When students read an IELTS essay task, they face three different challenges:
1) they have to understand the TOPIC
2) they have to understand its SCOPE, and
3) they have to understand the required essay TYPE.
Getting either of these three wrong might make them collect irrelevant or inappropriate ideas in preparation for writing.
To help your students understand what the topic and its scope are IN LIGHT OF the task, ask them (or have them answer in pairs or groups) some leading questions you prepared in advance that will help them notice differences between tasks in terms of topic, scope and essay type.
For example, ‘There has been an increase in homelessness IN YOUR COUNTRY in the last few years. What could be done to solve this problem?’ versus ‘There has been an increase in homelessness IN THE WORLD in the last few years. What could be done to solve this problem? are both solution essays but of a different scope.
Make sure that some of your questions are of a different TOPIC, others differ in SCOPE or their communicative purpose (i.e. essay TYPE).
Hi. I’m Fatime. I’m an IELTS Teacher Trainer, helping CELTA-qualified English language teachers become better at teaching SKILLS, as opposed to just testing them.
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