What is your opinion?

Read and understand the question

One key to it is understand the question and to be clear about what you want to say in your response. Clear thinking leads to clear writing.As ever, the first step is to read and understand the question. Here is the question today:

Despite advances in medicine there are concerns that certain diseases such as diabetes are increasing and some people believe future generations will face greater problems with health and die younger than we do today.

What is your opinion?

This question asks you to:

1. give your opinion – this must be clear in the introduction and the conclusion

2. about whether health will be better in future – this means that you need to talk about the future and now – there must be some comparison

3. about whether people will live longer – this needs to be mentioned to

All these things must be included.

How to structure IELTS essays

This lesson shows you a simple way to structure IELTS essays. Below I show a very simple method (with a downloadable resource) I use myself and also show my students in class.

Read and understand the question

One key to it is understand the question and to be clear about what you want to say in your response. Clear thinking leads to clear writing.As ever, the first step is to read and understand the question. Here is the question today:

Despite advances in medicine there are concerns that certain diseases such as diabetes are increasing and some people believe future generations will face greater problems with health and die younger than we do today.

What is your opinion?

This question asks you to:

1. give your opinion – this must be clear in the introduction and the conclusion

2. about whether health will be better in future – this means that you need to talk about the future and now – there must be some comparison

3. about whether people will live longer – this needs to be mentioned to

All these things must be included.

Think about the examiner – make your opinion and structure clear – give your essay a backbone

IELTS essays get marked quickly. You don’t want to allow the examiner to make a mistake. So make life easy for him/her by showing the structure of your essay as clearly as possible. There are 4 places you do this – what I think of as being the spine of the essay. (your spine is your backbone – it’s what keeps you upright and gives you your structure).

1. the introduction – that’s the first thing they read and where you make your first impression and first impressions count

2. the first sentence of each paragraph (x2) – examiners are taught that each paragraph should have one main idea – show them what it is in the first sentence

3. the conclusion – that’s the last thing they read and the first thing they remember!

The key is link these things together so that

• the introduction matches the conclusion – the opinion/point of view is the same: you just need to change the language

• the two body paragraphs link to the opinion/point view in the introduction

To do this try this simple essay structure plan. It may just look like 4 boxes on a blank piece of paper, but it might save your life!