Today we're going to be talking about moving up the rubric.
When we talk about doing well on the general task.
Number one, you have to know how to improve your rubric score.
You want to be able to move from a 6.5 to a seven or from a 5.5 to a 6.5.
And in this lecture, I'm going to show you exactly how to do that.
So, first of all, let's take a look at the grading criteria.
You have four parts that you need to address.
Number one is task achievement, then coherence and cohesion, lexical ability, and finally, grammar
range and accuracy.
Here is a little bit more information about each specific criteria.
With task achievement, they're talking about, you're providing a clear purpose and addressing all
of the key points thoroughly.
For coherence and cohesion, we're talking about how your sentences stick together.
Are all the ideas in a specific paragraph related to a central topic sentence, a central controlling
idea?
Are you able to really connect your sentences together with really good transitions or linking language?
Now, when it comes to coherence and cohesion, it doesn't mean overdo it.
You're not supposed to have a first, second, third, next also in every single sentence.
That's not good cohesion.
Right.
You're not supposed to overdo it.
And then with lexical mobility, they're looking at the variety of your vocabulary.
If you're using the same words over and over and over again, you're going to have a hard time scoring
well.
You have to learn how to use synonyms, subject, specific vocabulary and paraphrase.
And then with grammar, we're looking at the range of your grammar.
So if you're only showing the ability to use simple sentences accurately, that's why you're not scoring
higher than a six.
You have to be able to show grammar control using the proper verb tense.
All of those things are really, really important.
So let's talk about moving up the scale shifting from a 6.5 to a seven.
Because I've known a lot of students that have been stuck at a 6.5.
And after taking my my course, they've been able to move to a seven, 7.5, eight.
And so let's talk about how you do that.
Number one, right, mistake free sentences.
If you're not able to write the majority of your sentences as mistake free, meaning no grammar or vocabulary
mistakes, that could be the reason why you're not moving from a 6.5 to an eight.
Then with your grammar, I think it's a really, really good idea to use a grammar app.
White smoke makes a good application, but I use Grammarly.
I think Grammarly is a great application.
It can act as a grammar coach for you.
A lot of you need that.
You need that coaching where the application is telling you these are the mistakes and these are the
suggestions for correcting the mistakes.
And then you can go ahead and rewrite it again and make sure you're not making the same mistakes over
and over and over again, because that's what I see very often.
Mistake.
Avoidance is really important.
This ties back into using a grammar application so you can really work on your mistakes.
You can't just look at the mistake and say, Oh yeah, that's a mistake.
And then write again.
You want you want to really work a letter that you write over and over and over again, rewriting it
until you're able to write it perfectly and avoid mistakes.
Make sure you have a balanced approach.
Don't be one of those students where you have the first discussion point as three sentences that are
very, very well written.
And then you get to your third discussion point and you have one simple sentence.
You've got to have balance and then avoid inconsistency.
You want to make sure that your fundamental grammar, fundamental vocabulary, everything is great,
right?
You don't want to be inconsistent where you're making mistakes, simple mistakes.
So let's work on those things.
Now let's specifically talk about moving up the rubric.
We're going to address all of the individual categories task achievement, coherence and cohesion,
lexical ability, grammar, range and accuracy.
So let's get started.
First let's talk about TASC achievement and improving your score.
When it comes to TASC achievement, you want to make sure that you have a very clear purpose.
This seems really obvious, but I've read many general letters and students just start off without having
a clear purpose to their letter.
And when you do that, you really are hurting your task achievement score.
You want to make sure that you have correct information that you're referencing all the time.
So if they give you a key discussion point and the discussion point says, say you're sorry and explain
this, say you're sorry and explain why you're sorry.
And if you go beyond that, beyond that for discussion point number one and talk about what you're going
to do to make it up to the person, then you're going beyond that discussion point.
You want to stay within that discussion point.
Structure or limitation?
Next number three, proper tone.
You probably have heard this before, but you have the formal, semi formal and the informal letters
that you have to write.
And using the proper tone is extremely important.
And I'll talk about that a little bit more later on.
Number four, you want to make sure that your letter is very well developed.
You can't just have three short, simple sentences.
You want to be able to explain and expand your details, really connect them to really addressing what's
addressing the point that you need to talk about for the letter.
And then, of course, word count affects your task achievement.
If you write less than 150 words, then you're going to hurt your score.
Now some people ask me, Well, what if I write 300 words?
Well, you're probably hurting your score also.
And also, you're frustrating the examiners because nobody wants to read a 300 word letter.
They give you a word limitation for a reason.
Right.
They want you to stick with 150 and and 225 words, basically.
Right.
So you should really end up around 200.
If you're up to around 230, you're okay.
You're still okay around that amount also.
But you have to be able to write enough to achieve the task.
And normally, if you're writing about 10 to 11 sentences, you're going to achieve that mark every
single time.
So let's talk about what it means to state a clear purpose.
Let's look at these two sentences.
So here is a poor response.
You can look at the question over here.
The question says your local council is considering closing a local sports and leisure center that it
runs in order to save money.
Write a letter to the council explaining and then it gives you the three parts they want you to explain.
So your local council is going to be closing the sports and leisure center, and they want you to write
a letter addressing that.
So look at this person's.
First sentence there.
Introduction This letter is addressed to the local council.
My name is Ben Okri.
Right.
So this this does not state a purpose.
It doesn't give a purpose for why you are writing this letter or what you're going to be talking about.
This is a poorly written introduction.
This does not have a purpose.
Here's a better response.
This well considered letter regards your erroneous thought towards shutting the doors of our beloved
local sports and leisure facility.
Now we have a purpose.
You can see it there highlighted in blue.
Also, this is a great sentence because you can see there are no B verbs.
There are no weak verbs in the sentence that goes more towards grammar.
But I just wanted to point that out.
There's no is our was were B being none of those weak verbs exist.
This is a very strong sentence, and that's the way you want to write.
But the main point is it has the purpose.
Now let's talk about tone.
Let's say, for example, we have the same the same question as before about the local council closing
the sports and leisure centre.
And you're writing a letter to the council.
So obviously this is a formal letter, so it should have a formal tone.
Let's look at this poor response with improper tone for a formal letter.
You know what?
I'm going to tell you that this gym must remain open for my family members.
Pull your heads out of the sand and stop messing with my family enjoyment.
My moms and pops both anguished from diabetes and can't lose weight and combat this disease with this
Super Bowl without this super cool center.
I'd be crazy.
Not to mention that.
Also, my daughter city championship swim team's jaws dropped to the floor when they heard they could
not practice.
Now the information is good.
It probably sounds good, probably sounds like real speech, but you can't write that way.
The tone is all wrong.
That is improper, incorrect tone.
And then you can take your time if you want and read the response below.
That has the proper tone, right?
It's a flat tone.
First, this gym must remain open for the members of my family who reside as longstanding community
representatives.
Both my mother and father anguish from diabetes and depend on the fitness center to lose weight and
combat this disease.
Not only do my parents benefit from the leisure center continued operation, but also my daughter city
championship swim team uses the pool for practice.
You see that?
That's formal.
The tone is proper.
So for any of you that are confused about tone, that's what we're talking about now.
Semi formal and formal letters basically have the same tone.
The difference is that with a formal letter you're writing to a business or an organization and within
with a semi-formal letter, you're normally talking to somebody within that business or organization.
So a formal letter is writing to the school.
A semi-formal letter is writing to the teacher in the school.
Now let's talk about coherence and cohesion.
Number one, you're going to write for body paragraphs so that you have really good organization and
you can make your paragraphs coherent and also have great cohesion because you're going to use a lot
of reference and linking language.
Number four, this, that, these, those and some other types of linking language.
Number two, you're going to have a plan.
The way that I teach you how to write is step number one and you do an outline.
You outline the question, you identify very quickly and then you outline the question.
Having a plan makes you write with more coherence, and then your sequencing is important.
Don't talk about discussion point number three.
Before you talk about discussion point number one.
Here's an example of a paragraph that is not coherent and a paragraph that has coherence.
So let's look at this poor response.
Right.
So this is the paragraph.
First, this gym must remain open for the members of my family who reside as longstanding community
representatives.
So clearly from the topic sentence, the person is going to tell why it must remain open for their family
members.
So they start off pretty good with the second sentence.
Both my mother and father anguish from diabetes and depend on the fitness center to lose weight and
combat this disease.
Now the person drives completely off the road.
This gym was built in 1925, and there is a model of it sitting in the local museum.
Last year it was featured in the latest Steven Spielberg movie.
None of this has to deal with the topic sentence controlling idea that you're explaining why it must
remain open for members of your family.
This is where you have no coherence, and I see this quite often, unfortunately.
This next paragraph actually has a lot of coherence and cohesion.
First, this gym must remain open for the members of my family who reside as longstanding community
members.
Both my mother and father.
So you see, we're still talking about members of the family depend on the fitness center to lose weight
and combat the disease.
So again, we're explaining why not only do my parents, but also my daughter.
Again, still talking about members of the family use it for the swim team practice, again, explaining
why we must keep it open for them.
Everything is related to the controlling idea of why it must remain open for members of my family.
Okay.
Let's go ahead and move in to talking about lexical ability.
So when it comes to lexical ability, we want to first make sure we use a range of vocabulary.
This means that you're going to not repeat the same words over and over and over again.
You're going to paraphrase you.
Synonyms use great collocations, great collocations, great word combinations.
Very often students put words together that should not be put together.
It may come out grammatically correct, but it's a bad collocation.
And that hurts your score.
With the informal letter there you can use colloquialism and colloquialisms are almost close to slang
language.
But really, we're dealing with sometimes sentences might have a missing word.
So, for example, you might say hope you're doing well.
Instead of saying, I hope you do well, you're doing well.
So you have to know when you can use that type of language.
And really, it's just with task number one.
Now some other information on increasing your rubrics score.
Use some uncommon lexical items or phrases.
Your adverb placement is really important and then work on being able to change the word form.
Local populations, poor health increased, increased over the decade.
The city residents unhealthy eating habits decreased after this period.
So we are going from poor health to unhealthy changing word form.
That's another way that you're able to show more lexical range.
So let's look at some examples on lexical resource when it comes to formal versus informal.
First, let's talk about contractions and phrasal verbs.
So here we can see the informal.
The changes can't happen.
What the formal.
You'll say the changes cannot happen.
For phrasal verbs.
You can say the car tyre was blown up and then I was able to proceed for a formal letter.
The car tire was inflated prior to our proceeding forward.
Now let's talk about colloquialism and first person for informal letter.
You will say lecture style.
Count on students to use proper grammar.
Formal lecturers still expect students to use proper grammar.
First person pronouns.
You want to avoid them when you can.
However, this is not really a big deal when it comes to a general letter.
This more relates to when you're doing tasks number two.
But even with the general letter, you want to avoid them when you can.
So for example, informally you would say, I'm sorry for ignoring your request.
Formally you would say, Please accept our apologies for ignoring your request.
Finally, let's address grammar, range and accuracy.
When it comes to grammar range and accuracy, you must master the four sentence types or really all
the different sentence types.
Simple compound.
Complex compound.
Complex.
Conditional.
Using adjective clauses properly.
Always make sure you're using the proper verb tense.
Be consistent in your verb tense and then learn how to work on breaking your bad habits.
I see a lot of students write letters and they keep repeating the same mistake over and over and over
and over and over again.
You have to know how to break your bad habits.
Part of that, like I said earlier, is using a really good grammar application and being able to work
on correcting mistakes, writing again and not making the same mistake over.
You have to teach your brain to produce the correct form every single time.
Here are the four sentence types for those of you that are unaware of them.
There are some really great videos on YouTube from Khan Academy.
They're really going into this with great detail.
But you have to be able to write these basic four types the simple compound complex and compound complex
sentence.
To really improve your score.
You want to write mistake free sentences, avoid fragments and run on sentences and be mindful of the
mistakes.
Don't be careless.
A lot of scores are drop by one or two points from just being careless.
You heard me say a little bit earlier about changing your parts of speech.
So here's an example of that again.
Worker salaries will fluctuate slightly and problems will occur if you implement this new flex schedule,
this slight fluctuation.
So you see how we're changing the parts of speech.
Again, that's something that can help you with grammar.
But also, really, I guess this kind of goes more towards even lexical ability also.
Parallelism is really, really important.
If you're going to give a list of items, you must do it properly.
So, for example, here's an example of poor parallelism.
Successful people tend to plan their day working long hours and they never give up.
That is not correct.
Successful people tend to plan their day, work long hours and never give up.
That's correct.
Parallelism.
There are many different prepositional phrases that you can use.
Since the beginning of the year after the next decade with regards to.
All right.
So thank you so much.
I hope that you are more aware of how to really move your score up the rubrics scale.
Of course, if you have any questions about this, you can feel free to ask me.
We're up next.
We're going to be talking about question types and specific strategy application.
Thanks a lot.
Take care and have a great day.