TYPES OF ESSAY QUESTIONS AND STEPS OF GENERAL ESSAY (MS BAO YEN)
Type 1: Argumentative/Opinion/Agree or Disagree
For the opinion type in IELTS Writing Task 2, the test requires you to give your opinion on the opinion stated in the question. Make sure your opinion is stated in the essay and explain your opinion in the body of the essay.
Type 2: Discussion (Discuss both views)
There will be two points of view on an issue, and you must state your opinion on both of them. Each view must be of equal length.
If the topic requires you to give your personal opinion, you do not need to write a separate paragraph, just insert your personal opinion in the introduction or conclusion.
Type 3: Problem & Solution
This type of essay requires the writer to give the cause and solution of a certain problem, in which you only need to spend one paragraph of the body of the essay on the cause and the other paragraph on the solution.
Type 4: Advantage and Disadvantage
This type of topic is very easy to identify and divide the layout, one body paragraph for advantages and the other body paragraph for disadvantages.
Type 5: 2-part Question
This type of question is also relatively simple, the test has two questions and requires you to answer each question along with giving reasons and examples to support your answer. For each question, we will also write the answer in a body paragraph.
II. GENERAL WRITING STEPS
Step 1: Analyze the topic
First, you should spend 1-2 minutes analyzing the following elements of the topic:
Keyword: Keywords in the title
Micro-keyword: Smaller difficult words in the topic
Instruction word: The keyword only requires, the instruction of the lesson
Step 2: Make an outline
Next, you should spend 5-10 minutes planning your essay. This will save you time on the test and make you less likely to make mistakes in the test because you already have the full idea of the text from the start, and you can focus more on vocabulary and Grammar structure.
Step 3: Write Introduction
The beginning of the essay should always have the following two elements:
- Background Sentence: Introduce the topic of the article
In this part, we will paraphrase the topic by changing the vocabulary or changing the grammar structure
- Thesis Statement: Answer a question or give information signaling about the content of the article.
The second sentence in the introduction usually goes straight to the point to answer the question in the passage. Often there is a linking word that indicates an opinion sentence: “In my opinion”, “I believe that”, or “In my view”.
Step 4: Write the body of the essay
Usually two body paragraphs are often written including the following ideas:
- Topic sentence: Topic sentence
- Explanation: Explain
- Example: Specific example