‫Hello and welcome to our next lesson for Adults Writing Task two.
‫Today, we'll understand how to structure our essay.
‫By the end of the lesson, you'll have a clearer understanding of the four point task to structure and
‫you'll understand exactly what you need to write in each of the four sections for our task to structure.
‫As it was a few lessons since we last saw this four point structure, let's take another look at it
‫now.
‫The best thing about using this outline for your task to say is that it can be used for any question
‫type.
‫It really is a very simple and flexible way to order your essay.
‫So we begin with an introduction paragraph, and I'll be showing you exactly how to write that in the
‫next part of this letter.
‫Then we have two supporting paragraphs where all your details and thinking are put.
‫The final section is our conclusion, and this may or may not include your opinion, this depends on
‫whether the question asks you to give your opinion.
‫Now, we'll look how you can write a really good introduction.
‫So for any task to essay, your opening introduction paragraph can be made of three sentences and I
‫have a formula that I'm going to show you so that you can always write effective introductions.
‫Our first sentence will paraphrase the question that we have been given.
‫Now, you may remember that paraphrasing is a really important skill and that synonyms are a very important
‫part of their skill.
‫Use synonyms to rewrite the question in one sentence only.
‫In our second sentence, we will plan our essay's viewpoint effectively, we will tell the reader or
‫the examiner exactly what our essay believes or feels.
‫It could be that your essay will purely discuss the advantages and disadvantages of a topic.
‫Or it could be that the essay is agreeing or taking sides with a group of people's opinion.
‫Whatever your essays overall idea will put that here.
‫In sentence three, we will quickly tell the examiner or reader what we will write in supporting paragraph
‫one and supporting paragraph two, and that is all three sentences that you can use to write your introduction.
‫So let's take a look at some examples to help you understand what this three sentence structure exactly
‫is.
‫An easier way to remember what each sentence is, is by remembering paraphrase, plan and outline.
‫Let's read through our question.
‫Many people believe that wealth is a measure of success.
‫Do you think that wealth is a good measure of success?
‫What do you think makes a successful person now?
‫The first thing that we should identify is that this is a two part question.
‫Obviously, we would do a plan and then we'd move on to writing our introduction, here is what I have
‫for my first paraphrase sentence.
‫A person's financial situation is often considered a good measure of success.
‫Now, as you can see, I've used a few synonyms to paraphrase the first sentence from the question.
‫I believe that paraphrasing the question straight away shows the examiner you really understand what
‫the question means.
‫After that, you can give your plan.
‫And here I am telling the examiner that I disagree that wealth is a true measure of how successful people
‫are.
‫Next, I'll move on to my outline sentence and describe what I will discuss in support in paragraph
‫one and two.
‫By using the time opener's firstly and secondly, I can tell the examiner what I will be writing in
‫each supporting paragraph, again, this shows that you fully understand the question and can plan to
‫give a real response and answer the question.
‫Here is the introduction, completely pieced back together.
‫A person's financial situation is often considered a good measure of success.
‫This essay disagrees that wealth is a true measure for how successful people are.
‫Firstly, this essay will give reasons for why wealth is not a good measure.
‫And secondly, I will define what I believe a successful person is.
‫And there you have it, the first example of your three sentence introduction before we move on to the
‫supporting paragraphs, I think it would be helpful to take a look at another example of an introduction
‫for a different question type.
‫Let's move on to that now.
‫In recent years, preprepared convenience foods have grown in popularity to suit people's fast paced
‫lifestyles.
‫What are the advantages and disadvantages of this trend?
‫Now, the first thing I can say is that this is an advantages and disadvantages question, and it doesn't
‫ask me to give an opinion.
‫So I know that I don't have to include that when I get to the conclusion.
‫But we're on our introduction.
‫So let's say my first sentence for the introduction.
‫The last few years have seen a dramatic rise in the consumption of fast food synonyms that I've used
‫here are fast foods instead of convenience food and instead of recent years.
‫I said the last few years, I would say that that's pretty straightforward and simple paraphrasing,
‫but really effective to introduce your essay.
‫Let's see.
‫Sentenced to.
‫So here is my plan or the overall idea of this essay simply, I just say I'm going to explore the advantages
‫and disadvantages of the fast food Speedie eating trend.
‫And here is sentence three.
‫Firstly, I will discuss the negative impact that convenience foods can have, and secondly, I will
‫discuss the positive impacts of fast food, quite straightforward.
‫And I have also used synonyms to not repeat myself to offer and as well notice that I have used those
‫two time connectives firstly and secondly.
‫And here it is all pieced back together the last few years have seen a dramatic rise in the consumption
‫of fast food.
‫This essay will explore the advantages and disadvantages of this trend.
‫Firstly, I will discuss the negative impact that convenience food can have, and secondly, I will
‫discuss the positive impacts of fast foods.
‫So there it is again.
‫Your three sentence introduction or you have to remember, is to paraphrase plan and outline, find
‫some example questions for adults writing test to online and practice, creating a few introductions
‫for them before we move on.
‫Here is a quick quiz.
‫In many developing or recently industrialized countries, air pollution and quality of drinking water
‫is becoming a major issue.
‫What measures could be taken to improve the situation?
‫Pause the video and read through the three introduction sentences below the question, I want you to
‫try and figure out which of these three sentences links with the Three-step introduction process of
‫paraphrase, plan and outline.
‫Pause the video now and link the steps to the sentences.
‫And here are your answers, I hope that you got that right and you feeling fairly confident about writing
‫introductions quickly and effectively.
‫Let's move on to supporting Paragraph's.
‫OK, I think now is a good time to share this master structure with you, and it covers all five questions.
‫At first, it will be quite a lot to look at, but don't worry, I'll be talking you through it.
‫Now, the main point is to think about before we begin.
‫Is that the introduction is always the same and the conclusion doesn't change too much.
‫That only leaves us with the supporting paragraphs which, depending on the question, do change a little
‫bit.
‫So let me talk you through the master structure, beginning with the agree or disagree question.
‫The main thing to remember for this question type is that you either choose to agree or disagree, not
‫both.
‫So the introduction remains the same, that three step three sentence structure I just showed you.
‫And in your first supporting paragraph, you can explore your first opinion and in your second paragraph,
‫you can explore your second opinion.
‫The conclusion is to summarize the key points, and almost 100 percent should give your opinion, as
‫I'm sure you'll be asked for it in the question.
‫In the advantages and disadvantages question, the introduction remains the same.
‫And in your first supporting paragraph, you need to discuss either an advantage or disadvantage.
‫Only cover one in one paragraph and in your second supporting paragraph, you'll need to discuss either
‫the advantages or disadvantages, whichever one you didn't talk about in your first supporting paragraph.
‫For the conclusion, summarize the key points and give your opinion.
‫If asked in a discussion question, you'll be given two opposing points of views.
‫So your first supporting paragraph should discuss the first point of view and your second supporting
‫paragraph will discuss the second type of thinking in a problem and solution question.
‫Each of your supporting paragraphs will discuss one problem and one solution each.
‫And finally, in a two part question, your supporting paragraphs will address each question one at
‫a time.
‫Of course, if the questions ask for your opinion, you need to include this in your conclusion.
‫I'd highly suggest bookmarking this master structure or writing it down so that you have it for reference
‫later.
‫When writing your supporting paragraphs, there are three main sentence types that you need to include
‫for almost all of the questions, that's a topic sentence, a support sentence and an example sentence.
‫The example sentence is really important.
‫So you need to make sure you include a few of these in your supporting paragraphs.
‫A topic sentence always comes first, and it gives the main idea that you would want to discuss.
‫And it relates to the question.
‫The a poor sentence explores your topic sentence in a little more detail and give some extra information.
‫And the example sentence provides a real life example to give the examiner a better understanding of
‫what you're talking about.
‫Let's see how I use these three sentence types to create a really good supporting paragraph.
‫We'll return to the question seen previously all about the advantages and disadvantages of fast food.
‫Let's read through this supporting paragraph.
‫Fast foods are a serious problem facing our societies for numerous reasons.
‫But health and obesity are both huge concerns.
‫As people become overweight, they will also have a higher chance of being ill.
‫For instance, obesity is understood to be one of the major causes of heart disease in adults.
‫Furthermore, many preprepared foods contain many toxic chemicals to keep the ingredients fresh.
‫It is very difficult to always check what ingredients are in these foods, which is very worrying.
‫For example, news reports often cite many preservative ingredients as being causes of cancer and other
‫illnesses.
‫So I've highlighted the topic sentences in blue, the support sentences in green and the example sentences
‫in red.
‫I do suggest having two of each of the sentence types in each of your paragraphs.
‫That way you'll fully explore your ideas and answer the question in full.
‫Now, this structure of using topic support, an example questions, is great for almost all questions,
‫but I do advise using something slightly different for a problem and solution question.
‫Let's take a look at that now.
‫So here is my first supporting paragraph, discussing problems and possible solutions for air pollution
‫and quality of drinking water.
‫In my first supporting paragraph, which you can see here, I'll only be talking about air pollution.
‫To write a supporting paragraph for a problem solution question, we begin with a topic sentence that
‫gives details as to what problem we'll be discussing.
‫The supporting sentence gives extra information about the problem that we'll be exploring in this paragraph.
‫Now, here is the difference in the solution sentence.
‫We give a possible way that we could fix this problem.
‫In my example, I suggest cutting down emissions from factories and cars.
‫After the solution sentence comes a result where we discuss the impact of the suggested changes made.
‫So these two structures that I've just shown you will give you lots of support when it comes to writing,
‫supporting paragraphs.
‫Do you remember to always begin with a topic sentence?
‫Now, we'll move on to our final section, all about conclusions, the most important thing to remember
‫about Conclusion's is that if you want to score six or higher, which I'm sure you do, then your last
‫paragraph must be a conclusion.
‫Now, for pretty much every question I like to teach, conclusion's in two different ways.
‫Firstly, it's either with one sentence that simply summarizes and paraphrases the main parts of your
‫essay.
‫The second approach is with two sentences, one sentence to summarize, and another sentence to give
‫your opinion and state how you feel about the topic.
‫Now, I did say that these two structures work for almost all questions.
‫Again, problem and solution questions have a slightly different approach, and we'll look at that later.
‫So the question here is, should you write one sentence or two?
‫And that completely depends on if the question asks for your opinion.
‫Take a look at these Altas two questions and decide whether your conclusions should be one sentence
‫or two.
‫Pause the video and match them up now.
‫OK, here are your answers for the first question, we can easily say that we are asked to give an opinion.
‫Do you agree or disagree?
‫And the second question, we aren't asked to give an opinion, but only to discuss both sides of the
‫argument.
‫And finally, for our last question, we are asked if we feel that the advantages outweigh the disadvantages.
‫So we need to give an opinion there as well.
‫Here are two examples of good conclusions.
‫In red, we have the summary of the key points from our essay, and in blue we have our opinion.
‫Let's read through the first conclusion.
‫In conclusion, there are many benefits to allowing young people to drive a car such as easier travel
‫to work, although the negatives mean roads may be less safe with more inexperienced drivers.
‫And conclusion number two, to sum up, we currently use animals for many useful reasons, from food
‫to clothing, although there are ethical issues to consider as well.
‫In my view, the advantages vastly outweigh the disadvantages and we should continue to use animals
‫for our own use where needed.
‫So here are two examples of a one sentence and two sentence conclusion.
‫Now, I did say that problem solution questions require a slightly different approach.
‫So as the final part of this lesson, let's take a look at that.
‫We'll return to the question of air pollution and the quality of drinking water and what measures could
‫be taken to improve this now in a problem solution type question, your first sentence wants to summarize
‫and paraphrase the main points of your essay.
‫Your second sentence should make a recommendation as to how the problem can be solved and who should
‫do it.
‫Let's see the conclusion that I have for this question.
‫In conclusion, the problems associated with pollution are clearly becoming a major issue in many countries,
‫in my view, the government should prioritize cleaning the local environment and citizens health above
‫the financial rewards of industry and growth.
‫So I have recommended that the government should be the ones who are taking responsibility and fixing
‫this problem.
‫First sentence is to paraphrase and summarize, and the second sentence is to make your recommendation.
‫So that brings us finally to the end of this long letter, I would suggest watching back some of the
‫main parts of the lesson.
‫Again, if you feel that you still need to have a little bit more of a focus on certain parts.
‫Here's a quick review.
‫Remember to use the force structure, try to manage your time and make sure you answer the question
‫in full.
‫Do you remember the Q&A section where I or another student to come and help you if you have any questions?
‫Best of luck, take a rest and I'll see you in the next lesson.