Understanding the rubric is critical to your success.
And in this lecture, I'm going to provide you rubric improvement advice.
I'm going to walk you through every aspect on the rubric and tell you what you need to do to be able
to be very, very successful.
First of all, let's go over the grading criteria.
There are four aspects.
Number one is task achievement.
Second, coherence and cohesion.
Third, lexical ability.
And fourth, grammar.
Range and accuracy.
Now here's a little bit more information so that you understand exactly what each aspect means in regards
to task achievement.
This really relates to your really doing a great job of providing an overview and highlighting the key
points on the chart graph process or map.
This involves your really discussing the data trends, similarities and differences you want to be able
to give a really fully developed response.
And I'm going to explain to you exactly what that means later on.
Number two, coherence and cohesion.
Coherence refers to the flow, the organization of your report.
Cohesion really, really relates to the linking words that you're going to use, being able to connect
the ideas together, connect the sentences together, and connect the paragraphs together.
Number three, lexical ability.
The word lexical is a fancy way of saying vocabulary.
Basically, it considers the variety and use of your vocabulary.
They're looking at how often you repeat your words, copy words from the task.
You want to avoid common and simple words.
And also keep in mind, spelling matters a lot.
Number four Grammar Range and accuracy.
The grammar is probably the most difficult aspect for most students.
The reason why?
Is that most of you know the rules.
If I gave you a grammar test and you were choosing ABCD, most of you would score perfect perfectly
on that test.
However, when writing, you have to be able to apply the rules in real time, and that can be difficult.
But I'm going to really give you some advice and tips to be able to work on improving your grammar so
that you can do well on this aspect of the exam.
Now, this is a question that I really get a lot.
Everybody wants to know how do I move my score up the rubric scale.
Many students have been stuck on the six.
For six months.
They've taken the exam four times and they keep getting a six.
They keep getting a 6.5.
If you want to be able to move your score up the rubric scale, these are some things you need to do.
Number one, write mistake free sentences.
The majority of your sentences should be mistake free.
That means free of grammar mistakes, free of lexical mistakes.
If you do that, you're well on your way to going up to a seven, eight or nine.
Number two.
Work on your grammar.
There are some really, really good grammar applications out there, like grammarly and white smoke.
Personally, I use Grammarly.
I use the premium version of Grammarly.
I think it's a great grammar tool.
It can literally act as your grammar coach telling you what your mistakes are in your writing, and
also the application advises you of what you need to do to fix the mistakes.
That way you could write, check the mistakes, write it again, and see if those mistakes still exist.
This is what really helps you to improve your grammar.
I've seen some students write 20 essays, and literally they will have the same mistakes in every single
essay, every single report.
Writing more is does not fix the problem.
Number three, for task number one, you have to avoid some of these basic mistakes.
You must use correct descriptive language.
Don't say the bar graph is fluctuating and really all it's doing is increasing and then decreasing.
That's not a fluctuation.
Don't report every single detail that makes your writing to be very, very mechanical.
You're not going to score a seven if you're doing mechanical writing.
And also you want to have an appropriate amount of information about the details.
Number four make relevant comparisons.
Relevant comparisons.
Compare the data.
Don't just state the obvious.
Don't just state exactly what the chart states.
What the chart says.
Compare the information.
Compare the data.
And finally, you heard me say this earlier.
Don't sound mechanical.
Don't mechanically recount the details.
So many students do this and it's a huge mistake.
If you are being very mechanical in your reporting of the information, that is something that is probably
keeping you at a score of a six or a 6.5.
Now let's talk about helping you do much better when it comes to task achievement.
Let's improve that task achievement score.
So when it comes to task achievement, there are some things I want you to keep in mind.
Number one, do a great overview.
A properly constructed overview really demonstrates that you can see the big picture for a grab chart
or process.
Number two, provide correct information.
Very often, students are misstating details, misstating facts.
When you're doing that, you're hurting your score.
You're hurting your task achievement.
Number three, stay factual.
You cannot interpret the data.
You don't know why it rises.
You don't know why it fluctuates or falls.
Don't do that.
Number four, to improve your task achievement, make real comparisons.
This seems really, really obvious, but make real relatable comparisons.
And number five, to make sure that you hit your mark with task achievement.
Have the proper word count.
You cannot write less than 150 words.
Every time you do that, you hurt your score, especially for a task achievement.
Now I'm going to explain to you with more specifics about what I meant when I said don't do mechanical
descriptions.
Mechanical descriptions really, really hurt your task achievement score.
So this is what I want you to avoid.
Look at this writing here.
It's very, very mechanical.
In 2005, 50 million students participated in postgraduate programs.
In 2010.
This number of students jumped to 75 million by 2015.
The number of students increase to 95 million.
Finally, in 2020, the number of students in polls graduate programs decreased slightly to 80 million.
Yes, that information is correct.
The sentences are correct.
But the style the style is very, very mechanical.
I can look at the graph and see that information.
You're just telling me what I obviously see.
I don't need you to tell me this.
Says that.
And then this doc says this.
And then the next dot says this.
That is what that's.
That's what we mean when we say mechanical descriptions.
No examiner wants to see that.
I don't want to see that.
Right.
So this is what you're supposed to do.
Highlight a difference.
Highlight.
Highlight a similarity.
Highlight what's relatable.
Interestingly, over a ten year period, 2005 to 2015, the number of post-graduate students nearly
doubled.
Now I want you to be able to give some band seven structured sentences.
So this is an example of a band 5 to 6 student.
100,000 men went to university.
In 2002.
200,000 men went to university.
200,000 women went to university.
In 2000 to.
This is really, really this is probably like a level five, to be honest with you.
This is not even level six.
But those are correct sentences, but they're very, very weak.
And that's what's important here.
They're grading your English ability.
Everybody.
It doesn't matter if it's a correct sentence.
At what level of English.
Where you writing?
If you're talking about a band, seven 200,000 women matriculate at the university in 2002, surpassing
the number of men attending in the same year by exactly 100,000.
Do you see that?
You related the information together?
You constructed a high level sentence.
Both examples are correct information.
Except one is written out of five or six.
The other is written at a seven or eight.
You also for your task achievement, have to make your analysis correct.
So for example, which of the following sentences is inaccurate?
Clearly the answer is C.
C says the local fixed line usage fluctuated over the period.
It did not fluctuate.
Look at the local fixed line.
It did not fluctuate.
It rises to a point.
Then it falls.
That is not fluctuation OC.
That is not fluctuation.
Now, let's go ahead and talk about coherence and cohesion when it comes to coherence and cohesion.
Right.
Number one, do four body paragraphs.
This will go a long way towards you having a coherent score of seven plus.
Number two have a plan.
You should already know in advance what information you're going to put in your overview, what information
you're going to put in your specific paragraph.
Number one, what information you're going to put in your specific paragraph.
Number two, have a plan.
Number three, have really great sequencing.
Make sure that everything is logically connected together.
Make sure you're sequencing in the correct direction.
For example, if you're dealing with a situation, if you're dealing with a situation where you're dealing
with dates and you have the years 2020 and 2030, and before that you have 2010 and the year 2000.
Don't talk about the years 20, 20 and 2030.
Before you talk about the years 2002 thousand and 2010.
That will be an example of improper sequencing.
Now let's move on to lexical ability.
With your lexical ability is really important that you utilize a range of vocabulary.
What really helps you do this is being able to use synonyms, not repeating the same words over and
over and over again.
And paraphrasing.
Paraphrasing.
Paraphrasing, paraphrasing.
Also utilize a lot of task.
One collocations some examples of their for you proposed changes.
Central Area Principal Change main main road plan destination five Product Categories.
Collocations really, really help students to score scores of seven plus collocations.
Most students think I'll just use this really complicated word that nobody's ever heard of that actually
hurts your score because nine times out of ten students use the language wrong or it does not fit the
context of what they're talking about.
So when they say when they say in terms of vocabulary range, they're not really talking about using
ridiculous words that are very rarely used.
What they really are talking about are the word combinations, collocations using synonyms, paraphrasing
appropriately.
Some other ways to help out your lexical score.
I said earlier, use uncommon lexical items and phrases.
It does not mean difficult words.
Number two have proper adverb placement.
If you say market share tumble, clearly that's incorrectly stated.
A lot of students mess up their score and are not able to get a seven because of poor adverb placement.
Number three.
Change a word forms.
Changing your word forms really helps show your range of vocabulary.
It shows your talent and that's what they're grading.
Now finally as go ahead and get into the grammar range and accuracy.
Okay.
So here are some ways to improve your grammatical range.
Master the sentence types simple compound complex compound complex conditional adjective clauses.
Master the proper verb tense.
If the chart or graph is taking place in the past, use the past tense.
If it's taking place in the future, use the future tense.
If there are no dates present, use the present tense.
Also, be able to break your bad habits.
This is something I really, really want to stress.
You have to be able to break your bad habits.
Many, many students that I've seen in terms of their work, I see them do the same mistake over and
over and over again.
You can't do that.
In the past, when I've acted as a private tutor in the past, I would see the same mistakes over and
over and over again.
And what I would have to do would help be able to help that person break their bad habits.
Earlier you heard me talking about the grammar application Grammarly, which I think is a really good
tool for you to use to help you break your bad habits.
If you do that, your grammar score is going to improve.
On this slide here.
You're just looking at the four sentence types, right?
I want you to be able to do each one of these types of sentences.
To help out your grammar score.
Do mistake free sentences.
Avoid the run on and fragment sentences.
Those usually happen when you're not writing a compound sentence correctly or not writing a complex
sentence correctly.
You must be able to avoid run on and fragment sentences.
They lower your score.
And finally, you have to be mindful a lot of the mistakes you make, you can very easily avoid them.
Don't be careless.
Being careless often drops your score by one or two points.
Make sure that you always try to change your parts of speech when appropriate.
So for example, here we can see an example of what I mean.
Worker salaries will fluctuate slightly between 10% and 15% over the next decade.
This slight fluctuation in salary continued until 2005, where we can see a surge ultimately reaching
a higher mark of 50,000 per year fluctuate slightly changing the slight fluctuation that shows talent.
Of course, if the occasion presents itself and sometimes it will in task number one, much more intense
than the two, sometimes in task number one, you have to use parallelism.
And so I want you to be able to just just take a look at these two sentences here.
So you can have an idea of what I'm talking about in terms of correct parallelism.
Using proper prepositional phrases is also really, really helpful in terms of your grammar range.
Since the beginning of the 2000, cell phone technology has advanced by 15% after the next decade.
With regards to these are all properly utilized prepositional phrases that again shows more talent.
All right.
So coming up next, we're going to go over the question types and we're going to go ahead and discuss
specific strategy application.
Thanks a lot.
I'll talk to you soon.
It's wonderful helping you on your journey.
Take care.