of a body paragraph from a sample essay band 9 quality zero grammatical errors and zero

spelling mistakes and all of the language has been upgraded so we're using more sophisticated

less common vocabulary and we've paid a lot of attention to cohesion and coherence and

task achievement what we're going to do in this video is we're going to analyze the paragraph

analyze the question analyze the body paragraph but we're going to analyze it alongside the

official band 9 band descriptors so this way you can get a complete understanding of what's

required of your writing and hopefully you'll learn how to upgrade your writing skills now

this type of upgrading and these types of techniques that we're using in this body

paragraph can be learned I teach them on the online course I have at ieltspodcast.com let's

jump into it straightaway and let's have a look of course we're going to look at the

question first so we have this wonderful question by the way this is a recent question I feel

like Donald Trump when I do this anyway this is a recent question and it's one that's been

seen on a recent exam paper so as you can see we have this wonderful copy of the band

descriptors this is a copy of the official one I just have to copy/paste it into a Google

Doc instead of using the PDF because the PDF would have trade marks on that I'm not allowed

to use anyway let's jump into it so task achievement cohesion and coherence lexical resource grammatical

range and accuracy these are all the four criteria that the examiner is going to use

to review your IELTS essay so we have the question we start off with a question and

what I always do and which I teach as well is to cut this question up and allocate a

paragraph to certain parts of the question and then we're going to construct that paragraph

in accordance to what's required from the question so it might say in this case discuss

both views and give your opinion so I'm going to allocate one view to one paragraph because

it's just easier one paragraph it says both views two paragraphs one and two both then

I'll probably finish with my opinion in the conclusion so let's get to it in this question

I decided to allocate one paragraph to women are equal okay I simplified it I got rid of

the nuance I simplified it down women are equal they should definitely serve in the

army and the police okay so I've got the idea now I've got my direction my argument I've

got my argument and my position now I'm going to back it up so as you can see here we've

got the paragraph I'm not going to focus on this but if you pause the video you can see

where I've upgraded the language and I've tried to make it more sophisticated using

more advanced structures we'll go into this in more detail later and using more yeah just

less common vocabulary or grammatical constructions so this is what I wanted to show you so we've

got task achievement I've highlighted it in purple here and obviously we can't fully satisfy

all the requirements of the task with just one body paragraph we need two body paragraphs

the introduction and the conclusion however we can develop a full-developed response which

is what I have done and I've tried to indicate where that fully-developed response is within

the essay or within the body paragraph specifically so let's have a look the question the task

achievement is very strongly related to the question obviously so let's analyze the question

first in some countries people think women should have equality with men in particular

equal rights to work as police officers or serve in the army this is entirely body paragraph

1 okay that's why I have left the rest as red for the time being now if we look through

this essay through this paragraph perhaps you want to read it countless women throughout

history have served pivotal roles in the shaping of societies whether… good structure women

should enjoy equal rights as men in this day and age is therefore a rather redundant question

here it's kind of a little bit aggressive but I'm taking a strong position I'm just

basically saying that this is redundant there's nothing no harm in doing this it just shows

a bit of character and it shows possibly a little bit of aggression but I'm strong I

just feel strongly about this so by making that by saying that that question is redundant

it's silly it's not necessary you can clearly infer that I'm not in agreement with it so

this is my response this is my part of my developed response and it's clear now the

yellow bits although traditionally okay roles such as security such as security or positions

necessitating aggression have often gone to men there is no scientific literature or precedent

stating women are less capable so you can see I'm talking although traditionally the

roles okay which is what we're talking about we're talking roles such as police officers

or serving in the army these are roles traditionally they have gone to men also you can see here

that it does say men and you can see as well in the earlier sentence I put whether women

should enjoy equal rights and there in the question it says in particular equal rights

so ideally I would use synonyms but it's not always possible to use synonyms because sometimes

they're just not there for example with women there's only so many ways you can say women

and likewise with equal rights you could say equality I think I've used that later on I've

definitely used it later on in the second paragraph but not always is there a vast list

of alternatives so just bear that in mind don't go emptying your brain and stressing

over it use the first one that comes to mind and only use it if you're confident if you're

writing essays and getting feedback by the way which is a service you can get at my site

that's the time to experiment experiment when you're getting your essays reviewed by an

expert essay corrector but don't experiment in the exam so as you can see all the parts

in yellow refer to the fully-developed response also refer back to the question because I'm

keeping on topic the green bit I'm talking about Peru it's talking about countries also

it says in the question should have equality with men and then here one way I managed to

say the same was difference between genders okay this just helps with lexical resource

but I'm keeping on topic I'm not using I'm trying to avoid using words directly from

the question but I'm keeping on topic also I'm using female soldiers so it's all related

to the question there's no way that I'm going off topic so task achievement is definitely

going to be answered there perhaps I could go into more detail about countries but nevertheless

that's very much on topic perhaps in the body second body paragraph I'd go into more detail

about countries just to make sure now let's move on to cohesion and coherence before we

get there it's important to look at the criteria okay uses cohesion in such a way that it attracts

no attention this is for a band 9 so it's difficult to actually see the connection especially

in a band 9 essay and also it says skillfully manages paragraphing so let's see uses cohesion

so served pivotal roles in the shaping of society what I did here sorry is all the parts

in orange refer to the parts or the fragments of the paragraph that are pulling it together

okay it's not the easiest thing to explain at this level at a band 9 level but the highlighted

parts are referring to other parts in the paragraph or in the essay so you can see here

have served pivotal roles in the shaping of societies pivotal roles refers back to these

kinds of roles in the army in the police and that's what I'm referring back to and I would

probably mention this in the introduction as well so you can see that this refers to

a point in the introduction and this is why it's coherent because there's the same thread

there's the same line of argument and topic going all the way through and it's going to

be not the same position but it's going to be on the same topic all the way through the

essay this is what makes it coherent and cohesive now then here we say therefore is a return

to the question so I'm referring back to the question which is also like we said the task

achievement but I'm keeping it compact in one kind of like line of thought also I'm

talking about traditional roles here perhaps that should have been highlighted as well

because we're talking about police officers we're talking about the pivotal roles also

we got a tiny little bit of repetition there now also we're going to talk about scientific

literature stating that women are less capable okay which is what we've been referring to

before when I said they should enjoy equal rights whether women should enjoy equal rights

is a redundant question and then I'm saying that there's no scientific literature stating

that women are less capable so there is a connection there it's not obvious and that's

why it doesn't attract attention hopefully you'll be able to see the link here and then

we go further here we're talking about less capable and then we're talking about physically

weaker so again there is that link between different sentences and it's like the glue

of the invisible thread that's going through all the words just keeping the essay tight

and together now from physically weaker I move on to strength difference and therefore

strength difference I talk about that it can be negated through sports and then I'm talking

about that exact sports routine or training program I think I changed it to regime later

anyway I know it's there so anyway and then I'm going back to strength so hopefully you'll

be able to see here that there is a thread running through it and it all keeps together

okay and then at the end here I'm talking about thorough preparation which is what I'm

talking about here and then suitable for some positions which is what I talked about at

the beginning so you can see that it all ties in together to make a very coherent paragraph

now let's move on to lexical resource I personally think lexical resource is perhaps the easiest

one to focus if you're looking to boost your score and the reason for this is because there's

less risk involved with changing certain vocabulary terms whereas if you're experimenting or risking

changing things with the grammar structure it can have serious implications to the meaning

of the sentence and to whether you understand -- whether the reader understands it entirely

so let's move on lexical resource uses a wide range of vocabulary very natural and sophisticated

control of lexical features rare minor errors occur only as slips but there's no slips here

there's no errors and there is this I would say there's definitely a sophisticated control

how many times did you hear pivotal last week not that many enjoy equal rights here we do

have equal rights here but instead of using should have equal rights I put should enjoy

equal rights it's more sophisticated also I've used rather redundant instead of a

very redundant question I said it's a rather redundant question so upgrading it that's

probably more for grammatical range and accuracy actually also I changed instead of needing

aggression I put necessitating aggression it means something very similar but I'm upgrading

it now the easiest way I think to upgrade your vocabulary is to use TSV something that

I've explained a lot about in other videos and I go into it in quite detail in the online

course I have at IELTS podcast but I'll just give you an example here so here we're talking

about equal rights so I'm talking about gender equality I'm talking about where is it the

difference between genders so I'm not constantly repeating equal rights or equality which are

terms from the question I've managed to find alternatives also I go on to talk about sports

and the army so obviously if I'm talking about the army I could have used instead in the

Peruvian military instead of using army okay that would be one way I could have improved

it also I've used soldiers which is topic specific to the topic of army also because

I'm going into sports I've use sports regimes yeah ruthless endurance program and also I've

used counterparts okay so instead of talking about genders or repeating the term genders

or equal rights between men and women I've used the male counterparts which basically

means like they are colleagues yeah they are colleagues or competitors just basically the

people next to them not the best description but you get the idea so yeah so these are

instances all the green highlighted parts are instances of band 9 vocabulary and especially

topic-specific vocabulary or better said sophisticated and accurately used vocabulary so there's

an extensive lexical resource there now moving on finally to grammatical range and accuracy

this is perhaps in my opinion the most challenging and also the most important and I'm saying

this is the most important because if your grammar is messed up there's no way that the

examiner is going to be able to understand your essay and determine if you've actually

fulfilled the task required so this is why it's fundamental that you get your grammar

under control and I'll go into this in a little bit in a second but you can see here that

the blue parts are where I've identified more advanced vocabulary unlike the other

one there's no slips and there's no errors so here I've used whether instead of if here

I've said pivotal roles in the shaping of societies okay I think also I'm using structures

such as whereby okay so we're just using these different structures to boost our score and

it's not the same grammar structures throughout the paragraph there's a wider range here I'm

starting with the gerund returning to the question posed it is now possible to state

that women so by the way that's a useful copy/paste sentence okay returning to the question posed

it is now possible to state that whatever anyway so I think the best way to show this

would be to go right to the top where I actually went through and I've modified it so instead

of saying have equality I put enjoy equal rights as men okay enjoy equal rights as men

in this day and age instead of have equality with men in this day and age is therefore

a rather redundant question okay traditional roles like security or positions although

traditionally roles such as security or positions necessitating aggression have often gone to

men there's no scientific literature where is it now okay so yeah it's just improving

the – it's looking for opportunities to improve your structures there and introduce

more variety so let's just go back here and grammar like I said before is very important

because if we cannot understand the sentence that you've written then I can't tell if