Lesson 17 – Task 1 planning the writing

Today we are going to look at planning for Task 1

I’ll be on my soapbox in this lesson as despite what ANYBODY says to me I truly believe that if you plan you will get a MUCH BETTER piece of writing – DEFINITELY!

I plan even when I am writing model essays for students and so I think it’s unrealistic to suppose that you can produce a good Task 1 without planning.

 

There will always be exceptions but I am certain that these are few and far between.

 

(if you don’t know what a soapbox is click here)

Let’s begin with some tips and advice

 

1. Choosing the data IS NOT planning – that is getting your ideas together
2. Once you have the ideas or data that you want to use you need to organise it
3. What will you put in each paragraph?
4. How many paragraphs will you write?
5. What will your introduction be?
6. Will you have a conclusion?
7. These are all important questions to ask yourself.
8. You have 150 to 180 words and usually 3 or 4 paragraphs. Your introduction will be just 2 or 3 sentences and your conclusion the same or maybe just a concluding sentence – so you have approximately 100 words for the body which is very roughly 5 sentences in each paragraph. Now you can choose what points you are going to make in each paragraph and all that is left is to write these in good English.
9. Writing a good plan does two things for you. Firstly, it helps to speed up your writing because you have an outline to use and secondly because you are not writing and looking at the data at the same time you can concentrate on the accuracy of your sentences and therefore make fewer mistakes.You will need to refer to the data for the numbers but this will be brief. It also means that you will have a couple of minutes for checking your work at the end.
10. Don’t forget to refer to the data, this is important but you need to embed it in a sentence. Don’t just make lists.
11. A word about lists. It is lazy writing, as effectively you are copying from the original data. If you have to mention 5 or 6 things you must split them and combine them into sentences with good linking words to present them in an interesting way. Examiners DO NOT like lists of figures or points from the tables etc.
12. Remember Task 1 is a very practical piece of writing your language needs to be good but it doesn’t need to be too ‘flowery’.
13. Your plan is not your essay so keep it short with key words and bullet points. It needs to be something that you can work from. The examiner is not interested in your plan it is a tool to help YOU write better.
14. Finally, it should only take you 3 to 4 minutes to do a plan BUT make sure that it is going to be useful to you otherwise you are wasting time. A good plan=good writing and a better score / a bad plan will not help you at all!

 

Key skills to develop:

 

Learning how to construct a helpful plan can transform your writing – it’s worth learning how to do it

 

• Go over IELTS data and data from other sources ( the business pages of newspapers and online). Pick out the data that is important and organise it into a framework for a description – you don’t need to write the description just get used to doing this

 

• Look at examples of Task 1 and work backward to produce a plan from this – what was the writer’s plan?

 

• Look at models of IELTS Task 1 writing at the band level you want and do the same. What was the plan? Now go one band higher and do the same (always aim and band higher than you want for your writing)

 

Try to develop a note-form that will be useful to you in your writing – it’s not enough to have words scribbled on the data or jotted down in a random way

Things to do for planning in Task 1:

 

• choose a question, make a plan and then give this to a study buddy to write. Get one from them to write. Check your buddy’s writing is this what you intended in your plan?
• choose some of the data from a task one, make a plan for ONE paragraph and create this well-written paragraph about this data (you don’t need to write a whole essay every time)
• do the same for your introduction BUT don’t write anything before you have made an outline/plan

 

Don’t forget, if there is anything you don’t understand or can’t find send a message via Contact us

 

A word about General Training Task 1

 

• You still need to plan in the same way as academic but the initial stage will be different.
• Decide if the letter is going to be formal, semi-formal or informal
• Decide what your ideas are and then organise these into your paragraphs
• You have to imagine that this is a real situation – put yourself into the story, have someone in mind as you decide what points to write

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Let’s have a go at planning

 

Read this information on planning again

 

http://www.gapfillers.co.uk/?atk=103

 

Now let’s create a plan from the data we saw yesterday:

 

Task 1 planning

 

Don’t forget, if there is anything you don’t understand or can’t find send a message via Contact us

Now you’re done!

Good luck and let’s make great progress with IELTS!