Learn the Keys to IELTS & TOEFL Essay Success

Success at essay writing depends on you, but only if you know what matters! Learn the precise elements you must master for essay writing success on the IELTS, TOEFL, and TOEIC. This is an essential lesson from an experienced teacher who has examined thousands of essays. If you are planning to take a test or simply want to improve your essay writing skills, don't miss these keys to higher English grades.
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TRANSCRIPT

Hi. I'm Rebecca, and today I'm going to share with you a whole new way to think about your essay writing. Now, a lot of students get very confused when it comes to essays. They don't understand why they got a low score, they don't sometimes understand why they got a high score. Well, I'm going to break it down for you so you understand exactly how an examiner thinks when he's giving... He or she is giving you marks. All right? Because I've been an examiner thousands of times.

So, this is what it breaks down to. What is good essay writing? Well, a good essay depends on two main areas: What you write and how you write. What you write depends on your topic, whether you write about your topic because if you write a beautiful essay on the wrong topic, you're still going to get a zero. It depends on what you write, depends on your topic, depends on your logic of your ideas, how you present it, the organization of your ideas, and things like that. That's what you write.

But today we're not going to talk about what you write. We're going to talk about the second element, which is how you write. Okay? It'll be... There are other essay... Other lessons of mine which talk about what to write. Today we're focused on how to write. And what I want you to understand is in connection with how you write, every single little thing you do matters, from the smallest thing to the biggest thing, and that's how I want you to learn to think about your writing, that everything from the micro level (the smallest level) to the macro level (the largest level) matters. What do I mean by that? Let's look.

So, what I mean is every mark you place on your essay matters, every word you choose matters, every sentence you write matters, every paragraph you construct matters, and the entire essay that you build is important. Okay? What did I just go over? That every mark you place, every word you choose, every sentence you write, every paragraph you construct, and the entire essay - all of that constructs... Goes together and combines to give you a good score or not. So, let's see how you can improve in every single aspect. Okay?

Let's start with the smallest aspect, but smallest doesn't mean necessarily least important. Okay? So when we talk about every mark you make, it means the punctuation. Now, people think that they know punctuation, but do you really know punctuation? Yes, you probably know how to use a question mark, you may know how to use an exclamation mark, although we don't use them too much in essay writing. Do you know how to use a semi-colon? Do you know how to use quotation marks? If not, that's something you need to go and study so that you can include the whole range of punctuation marks in your essay so you can show the examiner that I know how to write well in English, which is what you're trying to do. So if you're not 100% sure, for example, how to use a semi-colon, then go and find out. Okay?

Next: The words you choose, obviously, are very important. That means you need to use rich vocabulary. That means using more than just saying "good" and "bad". In fact, I have another lesson on that. Go check that out on how to use anything but "good" and "bad". Right? And go to our website. I have a whole resource about 142 words you can use instead of "good" or "bad" to give you a higher score. All right? It also means... Vocabulary in essay writing also means using transition words, like to express your opinion, to compare and contrast, things like that. Right? To conclude. And if you want a list of those, you can go to another website which I'll give you a little bit later. You can check these things out. These things are available. Take advantage of them. Okay?

Next: What's important when it comes to the word? Spelling. Yeah, you have to learn spelling. I know that English spelling is very difficult. I have a resource about that, too, on our engVid website about 50 common spelling errors. Make sure... Go through the list, make sure you're not making those errors. There are some things we can control, for example, check the spelling of the transition words. Right? Make sure that you're not making a mistake in something you're guaranteed to use. You can't know all the words you're going to use, but you can know some of the words you're going to use for sure.