Practice

Practice
Look at an example question. Below are two paragraphs from an article
called Trees in Trouble- What is causing the decline of the Worlds giant
forests?
Match the two paragraphs with one of the following three headings:
1. How wildlife benefits from big tress
2. Factors that enable trees to grow to significant heights
3. How other plants can cause harm
Paragraph 1- Big tress are incredibly important ecologically. For a start,
they sustain countless other species. They provide shelter for many
animals, and their trunks and branches can become gardens, hung with
green ferns, orchids and bromeliads, coated with mosses and draped with
vines. With their tall canopies basking in the sun, they capture vast
amounts of energy. This allows them to sustain much of the animal life in
the forest.
Paragraph 2- Only a small number of tree species have the genetic
capacity to grow really big. The mightiest are native to Norther America,
but big trees grow all over the globe, from the tropics to the boreal forests
of the high latitudes. To achieve giant stature, a tree needs three things:
the right place to establish its seedling, good growing conditions and lots
of time with low adult mortality. Disrupt any of these, and you can lost
your biggest trees.
If you look at the above paragraphs you will see that they are full of
difficult words like bromeliads, basking and stature. If you try to read
and understand every word you will get nowhere.
Instead we just look at the first and the last sentences and with some
highlighting of keywords and an awareness of synonyms it is apparent
that the answers are:

Paragraph 1- How wildlife benefits from big tress

Paragraph 2- Factors that enable tree to grow to significant heights
I hope the tips and strategies in this post helps you. Try them with some
past paper IELTS writing questions.
If you have any comments or questions, please feel free to comment
below.

Summary Completion Practice

Look at the sentence below and try to guess what the talk is about. The
sentences summarise the key information from the listening.
You should write no more than THREE words and/or a number.
The video is quite long so Ive only used the first 5 minutes.
1. Elon first thought about making _____________ when at college, when
he thought about the most challenging issues facing the planet.
2. They are more efficient than gasoline engines because charging it at
home gives you double the efficiency compared to ______________.
3. Their ________ is competitive because of very small energy
consumption and a cutting-edge battery pack.
4. The goal of the company has remained a three step method, where
model one was __________ at low production numbers, version two has a
reasonable price and an average volume and three would be at a cheap
price, high volume.
Tell the students to select ONE keyword from each of the following:
1. Networking is not a modern idea.
2. People fall into two basic categories.

3. All teachers are cynics.

4. The first piece of Hesses art has little effect on visitors to the gallery.
5. The New Forest has already been made into a National Park.
Suggested answers:
1. not
2. two
3. all
4. little or perhaps first
5. already

The suggested answers may not seem that obvious to the students who would possibly
consider keywords such as 'modern' or 'New Forest' as more significant. However, the
keywords shown have a greater significance in terms of the meaning of the whole statement
and illustrate a number of traps in the test. For instance:
1. 'not' makes the statement negative as opposed to possibly being positive in the text
2. 'two' determines a specific number of categories which may differ in the text.
3. 'all' determines that every teacher is a cynic and not a proportion of.
4. 'little' has a negative connotation as opposed to 'a little' another one to watch out for
is 'few' and 'a few'
5. 'already' shows that the New Forest was made into a National Park in the past and is
not a future proposal i.e. an indication of past, present or future time.
These examples hence illustrate the importance of looking out for: negativity, a specific
number, the whole or a proportion of, positive and negative connotation and reference to
time. Other ones to watch out for include:

Modals e.g. words like must, should, have to (varying degrees of obligation or
certainty)

Adverbs of frequency e.g. sometimes, always

Words such as most, some, all

This can be used as a regular activity in class when attempting this question type. The
keyword the student selects may not turn out to be the correct one but at least the student is
focusing on the task. A useful addition to this activity is to compare what the student
perceived to be the keyword before reading the text and what the keyword turned out to be
after having read the text.
WRITING
Lets look at some examples of poor paraphrasing because of using
similar instead of the same meanings.
Violent crime is on the rise among teenagers.
Violent offences are rising among young people.
This student has changed the word teenagers for young people. They
are similar words and teenagers are of course young people; however
children and young adults, aged between 18-30, could also be described
as young people. A more term would be adolescents or young people
between the ages of 13-19. A better way to paraphrase this sentence
would therefore be:
Violent offences are rising among adolescents.
You should therefore only use words you are 100% sure about. Dont
change a word unless you are 100% sure that it is a direct synonym,
otherwise you are likely to make mistakes and this will bring down your
score.
Lets look at another good example:
Global warming is mostly caused by emissions from internal
combustion engines.
Climate change is mainly caused by the release of fumes from
motor vehicles.