Understanding Writing Task 2

Well again everybody in this lecture what we’re going to do is have a very quick look at writing a task to in just a bit more detail. Again if you are comfortable that you know how task to is structure just a general rule have rules for the this part of the exam then you can skip this lecture and move on to the next one. But for those of you who haven’t seen a task to question before you don’t know how this part of the exam is organized then this election might be quite helpful. So just some key points here about task too. There is a minimum word count of 250 words. There is no maximum word count. So you can write as many words as you like over 250. But bear in mind that there is a 40 minute time limit. So you do want to finish the essay in Time. That’s why it can be a good idea to get as close to 250 words as possible without going under that word count task to is worth twice as many points as task one. So it’s much more important that you focus your effort and attention on task too. This is why they say you should work for 40 minutes on Task 2 and 20 minutes on task one to make up the full hour. There are four different question types. They are the opinion essay the discussion opinion essay the discussion essay and the situation. Say we’re not going to look at the different question types in this lecture but we will look at them in a lecture in the approach section of the course. Now you can write in either pen or pencil. It’s not like the listening and the reading where you must write in in pencil. And finally with the general training questions they are essentially very similar to the academic module questions but the way that they can be answered it can be a little bit less formal a little bit more informal then in the academic exam. So here are some examples of the type of questions that you would get asked in task too. Some experts believe that it is better for children to begin learning a foreign language at primary school rather than secondary school. Do the advantages of this outweigh the disadvantages. Some people believe the unpaid community service should be a compulsory part of high school programs. For example working for a charity improving the neighbourhood or teaching sports to younger children. To what extent do you agree or disagree. So already we have two topics at work here. We have the idea of schools education. We have the idea of languages. I suppose we also have the idea of community service so lots of different topics being covered. A couple more examples. Some people say that the best way to improve public health is by increasing the number of sports facilities. Others however say that this would have little effect on public health and that other measures are required. Discuss both views and give your own opinion. And some people think that the teenage years are the happiest times of most people’s lives. Others think that adult life brings more happiness in spite of greater responsibilities. Discuss both views and give your own opinion so that last questionnaire is actually from the general training module. So you can see that the two question types are not very different at all. They might look at slightly more informal topics and like I said they can be answered in a slightly more informal style but they’re essentially so similar that everything in this course can be applied to both modules. So that’s our little brief look at how writing task 2 is set up in the IOPS writing exam and now we can get into a lecture on how writing task 2 is graded.