or not because of grammatical errors. That's rare. More common is these two. So it's very, very, very common for grammatical range and accuracy to cause people to get a 6.5 overall because they're getting a 6 for grammar, but then it might bring one of these two or both down to that level. So that's one of the reasons why 6.5 is a very, very, very common score and there could be many, many reasons for that, but for a lot of people it is related to grammar. So that's what we're going to work on this week to help you because if your grammar is going to go up to this level, then you're more likely to be getting a 7 or above. If you want to get a 7, you should be aiming for all of these across the board to be at a 7 because you don't know what's going to happen on exam day. If you want a banned eight, aim for all of them to be at a banned eight. You shouldn't go in and think, I might get away or I might be lucky. Try and move everything up to the level that you're aiming for and then you'll get the score that you need on exam day. So what are the examiners looking for when it comes to grammar? It's really important that you understand this. Hopefully this is quite clear. I've made this like a seesaw. So I'm sure in playgrounds where you live, you have one kid here and one kid here and it's like a little seesaw when it goes like this. This is here for a reason. So examiners are looking for two principal things and they're related and that's why we have the seesaw. One is range. So range of structures, range of tenses, range of complex sentences, range of simple sentences, complex sentences, compound sentences. So that's one of the things that they're going to be looking for. However, the other thing that they're going to be looking for is accuracy. How many mistakes are you making? One of the ways that they will look at that is error-free sentences. An error-free sentence is exactly how it sounds is a sentence with no grammatical errors in it, completely free of any errors whatsoever related to grammar. In this, the more error-free sentences you have, in general, the higher the score that you're going to get. But why do we have this seesaw? Why is there a relationship between this? Because what happens to a lot of students and the reason why they get a band five or a band six for grammar is they put too much emphasis on range. So they try and really increase the complexity of their sentences, include lots and lots of complex sentences and complex tenses and a huge wide range of tenses and structures and everything. And when they try and do that, their accuracy goes down. All right? So it doesn't matter if you have this massive wide range of tenses and complex sentences and structures if you're making lots and lots and lots and lots of mistakes. So in general, as students try and increase complexity, their accuracy will go down. And that's why we have the seesaw here. And the interesting thing about this is for most students, there's nothing wrong with their range because as you write an essay, you're going to be using a variety of structures and a variety of tenses and a mix of simple and compound and complex sentences. That normally takes care of itself. What the thing that students really struggle with and the reason why like 95% of students fail to get the score they need in grammar is because of accuracy. Just making too many mistakes. And this is the thing that's very obvious whenever you get a student's work, you look at it, you'll just see mistake, mistake, mistake, mistake, mistake. And it's very, it's impossible to give them a high score for grammar and a high score overall if there are mistakes in multiple, multiple mistakes in nearly every sentence that they have. Looking for a seven or above, you should be aiming for the majority of your sentences. So more than 50% of your sentences should have no grammatical errors in them whatsoever. And by trying to focus on range, you're making that really, really, really difficult. So that's something to bear in mind. It's something that is the key to understanding how to improve your grammar is this diagram. So let's talk about myths. All right. We are here for a reason. All right. So if you do your driving test in the UK, I don't know what it's like in different countries. But in the UK, I think you're allowed to pass the test, you have to, it's less than, is it 16 minor faults? Is that correct? 16. 16, yeah? So you can make less than 16 minor faults on the driving test. A minor fault is something like not checking your mirror or crossing your hands or something like that. And no major faults. So a major fault would be speeding or not looking at a junction, something like that. And this is not exactly the same, but very, very, very, very close to how the IELTS test is marked in terms of grammar. Myth number one, your grammar must be perfect. That's wrong. All right. In order to get a band seven, you can actually make quite a few small grammar mistakes in the same way that if you were doing the driving test in the UK, you could make like 15. How many did I make? Nine, I think? I think I had nine minor faults and I still passed. No major faults, which we will get on to in a second, but it's very, very similar to the IELTS writing test and especially the speaking test. In the speaking test, you can make quite a few grammatical errors and grammatical mistakes and still get quite a high band score. Now, does that mean that you can make lots and lots and lots of mistakes and still get a high score? No, but the IELTS realized that you are an English learner. You will make mistakes. Even someone at a band nine does make little mistakes from time to time. They're just slips, but they are there. So often you will show a student a really good essay, like a band nine, band eight essay and they'll look at it and they'll see a couple of small mistakes and they'll say, oh, that's terrible. They made a small mistake. That's a band five. That's not the way to think about it, especially for this, the speaking test. If you try and be perfect, your fluency is going to really suffer and you won't be able to actually speak because you will be thinking of the perfect sentence and it will just destroy your fluency. With the writing test, if you are trying to aim for perfection, you're never going to get there. Even a band nine student is never really going to get perfect grammar. You're not aiming for perfection. You're aiming to use grammar as a tool to help you clearly communicate through writing. So don't aim for perfection. Try and improve your grammar as much as you can and minimize mistakes as much as you can, but only as much as you can. Remember this little analogy for the driving test and you should also try and avoid major grammatical errors. So what are major grammatical errors? Major grammatical errors are errors that stop the reader or the person listening, understanding what you mean. Smaller grammatical errors like countable on countable nouns mistakes, preposition mistakes, article mistakes, they can all count up. But if you're only making a couple of them in your whole essay or a few of them during your whole speaking test, not such a big deal because they don't affect communication. Myth number two, you must use as many different structures as possible in order to get a high score. This is not true. So again, using the analogy of the driving test. When you're doing the driving test in the UK, they take you out on the public roads and you're going to be turning left, you're going to be turning right, you're going to be going down two-way roads, one-way roads, you're going to be at T-junctions, you're going to be at level crossings, you're going to come across a whole range of different scenarios. So you don't immediately begin the driving test and start going left and right and doing all these crazy things because you naturally will be doing them throughout the course of I think it's like a 40 minute test or a 30 minute test. The same is true when you're doing the speaking test. You will naturally use a range of different structures because you're going to be speaking for about 15 minutes. In the writing test, you're going to be using naturally a range of different structures. So you shouldn't focus on that, you should focus on answering the questions and you will naturally use a range of structures in exactly the same way as in the driving test, you just follow what the examiner says, go where they want you to go and you will naturally do that but you focus in the driving test on minimizing mistakes, not making any major mistakes, not making any minor mistakes or as few minor mistakes as possible. So what happens is if you try and use as many different structures as possible, two things happen. A, you don't answer the question. Try doing that even in your native language. Try like just writing an essay or writing a letter or an email to someone and try and use as many different grammatical structures as possible. Like it's like something, a challenge you would set for yourself or something like that, a silly challenge, but it's just really difficult to do. You will naturally do that. You will naturally use a range of structures, focus more on accuracy. Myth number three, you must use as many different tenses as possible. This happened actually on Friday. I was working with one of my VIP students and I asked her a really simple question. What's your job? And she started talking about her job, just saying I work here and explaining what she did and that was all fine. Her fluency was great, her pronunciation was great, her vocabulary was great, her grammar was great. And then she stopped and started going on about, but in the past, when I was a little girl, I wanted to be this and then she started talking about and in the future, I want to be this. And she, her fluency started going downhill. Her pronunciation actually suffered as well. She was making lots of grammatical errors and I stopped her and said, what are you doing? Why did you not just answer the question normally? And she said, oh, my old teacher said that I must use every single tense in every single answer in the speaking test. I was like, no, you do not have to do that. You use the tense that's appropriate to use in the circumstance that you're using it in, exactly the same as in real life. You will use the appropriate tense when you're using it. If you're talking about the past, you'll use past tenses. If you're talking about the present, you'll use present tenses. If you're talking about the future, you'll use future structures. So don't go into the test thinking, I need to use as many different tenses as possible. Just go into the test thinking, I need to clearly communicate with the examiner and answer the questions effectively. And very much like number two, you will use a range of different tenses, especially in the speaking test. They will ask you questions about the past, questions about the future, questions that ask you to connect the past to the present. So you're going to be naturally using all of those different tenses. So don't go in thinking that it's a tenses competition. It's a speaking test. Myth number four, all of your sentences need to be complex. And if you don't have every single sentence, if it's not complex, you're not going to get a high score. Again, not true. It's not a test of how many complex sentences or how long you can write a sentence. It's in the writing test. Can you clearly answer the question, clearly communicate in writing? Speaking, can you clearly communicate with the examiner through opening your mouth and words coming out? Some sentences will be simple. Some of them will be compound. Some of them will be complex. As long as you're displaying a range of different sentences, you'll be fine. Again, focus on accuracy. It doesn't matter if you write a 50-word sentence if it has 50 mistakes in it. That doesn't really make any sense whatsoever. Myth number five, memorization is a useful skill. So memorizing bits of sentences or half a sentence or a full sentence and then adding those in to your essay. It's not a memorization test. It's an English test. Memorization is a useless skill. Why? They're not testing memorization. If it was a memorization test, you could just learn, memorize lots of different grammar structures and kick them into your essays and into your speaking test, and you get a high score. That doesn't work because grammar is just a tool. Just like having a hammer and a saw and a drill, memorization is giving tools to someone who doesn't know how to use them, like me. I don't know how to use a hammer or a saw or a drill. I'm completely useless when it comes to DIY or using my hands in any way. So if you gave these tools to me, I wouldn't know what to do with them and I'd make a complete mess of it. This is exactly what happens when you try and memorize structures and tenses and complex sentences. You don't know how to use them. So what's going to happen, going back to our little seesaw here, you're going to try to use all of these things, put this up, and then your accuracy is going to go down. Always remember that it is a balance between those two things and your range is probably fine. You will naturally use a wide enough range. Your problem, I nearly guarantee it because I work with students every single day who have this problem is accuracy. So hopefully you find those useful. It's really important that you understand the relationship between range and accuracy and you understand the myths and that they are myths because if you are going into the test, believing things that are not true, and giving the examiners things that they're not even looking for, then obviously you're going to be in a lot of trouble. So the first stage is knowing the truth, knowing what actually they are looking for. So tomorrow, or not tomorrow Wednesday, we're going to look at simple versus complex sentences. This really does help you improve your writing by understanding the difference between these and it also helps you, it really helps you understand the relationship between range and accuracy as well. And then day three, we're going to help you improve your accuracy. As we've mentioned over and over and over again, that is the key to improving your grammar score. So we're going to help you improve your accuracy by giving you this grammar improvement plan and that will be on Friday at about 11 a.m. and this will be Wednesday at about midday. And as always with these live lessons, if you join us on Facebook, if you have questions that I can interact with you and everything. What we're going to do is, a lot of you, every time we do these mini courses you say, oh that's great, but what about writing? What about speaking? What about reading? What about listening? We have a fundamentals course which covers all of those and teaches you the absolute fundamentals. It's totally free. So we'll put a link in the comments and we'll put it, if you're watching on YouTube, you'll get it in the description. If you're watching on Facebook, we'll put it up in the description there. If you need help, comment, help in the comments and we will get in touch with you and try and help you out as much as possible. And if you need any help, you can email us. We can't guarantee that we'll be able to give you individual help because we've thousands of people emailing us every day but we'll try our best if you do need help saying that you're feel free to send us an email and we'll try and help you out with that. All right, so I'm gonna take my broken phone. I dropped my phone, the glass is broken. And see if you guys have any questions about grammar. Every time we put up myths or things that a lot of people think are true but they're aren't actually true, we'll get a lot of people disagreeing with us. That's totally fine. Feel free to disagree as much as you want. And I'm happy to answer any of your questions or anything like that. Banjo says, Chris, we need examples, sentences reflecting component of each teaching. There will be on Wednesday, we'll be doing day two. We're doing simple and complex sentences. I'm gonna put up a lot of example sentences not so that you can copy them but so that you can learn from them and see exactly what I mean. So we'll do that. Let me see, a lot of you need help so you're saying help, that's fine. We'll get in touch with you. We'll send you a message. If you have any questions, feel free to put it in the comments. We'll get back to you if we have time. A lot of you are saying you need help with punctuation. We will be showing you how to improve every aspect of your grammar on day three. So we're gonna give you that grammar improvement plan. Also, can you help me start preparation? Yeah, send me an email or comment, help and we'll get in touch with you. We've got a lot of free resources that we can just send to you and you can use those for free or we have paid services as well. So send us a message and we'll figure out what's the best thing for you. Mario, how many complex sentences we need to write to get a band seven? That's the wrong way to think about it. You shouldn't go into the test thinking I need to write X number of complex sentences because you're just making it way more difficult than it needs to be. You shouldn't go in thinking I need to write this number of anything because you're making it way more difficult and it's a very unnatural way to write anything. So you should go into the test thinking principally I need to answer the question and I need to use grammar in a way that is clear and is accurate and you will naturally use a range of simple, compound and complex sentences by doing that and we'll talk more about that on Wednesday. Chris, give me your WhatsApp number. No. The reason why I don't give my phone number and WhatsApp number and stuff. A, I don't have WhatsApp on my phone but B, I'm not gonna give my personal phone number right to a million people and that would be a bit crazy but there's my email address that's a lot more manageable. Do the quality of ideas increase the marks? It depends what you mean by quality. The two things that you should be thinking about when you're thinking of ideas are a few things you should be thinking about. Number one, is it relevant to the question? Number two, does it answer the specific question? And number three, can you develop it by explaining how it answers the question and support it with examples? Those are the things you should be thinking about. There is no hierarchy of ideas. It's not like if you use this idea you'll get a band nine if you use this idea you'll get a band seven and if you use this that's not the way it works. Like there are a hundred ideas that could get you a band nine. Like it depends what you do with those ideas. Muhammad, could you suggest a book for IELTS Grammar? There's a book by I think Raymond Murphy. So M-U-R-P-H-Y Murphy. If you go to Amazon or whatever you use in your country I think he has intermediate grammar, upper intermediate grammar, advanced grammar. Those books are good. However, grammar books, most people they're good to refer to the grammar but they're not actually gonna help you improve your grammar and we'll talk about that on Friday. Because you need to be doing, you need to be practicing, you need to be getting feedback in order to really improve your grammar. Obviously a book doesn't really do that. Do you have review centers here in the Philippines? No, I don't. We're a hundred percent online because we believe that online education is much, much better than being in a face-to-face classroom with 30 or 40 other students. Can you create a WhatsApp group? No, I don't have WhatsApp. So thank you very much guys. I'm gonna leave it there. I know a lot of you have questions that I couldn't get to just time as always and we've got a lot of people wanting to get in touch with us in not enough time but thank you very much and hopefully you enjoyed that. And on Wednesday we will have lesson two and then Friday lesson three. Thank you very much guys and if you need anything feel free to get in touch. Bye bye.