hi and welcome to a E helps IELTS test preparation videos this lesson and the materials you see are taken from AE help comm for lots more help with the academic IELTS please visit us there and join our full course in this video we will be looking at a writing section tasks to question for the IELTS exam we will discuss how to prepare your response to the question as well as how to analyze the question to make sure that you understand it clearly and then we will go through a complete working example writing of course the minimum 250 word essay which should get you a nice high score on the IELTS exam now for more practice like this again just go to our website and you’ll see there are different kinds of questions that you can try for task two and if you’d like send it to our experts for professional editing and feedback and to see what kind of a score you can expect on the IELTS exam alright so the first step is simply just to look at the question and read the question some individuals believe that the primary goal of universities should be to provide information and skills needed for future work others however feel that the main objective of universities is to give students access to knowledge for its own values regardless if the information is useful for a job or not what in your opinion should be the primary objective of university education give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience write at least 250 words you should spend about 40 minutes on this task alright so whether your pissing at home or sitting the official IELTS exam the very first step that you need to take when you’re doing task two of the writing section is to make sure that you understand the question the number one mistake that’s committed by test takers for the odds is that they answer off-topic and that’s the potentially easiest way to lose marks so even if your writing is good if you’re not answering the specific question you will not get a good mark so you should always make sure that you have a clear understanding of the question now when you’re practicing this at home the best way to check your understanding of the question is simply to paraphrase the question so again we’re using the skill of paraphrasing here in writing and use synonyms antonyms with negatives grammar expression so on to paraphrase the question if you cannot paraphrase the question then even though you might think you understand the question there’s a good chance that you probably don’t if you truly understand it you should be able to paraphrase it to some level so that’s always a good way to to confirm that you know what you’re looking at alright so when you’re doing this at home again remember the best way to to practice this is simply write out the original question and then above the original question write the paraphrase this is great practice of course during the official exam you don’t have time for this so you will need to do the paraphrasing either in your mind or just on a separate piece of paper that’s provided for you but you don’t write out the original question in the actual exam because that’s not an efficient use of time however at home definitely write out the original question okay to save a little bit of space here I’m simply going to paraphrase the question and just give you the paraphrase that I came up to make sure that I understand what I’m looking at so the question says some individuals believe that the primary goal of universities should be to provide information and skills needed for future work another way we can say this is certain people think that the main objective of universities needs to be the provision of knowledge and tools required for the workforce ok so again keeping it simple certain people some individuals believe as think that universities need to give so the main goal here I said the main objective instead of give provision instead of skills tools instead of future work I wrote the work force so again use different kinds of synonyms different kinds of expressions to paraphrase if you’re having trouble remember use a thesaurus that’s a special type of dictionary which gives you synonyms and antonyms for words all right so this paraphrase is the first sentence and let’s keep going so others however feel that the main of of universities is to give students access to knowledge for its own values regardless if the information is useful for a job or not so this is saying that other people believe that universities should give the availability of knowledge and information to students without considering the application or the utility for the workplace so that’s kind of a paraphrase already this is how I paraphrase it so opponents opponents of course are other people who disagree support the belief that University’s ultimate aim aim is another way to say goal aim is to provide learners possibilities for gaining information without considering its utility for employment ok so it’s a nice long paraphrase here but there it is the complete paraphrase of the original question when you practice this it will become quick and its definitely worth doing this even if it takes you 1 or 2 minutes of the 40 minutes in the exam first and foremost again because then you make sure that you truly understand the question there are other reasons the second reason that you should practice and do this with task 2 questions is it helps you to think about the question it helps you to come up with ideas and it helps you to concentrate on this topic on this context the third big big reason that you want to practice and do this is because now you have a lot of synonyms and other ways to express the words of the question which will be of course very very useful when you’re actually writing the essay so having all of these different words for jobs such as employment workforce opportunities possibilities goals objectives aims and so on so these words now will make your essay a lot more rich with vocabulary and therefore you’re going to get a better score so that’s very useful vocabulary all right so now that we have the paraphrase of the question our next step is to actually plan the essay of course now that you’re sure you than the question clearly your second step of course is to plan your essay so to have a good structure never just start writing an essay without knowing what you’re going to write about that’s a very good way to get a low score simply because the most important parts of good writing are coherence and structures so there needs to be a completeness a wholeness to your ideas there needs to be a good flow of information and a structure so that of course it’s clear and easily comprehended for your reader if it’s not then it’s just not going to get a great score even if you’re using good grammar good vocabulary so you must have structure now to have structure you need to plan and the best way to plan is by using critical thinking and the basics of critical thinking of course are the three big questions what why and how so when you look at a question any question but especially here at task 2 then you should be able to identify the topic of the question the topic of the question comes from the what question so what is this question asking now if you look at the question then we will notice that what it’s asking you about is your opinion about the goals of universities and it says that in the first sentence of the question in the second sentence so some people believe the goals of universities is this and others believe it’s that so clearly if I ask what is this about then the answer will be the main goal of university okay now it’s really important that you’re clear on this so it’s not just about university it’s not just about the goal of universe but it’s about the main goal of university if you can’t identify the topic of the question specifically then you will have trouble to write a good essay so it’s very important that you do this practices as much as you need to so that you can do this quickly during the official exam you may not have enough time to write down the topic in like this so you need to be able to do it in your mind in order to do it in your mind correctly and quickly you must practice it at home and of course by writing it down so here we’re talking about the main goal of universities the second question of course is why so why should we discuss what the main role of universities should be whether to give knowledge for the workplace or whether to just give access to knowledge for its own value so why why talk about this why is it important now here you should try to visualize and again think critically and logically if I think about this I should realize that University graduates become professionals who have very important jobs in society so this makes the question of the goal of universities very very important so why is this important because university education has a great impact on society so there’s a lot of influence there so that’s why it’s really important to discuss this and then of course the third question is how so how does universe the education have a strong influence on society so well the answer here of course is by providing high level of training to the students so by providing very high level education to individuals okay so once you have the what why how read it check it make sure that you agree with it the second time that you read it as well you might come up with some other answers and now that you’ve seen this you can make your decision on what your opinion is to the answer whether universities should give skills simply for the workforce or whether they should give access to knowledge and then you can go forward to write your essay so here when I look at this I realize that University has a great impact on society and most likely the main goal of university is not just simply to give skills for future work but to give access to information because that allows students to develop society further to be dynamic to be innovative to be creative and I can get that by going through this thought process alright so again make sure to practice this at home and when you sit the actual exam make sure that you go through the what why how question in your mind before you start writing now that we have this we’re ready to begin our essay so let’s start with the introduction the first part of every of course is the introductory paragraph for the introduction now the introduction has three very important parts namely the hook the background and the thesis statement so you want to make sure that you have these three parts and that they’re well-written and they flow together and of course begin by indenting about five spaces that’s just kind of conventional writing so that’s the way it’s done all right so here we go with the hook so again remember that the hook is some kind of a sentence which should catch your reader’s attention it should want it should make them want to read what you’re writing if it’s not interesting for you it’s probably not interesting for your reader so that’s a good way to check how well you’ve written your hook if you think it’s exciting or if you think it’s interesting then your reader will probably think the same so here we’re talking about university education and when we write a hook there are different ways or different styles of writing a hook one of the most common most effective ways and the one of the fastest ways to write a hook is think about a global statement so some worldly statement or worldly fact that everybody will be able to connect with so if I’m thinking about University and I’m thinking about university education and I’m thinking about university students and university graduates then I realize that university graduates or people who finish universities are usually the people who give the direction of Society for various countries in the world so politicians of course are most of them University graduates doctors lawyers engineers and so on so a good strong hook here and this for this question would be University graduates dictate the direction of history alright so this is my hook and make sure that you start your IELTS essay with a hook because the odds examiners are looking for this so hopefully you can come up with something similar and that will catch the reader’s attention now the second part of your introduction should be a brief explanation of why this question of the main goal or objective of university is an important one and here the hook already kind of gives a hint for that so clearly the fundamental role of university is an important component of society for present and future so it’s simply just emphasizing to your reader that you recognize that discussing or debating the main goal of university is important because it does influence the structure and function of society now this is a bit about the background and so this is background here we’ll just go like this and then following the background is the most important sentence or a couple sentences of your entire essay which is the thesis statement so the thesis statement is basically where you declare your opinion so this is where a lot of that paraphrasing that we did in the first step can really come in handy now again remember with the thesis from previous lessons you need to make sure that you have a couple of really clear points which will form your body paragraphs and those points are in parallel grammar structure you’ll see that in a second here so before you start to write your thesis know what those points will be that you’re going to discuss really pay attention to what the task – question is asking this task – question is asking for your opinion what is your opinion what should be the main goal of the universities so your thesis statement must have your opinion about what the main goal of universities needs to be okay so as I mentioned during the critical thinking the planning process I believe that the main goal of universities should be to give students access to knowledge even without thinking about the job or the work or whether it’s useful because when universities focus on giving access to knowledge for students they become in and they become dynamic innovative means creative and inventive and dynamic means adaptive and flexible so these are my two points and this is what I really want to write about so I need to put those into my thesis statement so although certain individuals or people believe University’s main objective should be to give skills and information for future employment I believe that the essence of universities must be to open doors to knowledge regardless of job utility okay now very importantly I’m not done yet because I haven’t emphasized the two points that I would like to argue in my essay which will support my opinion so this is only half of my thesis so far so I need to finish it and write the other half this approach empowers students to be innovative and dynamic alright so that’s the end of my thesis and my two points for my two body paragraphs because that’s all you have time and space for in your 250 or 300 word essay so my two points are in an innovative and dynamic now notice how it’s a noun and it’s a noun so here we have parallel grammar structure which is great two very clear points and the reader will see that likely my first body paragraph will be about how the students become innovative when the main goal of university is to give access to knowledge and my second one will be about how they become dynamic and why these are important so now I’ll continue my essay from there with my body paragraph 1 so again this is the end of the thesis make sure you have a good strong thesis if you don’t stop think and write it again because without a good thesis you’re just simply not going to be looking at a very good score so again thesis the most important part of the essay if we can choose one all right let’s continue with body 1 you to see the rest of this writing video and for lots more help with the task 1 and task 2 of the writing section in the academic IELTS please visit us at triple w/e help calm and join our full course