 Hey everyone, Chris here from IELTS Advantage and in this lesson, what I'm going to do is talk about task 2 introductions. Recently we worked with a student who jumped from a band 6 to a band 8 and what she did was not really add anything new to her introductions but remove all of the bad things. So we're going to talk about 7 things that you never ever want to put in your introduction but before that, what I'm going to do is show you the high important introductions actually are by taking you up here. So welcome to my home time, I'd like to introduce you to it. So not a great introduction, is it? Do some rocks and some bushes, not a great introduction but if we slowly pan around then we can see that this is a very different introduction. So 2 things that are exactly the same, my home time, can have very different introductions and that creates a very different impression and they say first impressions last. So you could have an amazing thing, your essay could be amazing but if you're including some of these 7 things in your introduction, you are going to be lowering your score. So what I'm going to do now is go back there, jump behind my computer and show you some introductions and show you these 7 things so that you can remove them from your introductions. Okay, so let's start off with the question. It's really, really important that we fully understand the question before we can write our introduction and this is one of the key mistakes that we see students making all the time and it's related to the things you want to avoid in your introduction. So let's have a look at it and fully understand it. Many argue that schools are no longer necessary because children can learn so much from the internet and be educated at home. Do you agree or disagree? So pause the video if you like and just have a read of that again to make sure that you fully understand this. So what I'm going to do now is I'm going to set you a little test. What I'm going to show you is 2 introductions. Introduction A and Introduction B. Both of these introductions were produced by the same student. One of them when they first started working with us and on their previous attempt they got a band 6 and one of them after they had finished working with us and we removed all of these common mistakes and we showed them how to write an effective introduction and they actually moved from a band 6 to a band 8. So I'm not going to tell you which one it is. I want you in the comments to tell me do you think the band 8 student is or the band 8 introduction is A or B? Okay, so let's start off with A. Teaching children at home is a hotly debated topic nowadays. A plethora of people believe that children can study better online. This essay will discuss why it is better to teach adolescents in educational institutions before coming to a reasoned conclusion. So I would like you to just read that, have a think about it and do you think this is a band 6 essay or a band 8 essay? So remember one of them the student was getting a band 6 and the other the student was getting a band 8. So let's have a look at the second introduction, Introduction B. Many people believe that homeschooling is preferable to traditional education because learning can be done online. I do not agree with this because students require face-to-face guidance and many way web-based schools are not reliable. So do you think A is better or do you think B is better? In the comments just let me know, put A or B and maybe if you want to say why you think this is so. So what I'm going to do now is I'm going to take Introduction A and I'm going to break it down into its constituent parts. So we're going to look at each part of this essay introduction and tell you exactly what the student is doing to give you an insight into how the examiner is thinking about this. So let's start. So this bit here is what an examiner would consider a hook. A hook is something that you'll often see in essays where the person writing the essay is trying to make the reader interested in what they are trying to say. They're trying to hook the reader in and get them to read the rest of the essay. This is a terrible idea for IELTS writing class two for a couple of reasons. Number one, the examiner is being paid to check your essay. You don't need to hook them in at all. The money that they're getting paid is hooking them in. So you don't need to do that. Number two, there are no extra marks for it being interesting or it being exciting or anything like that. You're not being judged on how interesting or exciting your essay is. So if you are trying to do something that doesn't get you any marks, you've just wasted your time completely. So you're doing something that is not necessary and you are wasting your time completely. So the first thing that we do not want to see is a hook. They are a complete and utter waste of time. Okay, so the next thing that you do not want to put in your introduction is something like this. Hotly debated topic nowadays. Now you'll see this in the vast majority of essays and you'll often also see teachers teaching this and this is a cliche. So let's have a look at what a cliche is. Cliche, a phrase or opinion that is overused and most importantly, betrays a lack of original thought. So it is an overused phrase. And the reason why people use these phrases is they don't have original thoughts. They don't want to think for themselves. So examiner is looking at this and number one, they're looking at it and go, Oh, another hotly debated topic. Alright, I've seen this hundreds of times this week. And the examiners are human beings. And if you they say the same thing over and over and over again, they're you're not putting them in a great mood to be honest. And most importantly, you're just basically copying something that you've seen elsewhere. There is no originality in here. And you want to at all times, avoid things that the examiner is looking at that and thinking this person is just memorized something because the IELTS test is not a memorization test. It is not a repeat a memorization test. It is a test where they're testing your ability to clearly communicate in English. When have you ever heard someone a native English speaker say, Oh, this is a hotly debated topic. Never in your entire life have you heard someone say that naturally. So it is completely unnatural to put this into your essay shows that you're not really thinking and shows that you believe that the test is just a memorization test. So don't include cliches. Okay, the third thing a plethora of people an educational institution spelled incorrectly and the spelling is not the actual problem here. This problem here is memorizing impressive vocabulary or high level vocabulary or band nine vocabulary. The examiner see this over and over and over and over again, especially words like plethora. Why does plethora come up? Because someone on YouTube made a video called use these five words and you will get a high score. So what happens is millions of people have seen that video though included and some of those words in their introduction, I've even seen introductions with all five words put in there. And what again that indicates to the examiner is that you believe this is a memorization test and also that you are not focusing on actually answering the question and you are also not focusing on using the English language effectively to convey meaning. Why do people write anything in any language? It is to clearly convey meaning to tell people what you think. But instead of doing that, you are just trying to shove in big words. People would never use a plethora of people that is just an inappropriate way to use it. So often when people memorize these big words, they will use them inappropriately and incorrectly. The collocations will be wrong. It's not suitable to use that in a sentence. The grammar could be wrong. Or like here, the spelling is wrong. There you do not get any extra marks for using big words incorrectly or inappropriately. Educational institution, it would be better just to put school. All right, so you might be repeating the word school, but which is better to repeat a simple word that actually is effective and accurate and appropriate or try and put in a big word that is actually inaccurate because you spelled it wrong or the collocation is wrong or the grammar is wrong. Or here, you would just never use that word. Why not just say many people or a lot of people? Again, much simpler, but actually correct. So the fourth thing that you do not want to include is a background statement. So I've highlighted both of these. Teaching children at home is a hotly debated topic nowadays. And a plethora of people believe that children can study better online. This person has watched a few too many YouTube channels. And some of them say you need to include a hook. Some of them say that you need to include a background statement. And some of them say just paraphrase the question. And what this causes is huge confusion in the student's mind. So they're like, well, this YouTube channel says hook, this says background statement. And they get totally confused about the difference between a hook, a background statement, and simply paraphrasing the question. And some teachers also get confused about that. Not all most teachers are great. But there are some teachers, especially online and on YouTube, that get confused because how they produce their lessons is they actually go and look at other YouTube channels. And if you are looking at other YouTube channels that don't know what they're doing, you're not going to know what you're doing either. So this is going to cause a huge amount of confusion. And this is what has happened to this student. So forget about hooks, forget about background statements, and just simply paraphrase the question instead. Your first sentence, just look at the question statement, paraphrase that stated in your own words, and that's you done for your first sentence, you're not going to be confused. And most importantly, the examiner is not going to be confused because they're like, Well, is this a paraphrase? What are they doing here? I don't really understand. The examiner has a headache already before they've even got to the end of the introduction. So forget about background statements. Okay, so the next thing we're going to talk about is this. This essay will discuss why it is better to teach adolescents in educational institution before coming to a reason conclusion. So this is a very poor thesis statement for two different reasons. And there's two different things that you do not want to include in your introduction. And the key here is adolescents. So did the question talk about adolescents? So adolescents are a specific subset of children. Adolescents are teenagers. There are people who are in high school. The question was not about high school. It was not about teenagers. It was not about adolescents. It was actually about children in general and school in general. So by misunderstanding the question and putting things in there that are not actually accurate or not related to the question, you're indicating to the examiner that you haven't understood the question. And also what the student was doing was trying to again add in big words. So they didn't think that children or school children or boys and girls or whatever was fancy enough or impressive enough because their former teacher had told them that you need to use big impressive band nine words. So they've tried to put that in there. And this is not accurate. It's not what the question is about. So not only have you messed up your introduction, you've messed up your whole essay because your focus is now going to be on adolescents. So be very, very careful about understanding the question and just putting things in the introduction that relate to you answering the question because at the end of the day, the most important thing is that you actually answer the question. The second reason why this thesis statement is not appropriate is because it has a lot of memorized language in it. You will see a huge number of introductions that say this essay will and then they talk about the topic before coming to a reason conclusion. So it is very, very obviously memorized by the student. And again, this comes from the internet, especially YouTube, where you will get certain videos that have millions and millions of views on them. Obviously, students are watching them. They trust the person talking to them. They think that they're an expert. So they copy what they say. And then after a few months, examiners start to see the same thing over and over and over and over and over again. And that is not a good thing for your band level. Your band score is going to suffer because again, you are basically telling the examiner, I do not know how to think for myself and I do not know how to write in English without memorizing things. It is not a memorization test. It is an English writing test. You will not be able to go into the real world and use these fixed phrases. They are testing your ability to communicate effectively in the real world, not memorize stuff that is totally useless in the real world. And the last thing that you want to avoid, the thing that you never want to do is to use a memorized formula to treat writing in the same way that someone would treat a mathematical equation. It is very, very tempting and it is very attractive to think that all you have to do is just memorize a formula and then use it. I know that you're very stressed out and I know that you want to get a high score, but this is the last thing that you want to do to memorize a formula and then place it on any different type of question. That is bad for a few reasons. This is what a lot of these memorized formulas look like. X, take the topic, is a hotly debated topic nowadays. Wow, you are really impressing people with those cliches. Insert general background statements. Take the background of the topic and then put that in, even though you've already really talked about it in the hook there. This essay will discuss Y and Z. Well, the examiner really isn't interested in you telling them what the essay is going to discuss. You better discuss that. That is what they've just asked you to do. It's like walking into a store and saying, I am going to open the door now. I am going to walk to the counter. You're supposed to. Why are you telling people about that? Then before coming to a reason conclusion, just another memorized, fixed phrase. Another major problem with this is that people tell you that you can take this formula, take this format and apply it to any question type. It doesn't matter if it is advantages and disadvantages, problem, solution, a double question, a discussion question, an opinion question. You can just memorize this and do that. You can't. Each of those questions is asking you to do a very different thing. Therefore, you need to have a different approach for each different introduction and each different question. I know that's going to require a little bit of extra work. But if you want to go to our website, ialtavantage.com, we cover a lot of that on there for free. So go and check that out if at the end of this video, of course, if you want to. So let's look at the seven things not to put in your introduction. Do not put a hook. Do not put cliches. Do not put memorized high-level vocabulary. Don't put a background statement, especially if you don't understand the difference between a hook, a background statement, and paraphrasing. This essay will discuss and then put something in there that is not related to the question. Or this essay will discuss plus all those memorized phrases. And finally, don't make every introduction exactly the same or apply the same format or the same strategy to every single introduction. The good news is that once we took all of those things out from our students introduction, they were able to massively improve their essay. And I say essay, not introduction, because let's look at what a good introduction can do for your entire essay. So let's have a break it down again. So many people believe that homeschooling is preferable to traditional education because learning can be done online. So what they've done is they've just taken the question and they have paraphrased it. So they've taken the words and they have stated it in their own words so that it means the same, but with different words. So this introduces the topic. It tells the examiner this person understands the question. And they know how to paraphrase. So their vocabulary is good, their grammar is good. So you are making the examiner very, very happy because they know you know what you're doing. And just from the very first sentence, they know that this essay is going to be easy to read. Now let's have a look at the rest of it. I do not agree with this. So the reason why this is a good way to start your second sentence is it clearly demonstrates that you have a position that you have an opinion on this question. In other words, you have just answered the question. All right. So it's going to be different from question type to question type. But this question type basically said, Do you agree or disagree? I do not agree. Okay, so they're saying I disagree. So they could say I disagree or do not agree. But they have clearly stated what they think immediately. So again, the examiner has already understood what you think about the question. Let's continue because, okay, here's the reasons. Students require face to face guidance, clear main idea, and many web based schools are not reliable, clear second idea. So instead of this essay, we'll discuss why homeschooling is preferable to not schools, the plus reason that doesn't you're just wasting your time and state your position and your two main ideas. Now, how is this going to help the student write the rest of their essay? Because what is going to be their first main body paragraph, they're going to talk about students require face to face guidance. They're going to explain why that is that they're going to put examples in there. And then their second main body paragraph, many web based schools are not reliable. They're going to put that in their second main body paragraph, they're going to explain why that is they're going to use examples. And the examiner will know exactly what is going on. What this also does is it provides like a mini plan for the rest of the essay. The examiner will also be looking at your main body paragraphs, they'll be looking at your conclusion and seeing if all this matches up. Is it cohesive? Is it coherent? So this introduction does many, many things. But the two things that it does really, really well is it makes it easy for the student. And most importantly, it makes it easy for the examiner to understand that they are actually a band age student, and they are going to get a good score because they are helping the reader with their job. If you do that, you're going to do very, very well. If you just memorize a bunch of stuff, copy other people, use formulas, you're going to fail over and over and over again, no matter who tells you that they have some secret method or magic formula, they don't exist. Hopefully, this was helpful, guys. And if you need any more help, go to aislesadvantage.com. We've got a bunch of free courses, free videos, free articles on basically anything that you will ever need. Head over there and feel free to get in touch with us if you need any help. Thanks very much, guys. And I look forward to reading your comments as well, and give it a like if you liked it. If you didn't like it, feel free not to do that. Thanks very much, and see you in another video. Bye-bye.