Accommodation - Part 1

Some people prefer to live in a house while others feel that there are more advantages to living in an apartment.

Are there more advantages and disadvantages of living in a house compared with living in an apartment.

That’s the question we’re going to look at today and as usual I want you to think about the usual process that we go through.

First of all identifying the question type what type of question is this.

Hopefully you can see that this is more of a opinion discussion task.

Now in the video calls in mastering IELTS writing task to talk about discussion or opinion task’s opinion discussion tasks as if they were the same thing.

But really we need to talk about an important difference and that is the difference between discussion opinion and opinion discussion.

It doesn’t sound like much of a difference at all.

And that’s because it’s not a big difference.

But there is a slight difference.

I’m going to first of all write this and this is opinion and discussion opinion discussion.

The reason that I’m saying this is because we are going to treat the formats of this essay just like we would a discussion opinion task.

We’re going to start the party with the side that we disagree with.

So to speak and then in the second body paragraph we’re going to move on to the side that we agree with.

So to speak but it’s not really a case of agreeing or disagreeing here.

Instead we’ve really just being asked for our own opinion.

We’re not being asked about anybody else’s point of view.

But at the same time we need to come up with an essay that looks at two sides if that makes sense.

If it doesn’t make sense yet it should become clear in a moment when we go through the plan and speak about some ideas.

And it should become clear perhaps as well when we have a look at the key words.

That’s our second step.

We will to highlight the key words.

So let’s have a look here and see what we think.

Hopefully when you look at this you realize the main topic here is about where people live with picking out two kinds of accommodation.

Living in a house or house versus a parliamentary flat depending on how you want to term it so apartment.

And then of course you want advantages to get more advantages.

That’s the the idea here.

The more advantages of living in a house than living in an apartment and you are and you get back into them.

I like that.

Are there more advantages and disadvantages of living in a house that you go.

This is quite important compared with living in an apartment.

I’m going to highlight that compared with that because it’s very very important in terms of task response and making sure that we address all parts of the task for a reason that will become clear in a moment.

But those are key words that we’re thinking about here.

Basically the advantages and disadvantages of living in a house compared with those that key expression living in an apartment.

And just like with a discussion opinion task we need to think about our own opinion.

We need to come up with our position on this.

Are there more advantages and disadvantages are there not other more disadvantages than advantages.

For me I think that living in a house comes with more advantages.

So my view is that there are more advantages and disadvantages of living in a house compared with living in an apartment because of that.

How do you think I’m going to plan my essay.

What am I going to speak about in the body paragraphs.

You may look at this in two RAGAZZI.

You could either talk about flats in one paragraph and Halsey’s in the other paragraph.

But if you look at the question it’s not really saying our houses better than flats or apartments but it’s saying are there more advantages and disadvantages of living in a house.

And so the main topic here is based on houses.

So ideally instead of writing about apartments in one paragraph and then houses in another paragraph will instead look at advantages of living in a house in one paragraph and disadvantages of living in a house in another paragraph and we’ll use apartments in both of those paragraphs to provide contrast and context to make sure that we are still making comparisons like the task asks us to.

So if I think there are more advantages of living in a house then I’m probably going to start just like a discussion opinion format.

We start with the weakest side going to start by talking about the disadvantages.

And the second part of the paragraph the side that I’m leaning more towards the advantages but as I said we do want to make sure that we are referring to apartments as well but they are there to provide context and contrast.

They are not the central purpose of the say mostly based on houses.

OK.

Hopefully that makes sense.

So now we got to think of some ideas and this isn’t too difficult when it comes to the sort of opinion discussion essays we are advantages and disadvantages she could have come up with some good things and some bad things about living in a house.

So we first of all think about the negatives of our house.

One for me is security.

I always think about security when it comes to living in a house of course.

You know you can have locks on your house front door and all this sort of stuff but in general houses tend to be less secure.

And why is that.

Now we all support sentence.

The reason for that is that usually houses are protected by a lock maybe a double lock or whatever so it usually only locks involved instead of things that flats have which we will come to later to provide context instead of talking about in this instance we’ll come to it later.

So that’s our support.

Any other reasons why houses tend to be less secure instead of what they have.

They don’t have.

Could be block an extra support sentence here.

And in addition it could be that many houses are not very high up and a very tall.

If you contrast this with apartment blocks they tend to be very high.

That makes it a deterrent to criminals.

So we can talk about them being only one or two stories high.

Now notice the spelling of the word stories there it’s different from the black storybook which would be I guess stories spelled with an E in the middle there.

If we think about floors OK then what we can do now is provide that contrast.

We can address that need to compare.

So here is where we look at the alternative and we talk about flats for flats or apartments or whatever you want to look at them.

They tend to be more secure.

Why did they appear more secure.

Well we can say that that’s because we’re just a support sentence this is because this is because they tend to have cameras particular kind of camera will look at later cameras security guards and more stories build tools.

So just by thinking of your initial idea that immediately can give you the idea for apartments as well.

So you don’t actually have to think about all that much but you’re addressing all parts of the task.

We do the same thing with advantages.

First of all we’ve got to think of an advantage.

What’s one of the main positives.

Well I think probably the first one that comes to most people’s minds is that houses tend to be more spacious.

There’s a lot more space involved that tend to be a bit larger don’t they.

On top of that going up to here is simple privacy involved.

Now there’s a reason that I’m looking at two together here and that is because the question is really asking us are there more advantages and disadvantages.

And so by including two advantages we can quite clearly say with evidence that there are more it’s two to one.

Two advantages and disadvantages.

One disadvantage.

So that can be quite helpful there.

However the problem with writing two together is that it can be a bit tricky to then follow up with the support sentence that addresses each item because you don’t really want to look to to get it you don’t want to put a support sentence that looks at both together.

But it’s good if you continue separating the ideas.

So what we’re going to do when we get there is we’re just going to say with regard to the former I’m not going to write that in here but I’m just going right as one has to think about each one.

So with regard to the former space houses tend to have a say multiple words quite a lot of rooms in contrast to encounters with flats.

And then if we think about the second point that I made about privacy that can be because well a lot of houses are detached they’re not wall to wall with other accommodation.

And as a result the noise that you make doesn’t leak through.

So we can think about detached houses and noise basically and then just like before.

We’re going to contrast that with apartments apartments tend to have fewer rooms.

They tend to be smaller.

Basically not all the time.

That’s a very important part.

This essay we’re going to talk about in more detail later.

Not all the time not all flats are smaller than all houses so they tend to be smaller.

That’s one thing.

It’s almost like a one here and then sort of an age to look at the privacy aspect there.

The walls are two adjoining.

You say that neighbors live in close proximity is a nice collocation of we can use.

OK.

So that is our plan.

The nice thing here as I mentioned I’m going to mention again you really only need to come up with ideas for houses because apartments you just look at the opposite.

So your advantage of a house is your disadvantage of an apartment and vice versa.

So we can now use this to help us.

All right our response.

Now when it comes to questions where you’re confronted with a choice which you could reasonably take either way then a very good way to begin your essay is with.

It is important to consider.

Notice that this is like I say when you’re confronted with a choice it’s not really a case for arguments.

It can sometimes work with arguments but with choices it’s a lot simpler.

Let’s have a look at how it works here.

It is important to consider

and then consider what you’re choosing between what is the category of choice.

For instance if the question was something like Some people prefer to take science related courses whereas other people prefer to take humanities related courses which one has more advantages disadvantages etc.

You could start with it is important to consider which type of university course is most beneficial for students.

If you were talking about the choice between whether people should drive to work or whether they should cycle we can say it is important to consider which type of transport people should use on that commute.

So in those two cases we look to university courses Category 1 and transport category 2.

If you look at this here what would be the category title do you think houses and apartments.

Hopefully you can think about the word accommodation and we can slot that in in just the same type of sentence.

It is important to consider which type of accommodation people should live in.

OK there we go.

We can make that just a little bit stronger by moving the word people to a more appropriate location.

The moment we’re saying that we’re almost choosing on behalf of other people but really we want to say that all people should think about this for themselves.

So it might be better if we just slot this over here.

It is important for people to consider which type of accommodation they should live in.

OK.

That works a little bit better.

This just helps to set up our position without this sentence.

It’s a little bit more difficult to set up the position in a nice cohesive way.

You don’t have to have this instance though if you think you can write the introduction without this sentence then by all means give it a try.

It can work.

If you think hard enough about it but this does make a little bit easier for us because we can just say this essay

will explain why I believe the drawbacks of living in a house living in a house are outweighed by the benefits of really good benefits.

Let’s see positives when compared to life in an apartment.

So maybe we don’t even need that second sentence.

If you have enough speed I think it is quite good to just provide a slightly less abrupt opening guides and eases the reader into the essay a bit more.

So this third sentence let’s have a look at this in a bit more detail.

This essay will explain why I believe.

Good.

We’ve got a clear position here that’s important.

When they say are there more advantages and disadvantages This is not an objective truth.

It is your opinion.

So we need to make sure we use an opinion language.

Now notice up here that are there more and we kind of swap this around and we start with the drawbacks.

And by doing that we can actually bring in the passive voice here as well.

The drawbacks are outweighed by the positives.

We’ve also make made sure to include paraphrasing of compared with here when compared to life in an apartment.

So we’re making sure that we’re addressing all parts of the task appropriately.

Yes it’s maybe a slightly longer introduction than usual.

And yes you probably could get away with deleting that sentence there.

I’m going to leave it in but if you are worried about speed you could think about how you can reduce the time you spend by just writing those two sentences instead of three.

OK let’s move into the first paragraph.

And we note that we want to look at the disadvantages first.

So let’s make sure that we start the paragraph by clearly identifying the theme and the topic of the paragraph.

So we’ll say

it considering Thursley a nice expression to use because during Firstly the negatives can’t to the negatives of houses you can say of living in a house of life and a house.

But I’m just worried that it will turn into quite a bit of repetition so I’m going to leave that out there.

But important comma there following the car is a device the opening and important one is the one here.

Be careful with the way you use the word.

One we can use one to refer to negative here.

One of the negatives if you can say it like that it probably works.

An important one is that this style form kind of accommodation is less secure.

So you’ve got security less secure now.

Can you see if I’ve done anything wrong in this sentence.

And it may not be grammar related it may be task response related something that I mentioned before.

Hopefully you’ve remembered it as an issue.

When we write this is is less secure.

All the time.

Don’t think so.

Some houses are incredibly secure more secure than some apartment blocks.

It is very important that we avoid that by bringing in language like tends to be tends to be so this kind of accommodation tends to be less secure so we can drop that out there.

So considering Firstly the negatives of houses an important one is that this kind of accommodation tends to be less secure.

Why is that the case.

We can say this is because you start it you don’t even need this but it’s nice to have it in.

This is because the vast majority of houses and I feel quite secure saying this I quite confident it’s not an over generalization at external truth.

The vast majority of houses are only protected by a single or double lock.

So we a nice topic related vocabulary in here single lock double lock talking about accommodation security and that sort of thing on the front door.

Again more topic related vocabulary allocations on top of that sometimes a particular alarm system as well.

We call this a burglar alarm going to happen in as well.

But this is less common.

So there a vast majority.

I’m going to ride with.

Occasionally

a burglar alarm inside and talking about my house hit my house is a burglar alarm.

But we very rarely use it so we can even include that as well.

So we were occasionally a rarely used burglar alarm inside a rarely operated ready activated this is a good way of showing the word formation here when you join a frequency out a verb to a verb in the past participle here and it becomes a nice kind of singular adjective in a way are rarely used.

Burglar alarm inside.

Now my plan says we get a little bit more to say.

It’s like an additional point to going to write.

Furthermore we’re talking about stories.

Houses are usually an essay like this you need lots of frequency of tend to off and usually normally make sure you have a good backup of these frequency adverbs because you don’t want to repeat yourself if you can avoid it.

So usually only one or two stories high.

Why is that important.

Don’t just finish the sentence like that explain why that matters.

We can say this here with an undefined relative clause which is low enough low down enough for a burglar to see through.

Not only that see through and enter via a window there’s a big problem there.

So we really kind of building up the idea of creating a visual image for the reader.

Now we move over to the alternative.

You can see that we’ve got apartments to talk about now so we can say this we can contrast this is in contrast to this here with apartment blocks.

Again to use another non-fighting relative clause another which is OK that it’s a similar kind of sentence that are quite different in structure really.

To contrast this with apartment blocks which are frequently not always but frequently equipped.

We now I asked you these types of cameras what are they called Cara’s which look at you they go to name begins with an ash you are v.

Surveillance cameras for surveillance cameras security guards and probably a few other things as well.

I can’t think of anything specific but I am going to write something that shows off my vocabulary against say other forms of criminal deterrence.

So sometimes it’s good if you don’t think of another example but you instead think about the category which can be used to define all of the examples and the people that on the end instead.

That’s a good example of doing that.

There.