I have already shown how you can use IELTS reading and listening texts to help you develop your language skills to help you prepare for the IELTS test, and in this blog post, I will show you how you can use sample writing answers to help you prepare for the IELTS writing test.
First of all, before reading a sample answer, it would obviously be beneficial to think a little about the question or task. Even if you don’t want to write an answer yourself first, you can still take some time to think about the question and what you would include in your answer. For part 1, this might include:
thinking about how to change the language in the question to write the first sentence
identifying the main features and thinking about what information to include in an overview
thinking about what specific details you would include and what data to describe
thinking about how you would organise these specific details into two or three paragraphs
thinking about what language you could use to describe the data, map changes, process, etc.
For part 2, this might include:
understanding what you need to do to answer the question
thinking about your opinion on the topic
thinking about what ideas you could include and how to develop these ideas
thinking about how to organise these ideas into paragraphs
thinking about what language you could use to show your opinion and link ideas together
Once you have done these, you can then read a sample answer and compare against your own ideas and make a note of any differences. For part 1 answers, probably the most useful thing you can do is focus on what information is included in the overview, identify what data has been reported and identify any language that has been used to describe the data, map changes or stages in a process.
For part 2, the most useful thing to do probably involves identifying the overall opinion, the organisation of the main body, how ideas have been developed with reasons and examples in each paragraph and any language that has been used to show opinion and link ideas together.
However, when using sample answers, you need to make sure that you are using reliable answers as there is a lot of material available that is of questionable quality. Here are some websites that I think have quite reliable samples answers that you can be helpful for you:
Many people know that doing lots of grammar exercises from a textbook is not very useful to help you become fluent in English. However, it can sometimes be difficult to explain why doing grammar exercises is not very useful. After all, we need grammar knowledge to help us communicate in English, so why is doing grammar exercises and learning grammar rules not very helpful?
First of all, I would like you to consider this question – how much knowledge of Chinese grammar did you have as a child before you started school? You have five options to choose from:
It is quite a difficult question to answer, so I will try to help answer it at the end of the post.
Secondly, I want you to think about this WhatsApp conversation I had with my two sisters a while ago. Both my sisters are educated native English speakers and I asked them the following question about English grammar:
As you can see from the answers above, neither of my sisters have any idea what the present perfect is. Nor are they able to explain what it is or how to use it. However, they both speak excellent English and can use the present perfect tense in conversation without ever making any mistakes. So how is it possible that they can use the present perfect but cannot explain what it is?
The difference is because of different types of language knowledge.
Both of my sisters have very good implicit knowledge of the present perfect tense, but they do not have very good explicit knowledge of the present perfect tense.
Here is a summary of these two different types of language knowledge:
Characteristics of explicit and implicit language knowledge
We use both types of language knowledge when communicating but implicit language knowledge is much more useful, especially when:
we do not have time to think about our language use, i.e. speaking and listening
we do not have any control over language use, i.e. reading and listening
The diagrams below show my (unscientific) attempt to show how useful the different types of language knowledge can be.
Relationship between explicit language knowledge and the four skills
Relationship between implict language knowledge and the four skills
As you can see, the arrows in the diagram show that implicit language knowledge is more useful than explicit language knowledge for all four skills, especially listening. Explicit language knowledge is more useful for those skills when we have time to think and can control the language used, such as writing (time and control) and to a lesser extent, reading (time but no control). Explicit language knowledge can be useful at times when speaking (little time but some control) too but if you rely on it too much, then it will slow you down a lot and you will not be fluent. Explicit language knowledge is almost useless when listening as it is the only skill where you have little time and cannot control the language use. However, even though explicit language knowledge can be useful, to be successful in all skills (including reading and writing), you will need to mostly use implicit language knowledge.
Usefulness of explicit language knowledge in four language skills
In my opinion, explicit language knowledge about vocabulary is likely to be much more useful than explicit language knowledge about grammar. There are a few reasons why I think that:
Vocabulary has a much more significant impact on making meaning clear in communication. You are much more likely to misunderstand when reading or listening or be misunderstood when speaking or writing due to problems with vocabulary knowledge compared to problems with grammar knowledge.
Vocabulary is easier to remember and easier to apply in speaking and writing. A lot of grammar rules are quite complicated and abstract and so are difficult to apply when speaking or writing, whereas explicit vocabulary knowledge is easier to remember and apply.
Focusing on developing explicit vocabulary knowledge will have more of an effect in helping you to understand more difficult texts. Explicit grammar knowledge will not help so much in improving your reading and listening level.
Explicit grammar knowledge is not so useful in spoken communication. A lot of grammar in textbooks is based on written texts but the kind of grammar used in spoken communication is different to the grammar used in written communication. Therefore, the importance of ‘traditional grammar knowledge’ is less important in spoken texts. However, vocabulary knowledge is still very useful and necessary in both kinds of texts (spoken and written).
So, coming back to the original question at the beginning of the blog post about your knowledge of Chinese grammar when you started school, the answer depends on what kind of language knowledge is being referred to. As with my sisters, it is likely that you had a lot of implicit language knowledge of Chinese grammar but very little explicit language knowledge of Chinese. Today, you are likely to have much more explicit language knowledge of Chinese grammar but this knowledge is still tiny compared to the implicit language knowledge of Chinese grammar that allows you to communicate freely with very little effort. The aim in your English learning is to be able to get as close as possible to how you are able to communicate in Chinese. To do this, you should focus mainly on developing your implicit language knowledge of English. I will show you how you can do this in the next blog post.
References:
Ellis N.C. (2017) Implicit and Explicit Knowledge About Language. In: Cenoz J., Gorter D., May S. (eds) Language Awareness and Multilingualism. Encyclopedia of Language and Education (3rd ed.). Springer, Cham.
Self-Study English 