Hi guys. In our today's class, we are going to learn about the most common mistakes and things you should know before taking your IELTS writing, I'm sure that known some strategies and tips will help you succeed in your writing section. We'll begin our today's lesson by reviewing the most common mistakes in writing. The first thing you should keep in mind is avoiding using contractions. Instead of writing, I won't be home, you need to write, I will not be home. Never use contractions in academic writing. The following tip, that is very important to remember that writing too few words is not that good. If you write much less than the required word count, the examiner would reduce your score even if your essay is really good. You have to make sure if you're asked to write 150 words in the academic task one, you need to meet that requirement. For example, for the writing task two, you have to write 250 words as well. The following tip we have is actually the opposite of what we discussed just right now, which is writing too many words. Remember that writing too many words is not a good idea too, because as you probably know or maybe you don't know that examiners are paid to mark your essays. On a hour basis, it means they are being paid hourly and they will not have enough time to read all the essays. For example, if you write 350 words instead of 250 words, examiner probably won't be able to finish, won't be able to finish reading your entire essay and that means he or she probably will skip reading your conclusion, which is a very important part of your essay. Keep in mind that you should try to avoid your contractions, write too few words and write too many words in your academic task one, or writing task two. Another common mistake that some students make, is having handwriting that is difficult to read. Remember that IELTS is still a handwritten exam and the examiners will not spend time trying to understand your writing if they cannot read it. You must make sure that your handwriting is not messy and can be read quickly. Also, asking your family members and friends to read your essays could be very helpful too, and they could give you honest feedback about your handwriting style. The following point we have, it's using informal words. For example, instead of using nice, try to use positive. Remember that academic words are very different compared to our conversational English and try to avoid using the words that we use in daily life such as "wanna" and so on. So there are a lot of wars like that that we use, but you should try to avoid using them. In the following mistake. We have common mistake, it's a giving a personal opinion. You have to be very careful because some times the task actually does not ask your personal opinion. You need to read very carefully and understand if you need to provide your personal opinion or not. The last point in our slide on the slide is telling stories about your personal history, friends, or family. Even though tasks tells you to use examples from your own experience, it does not mean that you have to describe in a lot of details about People's life or your friends lives and maybe your personal life as well. Be very careful and remember that IELTS test just test your overall knowledge to see how much you learned and how much you know about the subject may be, that you learned from the media or you read in the books. All right guys, we're continuing to learn about the most common mistakes. The first point we have on the slide is giving evidence which is too detailed or specific to subject. This means you may be an expert in a particular social scientific field. The examiner probably has a different specialty. You need to make your ideas and examples accessible to the general reader. Try not to use specific terms because your examiner might not know them. For example, if the task topic is about money and you are an accountant, do not use specialized accounting terms, it can confuse your examiner. The following point we have is being emotional or too dramatic when giving your opinion about a certain topic. Sometimes students feel very passionate doing emotional, talking about some specific topics such as animal cruelty or maybe religion or politics, so try to be less emotional talking about this type of topics and avoid using very strong words such as disgusting, the test, unacceptable. I disapprove. These type of words are not a good idea to use during your academic writing or even speaking as well. Just remember to be very respectful and less emotional talking about such particular topics. The last point we have on this PowerPoint slide is not following the basic structures presented in the task. That means that examiners want to see a clear, well structured essay that is easy to read. They're accustomed to seeing the structures we have presented in this review, so you remember how we had our introduction, body paragraph, conclusion. Make sure you follow specific structure and you sound positive in your essay, and you practice a lot before you take your test. Remember, if you do all these points and you follow all the tasks that the requirements you have to complete, I'm sure that examiner will be happy to reward with a very good band score. Now we are going to discuss our sentences. You need to use four types of sentences to reach a higher score. The first kind we have its a simple sentence. A simple sentence has one subject and one verb. Here we have an example. Television offers a variety of programs. In this case, we have one subject which is television, and one verb offers, which is a verb. The following type of sentence we have, it's called compound sentence. A compound sentence has two or more simple sentences linked by the conjunctions, and, or, and but. If you guys remember before you started new grammar class, different fanboys we had. These are conjunctions that we use. Here we have an example. Some people are not bothered by violent TV programs, but others avoid them. Here you see we have two simple sentences. The first one, some people are not bothered by violent TV programs. It's our first simple sentence, and then we have the second one, others avoids them. You cannot combine them without any conjunction. So make sure that you have one of the conjunction for FANBOYS. Here we have but, and also pay attention how we use a comma before our conjunction. The following one we have, it's our third type of sentence, it's a complex sentence. A complex sentence is made up of a simple sentence or independent clause, and one more subordinate clause, we call it also dependent clause. Here we have the following example for this type of sentence. If we do not like a particular TV program comma, we can easily change the channel. The first one, it's actually called a dependent clause. Dependent because it begins with if, and if you read this whole entire sentence, it depends on the second part of the sentence. It's incomplete. For example, if we don't like a particular TV program, see it's not complete sentence. That's why we call it dependent clause. The following sentence we have, for example, we can easily change the channel. If you see the sentence, we can easily change the channel without the first part. It's still complete. That's why we call it independent clause. But remember, if you begin your sentences with, if, when, after, so we have many different those words. When you begin with them, you have to make sure that you have a comma in the middle. But if you begin with the independent clause, for example, we can easily change the channel if we do not like a particular TV program. When you have these words like if and when, even though in the middle we did not use any comma. These are our three types of sentences, and in the following slide, we will review our last one. Here is our final type of sentence, we call it compound-complex sentence. A compound complex sentence has two or more simple sentences and one or more subordinate clauses. The following examples look like while many people avoid watching violent TV programs, comma, others do not mind them and they watch them frequently. As you can see, we have our complex sentence combined with a compound sentence. That's what we'll call compound-complex sentence. You have a couple of independent clauses or dependent clauses, and you are combining them in one sentence, but be very careful and then remember that you need to use your conjunction. For example, our first part, we have well, meaning people avoid watching violent TV programs coma, others do not mind them and they watch them frequently. Do you see how we use conjunction and towards the end? Just remember that and make sure you practice a lot writing such sentences before applying them to your essays. That's all we have for four different types of sentences, guys.
