Navjot failed her IELTS writing test three times in a row. She'd lost all hope and was about to give up on her dream of moving to Canada. But after I shared this simple strategy with her that allows anyone to answer any IELTS question, she was able to jump from a band 6.5 to 7.5 in just a few days. So one day I get this email from her. Chris, I need your help.
If I don't get 7 in writing soon, I'll lose my express entry visa for Canada. Help! So I replied, send me a few of your essays. And she was right. It was very obvious from looking at her writing that she was completely confused.
You see, your writing is a reflection of your thinking. If on test day your thinking is confused, your writing is going to be confused. But I knew that if she learned this simple strategy, she was definitely going to get a band 7 on her next test.
But when I told her this, she got even more worried. Chris, there are so many different questions. question types, how is one strategy going to answer all of them?
Don't worry. And what if I get a topic I know nothing about? How is this strategy going to help with that? Don't worry. And I can't even finish an essay in 40 minutes.
So how is learning a new strategy going to help? Don't worry. This strategy will guarantee that you get a high score and finish everything on time, no matter what topic you get. To remove all this confusion, I tried to make everything as simple as possible. And I did that by asking her one simple question.
Why do we write anything? Think about the different things that you've written in the past few days. This could be a text message, a note to your family, or an email to a colleague at work.
You wrote all of those things to take information from your brain and transfer that information into their brain. In other words, the main purpose of writing is to help the reader understand what you are thinking. Let's apply that to an essay. Why do we write an essay?
To get a high score? To show the examiner how many big words we know and how many fancy structures we've memorized? No, we simply write an essay to tell the reader, the examiner, what we think about the question. Otherwise known as answer the question.
The number one thing the examiner will be thinking about when they look at your essay is did you clearly answer? the question. But there are so many different question types.
How will I know which structure to use? Let's apply what we've learned about writing to structuring an essay. Why do we write an introduction? We write an introduction to introduce to the reader what we think about the question. So let's apply that to some real questions.
Some people believe that university students should volunteer to benefit the community. Do you agree or disagree? Many think that those in third level education should do. unpaid work to improve their local community.
So all I've done there is just taken the question statement and paraphrased it, put it in my own words. But now let's do what the examiners are looking for, which is clearly answering the question. Do you agree or disagree?
We are immediately saying very, very clearly what we think about the question. So the examiner can just look at this very easily and know exactly what we think about the question. But then why? Because, then we're going to write the first reason why we disagree. Because students need time to focus on their studies.
A simple idea that directly answers the question. And then let's give them another idea. And some also have to get paid jobs to survive. So if we analyse this a bit further, we have answered the question here.
And we've given our first main idea. And then we've given our second idea. So all we're doing here is taking our ideas out of our head. I disagree for this reason and this reason. I'm putting it on paper.
But now you might be thinking, well, what about if we get a different type of question? Won't the structure be different? So it is widely believed that transportation is the main source of pollution. While some believe governments should address this, others believe this is the responsibility of... individuals discuss both views and give your opinion so this is a completely different question because it's asking you to do three things it's asking you why do some people believe this why do some people believe this other view and what do you think individually so let's start off by just paraphrasing again many think that transport causes the most pollution so i've just taken the question statement paraphrased it so governments can ban internal combustion engines to solve this problem so again What am I thinking?
Communication, taking ideas out of my head, while some people believe government should address this. So I'm thinking, why would someone believe this? Why would someone think this. Well, governments have the power to ban, to make illegal internal combustion engines, and that could go some way to solving this issue. So that's one of the reasons why someone might advocate for a legal internal combustion engine.
for that position. So I'm going to state that. But then why would other people think, well, it's nothing to do with governments. This is the responsibility of individuals. Why would someone think that?
But I think a better option is for people to choose. greener transportation voluntarily. This choice gives people more freedom. So why would people think that it's the responsibility of the individual?
Well, you know, governments can be a little bit overbearing. Some people really believe in the rights and the freedoms of the individual to make their own choice voluntarily. So that's why they would believe that side and I agree with them.
So what do I think? I think a better option is... people to voluntarily choose their own method of transportation because this gives them more freedom.
But I also understand that governments can ban petrol and diesel engines and they may have a role in it too. And that's why some people believe this. So these are two very, very different questions. And I have used slightly different structures, but you don't really need to be thinking about structures. All you need to be thinking about is how do I clearly tell the examiner what...
I think about the question. There is no one structure that's going to magically get you a band nine. But how you guarantee you don't get a high score is you don't tell the examiner clearly what you think about the question.
So all you have to do really is think about this. You look at the question and you start to think about the answer to the question in your brain. All the introduction is doing is introducing your main ideas, your answers to the question.
to the examiner's brain. You do not need structures for doing that. You just need to think clearly.
Okay, but won't that take a lot of time? That's where the essay acceleration system comes in. Let's look at our introductions. What do they all have in common?
They are all introducing to the reader what we are going to write about. All we have to do then is take the main points from the introduction and put them into our main body paragraphs. You see, but understand, the main purpose of an introduction, you've not only created a brilliant introduction, but you've also created a plan for your entire essay. When people run out of time on test day, it's not because they are slow writers or slow thinkers. It's because they are confused about what to write and then they get lost and have to start all over again.
This essay acceleration system means that your thinking is crystal clear and you have a roadmap for the rest of your life. essay. Great, but won't I need a different main body structure for all the different types of essays?
Let's make it simple again. If the purpose of an introduction is to introduce to the reader how you're going to answer the question, what is the purpose of the main body? Answer the question?
Yes, and the simplest way to do that is to use this structure. Main point, explain, example. And then we simply do the same thing with our next main body paragraph. By this point I could see that she was really starting to understand how powerful this simple strategy really was.
But she needed to avoid a huge mistake that most students make. Many students write a great introduction and main body paragraphs and then throw away a high score by failing to write a good conclusion. To write a great conclusion you need my law professor's secret hack. When I was 18, many many years ago, I started studying law at Queen's University.
And at the start of the first semester, we were given a huge reading list. And it seemed impossible that anyone would be able to read this number of books in such a short period of time. But I stayed up night after night and arrived at my first tutorial having read them all.
You read all the books? Nobody reads them all. And this is when he shared his secret hack with me.
Take any academic textbook and open any chapter. Read the introduction and then read the conclusion. What do you see? Remember what I said at the start about introductions?
Introductions tell the reader what you're going to write about and conclusions tell the reader what you just wrote about. In other words you should be able to just read the introduction and conclusion and fully understand all of the main points of the whole chapter. And to make it even easier for you All you have to do is just look at your introduction, note the key points, and then repeat them in the conclusion.
It really is that simple. Take the main points, paraphrase them, put them into a conclusion, and that's you done. So at this point, I thought that she would be very, very happy. She now understood how to structure any IELTS question, but I could see that she was more stressed than ever.
It doesn't matter if I know how to structure these essays. If I get a topic I don't understand, I'll panic and just run out of time. Don't worry, I'm going to give you a system that will ensure you can answer any question, no matter what topic you get. But first we need to understand why you have this problem. You see, if you had a health problem, you wouldn't just go to the doctor and expect them to give you medicine without them trying to find out why you have the health problem.
By understanding the root cause of the problem, the doctor will be able to treat you more effectively. So what is the root cause of this fear of unknown topics? So first I asked her this question. When you get an unfamiliar topic, is it ever in the real test? No.
Have you ever seen a topic in any of the Cambridge books you didn't understand? No. Then where are you seeing these terrible unknown topics? My old teachers gave me some.
And here I think we find the first root cause of the problem. If you look at real questions from real IELTS Cambridge books, the questions and the topics are designed in a way so that anyone in the world can answer them. But when websites run by people who don't really know what they're doing create these questions they often make them way more complicated than they actually need to be. But I'm a mathematician what do I know about advertising or newspapers? And here we found the second root cause of the problem and the more intelligent someone is the more they have this problem.
You see people like mathematicians, doctors, lawyers, engineers they've all been trained that the solution to complex problems is to have lots of expert knowledge. Now let me tell you a little secret. The opposite is true for IELTS.
If you get a question, don't try and think of the most complex idea. Try and think of the simplest, most obvious, most straightforward idea. Instead of thinking which idea will impress the examiner, think about if I asked a hundred people this question, what would be the most common answer? But what about brainstorming?
How do you feel when you're brainstorming? Stressed, confused, worried, and does brainstorming result in good ideas? No.
So why would you do something that makes you feel terrible that doesn't get you the result you're looking for? All of my teachers told me to do it, and most of the big IELTS experts on YouTube teach brainstorming. And this was her final challenge. Was she going to follow my advice that was different from all the other advice that she was getting? Or was she just going to be a sheep and follow the herd?
It didn't work the other three times you tried it. What makes you think it will work now? And here's what she did on test day.
Got the question, she read it and asked herself one question. What are the two simplest ideas? She then wrote them down and planned out her answer. After she planned out her answer using the structure we gave her, she had a complete roadmap showing her exactly what to write. This investment of time into her plan meant that her thinking was crystal clear and she finished everything on time.
And because she followed the universal structure, she completely shocked the examiners. You see, every examiner sees the same confusing, difficult to understand essays all day long. When you choose simple ideas, answer the question and write your answer in a clear, organized way using language you know. Instead of fancy words you memorize the night before your test, the examiner has no choice but to give you a high score.
And Navjot is now a mathematics professor in Canada after getting an amazing 7.5 in her IELTS rating. If you want a more detailed look at what we discussed here today, my free course IELTS Essay Builder will show you everything you need to know for free. All you have to do is just click the link in the description. If you want to join the same course, as Navajo.
Our VIP course is available for 10% off. You need a special link to get the discount. It's also in the description.
Or if you just want more free videos on YouTube, check this one out.