IELTS Simon

IELTS Writing Task 2: another band 9 paragraph

Is it always a good thing to work hard?

Here's my plan for a 5-sentence paragraph to answer this question:

1. Topic sentence - hard work is usually seen as positive
2. Explain why - education: pass exams, good grades, career progression
3. Explain why - employment: most industrious people rise to the top
4. However - it can become an obsession with perfection, competition
5. Result - neglecting family relationships, stressed, irritable

And here's my paragraph:

When a person is described as hard-working, this is almost always seen as a positive trait or attitude. In the realm of education, we expect hard workers to diligently follow instructions, pass their exams, achieve good grades and take their first steps on the path to a successful career. Similarly, in an employment setting, we expect the most motivated, industrious and committed individuals to rise to the top and become leaders or experts in their fields. However, I believe that in some people the desire to work hard can become an unhealthy obsession with perfection, outcompeting others or being the best. When people work so hard that they neglect family and relationships or become stressed and irritable, a positive trait has surely become detrimental.

IELTS Listening: using tests to work on spelling

If you have any of the books that contain practice IELTS tests (e.g. the official Cambridge books), why not use the listening test answers to check your spelling? Here's what you could do:

• Ask a friend or family member to read the listening test answers (at the back of the book). Write each answer down, then check whether you made any spelling mistakes.
• Or, record yourself reading the answers aloud, then listen to the recording and try to spell each word correctly. To make this more difficult, test yourself with the recording a week later.

Imagine if you worked through all 11 Cambridge IELTS books in this way. I think you would feel much more confident about your spelling.

IELTS Reading: multiple choice

Read the following passage and complete the multiple choice exercise below it.

The Suzuki method is an internationally known music curriculum and teaching philosophy dating from the mid-20th century, created by Japanese violinist and pedagogue Shinichi Suzuki (1898–1998). The method aims to create an environment for learning music which parallels the linguistic environment of acquiring a native language. Suzuki believed that this environment would also help to foster good moral character.

As a skilled violinist but a beginner at the German language who struggled to learn it, Suzuki noticed that children pick up their native language quickly, and even dialects adults consider "difficult" to learn are spoken with ease by children at age five or six. He reasoned that if children have the skill to acquire their native language, they have the necessary ability to become proficient on a musical instrument.

Suzuki believed that every child, if properly taught, was capable of a high level of musical achievement. He also made it clear that the goal of such musical education was to raise generations of children with "noble hearts", as opposed to creating famous musical prodigies.

Which THREE of the following statements are correct?

A) Suzuki saw similarities between learning languages and music.

B) He learnt German using his own method.

C) He found it easy to learn German.

D) He believed that all children have musical potential.

E) His aims went deeper than simply teaching music.

F) He hoped to create the next generation of famous musicians.

IELTS Advice: become a collocations collector!

Native speakers instinctively know which words work well together. In our native languages, we don't usually need to think about grammar because we have a vast store of 'correct' collocations and phrases in our heads; some people refer to these as 'chunks' of language. It's incredible how quickly our brains are able to retrieve these 'chunks' and piece them together to form sentences and express ideas.

Unfortunately most of us don't use our brains in this way when we're learning a second language. We learn grammar rules and individual words, and we fall into the trap of translating from our native languages. As a result, we often make the wrong word choices and produce 'unnatural collocations'.

Part of the solution to this problem, in my view, is to become a collocations collector! Collect groups of words that native speakers actually use (see yesterday's lesson for some examples). Write them in a notebook, reread them regularly, and try to use them when you're speaking or writing,

Note: How many collocations can you find in the paragraphs above?

IELTS Vocabulary: collocations

Did you notice the following collocations (words that often go together) in Wednesday's lesson?

• main factors
• key factor
• work hard
• study hard
• hard work
• goal-oriented
• parental pressure
• graduate successfully
• escape poverty
• a new life
• truly enjoy

A student called DaNang even made a collocations exercise in the comments area below Wednesday's lesson. Good work DaNang!

IELTS Speaking Part 2: tell an anecdote

An anecdote is a "short amusing or interesting story about a real incident" (according to my computer's dictionary). If you can think of an anecdote in part 2 of your speaking test, you'll find the task much easier.

Exercise:
Look again at the 'public transport' task in last Friday's lesson. Can you think of an amusing or interesting story about a time you used public transport?

Advice:
For advice about telling anecdotes, have a look at this website.

Example:
My public transport anecdote will be about a train journey that I took for work reasons. I was expecting a nice, relaxing trip, but the train filled up with football fans going to a big match. I'll share my full answer next Friday.

IELTS Writing Task 1: too long!

The report below describes the line graph in this lesson. It's a really good answer (band 9), but the problem is that it contains 240 words.

I don't think many people would have time to write such a long answer in only 20 minutes, so let's try the following exercise.

Task: Edit the following report, reducing it to between 150 and 180 words.

The line graph compares three types of traveller visiting New Zealand between 1997 and 2017 in terms of the average amount of money that they spent each day during their trips.

It is noticeable that overall spending by international visitors to New Zealand was at its highest between the years 2000 and 2003. Also, over the 20-year period shown, business travellers spent the most per day, on average, while people visiting friends or relatives spent the least.

In 1997, business visitors to New Zealand spent an average of just under $260 per day, while holidaymakers spent around $190 and people visiting friends or relatives spent less than $120. Over the following five or six years, spending by all three types of traveller increased dramatically, to peaks of around $330, $270 and $220 for the three respective categories. However, visitor spending suddenly fell again between 2003 and 2005.

Over the 10 years from 2005 to 2015, similar daily travel expenditure levels can be seen for both business visitors and tourists, with figures fluctuating around the $200 mark. By contrast, people who were in New Zealand to see friends or family spent roughly 60 to 80 dollars per day less than the other visitors over this time period. In the final year shown on the graph, 2017, the figures for average daily spending stood at approximately $250, $210 and $140 respectively for vacationers, business people and those visiting family or friends.

IELTS Writing Task 2: 'hard work' paragraph

Continuing with the question from this lesson, let's write a paragraph about why some people work harder than others.

First, here's a quick plan for a 5-sentence paragraph:

• Three main reasons why some people work harder
• 1) Parental pressure to be studious and successful

• Example: medical students do not want to disappoint family members
• 2) Escape from poverty or create a new life
• 3) Found a subject or job that they love

Now here's my paragraph, using the ideas above:

In my experience, there are three main factors that influence how hard people study or work. One key factor that drives people and makes them more studious and goal-oriented is parental pressure. Some medical students, for example, are motivated to study hard because they do not wish to disappoint family members who expect them to graduate successfully and become doctors. On the other hand, there are people who see hard work as a means to escape poverty or create a completely new life for themselves. Finally, it seems to me that some people are more driven and persistent as students or workers simply because they have found a subject or job that they truly enjoy; people who love their work describe it as effortless rather than hard.

IELTS Listening: 'microplastics' transcription

Here's my full transcription of the 'microplastics' recording from this lesson:

What is a microplastic? It's the tiny particle created when larger plastic items - tooth brushes, bottles, bags - break down over decades. They float in the water and get eaten by sea life.

They cause two problems. First, the fragments act like a sponge to other toxins in the water - pesticides and flame retardants, for example - suctioning them up and concentrating them.

Secondly, they are themselves complex polymers - molecules the body can’t fully break down. When they get really tiny, into a billionth of a metre as a nano-plastic, scientists have shown they can cross tissue membranes into fish cells. They say that is harmful to fish, their reproduction, immunity, survival skills.

What we don't know is what happens when humans eat the fish or sea life. Is it harmful to us? It's already an urgent question. A leading US government scientist told CNN plastic is definitely in our food chain and drinking water. This isn’t something maybe happening to our children; it’s already here.

IELTS Reading: how 'deeply' do you read?

There are various different ways to read a text. If you're just gathering information, you might scan several articles or books quickly; perhaps you might choose to quickly skim the beginning and end of an article if you only need to get a general idea of what it's about. When surfing the Internet, we skim, scan, click on hyperlinks, and jump around reading bits of text from here and there.

However, if your aim is to learn a new language, you'll need to slow down and do some 'deep' reading.

Here are some deep reading tips:

• Choose one article per day. If you don't have much time, it should be a very short text, or you could choose to read only part of the article.
• Remove all other distractions. If you've chosen an online article, it might be better to print it, or at least copy it onto a Word document.
• Read the article through once at normal speed, and then see if you can write a summary of it in five sentences or less.
• Read the article a second time, and note down both the 'facts' and the 'opinions' that it contains. Is the writer of the article expressing an opinion or trying to persuade you to think in a certain way?
• Next, look at the vocabulary used in the article. Write any useful phrases in your notebook. Remember: knowing the meaning of a word is easy - the difficult thing is knowing how to use words correctly to express ideas. So focus on the way words are used together in collocations and phrases.
• If you have time to go deeper, you could look at sentence construction: the length of each sentence, the connectives (linking words) that are used, and the order of elements in each sentence.
• You could do the same for paragraphs: how does the writer maintain coherence between sentences, how are arguments developed or details added?
• You could then analyse grammar more closely: nouns, verbs, tenses, articles etc.

It's fine to do quick, 'superficial' reading too, but you should consider adding at least 15 minutes of focused, deliberate 'deep' reading to your daily study schedule.

IELTS Advice: the path to improvement

If you're looking for the path to improvement, my advice is to let your mistakes guide you. Think of your mistakes as a torch lighting up the path in front of you. They will show you what your weaknesses are, and what you need to work on.

IELTS Advice: using the archives on this blog

A student thanked me recently for keeping my blog going for 10 months. This confused me because I've been writing lessons here since 2009 / 2010. But then I realised what the problem is:

The 'Archives' menu on the left only shows the most recent 10 months of blog lessons.

There are many more lessons that you can find if you "dig a bit further"! Click here to see the full list of monthly archives. Alternatively, click on any link in the "Categories" menu and keep clicking on "Next" at the bottom of each page to go back to older lessons.

One day I'll make a proper index for the site, but for now you'll need to do your own "digging" to find things!

IELTS Speaking Part 2: public transport

We looked at some part 1 questions about public transport last week, so let's continue with the same topic but in part 2 of the test.

Try speaking for 2 minutes about the following:

Describe a time you travelled by public transport. You should say

- what type of public transport you used
- where you travelled from and to
- what you did during the journey
- and explain how you felt about travelling in this way

IELTS Writing Task 1: only 6 sentences!

After you've written the introduction and overview, you should aim to write just 6 sentences describing specific information. For example, here's the graph task that we've been looking at:
...

The graph below shows the average daily spend of three categories of international visitor to New Zealand from 1997 to 2017.
...

...
We've already written the introduction and overview in previous lessons. Now follow the instructions below to write 6 sentences to describe details.

Paragraph 3

1) Compare all three lines in 1997.
2) Compare the trends between 1997 and 2002/3.
3) Say what happened in 2003 - 2005.

Paragraph 4

4) Compare the figures for ‘business’ and ‘holiday’ visitors from 2005 to 2015.
5) Contrast the above with the figures for ‘visiting friends or relatives’.
6) Compare all three lines in 2017.

IELTS Writing Task 2: two-part question plan

Here's the question that I shared last week:

In education and employment, some people work harder than others. Why do some people work harder? Is it always a good thing to work hard?

And here's my 4-paragraph essay plan:

1. Introduction: Introduce the topic and briefly answer both questions.
2. Main paragraph: Answer the first question.
3. Main paragraph: Answer the second question.
4. Conclusion: Summarise the answer to both questions.

To get the essay started, here's a possible introduction:

It is true that some people are hard-working and diligent while others prefer not to push themselves, and there could be various reasons for these different attitudes. In my view, a positive work ethic is desirable up to a point, but too much hard work can be counterproductive and even unhealthy.

IELTS Listening: transcribe it

If you've done the gap-fill exercise in last week's lesson, you could try transcribing the whole recording. Try to write out the exact words that the speaker says.

A couple of students have already shared their transcriptions (see comments by Tae and asker below the lesson), so you could check theirs if you don't have time to do your own.

IELTS Reading: a good study technique

When practising with the Cambridge IELTS books, try this study technique:

1. Choose a reading passage.
2. Go to the back of the book and get the correct answers.
3. Study the passage with the aim of proving why those answers are correct.
4. Make a keyword table.

When you know what the answers are, you can focus on exam technique: searching for keywords, then reading the relevant part of the passage carefully. You might find this helps you more than simply testing yourself would.

IELTS Advice: five procrastination tips

It was interesting to read about people's procrastination problems in the comments below last Saturday's lesson. I think we all experience these problems when we're trying to do something difficult.

Here are five tips that help me to fight procrastination:

1. Just make a start. If you've been procrastinating about writing an essay, for example, make it your goal to write the first sentence only. The hardest thing is to get started, and the idea of writing a full essay can be daunting. Put this idea out of your mind, and focus instead on writing just one sentence.
2. Find a nice place. Whenever I have some difficult writing to do, I find it much easier to get started if I'm sitting in a café with a cup of coffee. It doesn't feel like such hard work when you're in a nice environment.
3. Aim lower (at first). Sometimes our frustration is caused by the high expectations that we have. Instead of jumping into a 10-hour-a-day study programme, it's better to start with 10 minutes, then gradually do more each day.
4. Get some help. It's hard to study alone, so try to find a study partner, teacher or someone who can occasionally check your progress and give you advice.
5. Form a daily habit. For me, doing something every day is the ultimate weapon in the fight against procrastination. Doing something once a week (or even 5 times a week) doesn't work as well. There's something magic about daily practice: when a daily action becomes as normal as brushing your teeth, big changes start to happen!

IELTS Speaking Part 1: 'public transport' answers

Here are my answers to the questions that I showed you last Friday:

1) Do you use public transport? Why / why not?

These days I mostly drive, and the main reason is that my usual journeys are much faster by car. For example, the half-hour drive that I do twice a week would take me three times as long by train and bus.

2) Which type of public transport do you prefer? Why?

I definitely prefer the train. I like being able to stroll up and down, and on some trains I can book a seat with a table and a socket, so that I can do some work.

3) How good is the public transport where you live?

It's quite good. There's a train station not far from my house, and it's a direct line straight into the city centre. There are lots of bus routes too, and there's even a tram network in the centre of Manchester.

4) Do you think people should use public transport more? Why / why not?

Yes, as long as it's convenient for them. Public transport is obviously more environmentally friendly than private cars, so we could reduce air pollution by using it more.

IELTS Writing Task 1: two things about the overview

Here are two useful questions that people have asked me about the overview paragraph that I shared in last week's lesson, with my answers below.

1) Are two points always enough for the overview? Can we add a third point?

I believe that it's best to stick to just two main or general points, even if you can see other general trends that could be mentioned. Here are four reasons: First, I would rather describe two things well and then move on to the details. Second, I think the overview loses its impact if it becomes too long - it stops being a summary. Third, one of the requirements of task 1 is that you "select" information; you are not expected to describe everything. Finally, I like to have a method and stick to it, so I know what to do without having to think too much.

2) Is it better to put the overview after the introduction or at the end of the report?

Both positions are fine. However, I prefer to write the overview straight after the introduction for two reasons: First, I find it easier to describe general information before looking at specific details. Second, I know that the overview is very important. If you want a good score, you need to take the time to write a good overview; when people write the overview at the end, they often find themselves rushing and they do a bad job!

IELTS Writing Task 2: two-part question about 'hard work'

The task below is what I call a two-part question. The good thing about this type of question is that you know exactly what to write about in each main body paragraph.

In education and employment, some people work harder than others. Why do some people work harder? Is it always a good thing to work hard?

How would you structure a 4-paragraph answer to this question? Please share your essay plans (not full essays yet) in the 'comments' area below.

IELTS Reading: 'microplastics' passage

Read the following passage and answer the questions below it.

Microplastics are small pieces of plastic less than five millimetres in size. Some microplastics are manufactured, such as the microbeads added to health and beauty products, while others result from larger plastics gradually breaking down. These plastics are pervasive in marine environments, and they are known to harbour toxic substances such as heavy metals and phthalates.

Since many animals are known to eat microplastics, scientists are concerned about the toxic substances contained within them, as well as their capacity to accumulate within the animals and stop them from absorbing nutrients correctly.

Even the largest marine creatures are vulnerable to tiny fragments of plastic littering the world’s oceans. A new study has found whales and whale sharks – the largest fish in the world – are ingesting microplastics in alarming quantities. These creatures are filter feeders, meaning they consume large quantities of small prey by straining them out of the ocean water. In the process, they swallow hundreds to thousands of cubic meters of water daily, meaning there is the potential for them to take in substantial amounts of microplastic floating in the water.

Recently, plastic pollution has received a lot of attention for its effects on marine animals. In the UK, microbeads have been banned, and other plastic items such as water bottles and disposable coffee cups have also been in the firing line. However, while scientists agree that plastic pollution is a problem for marine animals, there is still a lot they do not know about the magnitude of its impact.

(Source: independent.co.uk)

Are the following statements true, false or not given?

1) Harmful microplastics are widespread in the world’s oceans and seas.
2) Larger fish are the most likely to be harmed by these toxic plastics.
3) The only fish that ingest microplastics are those that swallow water.
4) Water bottles and disposable cups have been banned in the UK.
5) Scientists are yet to discover how serious the microplastic problem is.

IELTS Advice: the positive thing about procrastination

I'll share some tips on beating procrastination next weekend, but I thought I'd say just one thing about it today, and it's something positive.

The positive thing about procrastination is that it tells you what is important. The more you procrastinate and leave something for later, the more important that task probably is in your life. So, let your procrastinating guide you towards what needs to be done, and begin to confront that task now. You'll feel much better if you do.

IELTS Advice: procrastination

Do you find it difficult to study as much as you would like to? Perhaps you make study plans but then decide to "do it later". This is what we call 'procrastination'.

Most of us procrastinate, put things off, or tell ourselves that we'll do it later, especially when the task is difficult and we feel stuck.

Let me know if procrastination is a problem for you (with regard to your IELTS preparation, or anything else), and we can discuss some ways to beat it.

IELTS Speaking Part 1: 'public transport' topic

A student sent me the following exam questions. How would you answer them?

1. Do you use public transport? Why / why not?
2. Which type of public transport do you prefer? Why?
3. How good is the public transport where you live?
4. Do you think people should use public transport more? Why / why not?

IELTS Writing Task 1: 'daily spending' overview

On the line graph below, I've labelled the two main points or general trends that I'll describe in my overview. Look at the big red numbers 1 and 2.

Point 1 refers to the years when all three lines were at their highest points. Point 2 refers to the line for "business visitors", who appear to have spent the most overall.

So here's my overview paragraph:

It is noticeable that overall spending by international visitors to New Zealand was at its highest between the years 2000 and 2003. Also, over the 20-year period shown, business travellers spent the most per day, on average, while people visiting friends or relatives spent the least.