Transcript
Use with ChatGPT / Claude Auto-scroll A
Introduces the idea that Orwell and Stephen King’s advice matches IELTS band 9 criteria. Explains the first rule: use vocabulary you know well and avoid trying to sound overly advanced.
George Orwell and Stephen King, writing decades apart, give almost exactly the same writing advice.And the crazy thing is, it matches exactly what the official IELTS marking criteria says about what a good essay looks like, what a band 9 essay actually looks like.So, in this video, what I'm going to do is show you the exact principles, put them into easy-to-understand rules, and explain to you how you can use them today to improve your writing.Okay, so let's start off with rule number one.Let's see what Stephen King has to say."One of the really bad things you can do to your writing is to dress up the vocabulary, looking for long words because you're maybe a little bit of ashamed of your short ones."And let's hear what George Orwell says."Never use a long word when a short one will do."And I think the keyword here is ashamed.
Why do IELTS students think that they need to use high-level or fancy vocabulary?Because they think that if they don't use it, they will get a low score.Well, what does the official marking criteria actually have to say about that?So, lexical resource is what we refer to as vocabulary and for the purposes of IELTS.But, what it says here is, "For band 9, a wide range of vocabulary is used accurately and appropriately with very natural and sophisticated control of lexical features."What does that mean?Well, we need to compare that to what it actually says for band 6, let's say.So, it says here, "If the writer is a risk-taker, there will be a wider range of vocabulary used, but higher degrees of inaccuracy and inappropriacy."And this is what we call on our VIP course the 100% rule.100% rule just means only use words that you are 100% sure of.
You know the meaning, you know the spelling, you know how to use that word in a sentence.Because if you don't, you will be using lots of words inaccurately and inappropriately.And the big confusion, and this is what Stephen King and Orwell are talking about here, is a lot of students believe that to get a high score, most of the words need to be like C1 or C2 level.But you can take any book and look at all of the sentences in there, and look at all of the words in there, and most of the words are simple, easy to understand words.So, don't be ashamed to use the words you already know.Now, you should always be trying to improve your vocabulary, but on test day, follow the 100% rule, which is only use words you're 100% sure of, and your writing will improve immensely.
Covers the second rule about avoiding tired metaphors, similes, and stock IELTS phrases. Emphasizes that memorized language sounds unnatural and can make writing seem lazy or ignorant.
So, let's look at rule number two.This is what Stephen King says.He ran like a madman.She was pretty as a summer's day.The guy was a hot ticket.And Bob fought like a tiger.What is wrong with this?Well, he says, "Don't waste my time or anyone's with such chestnuts.It makes you either look lazy or ignorant."So, key words there are lazy and ignorant.Lazy, we all know what lazy means.Ignorant means that you don't know better.You're not aware of what to do yet.And what Orwell says about this is, "Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print."Now, within an IELTS context, what this means is writing things like a hotly debated topic, or something like "Nowadays, X is a hot topic."Or there are a plethora of reasons for something.
Or something that we see all the time, "This essay will discuss before coming to a reasoned conclusion."What do all these things have in common with she was pretty as a summer's day or he was a hot ticket or he fought like a tiger?All of these are just memorization.The examiners see things like this all the time.And when you write things like this, you are showing them that either you are lazy or you are ignorant.Lazy means that you couldn't be bothered to learn how to write properly.Or ignorant is you are maybe following what someone who doesn't know what they're doing either.They are telling you to memorize these, insert them into your essay, and magically you're going to get a band nine.This is lazy or ignorant.And if we go back to the marking criteria we have here, talks about using natural vocabulary.
None of this is natural because you just memorized it.And the worst examples of this are when people memorize full chunks of paragraphs or even full chunks of essays, and it just all sounds like this type of language that they're talking here.So, easy fix is don't memorize.Use the language that you have naturally.It is not a memorization test, it is a writing test.Those are two very, very different things.
Explains the third rule: writing should make ideas clear and easy to follow. The focus is on coherence, clarity, and helping the reader understand your thoughts.
Okay, so for rule number three, Stephen King quotes another book called The Elements of Style, which is another seminal book on how to write clearly.And it talks about the reader being a man floundering in a swamp.And that it was the duty of anyone trying to write English to drain this swamp quickly and get this man up to dry ground or at least throw him a rope.And Orwell says, "I have not been considering the literary use of language, but merely language as an instrument for expressing and not for concealing or preventing thought."And if we have a look here at what the marking criteria says.So, for coherence and cohesion, the message can be followed effortlessly.A clear position.And how we express this to our students is the purpose of writing is to help the reader.So, the purpose of writing is not to show how many big words you know.
It's not to show how many phrases you've memorized.It's not to show off.The purpose of writing is to help the reader.So, you do that by giving clear ideas, making your reading effortless to follow, using vocabulary that is easy and clear.Cuz all writing is doing is taking thoughts from your brain and conveying them to the reader so that it makes it easy for the reader to understand the thoughts within your brain.
Discusses the fourth rule, which is about letting go of fear and affectation. The speaker explains why students overuse fancy vocabulary and encourages confidence in using simpler, natural language.
Okay, let's move on to rule number four, and it's probably one of the most powerful ones because it explains why students do this.So, King says, "Good writing is often about letting go of fear and affectation."Affectation means deliberately trying to show off.So, it's about impressing other people by doing something often false.Affectation itself, beginning with the need to define some sort of writing as good and other sorts as bad, is fearful behavior.And Orwell says, "Bad writers are nearly always haunted by the notion that Latin or Greek words are grander than Saxon ones."What he's saying there is just bad writers feel the fear.They feel the need to show off by using Latin and Greek complex words rather than simpler Saxon words, normal English words.And they use words like, and many of you will know these words because they're on lists of band 9 vocabulary, expedite, ameliorate, extraneous.
And this is all to do with fear.And many of our students have actually admitted that even after graduating from our VIP course and us telling them all of these things and giving them feedback and telling them exactly how to get the score that they needed,when they were sitting there on test day, they started to get this fear that if they didn't use memorized vocabulary, they didn't use these high-level words that they memorized, they didn't try and use the fanciest ideas, they wouldfail.And many of them gave in to this fear and actually went back to their old ways and failed the test.And I want you to think about why you have this fear.You have this fear because if somebody tells you, "Here's a list of band 9 vocabulary."or "Here's a list of phrases that are high-level that you can insert into your essays."
what they're really telling you is "You are not good enough.Your English is not good enough.You are not ready to get a high score."So, the rule here is have confidence that you are good enough.The vast majority of students that we work with, when they come into our VIP course and we look at their writing and we give them feedback for vocabulary and for grammar, the vast majority of the feedback is stoptrying to use stuff that is beyond your level and just use the words and phrases and writing that you feel comfortable actually using.So, going back to the 100% rule.And for the vast majority of students that we work with, whenever they have that shift, they stop using words like ameliorate and extraneous and they just use simpler versions of those words and they have confidence in their ownability, their confidence goes up and their writing improves and it becomes this flywheel where they just get more confident and they get better and better.
But you can only really get there if somebody is, you know, looking at your writing and and guiding you and giving you feedback on that.If that's something you're interested in, no pressure, there's a link in the description if you want our help with that and you want us to guide you and give you that confidence.It's up to you, there's a link in the description if you want to join the VIP course.
Summarizes the four rules into a simple writing workflow: thinking, writing, and checking. Ends by directing viewers to a more detailed follow-up video.
And we can summarize all four of these rules by breaking the IELTS writing process down into three parts.The thinking stage, we do all of our thinking and planning, the writing stage where we write out our essay, and then the checking stage where we check that we have done all the right things.If you would like to see this process step-by-step in a lot more detail, watch this video next where we take you through everything step-by-step.