00:00:00
okay so what if I know nothing we get
00:00:03
this question
00:00:04
at least a few times a day people
00:00:07
emailing us saying what if I open the
00:00:09
test paper on test day and I look at the
00:00:12
task 2 question and I know nothing I
00:00:14
just don't know how to start I don't
00:00:16
understand the topic I don't know how to
00:00:18
think of ideas
00:00:19
so if you look at most IELTS websites
00:00:23
the majority of them have fake questions
00:00:25
and this is where this fear comes from
00:00:28
because if if someone is producing IELTS
00:00:31
questions and they don't know what
00:00:32
they're doing normally what they do is
00:00:34
they think that oh IELTS is really
00:00:36
difficult therefore I must create really
00:00:38
difficult complex questions if you look
00:00:41
at real IELTS questions so ones produced
00:00:43
by Cambridge if you go into the IDP
00:00:46
website the British console website the
00:00:48
official IELTS website you'll see the
00:00:51
task two questions are not really that
00:00:53
complex they are on very common topics
00:00:56
and the questions are designed in a way
00:00:59
that anybody with half an education will
00:01:02
be able to think of some ideas for them
00:01:04
the other thing is
00:01:07
so many students after they do the test
00:01:10
what they'll do is they'll go online
00:01:12
they'll go on some blog or they'll be
00:01:14
chatting to someone
00:01:16
and they'll tell people this is the
00:01:18
question that I got 99 of those
00:01:21
questions are misreported this isn't the
00:01:23
student's fault but it's very very
00:01:25
difficult for someone to do a whole
00:01:28
question finish the test and then
00:01:30
remember that question and then be able
00:01:32
to tell everyone accurately what it's
00:01:35
like so if you're looking at fake and
00:01:36
misreported questions no wonder that
00:01:39
you're worried that you're not going to
00:01:41
be able to answer the question because
00:01:42
you're looking at questions that are far
00:01:44
more difficult than what you'll really
00:01:46
get on the test so only look at official
00:01:48
questions then you also need to think
00:01:52
about the common topics so the common
00:01:56
task two topics now can we accurately
00:01:59
predict exactly what is going to come up
00:02:01
no but are there some topics that come
00:02:04
up again and again and again yes I've
00:02:06
analyzed thousands of past questions and
00:02:09
there there are some topics like
00:02:11
education technology Health environment
00:02:15
government these everyday topics that do
00:02:18
come up quite regularly and so how can
00:02:21
you use this information what you can do
00:02:23
is use the common topics as part of your
00:02:26
IELTS preparation process log into every
00:02:30
day into a popular English news website
00:02:34
so BBC News New York Times the guardian
00:02:37
something like that and at the top of
00:02:39
the website you'll see education news
00:02:41
the environment news technology news all
00:02:44
these common topics if you read one
00:02:47
story about education one story about
00:02:49
technology one story about the
00:02:51
environment are you going to find it
00:02:52
difficult to think of ideas if you did
00:02:54
that every day during your IELTS
00:02:56
preparation and only takes five minutes
00:02:58
you can spend longer on that if you want
00:03:00
to work on other things but it really
00:03:03
doesn't take that much time so if you're
00:03:05
looking at real questions and you're
00:03:07
also reading the news each day and
00:03:09
reading about these common topics you
00:03:11
should have no problem
00:03:13
thinking of ideas and understanding the
00:03:15
question on test day so that's the first
00:03:17
thing next what is a good idea so it
00:03:20
doesn't matter how amazing an idea
00:03:24
generation technique is if it is
00:03:26
resulting in bad ideas so we have to
00:03:28
think about what a good idea is so that
00:03:31
when you're generating your ideas you'll
00:03:33
be able to pick the ones that are best
00:03:35
and be able to use those in your essays
00:03:38
I hope you're enjoying this video on
00:03:39
IELTS writing if you want to improve
00:03:42
your IELTS writing even more and put all
00:03:45
of the things that you're learning from
00:03:46
our YouTube channel into practice I've
00:03:48
developed a free course called IELTS
00:03:51
essay Builder what IELTS essay Builder
00:03:53
does is it gives you a free course that
00:03:55
structures everything from your
00:03:57
introduction to your main body
00:03:59
paragraphs to your conclusions it shows
00:04:01
you a step-by-step sentence by sentence
00:04:04
how to write everything that you're
00:04:06
learning here and it's a hundred percent
00:04:08
free and it's helped thousands of
00:04:10
students get about seven eight and even
00:04:12
nine to sign up for that for free all
00:04:15
you have to do is just click the link in
00:04:17
the description enter your email address
00:04:18
on that page and we'll send you that
00:04:21
free IELTS essay builder for free thanks
00:04:24
very much now back to the video so what
00:04:26
is a good idea
00:04:27
so the first one and the most important
00:04:29
one it has to be relevant all right it
00:04:32
has to be relevant to the question if it
00:04:35
is not relevant to the question it is
00:04:37
not going to answer the question the
00:04:39
number one thing that you must do is
00:04:41
answer the question so if you have
00:04:43
irrelevant ideas you're not going to
00:04:46
answer the question you're likely to get
00:04:48
a band 5 for task achievement the rest
00:04:51
of your essay is not going to be very
00:04:52
good either because you're just you're
00:04:54
starting off on the wrong track so
00:04:56
imagine you are on a journey the end of
00:05:00
your journey is when you finish your
00:05:01
essay if you use irrelevant ideas you're
00:05:05
going off on a tangent you're going to
00:05:08
write about something that is completely
00:05:09
unrelated to the topic so make sure your
00:05:12
ideas are relevant second thing is can
00:05:15
you develop those ideas so you might
00:05:16
think of the most amazing idea ever but
00:05:19
if you can't explain that idea if you
00:05:21
can't support that idea with a relevant
00:05:24
example it's useless because in the test
00:05:27
in the writing task 2 you're not just
00:05:29
going to write a bunch of ideas you're
00:05:31
not going to have a main body paragraph
00:05:33
with six or seven different ideas you're
00:05:35
going to have one idea and you're going
00:05:37
to fully develop that idea with
00:05:39
explanations and examples so unless you
00:05:42
know about that idea and you can develop
00:05:44
it you can explain it then don't use it
00:05:48
the third thing is can you think of that
00:05:51
idea quickly so if I give you six hours
00:05:54
to think of an idea you know anybody can
00:05:57
do that but can you think of ideas
00:05:59
quickly so what you're trying to do is
00:06:02
you're trying to think of relevant ideas
00:06:03
that you can develop and that you can
00:06:06
think of quickly so those are the three
00:06:09
things that you should be thinking about
00:06:10
if you can't think of relevant ideas if
00:06:13
the idea is not relevant
00:06:15
it's not a good idea if you can't
00:06:17
develop it it's not a good idea if you
00:06:19
can't think of it quickly it's not a
00:06:20
good idea all three of those things must
00:06:22
be present in any technique that you use
00:06:26
to help you generate ideas and that
00:06:28
brings us on to
00:06:30
brainstorming so as I said at the start
00:06:33
of this lesson
00:06:35
if you go into any IELTS classroom today
00:06:37
so all around the world there will be
00:06:40
100 different classes all teaching IELTS
00:06:43
at the same time if you ask the teacher
00:06:45
how do I generate ideas they will say
00:06:48
brainstorming now does this work
00:06:51
no it does not work in fact it is the
00:06:56
most useless thing that you could ever
00:06:57
do on the test it does not help at all
00:07:00
why is that brainstorming results in
00:07:03
irrelevant ideas how you brainstorm is
00:07:06
you just think of as many different
00:07:08
ideas as possible so if you're just
00:07:11
thinking of as many ideas as possible
00:07:12
what you're going to do you're going to
00:07:14
think of irrelevant ideas you're also
00:07:16
because you're thinking just about as
00:07:18
many ideas as possible you're going to
00:07:20
think a lot of those ideas are going to
00:07:22
be ideas that you know a little bit
00:07:24
about but you can't fully develop them
00:07:26
you can't explain them you don't have
00:07:28
examples for them so what this does is
00:07:30
it results in a huge number of
00:07:32
irrelevant or useless ideas and it takes
00:07:36
you a very very very long time to do
00:07:39
that so you're left with a bunch of
00:07:41
useless information you've just wasted a
00:07:43
few minutes and then you have to sort
00:07:45
through all this useless information a
00:07:48
better way would be to quickly think of
00:07:51
relevant ideas that you can develop and
00:07:53
be able to do that pretty much instantly
00:07:55
I'm not in instantly is probably the
00:07:58
wrong word actually you don't want to do
00:08:00
things instantly because that means
00:08:02
you're not thinking about them but you
00:08:03
should be doing them pretty quickly when
00:08:05
I work with my students on my VIP course
00:08:08
we aim to get them to the point where
00:08:10
they can think you know look at any
00:08:12
question and think of relevant ideas
00:08:15
that they can develop
00:08:17
in a few seconds and that might sound a
00:08:19
little bit
00:08:20
ambitious but it's totally possible by
00:08:23
using some other idea generation
00:08:26
techniques
00:08:28
I'm forgetting about brainstorming so if
00:08:30
there's one thing that I would suggest
00:08:32
to you
00:08:33
to take away from this lesson is stop
00:08:36
brainstorming I know that your teacher
00:08:38
has probably told you that that's a
00:08:40
really good idea but your teacher hasn't
00:08:42
taken the time like I have to really
00:08:44
work with students and consider what
00:08:47
actually works and what doesn't if you
00:08:49
want to stick with brainstorming stick
00:08:50
with brainstorming if you want a better
00:08:52
way to do it keep watching this lesson
00:08:55
so number one is call the coffee shop
00:08:58
method and I developed this myself when
00:09:01
I was working with students in the
00:09:03
classroom and one thing that I I picked
00:09:05
up on one pattern that emerged was when
00:09:09
I first walked into an IELTS class I
00:09:12
would start the class maybe the first
00:09:13
five minutes just chatting with the
00:09:15
students asking them how they were
00:09:17
talking about different things in the
00:09:19
news or talking about current events and
00:09:21
these were intelligent students that had
00:09:23
no problem talking about these current
00:09:26
events things in the news things that
00:09:28
they were doing no problem at all as
00:09:30
soon as the class started and as soon as
00:09:32
I put a task 2 question in front of them
00:09:34
the same students that had no problem
00:09:37
whatsoever thinking of ideas was like
00:09:39
the brain completely shut down so I
00:09:42
started to spot this over and over and
00:09:44
over and again and when you spot a
00:09:45
pattern like that obviously there's
00:09:47
something wrong and you want to fix it
00:09:49
so what I did was I spoke to the
00:09:52
students and asked them why do you have
00:09:54
no problem thinking of ideas before
00:09:56
class but as when class starts you can't
00:09:59
do it and it was because they were in
00:10:02
something that I call test mode and so
00:10:04
this affects your writing it also
00:10:06
affects your speaking more than anything
00:10:08
that people for example on the speaking
00:10:10
test when you are talking to someone
00:10:12
outside of class their fluency is great
00:10:15
their grammar is great their
00:10:16
pronunciation is great but then when
00:10:18
they step into into the the real test
00:10:21
everything falls apart for some reason
00:10:22
again this is what I call test mode so
00:10:25
what we want to do is we want to
00:10:28
normalize the situation so even though
00:10:30
it is a very stressful test and you're
00:10:33
going to have you know there's a lot at
00:10:35
stake I understand I speak to students
00:10:37
every day about how important this this
00:10:39
is we want to normalize it as much as
00:10:41
possible and reduce stress as much as
00:10:43
possible so that we can think normally
00:10:45
so the coffee shop method what it does
00:10:49
is I say to my students imagine instead
00:10:52
of doing the IELTS test imagine you're
00:10:55
sitting with a friend in a coffee shop
00:10:57
just in your in your in your imagination
00:10:59
and you're discussing the question like
00:11:03
two normal people would in a coffee shop
00:11:05
so it's probably better just to ex show
00:11:08
you a real example of how this would be
00:11:10
this video is sponsored by us IELTS
00:11:13
advantage and ielt VIP course the IELTS
00:11:16
VIP course is the most successful IELTS
00:11:18
course in the world that is a fact
00:11:20
because we have more bonds seven eight
00:11:22
and nine success stories than any other
00:11:25
IELTS course in the entire world we do
00:11:28
that by simplifying the whole IELTS
00:11:31
process supporting you with some of the
00:11:34
best IELTS teachers in the world and
00:11:36
being with you every step of the way
00:11:38
until you get the score that you need to
00:11:40
thank you for making it this far in the
00:11:42
video I want to give you 10 off our VIP
00:11:45
cores all you have to do is just look
00:11:47
down in the description you will see our
00:11:50
special link that you need to get 10 off
00:11:53
just click that and you can sign up if
00:11:55
you have any questions about the VIP
00:11:57
course always feel free to get in touch
00:11:59
with us Chris at ielt advantage.com is
00:12:02
my email address we answer 100 of the
00:12:05
questions that we get hope that you
00:12:07
become a VIP if not enjoy the rest of
00:12:10
this free video so here's a question
00:12:12
today more and more tourists are
00:12:14
visiting places where conditions are
00:12:16
difficult such as the Sahara Desert what
00:12:20
are the advantages and disadvantages for
00:12:22
the tourists so this is a real question
00:12:24
from Cambridge 12 and this is a very
00:12:28
typical question and it's not difficult
00:12:30
to understand
00:12:32
but when students see this they over
00:12:34
complicate everything they make it more
00:12:37
complex than it really needs to be so
00:12:39
instead of just looking at this question
00:12:40
like an IELTS task 2 question imagine
00:12:43
you're sitting with your friend in a
00:12:44
coffee shop and you're saying like a lot
00:12:46
of people are going to more extreme
00:12:48
places on holiday these days what are
00:12:52
the good and bad things about that for
00:12:53
the tourists so instead of using words
00:12:55
like you know advantages and
00:12:57
disadvantages to simplify it what are
00:12:58
the good things about that what are the
00:13:00
bad things about that and by doing that
00:13:02
you will be able to easily generate
00:13:05
ideas that are relevant that you can
00:13:07
develop and you can think of them
00:13:09
quickly so no brainstorming just
00:13:12
thinking about that for a few seconds
00:13:13
and it will generate really good ideas
00:13:16
pretty much immediately another way to
00:13:19
think about this is
00:13:20
something that I call the Family
00:13:23
fortunes method this is something that I
00:13:25
developed with my VIP students because
00:13:28
as I said before
00:13:30
um one technique will work for some
00:13:32
students but it won't work with other
00:13:35
students because it's their brains don't
00:13:37
work like that everybody is different
00:13:38
everybody's brains are wired differently
00:13:40
so there were some students who I was
00:13:43
showing the coffee shop method to and
00:13:45
they were still having problems so I
00:13:46
said okay let's think about this
00:13:48
differently and let's think about why
00:13:50
you find this method difficult so they
00:13:54
were still over complicating everything
00:13:56
this is particularly with people who are
00:13:58
very intelligent so I think about a
00:14:01
third of my VIP course there are doctors
00:14:04
and and engineers and lawyers and people
00:14:07
like that like very very very
00:14:09
intelligent highly qualified people
00:14:11
those types of people tend to over
00:14:13
complicate everything and they find it
00:14:16
very difficult just to keep things
00:14:17
simple so this is for someone if you're
00:14:19
a doctor or you know an engineer a
00:14:22
lawyer someone who has a lot of
00:14:24
Education this technique is probably for
00:14:27
you so what is family fortunes family
00:14:28
fortunes is a game show and basically
00:14:32
what it is they they ask the contestants
00:14:35
questions and the questions are always
00:14:38
we asked a hundred members of the public
00:14:40
this question what was the top answer
00:14:42
what was the most common answer and this
00:14:45
is a great way to think of writing task
00:14:47
two ideas so what you do is you look at
00:14:51
any question and you think if we asked a
00:14:54
hundred members of the public randomly
00:14:57
what would be
00:14:59
the most common advantage that they
00:15:02
would say and what would be the most
00:15:04
common disadvantage that they would say
00:15:06
and if you do that you will always think
00:15:08
of very relevant ideas you will always
00:15:11
think of ideas that you can develop
00:15:13
because the these are the most common
00:15:15
ideas they're the most straightforward
00:15:17
ideas they're the most simple ideas and
00:15:20
you'll always be able to think of them
00:15:22
quickly so some people like this one
00:15:24
some people like that one there are many
00:15:26
other techniques that I teach I'm not
00:15:28
going to share all of them with you
00:15:30
because that would be a very long class
00:15:32
and my VIP students would be a little
00:15:34
bit angry with me if I shared everything
00:15:36
with you but hopefully that will help
00:15:40
you I am generate ideas so now what I'd
00:15:44
like to do is
00:15:46
look at this question
00:15:48
pick one of these techniques so either
00:15:51
imagine you're in a coffee shop and
00:15:53
you're discussing this with a friend or
00:15:56
think what would be
00:15:58
excuse me what would be the most the
00:16:01
common Advantage what would be the top
00:16:02
answer for disadvantage or and you could
00:16:05
simplify it by you know what's a good
00:16:07
thing about it what's it what's not such
00:16:08
a good thing about it
00:16:10
um keep it simple so in the comments let
00:16:13
me know one advantage and one
00:16:15
disadvantage and you will surprise
00:16:18
yourself just how easy this is okay so
00:16:20
we're getting some comments thank you
00:16:23
very much so Lynn Lloyd says Advantage
00:16:25
unique experience excellent that is the
00:16:28
most common one that's the most
00:16:30
straightforward one that's the easiest
00:16:32
one to explain perfect experience about
00:16:35
desert so the question this question is
00:16:38
not about deserts it's not about the
00:16:40
Sahara Desert they say such as this
00:16:42
Sahara desert just to help you
00:16:44
understand the question the question is
00:16:47
about visiting places where conditions
00:16:49
are difficult so extreme places so it's
00:16:52
not about deserts option exploring new
00:16:54
places yeah perfect
00:16:56
so you get the idea how easy it is to
00:16:59
think of these things so let give me one
00:17:02
bad thing it could be one disadvantage
00:17:04
one drawback of visiting a place that's
00:17:08
that has an extreme environment like
00:17:10
Antarctica or the Arctic or the Sahara
00:17:13
Desert or Mount Everest or something
00:17:15
like that
00:17:16
so the negative thing
00:17:19
government health problems yeah so the
00:17:23
negative part of visiting the Sahara
00:17:25
Desert or Antarctica is something could
00:17:28
happen to your health or you know you
00:17:30
could have an accident you could get a
00:17:32
disease there's not many hospitals
00:17:34
around there that's a pretty probably
00:17:37
number one reason why people don't go on
00:17:39
holiday up Mount Everest you know some
00:17:42
people do and but you know most people
00:17:45
don't because maybe it's not the biggest
00:17:48
reason maybe because it doesn't really
00:17:49
have you know beaches and Cocktails and
00:17:52
you know things like that disadvantaged
00:17:55
complex preparation yeah it's expensive
00:17:57
to go to those places so it's you know
00:17:58
what is the average holiday cost a
00:18:01
thousand two thousand dollars probably
00:18:03
to visit
00:18:04
Antarctica it's going to cost ten to
00:18:07
twenty thousand dollars you know all of
00:18:09
you are getting it all of you are
00:18:11
thinking of great advantages and
00:18:14
disadvantages so if you're watching this
00:18:16
video you're obviously worried about
00:18:18
idea generation but hopefully I
00:18:21
simplified it for you and showed you
00:18:23
that you don't really need to worry
00:18:25
about it this is all you need to do
00:18:27
don't worry about brainstorming and use
00:18:31
you know seek out people who have
00:18:34
actually thought about making it easy
00:18:36
for students hopefully you enjoyed this
00:18:39
lesson my email address is Chris
00:18:41
ieltsadvantage.com if you need help with
00:18:44
your IELTS preparation
00:18:45
bye-bye
00:18:47
[Music]
