Let's talk about two styles of writing: argumentative writing and comparative writing. Contrast). These two kinds of writing are the main ways of writing in the mainstream English test, TOEFL, IELTS and GRE, so China students especially hope to master them well. In order to improve English writing, we should pay attention to the following four aspects.
Factors that limit the high score of IELTS writing 1. The structure of the article
The structure of written English has strict standards, namely, the beginning, the theme and the end. Put forward your own statement from the beginning. The text can be divided into three to five paragraphs, with arguments to support their own views, and finally summarize and restate their views, echoing the original views. If it is a small composition (300-400 words), such as TOEFL and IELTS, it is generally more appropriate to write three paragraphs in the main paragraph. If you write too much, there won't be so many reasons. If you write too little, it seems unconvincing. Therefore, this structure is usually called five-paragraph format, which is the most commonly used structure in English writing. China has several common problems:
1. The beginning is very long, and I don't know what to say. I put a bunch of gorgeous sentences with no substantive content, and then I suddenly jumped to my own point of view.
The beginning is confused with the first paragraph of the main paragraph. Some students will write directly? I agree. . . Opinion because. . . . . ? Give an opinion in one sentence, and then start writing the first reason directly. The structure of such an article is unclear, and it is immediately labeled as unclear in the eyes of reviewers. Make two more grammatical mistakes and you won't be able to turn over.
3. The text is not segmented, and all the reasons are mixed together, so that readers can sort it out by themselves. English is different from Chinese. English is the responsibility of the author and Chinese is the responsibility of the reader. In other words, to write English, the author needs to make sure that readers can understand what they have written. If the reader doesn't understand, it's your responsibility. In Chinese, it is just the opposite. I can write whatever I want, and it's your readers' problem whether to read it or not.
4. Each paragraph of the main paragraph has no thematic sentence and no obvious thematic meaning. I often see someone telling a bunch of examples, but I don't understand what he wants these examples to illustrate. In fact, just add a short sentence before each paragraph to tell others what you are talking about, which will make the article clear.
5. There is a topic sentence in the main paragraph, but there is no further explanation of the topic sentence. A direct example will make the article very abrupt.
6. The article has a beginning, but the author does not express his opinions at the beginning, but expresses his opinions at the end. There is also controversy about this writing method, and English speakers are also debating whether all people in the world should write according to the English style. The general conclusion is that it depends on your readers. If your readers are native speakers of English, you'd better write according to their habits. Don't pursue any mystery, you must wait until the end to give your opinion. For TOEFL IELTS composition, it is better to behave yourself. For other articles, the teacher asked me not to put forward a point at the beginning, but to put forward a point at the end when writing a paper.
Factors limiting the high score of IELTS writing II. Grammatical problems
There is still a big gap between the exam and the actual communication requirements. In the process of communication, it is normal to make grammatical mistakes. If it does not affect understanding, the listener will not care too much. But the exam is different. It requires relative accuracy. However, grammar problems are not all serious. In the examiner's opinion, those mistakes that affect the expression of meaning are the most important, so try to avoid these mistakes when writing. For example, the use of tense, a past story, if you use the simple present tense, readers will be confused and don't know the order or relationship between times. There are also pronoun references that can easily affect understanding. Looking at the composition written by our classmates, it is often a pronoun like it, that. They appear somewhere, but there are many nouns in front of the pronouns. I can't understand what these pronouns mean after repeated reading. In fact, this is also caused by cultural differences. Pronouns are widely used in Chinese to avoid noun repetition. To make readers understand what pronouns refer to, this is what we often say: the reader is responsible. English, on the other hand, is the style that the author is responsible for, and the author has the responsibility to explain every place clearly for the readers. Not only China students, but also Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese and even Arab students have this problem. Apart from these big grammatical problems, many readers don't care much about articles, prepositions that don't affect the meaning, and whether the third person singular is added with S. Many professors admit that some structures in English are irregular and it is understandable for foreigners to use them wrongly.
Three factors limiting IELTS writing high score. Wording problem
Listen to the teacher often, and use special words in writing and speaking. In fact, this is true, but many students misunderstand the meaning of this sentence and think that words and uncommon words are particularly long. So we often see some ridiculous old English words in students' compositions, or words that are only used in very academic articles. Some students find a synonym of a word directly from the dictionary, and then choose one from those synonyms that they have never heard of and write it in their compositions, which is particularly awesome. A classmate wrote in abophate that he hated English. Although it is synonymous, abhor only means fear and disgust. There is a classmate in China who always complains that every time the second draft of a composition is handed in, the teachers in the composition center change all the big words in the composition. He used many big words and difficult words, but none of them were used correctly. The teacher asked him if he knew all these words, but he said no, they were all selected from the dictionary. It is good to choose the right words and consciously diversify your own words, but pay attention to the specific usage of the words, that is, when you find the word, you should check the example of the word again to see if it can be used in similar situations in your composition. Sometimes, if you look it up in the dictionary, you can see that some words are formally identified and proved to be very formal words, and some words are outdated and rarely used. A classmate always uses some GRE words when he speaks English. Every time he talks to people, everyone thinks what he says is ridiculous, but he doesn't think his English is good at all. On the contrary, some students use ordinary words, but the meaning is more accurate, so everyone feels more authentic. So, how to solve the problem of often repeating words or using simple words? Then you need to spend a little time summarizing some synonyms and learning the usage of these words, so that it won't be awkward to use them after understanding the usage. For example, if you want to express your love for something, you should sum it up as: like, interested, enthusiastic, popular, something is very attractive to me, and so on. When practicing writing, deliberately use more words, and you will naturally think of these words when you write later. So, in short, the words should be special and accurate.
Four factors limiting IELTS writing high score. Thinking expansion
A common composition is to have an opinion and then have a reason to support it. Going back and forth, writing and writing a long article is actually a repetition of the same truth, so that although you have a lot of words, it is no different from writing a main paragraph for readers. In fact, the problem of writing ideas can not be solved in a short time. Extensive reading can broaden your horizons and open your writing ideas. Therefore, this question requires everyone to read more English newspapers, such as 2 1 century newspaper, which is very good, not difficult and interesting. If you can't read that widely, you can read a book to expand your thinking especially for the exam. Of course, it is a bit unrealistic to ask everyone to supplement so much knowledge in a short time, so everyone can learn to analyze different problems from several common angles. In fact, we can try to discuss it from the perspectives of economy, environmental protection, time consumption and emotion. Familiarizing yourself with vocabulary from these angles can help you to change constantly.
The above are the solutions to the four weakest limiting factors of IELTS writing in China. It is suggested that the most important thing for the majority of candidates is the structure and logic of the article, which is very important and the skeleton of the whole article. It must not be crooked, but as long as the language and grammar are rich and pay special attention, it is no problem.