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Write mark calculated

hi I'm Alex I'm an ex IELTS examiner and one of the expert IELTS teachers here at E2language.com. Here at E2 language our mission is to help you pass your English language test and we know that IELTS writing is a big hurdle, so today I want to show you how an examiner marks your writing. That is I'm going to show you exactly how the marking criteria work I know it looks like a super complicated document but I'm only going to show you the important parts. So how does it work? First of all I should mention this is the public version of the writing task 2 band descriptors. Everything you need to know is on here and you can find this via the link below. Now, there are four criteria here task response, coherence and cohesion, lexical resource, and grammatical range and accuracy. And the band scores are on the left; expert user is up the top, band 9, and band zero is down the bottom for people who didn't turn up or who wrote a memorized essay. Most people are aiming around here band 7 and band 8. Now, the examiner actually gives you four scores one for each of the criterion and your total score is worked out from them. So, how do you get your score? Well let's say you get 7 7 7 7 from the examiner, then congratulations! That of course is a band 7 essay however if you miss one and get let's say band 6 in grammatical range and accuracy even though you've got three 7s this will come to band 6.5 for this one you can counter this by scoring about 8 somewhere else. So what does this mean for you as a candidate? How can you be sure that you're not going to drop below and 7? Well of course we need to know what's in the band 7 criteria, but you also need to look at band 6 and then 5 and even been 3 because that's where the reasons for band 6 or 6.5 exists Let's start with criterion one, task response, which is here on the left. If you look at the band seven requirements, you can see three dot points and the first one says, addresses all parts of the task. Now if you have a question like this nowadays people use social media to keep up with the news why do they do this is it a positive or negative trend you'll see that there are two questions why do they do this is it a positive or negative trend you're more likely to be down here if you answer just one question addresses the task only partially so that's a simple one there are two questions answer both the second question that we just saw asked is it a positive or a negative development now this brings us to the second point presents a clear position throughout the response very important word there is threw out threw out the response basically this means that you are giving an opinion from top to bottom in your essay now let's say you don't want to give an opinion or your opinion is not clear to the examiner this is catastrophic we're down here at band three does not express a clear position so your work could be beautifully written full of rich vocabulary and ideas but if I get to the end if I don't know what you think you're gonna score band three so address all parts of the task clear opinion throughout and then presents extends supports main ideas this is the body of your essay whenever you give an idea or make a point you need to present it extend it supportive if you don't you'll be down here at six presents relevant main ideas but inadequately developed or unclear or five limited ideas that are not sufficiently developed or have irrelevant detail this is where an expert IELTS teacher can really help you so make sure that you book your tutorial if you're a subscriber and submit your work for so that we can help you criterion 2 is coherence and cohesion and this is all about paragraphing linking and flow there are three points here logically organizes information and idea clear progression uses a range of cohesive devices clear central topic within each paragraph if you've done any IELTS prep you would know all of this but you could still be scoring six point five or six why is that well let me show you here it bends six the second dot point says uses cohesive devices effectively but cohesion within and or between sentences may be faulty or mechanical faulty or mechanical again these are very important words let me show you what they mean faulty cohesion here's an example some people like to get their news from social media while there are some benefits but this is not always a good idea faulty cohesion this is really it's a grammatical problem but there's a linking word here while linking word but and they are used incorrectly so this is classic band six faulty linking the other one was mechanical mechanical cohesion here's an example firstly blah blah blah secondly blah blah blah finally love a blah therefore blah blah blah moreover blah blah blah it's totally fine it's not wrong but it's pretty boring and it's mechanical the linkers are at the start of the sentence and they're not very imaginative if you've come to our live classes you'll know that we have a few tricks to avoid having this mechanical cohesion but you probably recognize that you're guilty of this in your own writing it's very common so beware of faulty and mechanical linking another big reason why you might lose points is because of referencing been success that you may not always use referencing clearly or appropriately a referencing is words like it they there this these using them correctly means knowing your countable and uncountable x' and editing carefully so do you know when to use the word this and when to use the word these if not you could be using your references incorrectly and the more serious issue is here in band 5 may be repetitive because of lack of referencing and substitution let me show you an example of this these days it is quite difficult to avoid advertisements some people believe that advertisements make life better whereas other people feel advertisements make life worse despite the negative aspects of advertisements I feel that life is better with advertisements grammatically this is fine however you can notice the repetition this writer has used the word advertisements five times in just three sentences this is way too many this is a classic band 5 repetitive because of lack of referencing and substitution of course you have to repeat vocabulary but be careful with repeating the same word more than once per sentence and definitely not more than three times per paragraph one final point on this criterion is about paragraphing no band 6 says users paragraphing but not always logically well what is a logical paragraph you ask this this is logical paragraphing the words here are just nonsense so don't worry about them for the moment I'm just talking about the visual aspect you can clearly see here the introduction to body paragraphs and the conclusion now compare that to this essay immediately this poor student can say goodbye to IELTS 7 why is there one sentence sitting all alone here and what's this weird gap in the middle of this paragraph what's this huge block of text at the end where is the conclusion this is illogical paragraphing paper-based IELTS same thing bye-bye then seven but the good news is that is super easy to avoid just learn the e to structure look at our samples and it's super simple in terms of the content it's a little more difficult but again learn the e to structure and apply it to your writing criterion 3 is lexical resource this is vocabulary there are two factors at play here the first one is range band $0.07 uses a sufficient range uses less common lexical items and the other point is accuracy so in band 7 you may produce occasional errors in word choice spelling or word formation let's look at accuracy from bounds 7 to band 5 & 7 occasional errors band 6 some errors and they do not impede communication band 5 noticeable errors that cause some difficulty for the reader so band 7 a few errors then 6 quite a lot of errors but I understand everything and 5 a lot of errors and in some places I can't follow because of those errors the final criterion has much the same approach grammatical range and accuracy again here an examiner is looking for a variety of complex structures in them 7 wide range in band 8 and 9 but here is the kicker in band 7 second dot point frequent error free sentences if you've ever submitted your work for assessment or for feedback have a look at how many sentences you have which are absolutely perfect where the teacher hasn't made any comment or any changes frequent error free sentence is actually fairly rare you need to be perfect in a lot of sentences you need to edit really really rigorously so how many errors can you make well band 8 says the majority of sentences are error free so for band 7 you need to be pretty close to 50% let's say now remember the VOC have Criterion grammar works in much the same way found seven frequent error free sentences band six makes some errors and they rarely reduce communication and five frequent errors that cause some difficulty let's see this in action here look at this first paragraph in conclusion to some extent advertising does have a role to play in the economy and can provide useful information to the buying public there's a spelling error in there but otherwise it's pretty much perfect this one in conclusion to some extend advertisement does has a role to play in the economy and can providing useful information to the buying public I can see lots of errors here but I can still understand what the writer is trying to say in conclusion to some extend advertisements does have a roles for play economics and can to pervade us full information to the busy poopley here I'm having trouble understanding so this is a good example of a band 7 fan 6 and band 5 level of writing so let me simplify everything sum it all up to score band 7 up in task response you need to answer all parts of the question extend support your ideas give a clear position throughout coherence cohesion use referencing use substitution beware of faulty and mechanical linking and paragraph logically for vocab and grammar just two points wide range minimize your errors it all sounds very simple I know but it can be difficult to analyze your own writing critically so if you get in touch with us here at e2 language you can book a tutorial with me or one of the other IELTS teachers and we'll go through your writing with you step by step sentence by sentence and point out to you where you might be making errors and more importantly show you how to fix them up so that on test day you are scoring down seven such now that II to language calm 100% online you can submit speaking and writing for feedback book your tutorials come along to our daily live group classes access our course and heaps more catch you soon