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Does it take your students a little while to come up with ideas on paper? While their neurons may freeze when confronted with their writing task question, they are in fact not alone. When my student insisted that the 'ideas do matter', I agreed, but said they needn’t be radical or earth-moving concepts, as much as they must be clear, concise and coherent in the message and particularly, the specific parts of the message. It is important to promote to your students a flexible use of topic language and ideas by first reading extensively; then breaking down what they have read for mind mapping; and then sticking the pieces back together in their written and spoken responses.
As a teacher, vary your general and academic texts but also offer learners a choice ‘to read [about] something they want to read’ (R. Warring 2012), which sparks their role as a detective, digging into the topic-related ideas. Learners use existing knowledge as well as new graded and authentic reading and listening materials to interrogate and analyse the details. However, they need to then synthesize these details with the use of mind-mapping or spider plans; an often-shrugged off, yet effective reference tool. This draws out a network of related word groups and idea ingredients, which writers can harness and re-cycle in many similar topic-related exam questions.
Students can use cohesive devices to expand from words into complex sentences, into idea components and finally a full concept. We do this by asking the right questions, which is to say that we explain why and develop the meaning of the idea. We Illustrate this explanation with a real-world circumstance, for instance who, or where and when this occurs. For example, connecting to the idea with personal experience is often ignored, but it is vital, since events that are more closely witnessed feel less sterile than generalized examples. We finally ask 'how does this idea have an impact' and what happens ‘as a result’. The result is that students can join these details together in a written paragraph, or even in a part 3 Speaking response.
IELTS author Sam McCarter (2011) tells us, rarely is it the candidates’ ideas that are lacking, but rather the need to organise and link the components of a simple idea. While you shouldn’t limit higher level students who find more unique and ‘out-of-box’ explanations, examples and implications, if you give lower levels a simpler prescription for presenting the idea elements, this will help them to dress it up with details. From there, you and your students can produce a clear and reader-friendly structure.
References/ Other reading
Sam McCarter 2011 www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/skills-techniques-link-speaking-writing-ielts
Rob Waring 2012 https://erfoundation.org/wordpress/why-er-should-be-an-indispensable-part-of-all-language-programs-by-rob-waring/
Douglas E. Forster -March 2014 Studies in English and American Literature no.49 ’Using Web-based Extensive Reading in the EFL Classroom’
Christopher Redmond Extensive Reading to Improve IELTS Writing Skills https://www.chinaielts.org/teachers/Doc_main_1204.html
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