STUDYING IELTS

By Ridwan Sa'at As dealing with other essays in IELTS exam, what we need to do first is to see and observe the question. Identifying what kind of essay is being asked to you to respond is key thing in the success of doing IELTS exam. Understanding the question will lead you to select what kind of response you need to give in order to really respond to the question. There are some differences in the way we respond to the essay questions. If you are dealing with agree or disagree essay, it is best to use opinion essay pattern or if you are dealing with problem-solution essay, it is appropriate to use problem-solution pattern. The patterns are not just how you structure you paragraphs but how you put the essential parts of your essay in the correct place. For advantages and disadvantages essay, the pattern is quite unique: The essay structure: 1. Always put your response in 4-paragraph essay: introduction, advantages paragraph, disadvantages     paragraph and conclusion. ...

By: Ridwan Sa'at What is coherence in writing?  Coherence  is one of requirement of a good writing. It refers to the smoothness of your writing from the beginning to the end; in other words, all ideas are linked logically. To make our writing coherent, what should we do? First thing first is knowing the coherence devices. What are the coherence devices and what are their functions? Here are seven coherence device that help your writing coherent. 1. Pronouns     Pronouns refer to the word names. It is used to replace the word names. Using pronouns prevents your writing from being repetitive. Some of the pronouns are he, she, it, they, we, his, mine etc. See the following example of the use of pronoun that helps your writing coherent. Mike is from the Netherlands. Mike studied at Oxford University. Mike lives now in New York. (the word Mike is repetitive, so this is not coherent) Mike is from the Netherlands. He studied at Oxford University. He lives now in...

What are the thesis statements?  By: Ridwan Sa'at If you think that thesis statement is the backbone of your essay, continue reading this article. Then, what's thesis statement? Thesis statement consists of two parts; a topic and controlling ideas. Look at this example of an introductory paragraph in a response  to writing task 2 question. The enormous growth in the use of the internet over the last decade has led to radical changes to the way that people consume and share information. Although serious problems have arisen as a result of this, there are solution.  Which sentence is the thesis statement? Yes you are right. It is the one in red. It commonly appears at the end of introductory paragraph. see that it has the idea of a topic. Although it does not really specify what the topic is, but the topic is presented in the pronoun 'this' which represents radical changes people consume and share information and it tells the controlling ideas which are possible ...

By: Ridwan Sa'at What is a question rubric? If you wonder what a question rubric in IELTS writing task 1 or 2, here is the explanation: Question rubric has topic and writing instruction. These are in the box usually. In addition to these two items, there are also instructions before the rubric and following the rubric. Here's two examples of question rubric: A. Writing Task 1 You should spend about 20 minutes on this task. The table below gives information on consumer spending on different items in five different countries in 2002. Summarize the information by selecting and reporting the main features, and make comparisons where relevant.   Write at least 150 words B. Writing Task 2 You should spend about 40 minutes on this task. Write about the following topic: It is generally believed that some people are born with certain talents, for instance for sport or music, and others are not. However, it is sometimes...

By: Ridwan Sa'at Problem solution essay is one type of several IELTS Writing Task 2 essays candidates have to deal with during the exam. In this essay you are ought to present Problems and Solutions to the problems. Basically the approach is the same that first of all we need to understand the question topic and its instruction in the question rubric. In this article we will go through what problem solution essay is and a sample of response will be given to one particular question.

By: Ridwan Sa'at You have learned what composes a good paragraph, however it is a good idea to refresh again from the very beginning what are in a paragraph.  A paragraph consists of topic sentence, supporting sentences (two or more sentences) and concluding sentence.  Similar to a paragraph, an essay also has parts that are called introduction, body and conclusion. In other words, an essay is a big picture of a paragraph. So, if you know how to make a good paragraph, then you should also be able to compose an essay.  In an IELTS response to Writing Task 2 question, it is adviced that the candidate writes 4 good paragraphs. This is considered the time given is only 40 minutes which are just enough for planning, composing and reviewing. Thus, they are one introduction paragraph, two body paragraphs, and one concluding paragraph.  An opinion essay is a very common essay the candidate faces during IELTS exam. The following is samples of questions o...

By: Ridwan Sa'at Before we talk about what an essay is, we need to be sure that we can compose a good and coherent paragraph. So what is coherence in a paragraph? We can say a paragraph is a coherent paragraph when the flow of the ideas in the paragraph is easily understood as they are connected to each other correctly and smoothly.  A good paragraph should also be showing unity. What is unity in paragraph? It is that the paragraph also describes or discusses one topic or main idea. All supporting sentences and concluding sentences are related to the topic. There is no point beyond the topic of the paragraph.  To make a paragraph coherent we need to know how to relates ideas in the paragraph. We can do this by using what we call grammatical links and logical links.  What are logical links: Logical links are words which could be coordinate conjunction, subbordinate conjunction or introductory adverbs: 1. Coordinate conju...

By: Ridwan Sa'at This article looks at skimming – the ability to read a text quickly and understand what the general meaning is. Here I am suggesting one way to practice your skimming skills. It is a good place to start if you know you can’t read texts quickly enough and don’t like skimming and that your ability is only scanning for “key words” in the text.

By: Ridwan Sa'at As we know there are two writing tasks in the Writing Section of IELTS exam; namely IELTS Writing Task 1 about charts or statistic data and Writing Task 2 on composing an essay.  Writing Task 1 aims for a report response on the given visual/chart/statistic data. Due to its task characteristics of which the participant of the test is asked to write a report, an opinion on the response is not necessary or is not allowed. What the participant needs to write is just a report on what can be observed from the visual.  From time to time the visuals of charts have been developed. There is a task of line charts, bar charts, pie charts, diagram, process and some more.