Top Marks - A Brief Look at a Task 1 Model Answer

I everybody welcome back in this lecture. We’re going to look at one of the different question types which we looked at in the previous essay and we’re going to address one of these questions and we’re going to look at a more to answer for one of these questions. In fact we’re going to look at an answer which achieves aband nine. Now of course you’re probably not aiming to achieve aband 9 you’re most likely aiming to achieve a 7 6.5 7.5 but it can be useful to look at what is involved in a band. 9 answer as that gives us a better idea of what is required of us from the bad descriptors and what we need to do to achieve a high score in the exam. So we’re going to look at this question here for today. So instead of looking at slides today we’re going to look at a document. It will be a little bit easier to go through a document in order to illustrate what aband nine task one answer looks like. We’re going to begin by analyzing the question and then we’re going to look at the answer. And as you can see I have highlighted particular aspects of the answer. The reason I have done that is so that I can point you towards the lecture which shows you how to achieve that particular technique or how to use that particular skill. So let’s begin by investigating the question. Now in the previous lecture we looked at the full question types and immediately hopefully you can see what type of question this is. But let’s go through it together. The table below shows how many students of the school in the UK chose to take part in four different sports. Between 2001 and 2002 and 11 summarize the information by selecting and reporting the main features make comparisons where relevant right at least 150 words. If we look at the table itself you can see that it is a line graph with four different categories. We have running in blue basketball in green swimming in yellow and football soccer if you like the American term in orange we’re looking at the number of participating students in the y axis and we’re looking at the year in the x axes. Hopefully you have already identified this as a graph with a trend. OK so having looked at the question we can now move into the answers and see how the answer actually addresses the requirements of the question in the task. So let’s begin. The graph demonstrates the number of students of a particular UK school who participated in running basketball swimming and football over a 10 year period from 2001 to 2000 and 11. This is our introduction. And as I’ve highlighted here if you want to find out how to write your introductions you go to lecture 12 titled accurate introductions and Esther and what this introduction is doing and what that lecture lecture 12 will show you is How To paraphrase the language in the task. So instead of saying how many students of a school in the UK we’ve written the number of students of a particular UK school you can see the difference in language there. So this is not only addressing the task requirements for task achievement by accurately responding to the task but it’s also paraphrasing the language which is good for lexical resource so you’re covering to ban descriptive categories at the same time. Notice it’s just a single sentence. This is usually the case for introductions and you learn about that little bit more in lecture 12. Let’s move into the second paragraph. Well what we would call the overview overall what stands out from the prof is that while the popularity of running grew over the period in question and after football remained high throughout the number of students interested in basketball fell sharply. Let’s look at that sentence. First of all before moving on to the second one and what have I highlighted here. So overall what stands out. This makes it very clear to the reader that they are now looking at an overview. And so in lecture 13 you can find out more about how to write overviews as overviews are absolutely essential for task achievement. It is written there in the band descriptors. As we looked at in Section One. So if you want to learn what sort of language is used in an overview and how to construct that over if you go to lecture 13 and look at overviews over here the popularity of running grew over the period. Here we are identifying main trends and what we’re doing here is really reporting the main features. So here we are not only looking at task achievements in terms of the band descriptors but we’re also looking at addressing the task from the question itself. And sometimes it’s difficult to identify the main trends. So you can learn exactly how to do that in election 9. Identifying main trends let’s move on to the second sentence in this overview. Swimming figures Meanwhile saw an increase followed by a drop by the highlights. This is for cohesive devices and referencing. So we’re using Meanwhile here to link two ideas together. This is also good for lexical resource as well. But you can learn about how to join ideas together in lecture 15 which looks at cohesive devices and referencing. This is mostly focusing on improving the band descriptive category of coherence and cohesion. But as I said it’s also good for lexical resource as well. Let’s move into the first detail paragraph here. With regards to running and swimming the starting figures were roughly identical at 18 and 20 participating students respectively. So let’s have a look at this first sentence with regards to running and swimming. This makes it again very clear to the reader from the very beginning of the paragraph that they are now reading about the details of the graph we’re now looking at specific facts and figures. Notice that we avoided those in the overview. We looked to general trends here with focusing more specifically on individual categories and you will learn about how to write detailed paragraphs effectively and efficiently. In lecture 14 detailed paragraphs. However whereas the former climbed to reach 60 students in 2007 before leveling off for the remainder of the period the latter peaked at 50 students in 2006 and then slipped to half this figure in 2011. Now there are a few highlighted expressions to go through here so let’s go one by one. Let’s start with this one here. So we’ve got the word whereas whereas is what’s called a subordinating conjunction. It allows us to create a complex sentence and we need to write complex sentences in order to achieve a band 7 for grammatical range and accuracy. And you can learn about how to write complex sentences in the context of task one questions in lecture 20 complex sentences over here 60 students in 2007. This is going to be looked at lecture 10 selecting data. Notice as I mentioned a moment ago that in this paragraph we’re looking at specific figures and specific facts. Where in the overview we look more generally at the trends. However it’s very important that the data that you select is accurate and relevant and lectured them will help you to understand how to do that. Sixty students very specific 2007 very specific but also relevant as a main feature. It’s not just a randomly selected piece of data. As I mentioned lecture time will show you how to select relevant data. The latter peaked to 50 students in 2006 and then split to half this figure in 2000 and 11. So the word slipped. Why is this highlighted. We’re going to look at this in lecture 16 which is about vocabulary specific for graphs with a trend the vocabulary that you write should be specific for your particular task as this will help you to translate data accurately and efficiently for the reader. Now there will be different vocabulary which is more appropriate for different tasks. So you notice that in lectures 16 is vocabulary for graphs for the trend in lecture 17 dobi vocabulary for comparative cross in lecture 18 nobody vocabulary for processes and in lecture 19 there’ll be vocabulary for maps. So each question type will have a different set vocabulary which is helpful for it. Of course there’s some vocabulary which will be relevant for every question type but in this course the vocabulary section is going to focus primarily on what type of vocabulary is best for each question type. The words Slichter is very relevant for a graph with the trend as it’s a way of saying that the data began to decrease the numbers began to decrease. And this helps us to avoid repeating ourselves by avoiding the repetition of words like fell or dropped or decrease. So it’s good to have a range of these verbs. Let’s move into the final paragraph here. Turning to the ball sports football state consistently popular with student figures remaining between 60 and 70 throughout the period. Basketball’s popularity was nearly as high as footballs in the first half of the decade studied with the number of participating students rising from 55 to 60 one but 2006 to 2008. So student numbers crash to 21 a figure which had not changed by 2011. OK. So there’s nothing highlighted in the first sentence but still have a look at that first sentence it still contains some very useful language and uses many of the techniques looked at in the lectures in this course but let’s focus on the second sentence which has some highlighted expressions. First of all basketballs notice that here we using an apostrophe between the L and the s at the end of basketball. Punctuation is important in your answer. It is marked under the category of grammatical range and accuracy. And in lecture 22 we’ll be looking at three of the most common mistakes which are made with punctuation and how you can avoid making those mistakes. Nearly as high as. Again this is looking at the grammar element of the task in lecture 21. We’ll be looking at comparative grammar. So how to compare information. This is also important for task achievement. If we look up here and make comparisons where relevant here we’re using what is called a negative comp. So as Plus an adjective Plus has rather than your more standard comparative of just adding an E R after or an adjective or more before the base adjective. So we need to have a range of comparative grammar. And we also need to have accuracy with this grammar therefore grammatical range and accuracy. So that would be in lecture 21 nearly as high as football was in the first half of the decade studied. So let’s have a look at this. In the first half of the decade this election 19 paraphrasing the task language. This is the other lecture that is going to be in the vocabulary section. So on top of all the different task appropriate vocabulary lectures We’re also going to look at how to paraphrase the task language itself. Here we are doing so instead of saying from 2001 to 2006 we’ve said in the first half of the decade studied you will also learn about lots of other ways that you can paraphrase expressions like this typical things that come up in the exam in election 19. Paraphrasing the task language started with a number of participating students rising from 55 to 61. So intellectually 10 we were looking at selecting data in lecture 11. We’re going to look at how to make sure that that data is accurate. One of the most common mistakes I see when I’m looking at students tasks for Task One is that there’s lovely grammar. There’s some great vocabulary but they’re missing basic accuracy and then they kick themselves because it’s right there in the task they just haven’t been paying attention and lecture 11 we’ll have a look at some of the most common mistakes that people make when selecting their data and how we can avoid making those mistakes with accuracy. Ensuring that we score highly on task achievement that 2006 to 2008 so student numbers character 21 a figure which had not changed by 2011 the last thing we’re going to focus on here is lecture 23. It’s again related to grammatical range and accuracy using relative clauses the word which is being used as a relative pronoun here. We’re looking at what is called a defining relative clause. But we should also be trying to use non defining relative clauses in our response. And we’ll learn about how to use those in a task one context in lecture 23. There are also a number of other lectures within this course that I’m hoping that you will find very helpful. And we haven’t addressed in this model once here. But hopefully this Mudlarks it gives you a good idea of what is involved in a band line answer. At the same time as illustrating what this course involves. But if you do have any questions about anything that we’ve spoken about today or if you would like to see any other lectures included in this course then please get in touch by asking a question using the Q and A function on the course or please write to me at Matt at the Isles teach dot com bubble wrap things up there so I hope you enjoyed this lecture today and I see you in the next one.