IELTSBlog.com presents: How to get a higher IELTS score by building a positive image in the examiner’s mind This series of lessons was prepared by Donna Millen especially for the readers of IELTS‐Blog.com. The lessons are brilliant and will do amazing things for your IELTS score if you study and implement them. You will learn: Lesson #1: How to create a positive, psychological impression on your IELTS assessors. Lesson #2: How to write a Task 1 report that will impress your assessors (Academic Module). Lesson #3: How to write a Task 1 letter that will impress your assessors (General Training Module) Lesson #4: How to write a Task 2 essay that will influence your assessors positively (Academic and General). Lesson #5: How to improve your Speaking test score by connecting with your assessor. Lesson #6: How to optimize your performance in the Listening and Reading tests. Donna Millen, co‐author of the Centre for English Language in the University of South Australia’s IELTS on Track series of books (ieltsontrack.com) talks about what may create a positive psychological impression on assessors who may be scoring the Writing and Speaking (interview) components of your IELTS test. Page 1 © Donna Millen (content) ● Web: http://www.ieltsontrack.com Design & layout by IELTS‐Blog.com ● Web: http://www.ielts‐blog.com Lesson #2: How to write a Task 1 report that will impress your assessors (Academic Module). Before beginning Lesson #2, here is a short summary of what we learned last week. Summary of Lesson #1. In the IELTS Writing and Speaking tests you have some power to: • influence the impression that you make on the assessor • build a positive, psychological impression in the assessor’s mind of the sort of person YOU are. In the IELTS Writing test you can impress the assessor by: • presenting your writing neatly and in a well‐organised way • writing sentences that express ideas maturely and with precision • avoiding ‘babyish’ simple expressions. In the IELTS Speaking test you can impress the assessor by: • behaving as an equal • expressing your personality in a friendly and open way • telling the assessor interesting things about your life and culture (when it is relevant to do so). Now let’s move on to Lesson #2. Page 2 © Donna Millen (content) ● Web: http://www.ieltsontrack.com Design & layout by IELTS‐Blog.com ● Web: http://www.ielts‐blog.com Important background issues Before looking specifically at this week’s lesson on IELTS Academic Writing Task 1, let’s explore one or two important background issues in the Writing test. Don’t become a ‘clock victim’ The IELTS Academic Writing test puts every candidate under a great deal of time pressure. Candidates know that they have to respond to two tasks by writing a 150‐word, and then a 250‐word answer in only one hour. Under such conditions, it is easy for candidates to see themselves as powerless ‘clock victims’. What is an IELTS ‘clock victim’? Candidates who spend too much time either counting words, clock watching or being over‐ anxious about time can be described as ‘clock victims’. Cut down on word counting Avoid losing time by counting words too frequently. Instead, work out the approximate, average number of words you normally write on a line, count the number of lines you have written and multiply them together. A full IELTS Answer page has about 20 lines. If you normally write about 10 words on each line you will write about 200 words on a full page. What to do to prevent feeling so anxious in the IELTS writing test To help to manage feelings of anxiety you need to: • see yourself in a more positive way so that you can increase your ability to control this challenging writing test situation. • become better at organising your written text. HOW? Create a suitable ‘test persona’ for the IELTS writing test It is important for test takers to create a suitable ‘test persona’ (a sort of test identity) with which both to manage their test performance and to build the confidence to connect positively with and make a positive impression on the assessor. Being a ‘panicky test taker’ is not a suitable test persona. Page 3 © Donna Millen (content) ● Web: http://www.ieltsontrack.com Design & layout by IELTS‐Blog.com ● Web: http://www.ielts‐blog.com What might be a suitable ’test persona’ for the IELTS Academic Writing test? Imagine this context: You are working with a senior, university lecturer on some social research. This lecturer has asked you to present them with a brief report on some data and to give some outline views on a social issue as background material to be taken to a twoday, academic seminar overseas. The lecturer is flying overseas for that seminar at lunchtime. Time is important also in this imaginary context, but it is important in this case because of your colleague’s schedule, so you are helping someone. Also an academic context is a professional context in which you would be expected to write in a mature, considered, clear, precise and professional manner. This ‘professional and academic test persona’ is a more suitable one for you to imagine yourself in than just being a ‘test candidate’; it establishes a much stronger sense of relationship between writer and reader, and this gives your writing a stronger social purpose. But I’m taking an IELTS language test, not working for a university…. Perhaps this is what you are thinking right now. Perhaps you think this idea of a ‘professional, academic test persona’ is a little bit crazy. OK, then think about it this way. Even if you are not trying to do so, or not aware of doing so, almost everything you write to another person carries an impression of YOU within it. If, for example, your writing is disorganised, looks messy, is off the point, offers inaccurate information, then all of these features tell the reader something negative about YOU (the writer) as a person. The reader starts to imagine what YOU are like from how you write, not just from what your language is like grammatically. This means your writing has the power to influence the impression you make in many different ways. So you need to try to communicate positive impressions of yourself in your writing. How else can anxiety or panic be managed? Page 4 © Donna Millen (content) ● Web: http://www.ieltsontrack.com Design & layout by IELTS‐Blog.com ● Web: http://www.ielts‐blog.com Planning before writing Often candidates receive their IELTS writing test paper and then begin writing their answers almost immediately. Why? Because they are so scared of time. A professional person, in contrast, learns how to plan and manage time in the most effective way in order to achieve the goals they have established for writing. Planning is essential to a professional approach in working life. If you go to meet a business client you prepare the night before so that you are clear about what you want to achieve and the best way to achieve it. The same is true in IELTS Writing. One of your prime goals is to get a better IELTS score by building a positive impression in the assessor’s mind. In IELTS, planning time (even 2‐3 minutes) is effective because it helps you to develop a systematic and well organised answer, and this creates a professional impression of YOU in the mind of the assessor. Imagine this: Let’s say you did some research and made a video recording of two people of the same English level answering the same IELTS Writing task 1 BUT: – one person spent about 3 minutes planning the answer – the other spent no time planning. My guess is that when you play back the video of the one who didn’t plan, it will show that this candidate stops to think, or stops to cross something out, more often during the twenty minutes than the candidate with a plan…….perhaps even 3 minutes more! In other words, it may be just test anxiety which causes you to think that every possible second has to be used as writing time. It may also be a mistake to believe that the best Task 1 answers are from candidates who have written non‐stop for 20 minutes. Someone who plans and organises well is showing that they care about: • being systematic about organising the content of what they are writing • helping the reader of their work to read it as easily as possible. This act of planning demonstrates an important basic validation of the reader‐writer relationship, which is important even in a language test situation. Page 5 © Donna Millen (content) ● Web: http://www.ieltsontrack.com Design & layout by IELTS‐Blog.com ● Web: http://www.ielts‐blog.com Creating a good impression in your WRITING – ACADEMIC Writing task 1 Academic Writing task 1 involves responding to a graph, chart, table or other diagram. The assumption is that you are writing a sort of summarising report which draws out and compares key features and presents them in a clear and professional manner. To build a positive impression in the mind of the assessor there are many things you can do when choosing the language to use while building your Task 1 response. 7 Tips to Writing a Successful Report 1. Take care with the accuracy of information Whatever the material and data presented to you in Task 1, you need to study it carefully and look at each category or number carefully so that you report on them accurately Why do it? Accuracy creates a good impression of you as a professional report writer. 2. Write about the most important patterns and trends not about everything Why do it? An appropriate selection of key information shows evaluation skills, and this is a professional style. 3. Avoid ‘shopping list’ writing, which means just listing obvious figures one after another. Instead, try to identify key trends and compare and contrast patterns, don’t just repeat lists of facts Why do it? Comparing/contrasting shows more mature evaluation of material, which is more professional. Remember, too, that language used to connect ideas at the beginning of a sentence can signal this comparative writing nicely. (For example: ‘Similarly’, ‘Conversely’, ‘An exception to this trend is…’, Compared to…’, ‘This pattern changed from…… to….’) 4. Don’t make personal comments about the statistical material Why do it? Being professional when you report on data requires you to be factual and objective. Page 6 © Donna Millen (content) ● Web: http://www.ieltsontrack.com Design & layout by IELTS‐Blog.com ● Web: http://www.ielts‐blog.com 5. Use a systematic layout Have an introduction to your report on the data and include in it perhaps a very general statement about the most dominant trend in the data. Create and arrange other paragraphs logically. Why do it? Remember in terms of your ‘test persona’, an academic colleague might not have very much time to read your report and needs to find and classify report information easily) 6. Use a professional writing style and formal tone This is not easy to achieve if your level of English is not very high. Nevertheless it is still possible to shape your tone (which means your attitude to the content that the reader gets from your Task 1 writing and how appropriate that tone is both to the genre (type) of writing, and to the expectations that the reader has of a report of this type. You can try to achieve an appropriate formal, professional report style by: • avoiding lazy language expressions (eg ‘etc’, or ‘and so on’ – they are not professional, are used more in spoken language, and suggest the writer doesn’t care enough to finish a sentence properly) • avoiding informal expressions (eg ‘a lot’, ‘was OK’ ‐ they are not professional enough for a report style) • avoiding repetition ( too boring and makes the writer sound very limited. Use appropriate synonyms, or referencing language (eg ‘this’, ‘it’ wherever possible) • avoiding (where possible) over use of general expressions that lack precision (eg ‘thing’, ‘do’, ‘is’, ‘big’, ‘nice’) 7. Reduce simple grammar mistakes Of course, anyone taking the IELTS test is likely to make numerous grammar mistakes. However, some mistakes create a more negative impression than others when read by a native speaker. If you can reduce the number of these you can help a positive impression to spread to other parts of your writing. Page 7 © Donna Millen (content) ● Web: http://www.ieltsontrack.com Design & layout by IELTS‐Blog.com ● Web: http://www.ielts‐blog.com 4 Types of Grammar Mistakes That Annoy an Assessor the Most Mistake Type #1 VERB TENSE a) Talking about the data Usually IELTS Task 1s use data from particular year dates. You must use the PAST tense when describing information from the past. Similarly if the information is about the future, use appropriate FUTURE tense forms. b) Talking about the actual graph or diagram you can see in front of you on the test paper You use the PRESENT tense forms to say ‘The graph/chart/table shows…/ indicates… / reports on…. because the graph itself is always the same and always in the present. Mistake Type #2 SUBECT/VERB agreement In English, we say: ‘The graph shows… ; ‘The statistics show…’ ; ‘The population of the three Asian countries is changing…’ ; ‘The number of people who sit IELTS is increasing…’ (the head nouns ‘ population’ and ‘number’ control the verb agreement); Mistake Type #3 WORD FORMS Adjective/Noun/Adverb Candidates need to control and manage effectively the English word forms they use. Look at these 4 examples: (X – noun form ‘doubt’ needed) • There is some doubtful about the data • The accuracy of the figures is doubt (X – adjective ‘doubtful’ needed) • It is doubtfully that the figures are accuracy (XX – adjectives ‘doubtful’ & ‘accurate’ needed) • The population increased rapid during 2000 (X – adverb ‘rapidly’ needed) In simple terms, errors that relate to basic rules of English grammar leave a more negative impression than other kinds of mistakes because the assessor may assume that you learnt about these basic rules when you were young and have had plenty of time to learn to use them correctly since that time. Page 8 © Donna Millen (content) ● Web: http://www.ieltsontrack.com Design & layout by IELTS‐Blog.com ● Web: http://www.ielts‐blog.com So, if you still make these basic errors you give the impression of being like an immature schoolchild, even if your own native language causes you to make the errors because its verb system is much simpler than the English verb system, or its translated word forms are less varied than those in English. The assessor forms an impression of you from your writing and isn’t influenced by such complexities as ‘first language interference’. The IELTS test, remember, is based ultimately on comparing performance with a native English speaker equivalent. Mistake Type #4 – Sentence BOUNDARIES and OMISSIONS from sentences Candidates need to build sentences carefully and respect what a sentence is and what the parts of a sentence are, otherwise the reader has to keep reading and re‐reading the sentences to try to understand them. This leaves a negative impression on the examiner because: a) it is frustrating and boring, b) it damages the relationship between writer and reader. Look at these 2 examples: 1) The figures show the food preferences of men and women they are in two tables. 2) The table shows the population. In the Asian countries rose a lot in the ten‐year period. After you read each example above, it is difficult not to re‐read each of them because they don’t communicate either clearly or effectively. Now look at these improved versions: Example 1 • The figures show the food preferences of men and women. They are in two tables. OR, more simply, • The figures show the food preferences of men and women in two tables. OR, even more simply, • The two tables show the food preferences of men and women. Example 2 • The table shows that the population in the Asian countries rose significantly in the ten‐ year period. OR • According to the table, the population in the Asian countries went up markedly in the ten‐year period. Page 9 © Donna Millen (content) ● Web: http://www.ieltsontrack.com Design & layout by IELTS‐Blog.com ● Web: http://www.ielts‐blog.com Remember, all these examples represent just a small sample of possible grammatical or other errors in language use, but they are ones that may significantly affect the psychological impression that your answer has on the examiner. To summarise With the IELTS Academic Writing test Task 1 it is important to: • try to be a confident manager of time not a clock victim. • plan before you write to help your answer to be well‐organised. • create an IELTS test persona for the Writing test that helps you more easily to see yourself as writing for a professional purpose to an academic colleague, not as a panicky test candidate. You can help to create a positive impression in Writing Task 1 if you: • are accurate when reporting statistics or categories of information • select and compare key information skilfully • resist making personal comments • create a professional style and tone • reduce those grammar mistakes that assessors might think are from your early days of learning English. In the next, shorter lesson I’ll look at creating a positive impression when writing your response to IELTS General Training Task 1. Hope you’ll join me for Lesson #3. © 2009 Donna Millen and ieltsontrack.com This article is copyright to ieltsontrack.com, and may not be reproduced or copied without the permission of ieltsontrack.com The design and layout of this series of lessons are copyright to IELTS Blog.com and may not be reproduced or copied without the permission of IELTSBlog.com Page 10 © Donna Millen (content) ● Web: http://www.ieltsontrack.com Design & layout by IELTS‐Blog.com ● Web: http://www.ielts‐blog.com