Thank you for joining me today.
I'm going to be covering a very, very important topic that affects your writing more than anything
else.
Very often students get stuck at certain scores in their writing.
They're either stuck at a six or stuck at a 6.5 or stuck at a seven.
And what that comes down to is being able to upgrade your exam essay writing, being able to upgrade
your writing because when you're writing, you're writing against the rubric.
So if you want to be able to get a seven or get an eight in your writing, you have to satisfy those
qualities on the rubric.
And very often students are unclear about what does it mean to write at a high level.
A lot of times they think it has something to do with really fancy vocabulary, things like that.
But that's not really what it's about.
So today I hope you're going to be able to learn something about what it means to upgrade your essay
writing.
We'll talk about attacking the rubric, how not to ruin a score.
And then I'm going to take you through 12 problems that students have when it comes to writing.
And most likely, if you're having difficulty, you're going to fit into one or more of these problem
areas.
And once you're once you're aware of a problem area, you have to be able to correct it.
You have to really work on it.
So what do examiners expect from high scores?
You have to have really good grammar and more than anything else, mistake free sentences.
If you're not able to write a majority of your sentences, mistake free.
It is almost impossible to score seven or higher on your writing.
More than anything else, students are stuck at six or 6.5 because of an inability to write mistake
free sentences.
Number two Examiners look for varying your language in terms of lexical and grammar grammatical range.
So their English language deals with not repeating the same words using synonyms, paraphrasing grammatical
range, meaning showing that you're able to write a variety of different types of sentences, use a
range of grammatical forms.
That's what examiners look for.
They look for having logical, organized and properly sequenced structure.
And being consistent in your ideas and expanding and explaining them in a way that answers the question.
So these are the things that examiners really, really look for.
And if you want to score well, you want to satisfy these different areas because they're looking for
it.
So a lot of mistakes that students make in essay writing.
Some typical ones like, number one, using contractions for punctuation capitalization.
What amazes me more than anything else sometimes are, is when the students said, Yeah, it's just
a capitalization mistake.
It's just a common mistake.
If you're making basic level, foundational level mistakes, you look really, really bad.
It means you have no foundational control.
And if you have no foundational control, there is no way I'm going to give you a really high score.
I can't.
I can't the rubric doesn't even allow me to do it.
Number two, not addressing the question directly.
Very often students write about the topic and not the specific question.
Run on sentences and fragments.
You cannot just keep throwing in commas or not using proper commas.
I talked about lack of foundational grammar and lexical lexical control.
Number five is probably also a big time area in terms of what separates students that are getting seven
and higher from students that are getting less than seven and that is being able to expand and extend
your ideas.
You can't have unanswered questions you can't have.
You have to be able to expand and extend ideas.
You have to explain yourself.
Students that score really, really well are able to explain themselves.
Writing too few, writing too many words, poor coherence, poor progression.
When it talks about progression, you see this very often on the on the rubric progression.
I'm talking about number eight progression deals with if you are consistently answering the question
throughout the entire essay, are you consistently answering the question throughout the entire essay?
All right.
So I'm going to go through some lessons for how your scores.
I'm going to review ways in which you can upgrade your writing.
I'll be introducing and correcting 12 mistakes or problems that students make in their writing.
So let's look at problem number one.
And problem number one deals with question analysis or poor question analysis.
Very often this problem or this mistake really results in students getting lower scores.
So here we have four questions on the right hand side and what question analysis deals with question
analysis, deals with your ability to understand specifically what that question wants you to address.
Specifically what they want you to address.
And very often, students don't engage in these three steps of question analysis before they start writing
an essay.
Everybody wants to hurry up and start typing or hurry up and start writing.
And so much of a great essay has nothing to do with writing.
There are about 5 minutes you need to take to really do two things really well.
And one of them is question analysis.
And when you're doing question analysis, you're answering three parts, the general topic.
The restrictive, limiting language of the question.
And number three, the specific direction or instruction words of these three.
Number two is probably the most important because every question has restrictive or limiting language.
So if we look at it in terms of these different questions.
I guess first question here, every year we get reports of dwindling natural resources on Earth.
Choose one research, choose one resource, and explain why you would choose to save that resource.
The general topic is natural resources.
The restrictive language is choose one to save.
The direction words are explained.
Giving your opinion, but explaining.
Explaining.
And you have to know how to answer an essay question when it says explained.
Right.
So these are the three steps you go through before you start writing.
Identify these three areas.
Infectious diseases have affected mankind for thousands of years, and now we face the coronavirus compare
and contrast life before COVID 19 with life after COVID 19.
General Topic, Infectious Disease, Restrictive Language Before and after COVID the direction words
are compare and contrast.
Number three Robots are increasingly taking over daily work and home task.
Discuss the benefits and drawbacks of this phenomenon.
General topic is robots restrictive language replace home and work task direction words, its benefits
and drawbacks.
Technology is constantly being replaced or updated.
Name one technology you would replace.
General topic is technology.
The restrictive language is one tech to replace.
Can't talk about two can't talk about three one and direction words explain or give your opinion.
So one area that are one problem that you want to address.
Is making sure that you do a really good question analysis before you go ahead and start the writing
process that's really, really important.
All right.
So coming up next, problem number two.
Problem number two deals with a lack of outlining.
Like I told you, there are two things you need to do before you start writing.
Number one question analysis.
Number two is outline.
If you do these two things, you are really setting yourself up to score really, really well.
So the second weakness is poor or lack of outlining.
Whenever I've seen students taking the aisles exam, I can always tell who's about to score really,
really well and who is about to get a really bad score.
Very often, students that take the time to plan write really well, and students that just start writing
right away often have many, many problems because they have no direction.
So I'm looking at these same questions in terms of outlining.
And when you're doing an outline.
Right when you're doing it, that outline, you're looking at the controlling ideas.
Supporting details.
A second controlling idea to supporting details.
This is what a brief outline looks like.
Right.
I'm looking at that first question.
Every year we get reports of dwindling natural resources on Earth.
Choose one resource and explain why you would choose to save that resource.
I made my choice in the outline forest controlling idea one near an atmosphere two Supporting detail
controlling idea two Essential Resources.
My two supporting details.
This is a brief outline.
Right.
Taking the time to do this is really important.
This is a brief outline.
Now, another type of outlining, which is actually what I think is even better.
And I typically typically like students for the exam to do a complete outline or total outlining my
students that take the total exam, they don't really have the time to do this because it's instead
of having 40 minutes, they only have 30 minutes.
So for a total outline or a complete outline, looking at the same question you have, you're supporting
the ideas.
Also, within your outline, you go ahead and write your topic sentence.
You have your second controlling idea to details.
You write your topic sentence for that second controlling idea paragraph, and also go ahead and write
out your thesis statement.
This is a complete outline.
When you have a complete outline like this, what you're looking at right now on your screen, we have
a complete outline like this and you then start the writing process.
You have everything in front of you to write an organized and coherent essay.
You already know your topic sentences, you already know your thesis statement, and basically you're
building everything around this.
You can focus on the types of sentences you're going to write your sentence variety.
You're not trying to think of what to say and focus on how to say it.
You're just focusing on how to say it.
So this is a complete outline versus a brief outline.
Both.
This is better.
At a minimum, do a brief outline.
But if you can do a complete outline like what you see right here in front of you.
Looking at another question like the second question.
Right.
This is a total outlining.
Again, if you're doing it this way, a total outline, you should be able to complete a total outline
in about 4 minutes.
A less than 4 minutes.
Right.
So if you're doing a question analysis in one minute, a complete, total outline in 4 minutes, that's
5 minutes right there.
Then you take 30 minutes to do the writing process, which is more than enough time if you've outlined,
and then you take 5 minutes to proofread your work.
That's really how your timing should work when it comes to writing.
That's how your timing should work.
5 minutes of preparation.
30 minutes of writing.
5 minutes of proofing.
Proofing.
That's that's the way you work.
Right.
So problem three is probably a really big problem for a lot of students.
Grammar mistakes and low level lexical ability.
You need to be really, really mindful of your grammar.
Probably most scores are stuck at a 6.5 because of grammar mistakes and low level lexical ability and
lexical mistakes.
Right.
So.
Let's look at this paragraph right here.
Right.
Each one of these sentences has mistakes.
So what I want you to do is I want you to take 2 minutes.
One or 2 minutes.
I want you to pause.
Take one or 2 minutes.
And see if you can identify the mistakes in each sentence.
All right.
I'm going to wait one or 2 minutes, probably 2 minutes and see how many of the mistakes you can identify.
So the mistakes are highlighted here.
One thing you see, one, one in terms of lexical weakness, this person repeats the word work over
and over and over again.
They repeat the word don't over and over and over again.
They're using contractions over and over and over again.
They're using general words like person and people, which shows that you have no range at all whatsoever.
Right.
We see a sentence fragment where he says while he loves the money.
There's missing conjunctions.
So this is this is a very weak paragraph.
And some of you may be looking at it and saying, well, I wouldn't do that.
Yeah, you would.
It's it's much easier to see somebody else's mistakes than to see your own.
Trust me, I know it's much easier to see somebody else's mistakes.
You have to get good at seeing your own mistakes.
Right.
So this is what this paragraph looks like with all of its corrections.
But being able to recognize and see the mistakes and errors is really, really important.
My work is one of the most critical aspects of a person's life.
But employees like my coworker dislike their job for various reasons.
So in that first sentence, you can see that we have added.
Subject specific vocabulary employees coworker we stop using the simple word like don't and we use the
word dislike which is going to score better.
The colleague again subject specific vocabulary employee next to me complains that he does not enjoy
his employment and this paragraph will detail his grounds.
While my work mate loves the money, there is a there.
There are a few more work issues that he maintains exist.
So if you read this, one thing you'll see are the corrections are made.
But another thing that I want you to really notice is the level of subject specific vocabulary that
the person is using and also the variety, the variety of the language and vocabulary that the person
is using.
And then, of course, fixing all of those.
Plural, plural.
Singular.
Now.
Mistakes.
Punctuation mistakes.
Grammatical mistakes.
So again, I want you to look at each one of these sentences, and I want you to see if you can find
the mistake in each one of these each one of these four sentences.
All right.
So let's take a look at it.
Right that first one we're dealing with that space exploration is non countable, should not have a
ness.
Also the lack of parallelism because it should be thermometers tools and insoles number two are and
today's I saw you guys call it that we're dealing with noun verb agreement number three is missing articles
should have none before recycling and a before public education.
Number four we're dealing with now phrase in Japanese.
You have to have to it can lead to increased or can lead to any lead.
To an increase in the rate has been one of those two things.
Number five, you have to have a comma because there's a run on sentence.
And number six is is a sentence fragment, actually.
Six is a sentence fragment that shouldn't be made.
All right.
But overall, good job.
A lot of you guys are saying these are these are a lot of the typical mistakes that students make in
terms of grammar.
And people ask me all the time, what can I do to work on my grammar?
Grammar really premium is a really good service to use.
It really.
It really catches a lot of grammar mistakes that students make.
Many students are it's a cheaper it's cheaper than hiring a tutor, cheaper than hiring a coach to look
at and catch your mistakes.
Ill find the mistakes for you, especially the premium version.
Also Cambridge puts out a really good book for those you need to work on your grammar area grammar week
areas.
Cambridge has a really good book also, but Grammarly can be a really good tool for you to be able to
check for your mistakes, see your mistakes, and then work on correcting them yourself.