Finding Ideas

Welcome back everybody. Now having finished the last section we are now going to move on to a new section of the course and this section is all about answering the question or in bad descriptive terms task response or task achievement. Now if you want to score highly in this band descriptor category you’re going to need to focus on addressing the task or requirements appropriately accurately and sufficiently so. One of the ways that we can do that is to have a relevant and appropriate ideas. So this first lecture is going to be all about how to find a do is to create the content of your essay. I feel like finding ideas is a common anxiety among many candidates. One of the most common worries that my students bring to me. They tell me that they struggle to think of ideas. This seems to me to be not a problem of English ability or English command but just a problem of it being able to think about an argument for an opinion on the spot without much time in advance. However there are two important things to remember when it comes to thinking of ideas. The first of those is that the quality of ideas is much more important than the quantity. If you are developing your ideas sufficiently You shouldn’t need many ideas in the first place. Really you should only need about two maximum three ideas each Not many at all is it. Once you have found your idea or your ideas you can then develop them which is much easier. Much simpler and does not require as much original thought. However finding ideas still a little bit difficult for some. So let’s look at some ways that we can come up with ideas now finding ideas is something that you can actually do on a daily basis. You can prepare in disregard on a daily basis. I also has an essay which aims to challenge you on a variety of topics as a result. It’s impossible to know which topic you’ll have to write about. So the solution is to form an opinion on everything and as they say you can do this every single day. Let’s have a look at an example. Trains subways. Imagine your waiting for a train while you’re sitting there. Think to yourself what could be done to make my experience of waiting for this train more enjoyable. What could the transport company or the government do to improve the quality of this public transport. What are the pros and cons of taking the underground vs. walking or taking a car. So there’s plenty of things that you can think about while you’re just sitting and waiting for a train. Then when you get a question in task too which asks you to describe the pros and cons of public transport then you will be completely prepared. You would have thought of some ideas beforehand. Totally confident. Go in sit down put those ideas onto the page and then you just develop those ideas. We can think of many other scenarios as well. Let’s consider these here. So ask yourself questions to go out to your day so that you can form ideas and opinions on a wide variety of topics. Think about the news for example. You sit down in the morning you read the news. So be a morning coffee stead of just sitting there and reading. Ask yourself some questions are you using the Internet right now or newspapers themselves or television. Why. Why are you choosing this medium over another medium. What are the pros and cons of each of these different formats. What do you think will happen to the news in the future. How important is the media in creating public opinion. What could be done to prevent media bias. Lots of things we can ask ourselves about the news. What about mobile phones. So its your lunch break and you’re checking your phone during this hour instead of just scrolling through Facebook. You can ask yourself some questions. What did you used to do during your lunch break before phones became a one of the central focuses of our lives. How have phones become so addictive. How has phone use changed. Over the last few decades what could be done to prevent or reduce phone addiction. Why are some people so concerned about having the latest model number. Different questions we can ask on what appeared to be the most mundane of subjects is it all things that will come up in the exam. Another thing you can do is to read newspapers read everything that you can read a variety of different materials and explore a number of different topics. But newspapers in particular are a great way to learn about the opinions of others on lots of different topics and the arguments they have for those opinions are therefore very useful at helping you to think of ideas. There’s a great site out there called news in levels. W w w dot news in levels dot com and this is a website which presents English news articles in language which meets three different ability levels beginner intermediate and advanced level 1 2 and 3. I really would recommend you check this out if you haven’t heard of it before. It is a really good way of learning. Typical journalistic language typical essay writing language and it will. You will find an ability level which suits your current ability. Once you’re comfortable a level 3 on news in levels you may want to try moving to real newspapers to get an idea of how English is written. That’s a very very high level. Here are some newspapers which focus on various different topics so you have the opportunity to think about lots of different things. The Guardian The Independent and the times I personally read the Guardian think it’s a great newspaper. Be free to pick any of those. They’re all very very good. But make sure you check out the news at levels dot com really good site. When you’re trying to learn how to think of ideas. So thinking of ideas. Hopefully you’ll go away and you’ll take the advice here and as soon as you close down this video you can start thinking about the Internet. Ask yourself some different questions on the Internet and this will help you to think of ideas based on that topic and continue so forth throughout your week so that’s thinking of ideas. I see you in the next lecture when we’ll talk about how to develop those ideas.