Video Transcription

Hi Everyone, my name is Gary, I am the IELTS English teacher at BROWNS English Language School, Brisbane campus.

So, today we’ll talk about how to write introduction for IELTS Task 2, argumentation style. Most of people probably ask me how to write introduction and this is very hard and because we only have 40 minutes to write, and also if you think, 10 minutes to make a draft and 5 minutes to find whether you have mistakes, in the grammar point of view or you have lots of spelling errors. So, actually you have 25 minutes to write 250 words. Now it just to say, in 1 minute you have to write 10 words.

So, Today’s topic is:  “A lot of people believe that smoking is really bad, so the government should ban it. To what extent do you agree or disagree?”

So, most of people would say, “wow this is very difficult”. I can find it difficult to write from the first word to the whole sentence. So here is what is, you paraphrase the sentence and answer the question. So, this one it’s said, “A lot of people believe”. Is there any other way to set a lot of people?.  Of course, you can use passive voice which is “It is known” another one is, “It is well known” of what?, smoking is really bad. So you can say: “It is well known that smoking is really bad”. Can we make it longer and use more vocabulary?. Of course, we can say: “It is well acknowledged that smoking is really bad”. Can we make it better for the word “bad”? You can say, “It is well acknowledged that smoking is detrimental to our health”. See, the word is there.
Now we are going to make it longer and more detailed. You can say: “It is extensively acknowledged that smoking is detrimental to our health and well-being”. Well-being means you’re feeling, you’re happy, you’re comfortable or the whole general idea.
Another one is, you are going to answer the question, to what extent do you agree or disagree. To what extent means: I completely agree, I partly agree so in this case I’d say: In my point of view, I completely agree that the government should ban it. I want to change the word “ban”, so you can use “prohibit”, this is a good word to use.

The whole sentence would be:

“It is extensively acknowledged that smoking is detrimental to our health and well-being, so the government and relative organisations should ban it. I completely agree with this point of view, I think smoking should be banned.” (35 words).

So today, the topic we talk about it, how to write introduction. In the next class, we’ll talk about how to write body 1: “Why smoking is bad.”, body 2:”How the government should ban it” and we will discuss how to write conclusion.

Thank you.