What Do You Want From Me? (How To Get Band 7+ From the IELTS Examiners)

Welcome back everybody. In today’s lecture we are going to focus on how the examiner grades and marks your eilts Writing a task to essay. We are specifically looking at how a band 7 is graded. But if you are looking to achieve a band 6 or a band 8 it may be worthwhile going online and searching for the eilts Writing band descriptors as that will make it clearer for you regarding what the examiners are looking for. For the specific bands so how to impress the eilts examiner now eilts Writing is assessed in four different categories and each category contributes an equal percentage to your score. Now there are four categories each making up 25 percent to make 100. The first is task response also called Task achievement. The second is called coherence and cohesion. The third is called lexical resource and the fourth is called grammatical range and accuracy. And what we’re going to do in this lesson is to look at each of these categories in detail and how we can score a band 7 for each one. So let’s get started on task response. According to the official band descriptors to achieve a band 7 and above you must address all parts of the task. Present a clear position throughout the response and present extend and supports your main ideas. Now what does that mean in plain English. Basically write about everything in the question try to address all the key words. Make it clear what your opinion is. Even if you are not sure about your opinion you can say that I do not fully agree with this or I do not fully disagree with this. Develop your ideas and arguments explain your point say why your points matter and give examples to help the reader understand your ideas better. How about coherence and cohesion. Again band 7. You must logically organize information and ideas is there must be a clear progression throughout the response you must use a range of cohesive devices appropriately and present a clear central topic within each paragraph break that down. Your essay should be in a logical order. It is star with an introduction. If you are in a discussion quite a question you should start with the prose move on to Daku cons and then finish with a conclusion. It’s different for different question types will come onto that later but this also applies to sentences within paragraphs. Always start with a topic sentence for example with cohesive devices. This essentially means link sentences and paragraphs and ideas with words like how whether they’re for. Furthermore in addition in contrast those sort of expressions and one topic per paragraph stay focussed on your idea. Try not to put in too many different ideas into a single paragraph. There should be one idea and it should be well developed. How about lexical resource. Now what lexical resource means is basically vocabulary so you need to use a sufficient range of vocabulary to allow some flexibility and precision. Use a less common lexical items with some awareness of style and collocation. You may produce occasional errors in word choice spelling and word formation. Again plain English here show a wide or flexible range of vocabulary. Essentially use synonyms. Show your ability to paraphrase and be precise. Try to avoid words like nice or good. Good in what way. Good as in effective or good as in morally sound. Use less common words and phrases so less common lexical items is just less common words and phrases and show that you know how these words fit together. This is called collocations something that we look at later in the course and as you can see you can make a few mistakes with your vocabulary and still score a band. 7 Do try your best to be accurate. Finally let’s look at grammar. Grammatical range and accuracy. The range is very important. You must use a variety of complex structures. You must produce frequent error free sentences and you must show a good control of grammar and punctuation. But you may make a few errors. Again plain English here use a range of sentence types and word orders you can use them. Simple sentences too but do use a range of sentence types. We’ll be looking at this later in the course of course. Avoid making mistakes in the majority of your sentences. You need to be producing a 50 percent or higher rate of sentence accuracy. If you want to achieve a band 7 this is where most candidates fail. In this regard. Finally use commas colons and fullstops and semicolons and question marks and apostrophes appropriately demonstrate that you are comfortable with grammar and punctuation. And yes you can make a few mistakes but again do try your best to be accurate. So. So a quick summary. What are the four band descriptor categories task response coherence and cohesion. Lexical resource or vocabulary and grammatical range and accuracy and what are we trying to do for each band descriptor category. In order to achieve a band 7 with the first one the task response address all parts of the task clearly show your opinion. Develop your ideas explain and support these ideas and use examples to help the reader understand. As for coherence and cohesion you need to order your essay logically link sentences and paragraphs together with cohesive devices or transitional words. Write about one topic only in each paragraph and stay focussed on the task. With regards to lexical resource you need to show a wide range of vocabulary you need to be precise with your language. Try to use less common words and phrases and show your understanding of collocation and aim for accurate spelling and word formation. Finally we come to grammar. We need to show a range of grammar both simple and complex. Avoid making too many grammatical mistakes. Use punctuation accurately and try to aim for a 50 percent or above rate of grammatical sentence accuracy. The aim of this course then is to help you to achieve each of these criteria. Many of the lessons in this course will be looking at individual criteria points. For example how to paraphrase or how to use collocations. So each of the lessons in this course is designed to help you achieve band 7. According to the band descriptors and we will be looking at some skills which are not mentioned in the band descriptors but will inevitably help you as well. So let’s continue with the course and find out exactly how we can achieve band 7.