What Do You Want From Me? (How To Get Band 7+ in IELTS Writing Task 1)

Okay now in this fine lecture in this section in the general overview section we are going to look at the idea of the band descriptors. Now the band descriptors are what are used by examiners to help assess your response and therefore provide you with your school. So essentially what we’re doing here is learning how to impress the IOC examiner enough for him or her to give us a band seven. So how is ials writing task one assessed. Well the band descriptors are made up of four categories and we’ll look at the titles of these categories now. We have task achievement coherence and cohesion lexical resource essentially vocabulary and grammatical range and accuracy. And what this lecture is going to do is look at each band descriptor category title and then look at the requirements for how to achieve a band seven in each one. Let’s get started by looking at TASC achievement. So according to the official iOS writing band descriptors to achieve band 7 and above you must cover the requirements of the task. Present a clear overview of main trends differences or stages and clearly present and highlight key features of the graph. Now what does this mean in basic language. In other words you need to write about everything in the question. Now that does not mean that you need to include every single piece of data. Will we look at that in a later lecture. But you do need to summarize and report the main features you need to make comparisons where relevant. You need to write an overview in which the trends or important differences are clearly demonstrated and you need to find the key features of the graph and make sure that these key features are clearly and accurately represented. Accuracy is important as well. How about coherence and cohesion. Again to achieve a band 7 and above you must logically organize information and ideas and show a clear progression throughout the response and you must also use a range of cohesive devices appropriately. In other words your response should be in a logical order which is easy to follow. Now look at this in a bit more detail later. But the easiest structure is to start with the introduction then move to the V and then move to the detail paragraphs. And this idea of a clear progression to out also applies to sentences within the paragraphs. Now one way we can improve the progression between sentences within paragraphs is to link these sentences and paragraphs together with words like however. Therefore Furthermore and also to link stages together with expressions like. At this point following this or having Plus the past participle etc.. This is how we can make our response a little bit more cohesive and coherent. As for lexical resource which is about vocabulary to keep us seven and above you must use a sufficient range of vocabulary to allow some flexibility and precision. Use less common lexical items with some awareness of style and collocation and you may produce occasional errors in word choice spelling word for mention in other words. You need to show a wide or flexible range of vocabulary. Basically trying to use synonyms and trying to paraphrase as well as being precise. So don’t use any kind of floaty adjectives like nice for example. You want to be as precise as you can be particularly when it comes to data. You might say just above or just below. For example use less common words and phrases and show that you know how these words fit together. That’s what collocation Csar the words which fit together you see them regularly together so fit together is actually a collocation itself. Now you can make a few mistakes with your vocabulary and still score Rabanne seven you can make a few spelling mistakes or mistakes in word formation but do of course try your best to be accurate. Finally we look at grammar for band 7 and above. You must use a variety of complex structures. Produce frequent grammatically error free sentences and demonstrate good control of grammar and punctuation even if you make a few errors. In other words we need to use a range of sentence types and word orders but try to use some simple sentences to boost your accuracy rate because that’s what we want to do we want to avoid making mistakes in the majority of our sentences. What we want to be aiming for is an accuracy rate in terms of sentences of more than 50 percent more than 50 percent of our sentences should be grammatically error free and we need to use commas and Tolan’s and apostrophes appropriately to demonstrate that we’re comfortable with grammar and punctuation so we can make a few mistakes. But again try to aim for as high in an accuracy rate as possible. So let’s have a quick summary. Now what were the four categories. Think about what the four category titles were. We have task achievement coherence and cohesion lexical resource or vocabulary and grammatical range and accuracy. So let’s just have a quick sum up of what we need to do to secure apan 7 in each of these categories. Fantastic achievement. We need to cover all the task requirements we need to present a clear overview which demonstrates the key trends in the graph or the key differences we need to identify key features of the graph. So the most important information we need to make sure that these features and these trends are presented clearly and accurately. As for coherence and cohesion we need to order our response logically introduction to overview to detail paragraphs. We need to make sure we link sentences and paragraphs together with cohesive devices. We need to link stages with the appropriate language and we need to stay focused in order to make sure that all of the transitions between our ideas make sense in terms of vocabulary we need to make sure we’re showing a wide range of vocabulary. So using synonyms and trying to paraphrase we need to make sure that we are as precise as possible with the language so we might need to use terms like just above or just below when we’re talking about a number which is close to another number. We need to make sure that we are using less common words and phrases at times and showing our understanding of collocation. And we need to aim for accurate spelling and word formation even though you can make a few mistakes. We will aim for accuracy finally with grammar. We need to show again a range we need to use simple and complex sentences as well. Aim to avoid making too many grammatical mistakes. We need to use punctuation accurately as well as grammar and in the end what we should be aiming for is a minimum of a 50 percent accuracy rates with sentences. So over 50 percent of our sentences should be grammatically error free in order to secure aband 7. Now over the duration of this course what we’re basically going to do is look at each of these requirements in more detail. So the lectures in section 3 of this course focus on task achievement. The lectures in Section 4 focus on coherence and cohesion. The lectures in section 5 focus on lexical resource and the lectures in section 6 focus on grammatical range and accuracy and in the next section section 2. We’re going to be thinking about just how to approach the task and I can’t wait to get started properly now. So I look forward to seeing you in S. too.