 Hey there, Chris here from IELTS Advantage and welcome to a new lesson. Today we're going to look at IELTS Writing Task 2 and we're going to focus on idea analysis and idea generation. And we're going to look at why truth matters and do your ideas have to be true and what does that actually mean and how can this idea of true ideas help you generate better ideas and help you write better essays. So what I did this week was I asked our audience on YouTube this question, when someone criticizes or makes fun of someone you love, even if what they say is true, I'll repeat that bit, even if what they say is true, it is acceptable to violently attack that person. Do you agree or disagree? 69% of people said, no, you should not violently attack people for telling the truth and 31%, nearly a third of people think that it's okay to use violence and to violently attack someone for telling the truth, which was quite shocking but maybe not surprising. And I also asked people to give their ideas and I'm going to analyze some of these ideas and give them feedback and thank you to the people who did give us these ideas. We're going to look at some people who are thinking about this very rationally and using true ideas and using this technique of using true ideas and then we'll also look at people who are not really thinking rationally, thinking more on an emotional level and why this lowers your score because your ideas are not true. So in this video, we're going to look at what is a good idea? What do you need to do with your idea? Feedback on student ideas. Why truth is important when writing or writing ideas or in life in general and why a lack of truth leads to ignorance and why this causes a huge problem for IELTS teachers and just the IELTS industry, let's call it in general. If you're looking for quick tips and tricks, this video is probably not for you. There are lots of other YouTube channels that teach quick tips and tricks. I would recommend just you'll be happier with those guys but if you're serious about getting the score that you need, keep watching because this is really going to clarify how to write an essay and particularly if you need a band seven, eight or nine, this is really, really going to help you think more clearly about your writing. So let's start off with this question, what is a good idea? So for the purposes of IELTS writing task two, a good idea should be all of the following, not some of these things but all of these things. So when an examiner is looking at your ideas, looking at your essay, these are some of the things that are going through their head. So this is exactly what you should be thinking about. Number one, and this is the most important thing, well, it's really two things. Is it relevant and is it specific? Relevant is probably the most important thing. What does relevant mean? Well, does your idea actually answer the question? Does it address the question? So for example, if the question was, how do we solve global warming and your idea was electric cars, that is relevant because electric cars do solve global warming. It doesn't have to be the only idea or the best idea and electric cars is very, very specific. But if your idea was people should get better or people should be good and those are real ideas that I've actually seen in essays, and that's not really relevant. It doesn't really address the question and it is not specific. People should be better, people should be good. That is incredibly vague. That could mean anything. So the most important thing is does your idea actually specifically answer the question? Then it must be easy to understand. Easy for you to understand it because if you don't understand it, you definitely will not be able to write clearly about it, but it needs to be easy for the examiner to understand because why do we write anything? We write something to clearly communicate with the reader. The most important person is not you. The most important person is the person reading your essay and that is the examiner. It must be easy to generate. So you must be able to think of this idea quickly and easily. You only have 40 minutes in task two to write your essay. So if you're spending half an hour brainstorming and you're trying to think out this really complex idea and you spend 35 minutes just thinking about it before your pen touches the paper, then it's not a very good idea, is it? It needs to be easy for you to think of quickly. Number four, it needs to be easy for you to explain. It's quite easy to think of ideas. It's more difficult to think of a relevant specific idea that you can actually explain and write about. You need to be able to do this, so you need to be able to think of ideas that you can actually explain. And then number five, it's easy to exemplify. Exemplify is just a fancy way of saying, show an example that supports your idea. Can you give someone an example that provides evidence to support why your idea is actually true? So what if your idea is not true? And we'll look at what truth means and all of those things, that's a loaded word and it can mean many different things, but let's just focus on this one, on the question that we asked. Imagine someone you love does something wrong. It's a fact that they've done something wrong. And I state that fact, okay? They have done something wrong. That is a fact. And I state that fact to you. And your response is to violently attack me for stating something that is true. So your idea is that violence is justified. It's okay to attack me physically for telling you the truth. Your main idea is you're protecting your family. Well, let's analyze that idea and see whether it is a good idea for the purposes of IELTS writing task two. Is it relevant? Yes, it is extremely relevant. Is it specific? Yes, it is very specific. So far so good. Is it easy to understand? Well, it's easy for anyone to understand why someone would want to protect their family. So it's very easy for the reader to understand this idea. Is it easy to generate? Well, most people who think this way will be able to generate this idea at the speed of light. And they will easily tell you that this is true. Now we get on to number four. Is it easy to explain? This is where this idea starts to fall down. It is very difficult to explain to someone why it is justified to attack someone violently with physical violence because you are protecting your family. So if you don't believe me and you don't think that this makes sense, imagine you do this and I am your lawyer. I used to be a lawyer before I was an IELTS teacher. I was a lawyer, believe it or not. And if you were my client, I would say to you, you cannot use this in court because you cannot justify this. This is illegal. That person did not do anything wrong. It is not illegal, well, in any country I know of, to state something that is true even if it hurts your feelings. And it is not justified to legally attack someone. You cannot explain this in a way that most people will understand and agree with. And you also can't think of an example that is true. You can't say, well, I know someone, someone told them something that was true about someone they loved and they attacked that person physically and this shows why this is okay. And the reason why I'm really focusing on on number four and number five is not to pick on these people who would give it this type of idea. It's not to attack these people intellectually even though they would attack me physically. It's because what we see every day is when people think of ideas that are not true, they find it extremely difficult to explain them and to think of an idea and they get lost and they fail their IELTS test because they are thinking of ideas that are not really true. Because what do you need to do with your idea in the essay? You must explain why you believe that idea is true. If you are thinking on a very emotional level rather than on a rational level, by rational I mean you're thinking this out clearly then it's very difficult for you to explain things. It's kind of like talking to a six-year-old who wants sweets in a sweet shop. Imagine you have a six-year-old in a sweet shop and they're throwing a tantrum and they really want a lollipop and you tell them, no, you can't have a lollipop. It will rot your teeth. You're giving a very rational idea there. Is the child going to explain rationally, explain in a way that makes sense? No, they're just going to say I want my lollipop and then start screaming and crying because people who cannot explain things rationally, that is how they think. And this must make sense to the examiner. The examiner doesn't have to agree with your idea but the examiner must be able to read your idea and think, yeah, that's logical, that makes sense. When you ask someone why they violently attacked someone for no good reason, do they normally give a rational response? So I don't know whether you have studied criminology or any lawyers watching, like when someone does something like this, do they normally give a very rational explanation? Not really. You should also provide evidence to support your opinion in the form of an example. We've already talked about that so we'll not talk about that too much more. And can you think of an example that justifies violently attacking someone for stating a fact? Not really. So let's look at some of the student examples, the student submissions on our YouTube channel and we'll talk about whether this idea they've given is true or not really true. So Michael says, I disagree when someone offends your beloved ones, it is better not to react in a violent and inconsiderate way since they might get hurt. So their main idea is that violence is not acceptable because you could damage them. You could really, really hurt them and they might be badly injured or die. Instead you should stay conscious and think about non-violent solutions. For example, when someone jokes about your spouse's illness, it is better to stay calm and tell them that you do not feel comfortable about it. This way they will reconsider their behavior and the problem will be solved in a peaceful way. Now you don't have to agree with Michael. Remember, the examiner doesn't have to agree with you. What the examiner is looking at is, is the idea relevant and specific? Yes. Have they explained it? Well, they probably could have done a little bit more explanation here but overall it's okay. And the example, you know, overall it's okay. They're not giving a task to answer. This is not a real test but the examiner will be able to look at this just as you are looking at this and understand it. It makes sense. So it's pretty good. It's well thought out. Then we have another student here. When you get offended, it's bad to respond to it in a wrong way. It is better to ignore these kinds of behavior and be the bigger man. Okay, so this one, there's multiple ideas in here. It's better to ignore this. Okay, why that's a little bit vague could be more specific and be the bigger man. Okay, again, a little bit vague. What does that mean? This is why it's important to be specific. Getting involved in these subjects will just make sink deeper and make the situation even and even yourself worse. Okay, so there's a lot of different ideas here. It would be much, much better for this person to just pick one idea that they believe is true and state that relevant idea specifically and then explain it and then give an example for it. Okay, so that's, I wanted to show you this to demonstrate how important it is to just pick one specific relevant idea per main body paragraph. I disagree. Hitting to the person who has criticized someone you care about is totally unacceptable. So their opinion is extremely clear here but what's their main idea? This is because no matter how true the critic is acting violently would only make the situation worse as it may lead to a physical fight where both the oppositions would only hurt themselves. Okay, so very similar to Michael's idea physical violence will lead to people getting hurt. So they would need to explain that a little more like why is that bad? It's obvious why that is bad but just because it is obvious doesn't mean that you shouldn't explain it. For instance, if a bully is bullying a student in a class for some reason, the teacher would react patiently and try to make the bully understand that how harmful it can be for the student. So yeah, a good example of a teacher. This is how most teachers would react. It wasn't how most teachers reacted in my day. In my day, the teacher would use physical violence but thankfully in this country anyway, those reactions are long in the past. Therefore, acting out vigorously by trying to physically hurt someone who has offended your beloved one is not acceptable. Okay, so pretty good. Let's look at this one. If someone is humiliating your best friend for anything like she is wearing an awkward shoe, I feel it's my responsibility to take stand for her and ask people to stop doing that. So the problem, and I'm not criticizing this person, this is not me saying that this person is bad or anything like that, I'm trying to help them. It's okay to make mistakes, that's how we learn. But this is a very good example of someone who states an idea but then cannot explain it because the idea is not really true. If the idea is true, then you can easily explain that idea. If the idea is true, there will be multiple examples because true things are self-evident. When someone states something like, if someone criticizes my friend's shoe, I'm going to beat the shit out of them. It's very, very difficult to explain why that is justified. And when you question someone and say, why do you think this is okay? They will normally respond with things just like, well, just because I feel like it or it's the right thing to do or I am protecting them. Those are not explanations, those are not examples. Verbal discrimination in anyone's personal life to family or partners is a sensitive issue and a person can protect their families not by a, okay, so again, no explanation, no examples. And you will see this over and over and over again if you look at as many IELTS essays as we do, like we're looking at hundreds of essays every day for more than 10 years. When someone states an idea that is true in their mind, it is very easy for them to write about. When they write something that they haven't really thought about and they're just really reacting from an emotional level or they are just repeating what society says or what people in general think or what they've seen on social media. In my mind, my definition of true is that you have thought something out and you believe that it is actually true because you have thought about it yourself. If you are just repeating what other people are saying or you're just reacting emotionally, it's not really a true idea, is it? So this idea and this idea are very, very, very typical and I didn't cherry pick these ideas. This is typical, this is what you will see all the time. I completely support this action of this man in this incident. This is because a man carries a responsibility to take care of his beloved ones in order to protect them from being bullied or abused. It was reasonable in this case as she was innocent and the statement of a joke. So you haven't really explained why it's okay to physically attack. This is you justifying why it's okay. This is not you explaining why it's okay. So this is just multiple justifications. You know, again, the kid in the sweet shop. I want a lollipop because I want one. Why do you want one? Because I like lollipops. Why do you want a lollipop? Lollipops are nice. Why do you want a lollipop? I really want one. Like that is just repeating the same thing over and over and over again. It's not actually explaining things. For instance, we know lots of cases from the history when kings and simple, genuine men stepped in to protect their mothers, sisters, daughters, and wives. Well, using kings and leaders is not normally the best example. Just because someone is a leader, just because someone is a king, just because someone was maybe, what, chancellor of Germany or chief secretary of the Communist Party or whatever that is, doesn't make them right. All right, that's not a very good example. All right. I made these points based on my upbringing, culture, and of course, religion. Very, very, very good point here. And I like that this person is being honest. And again, I'm not criticizing this person. I'm trying to help them and give them my point of view. You need to be very careful about what has your upbringing taught you? What has your culture taught you? I know religion is a very delicate topic and I'm not going to criticize anyone's religion. Everyone has the freedom to believe whatever they want. But be very careful about what has your life experience actually taught you. If you were to speak to someone in North Korea about what they believe about the world or you asked them about their leader, do you think that they would tell you what they think is the truth? Would that really be true? Something to think about. And then this is very, very typical of someone who is just speaking in quotes and sayings and things like that. So for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. People will quote people that lived thousands of years ago. I'm not a physics expert, but I believe this quote is from Isaac Newton. But he was talking about physics. Wasn't talking about human emotion, which is two very, very different things. And then when someone responds and asks them to justify their position as I have done here, they will respond with another quote. And they think that this means that they win because this was said 2000 years ago by an Indian poet. So just because someone said something 2000 years ago, does that make it true? Are all poets correct? Should we just do what poets told us to do? Is the older something? It does, should we judge things based on their age rather than whether they're true or not? Probably not. And then they will respond with things like justice and justice prevails. I think this person watched Batman maybe a few too many times. So I've talked a lot about ideas being true and we're probably seeing already, I'm anticipating a lot of people in the comments saying and debating what the word truth means. That's really trying to not address the actual issues and not really deal with what I am trying to teach you if you're debating about what true means within the context of IELTS. And that is the only thing that I'm an expert in. I only know how to teach IELTS and I'm only trying to help people with IELTS. I'm not here to have a philosophical discussion about the word true, but there is normally not a right or wrong answer to IELTS task two questions. That is not what I'm trying to teach you in this video. I'm not saying you must pick right answers and you will get a high score if you do and if you pick wrong answers you will get a low score. The examiner does also not have to agree with you. The examiner can completely disagree with you. I have given students band eight, even band nine when I have completely to my very bones disagreed with their point of view because it's not about whether the examiner agrees with them or not. The only thing that matters is that you can clearly communicate your answer to the examiner. It is easier to clearly communicate when you're writing about the truth or something that you believe is true. And if you say a poet 2,000 years ago quoted this, therefore I believe something is true, is it really true in your mind? It is very difficult to write about something that is not true because it is very difficult to explain in a rational way and it is very difficult to think of a example to support that idea that makes sense. So let's now look at why a lack of truth leads to ignorance. So what does the word true mean? Well, according to the dictionary, in accordance with fact or reality, it's very, very important that we live in reality. Ignorance, a lack of knowledge or information or in other words, people who do not live in objective reality. It's very significant that 31%, around a third of IELTS students would physically violently attack you if you stated something that was true. And I was very careful in my wording of this question, even if what they say is true. Because some of the most common reasons for IELTS failure are people you love telling you things that are not true. Let's look at some of the most common examples. And these are things that we see every day and we have seen every day in hundreds, thousands of emails over the last 10 years. My father, my mother, my brother, my sister, my auntie, my uncle, my cousin told me that IELTS is easy and I don't need to study. That IELTS is just an English test and I don't need a course. That IELTS is something that I shouldn't do. How are we able to tell you that is wrong if three out of 10 of you will violently attack us? And you might think that is a bit crazy. I can show you emails where people have threatened to kill us when we have told them that their parents or loved ones are wrong. Or my cousin told me that IDP is easier than the British Council or my cousin told me that the British Council in this city is really difficult. And IDP in this, like we have had students fly from Iran to Vancouver, Canada, because their cousin told them that the IDP Centre there was easier and they failed their test. How is it possible for us to explain to you that what your cousin is saying is complete bullshit if you will violently attack us? My old teacher told me, many of you love your old teachers and many of you come from cultures where you have been taught from you or a baby that teachers are always right and teachers should be respected. There are many great teachers out there in the world. There are not that many great teachers that are also IELTS experts. I think you have to agree and if you disagree with this, if you're not living in reality, a lot of teachers are not teaching you the right thing about IELTS. How are we able to teach you if a third of you will violently attack us? Many of you love your favorite YouTubers. Again, there are many great teachers out there. There are many great YouTubers out there. There are not that many great YouTubers who are also great IELTS experts. I can show you thousands of videos that teach you how to fail the test. Literally, the things that they are saying are important in those videos are objectively going to lower your score. But every time someone tells you that, you will threaten them with violence. Or many of you love yourselves. Many of you, when we give you feedback and we tell you you're doing something wrong or what you believe is wrong, you will threaten us with physical violence. And again, I can show you hundreds of emails where people have threatened us with physical violence when we have corrected their grammar or corrected maybe a spelling mistake in their essay. That is not crazy. That is true. So if a third of IELTS students will violently attack someone telling them the truth about someone they love, is there any hope of there being any truth? Without truth, we cannot understand reality. When we don't understand reality, we are lost in darkness. If we're lost in darkness, do you think many people are going to be getting this IELTS score that they need? The average score for IELTS writing is 5.5. The average number of times students do the IELTS test is three. Do you think good or evil thrives in darkness? Do you think that it's easy to tell people the truth and help people if you're surrounded by darkness? Or is it easy for evil to thrive? Is it easy to tell people lies and manipulate people when there is no reality? There is no truth. And why do you think many IELTS teachers speak to adults like they are children throwing a tantrum in a sweet shop? Listen to how many IELTS teachers online speak to grown adults. Listen to the tone that they use. Why do you think that they speak to you like they are trying to coax a six-year-old out of a sweet shop? Maybe it's because a third of you would physically attack them if they told you the truth and spoke to you as an adult because part of being an adult is living in reality and accepting the truth and accepting that you are responsible for your own actions and your own IELTS scores. Hope that you enjoyed that video and if you need anything, get in touch.