Community Service - Part 1

Right.

So let’s take a look at our question.

We’re going to go through the usual process of first of all identifying the question type and then highlighting identifying and highlighting the keywords.

So let’s read out the question.

Some people believe that unpaid community service should be a compulsory part of high school programs.

For example working for a charity improving the neighborhood or teaching sports to younger children.

To what extent do you agree or disagree.

What kind of question is this.

Hopefully very quickly you are able to answer that this is an opinion essay.

There’s no ambiguity here.

How about those key words then what do you think are the key words in the question I want to take a moment to think about this because there are a few key words in this task and many of the responses to this particular question often fail to sufficiently address those key words.

So take a moment and just consider what the key words might be.

OK.

Let’s go through this.

For me the key words going to be unpaid and of course community service.

Community service is basically the main theme of this essay.

But notice the unpaid word is well that’s quite important.

A compulsory so compulsory part you could Harleigh do a part if you wanted to.

Certainly the word compulsory very important there as well part of high school programs.

OK now what I’m not going to highlight is any of the examples I got a good question from a student on you to me recently that asked me whether those were key words that asked me whether they should be referenced in the essay either in the introduction or in the body or elsewhere.

And my answer to that is no it’s not really important.

I believe that that example those examples are being used to help lower level students.

Community service is a bit more of an advanced expression.

So by giving some examples here they’re giving a chance to the lower level students to correctly address the task.

It can be quite difficult to answer appropriately at all if you’re not really sure what community services.

I think that’s part of the reason that it’s in brackets there as well.

So if you get something in brackets you can probably be sure of.

It is more for your benefit.

OK so we have our keywords so now we can move over to the planet of course first of all we need to have an opinion.

So let’s just write down something says We were never in an opinion essay and now we want to have a plan and as usual no plan for the introduction and no plan for the conclusion because we’re going to rely on our awesome skills and our amazing formulas to help us through those paragraphs.

So let’s look at the body paragraphs.

And like I say we need an opinion here.

Now for me I think that we should look at the key words again because they’re going to make a big impact on what my opinion is.

We have unpaid.

We have community service we have compulsory.

We have high school programs.

Now they pick out three of these key words and I’m going to say that I completely agree.

I think the unpaid community service should be a part of high school programs which Where did I leave out.

I left out the word compulsory.

So while I believe the unpaid community service would be a good part of high school programs I don’t think it’s a good idea to make these to make this service compulsory.

I think it should be the students choice.

A big problem in about maybe 30 to 50 percent of the responses to this question that I see when people send me writing Corrections is that people will respond to this task with a clear position.

They will say yes I am in favor of this.

I’m in favor of this I’m in favor of this but they don’t really reference or explore the idea of it being compulsory.

They may mention it but they don’t give any justification to it.

So at the end of the essay I write to them and I say well that’s great but why should it be compulsory.

Why can’t it be optional to do make sure that you are not only noticing and identifying all of those key words but that you are exploring each and every one of them as well.

It’s a really good example.

OK.

So that’s my feeling.

I think it’s a good thing but it shouldn’t be compulsory.

So my body what I’m going to do is talk about what is good in the first paragraph.

So benefits of community service and then in the second paragraph which is the other element to my opinion if we’re going to talk about why it shouldn’t be compulsory.

So in this opinion approach my opinion can be broken up into two parts.

And in each paragraph we’re exploring each of those parts.

Sometimes your opinion is going to be 100 percent straight down the line.

And as I recommend you should have a separate argument each paragraph.

But if your opinion is like mine and it can be broken up into two parts then explore each part in-depth in each paragraph.

So first of all benefits or the main benefits whatever comes up of community service.

Now for me the first thing that comes to mind is that community service particularly if we’re thinking high school students not primary but high school students they’re on the verge of entering the adult world.

Community service is a good way to prepare them for that kind of world for the working world.

We’re going to say prepare students for work here just to help signifie that’s OK.

Now what do we usually do after topic’s instance where we know we going to support the remember we have different options we can either say why or how.

How does it prepare them for work.

We could ask a different question because a why is this a benefit.

Why is it important why is it good I’m going to was to the question why is it important.

So this is important because and I might even write that in them just to help speed myself up when I reach it.

Remember I’m writing this is important because T.A.R.P.

and then we can think about what happens when you don’t have that preparation.

And I think it could be quite overwhelming.

So no awareness no preparation can be overwhelming.

It doesn’t need to be a conditional.

We can use it just as a relative clause.

Those who have no awareness will be overwhelmed.

Something like that.

Naturally we can move onto an example here and again we can use another relative cause a student who has experience are going to get back to a main ID one who actually has experience.

So if you think of an example here of community service show that we understand that.

So an experience of let’s say caring for the elderly.

So experience of caring for the aged or elderly have you want to put it there.

OK.

How can we continue this idea.

I personally I think that this could turn into quite a long paragraph.

So I’m just going to make this four sentences and not five.

So the next one will look at the result.

What could the results of this be.

The result I think is that it just gives them a good amount of confidence so students will have confidence when they leave school.

Again you’re coming back to that key word one of the key words high school we’re not looking at primary school we’re not looking at middle school.

We’re looking at high school we need to make arguments based on that.

Continuing to think about all those key words is a sure fire way to make sure that you get a good score in Task achievement slash task response.

OK.

Second paragraph shouldn’t be compulsory.

Why not.

Why should it be the choice of the students.

Now first of all I want to make that clear.

This is a break away from the view in the tasks.

The first thing I want to do is simply make it clear that that’s my view.

So many vital so vital to give them choice.

OK.

Now why would that be.

Me I’m trying to put myself in their shoes.

If somebody forced me to do unpaid work I think I would end up hating that work.

So we might write that we can think about better vocabulary later hate maybe a little bit too simplistic too strong.

So hate work you put that there.

Now why would that happen again.

I’m thinking about myself.

I think that naturally averse would be a nice way to put it directly.

People generally are naturally averse to being forced to do things.

Again we’ll think about the vocabulary later.

So we’ll just leave that there is naturally of us what can we do next what we could do.

An example for me I think this lends itself quite naturally to a result.

So what happens then if we put those students in a scenario where they work without choice.

Yes they’re averse to it yes.

They hate it they resent it but they still have to do it.

So what’s going to happen to that work.

Well that work is going to be of poor quality isn’t so poor quality.

Who’s that going to affect.

It’s not going to affect the student but also the community.

So there’s going to have effects on both.

So we might say affect student and community and just using you know forms here as well.

Finally again I think that can turn into a fairly long paragraph but we’re going to use the way our That usually turns into one sentence anyway.

The alternative end result the looking at the contrast here also an opportunity to use a conditional sentence.

So what happens if a student chooses.

So this is the opposite.

Not force.

But if they choose if they have the choice.

So if students have the choice to do community service the are the hours the result will be the result of this.

Well they are going to really enjoy that work much more it lead to minimal feelings of satisfaction.

So think about job satisfaction for instance something like that.

OK.

That’s our plan.

I think that could work quite well.

So let’s leave this in the corner.

We’ll come back to that in a moment and move in to the introduction.

OK.

So introduction introduction introduction introduction what are all different options.

We need to be ready with lots of different weapons in our arsenal so to speak.

So we have lots of different forms that we could start with.

But it’s important if we have a general statement.

Nowadays it is important to consider.

There is no doubt that there is no denying that these days in recent years all of these things.

I think this is quite a recent development.

I don’t think this is pretty typical of schools back in the day.

I think it’s quite a modern day thing.

So I think it nowadays would be quite useful where it’s not every school by no means is at every school.

My school didn’t do this but it could be many.

So again make sure not to generalize use those high frequency verbs nonspecific quantified motivate.

So nowadays many high schools not all but many high schools.

What do they do.

Passphrases Nowadays many high schools make community service.

A So we have compulsory here.

I don’t think there are many schools that do this.

I really don’t.

I do think there are many schools that’s run community service programs but I don’t think there are many that make it compulsory mandatory.

In fact my view about it being optional.

That is what a lot of schools do.

I think so.

Can she write that in our introduction.

So you know a German state than many high schools make community service an option.

Oh another word for parts we’re beginning with ease you can get it before right.

It’s not an optional element of their.

Now any problems here well maybe we can work out that there might be a punctuation problem in a moment.

First of all what’s another word for programs if we’re thinking about school.

Good word beginning with c against.

Even before I finish it.

Looms now that although it looks a little bit like an uncountable noun is accountable noun we can pluralize it.

Now if you have a look back what have I done wrong.

Think about punctuation.

Hopefully you’ll notice the should be.

And where does it go.

Where does it go.

It goes here.

An apostrophe is needed right there.

The students possess these Karelia curriculums.

The curriculums so we need that there.

There’s a general statement.

Nowadays many high schools make community service an optional element of their students curriculums.

Notice the doubling up of the possessive here.

The high schools possess the students so their high school students and students possess the curriculums so students curriculums are like a double possessive.

OK now I really think that we can just write one more sentence and it’s going to be the opinion sentence.

This will also paraphrase the view in the task.

We don’t really need a plan sentence.

This next sentence makes it absolutely clear what the view in the task is and what our viewers we need to make sure this is a good clear sentence.

Now many high schools make community service an optional element to their students curriculums.

Is that what people think should happen.

Partly but not really because there’s that key word that compulsory shouldn’t be optional should be compulsory.

So we’ve got some contrast here.

What’s a good cohesive device for introducing that contrast whether however a very simple one very very useful nothing wrong with going either.

So however now there’s a difference between the view and the task and how if you want to put them both in the same sentence that means we’re going to write two clauses and they’re going to be very different from one another.

What subordinating conjunction could we use to introduce that sense contrast beginning with W.

If you thought while you’re right I mean to use whereas you can use either one.

I quite like whereas some reason I favor a little bit more than a while.

But you know you have the opportunity to use an animator.

So However whereas now keep it simple keep it simple don’t worry that it’s the same as this.

Sometimes you just don’t have to overthink these things.

You can paraphrase belief maybe you should go for feel something like that or claim or argue or think some people feel that’s this.

Now we’re told two key words what’s the key word here.

Unpaid.

You haven’t mentioned it yet.

So let’s put that in.

You could paraphrase that.

It’s quite difficult to do naturally.

And we’re probably not going to repeat all that much.

So I’m OK putting that in there but because we used this we don’t have to write community again.

We know if we write this service and it’s in the previous sentence we can at least avoid repeating it.

So where is this service should be a.

OK let’s paraphrase this.

What’s a synonym of compulsory meaning with them mandatory mandatory part.

We’ve already paraphrase part with elements so it’s fine to do it mandatory parts of the program curriculum.

Another one we could use syllabus.

OK.

Notice the comma is where the comma comes.

Doesn’t come often whereas very very rare to see after whereas has to be a specific reason for that doesn’t come there comes at the end of the clause.

Then we move on to the contrasting clause which is our view if it’s our view.

Let’s make that clear.

I would argue that OK I’m going to do something that is very complex Don’t ever think this but this is a really nice thing you can do if you have the opportunity.

So we have a view here that has two parts and the two parts are in a way they contrast a little bit.

OK.

We agree that community service is good.

So we’re going to write out notice this we don’t usually have a comma here but we are adding one here because we are including an extra clause which is actually another kind of complex sentence part of another subordinate conjunction.

What is it.

It is the unpaid service unpaid So this is helpful.

We believe that but we don’t think it should be mandatory.

So there’s that contrast.

It is helpful.

Shouldn’t be mandatory.

We’re going to write that while it is helpful we should remain the students choice that can be singular because we’re now referring to them individually because it be more of an impact this again and that’s a bit tricky for you.

Don’t worry too much.

Not so important certainly not essential for scoring about seven really moving up to the eighth and ninth.

Are doubling up on the complexity if not triple.

So we have I would argue that while it is helpful it should remain the students choice.

Remember that comma does not usually go there is only because we are introducing an extra clause in there not really entirely necessary.

OK.

Hopefully that’s clear and we have a word count of 45 words which pretty much bang on what we want it to be.