Essay Feedback March 2016
This is finally the final draft of your essay feedback on the two essays you sent me a couple of weeks ago!
Let’s start with Task 2.
This is your original answer, which as I said in my first draft I rated as a 6.
It has become far more normal for pregnant to have time off after they born their next generations. Personally, I believe that the benefits of this outweigh its drawbacks.
It is true that there are some drawbacks for companies to give their young mothers time off. First of all, a company needs to find someone to replace the young mothers position when this company gives time off for a young mother. This can be difficult, if few people are able to do the young mothers job that need long time training or experiences. The company is unlikely to find someone to do this job for a short time as when the young mother return to the company, the new worker has to leave or the company needs to employ one more person. This could be a burden for the company. Secondly, extra money is needed to pay for the young mother when they are on holiday. In China, for example, companies need to pay salaries and insurance for the young mothers when they look after their infants in a short time.
However, it is advantageous not only for families but also for the society, if women are allowed to have time off after their babies are born. For a family, it is beneficial for the upbringing of a child, if his/her mother has enough time to keep he/she company. Although their grand parents are able to look after the young infants, no one can delay that a mother is the best person to do this job.
Especially, in China, we have one child policy. For many families, the child is the central of the universe, grandparents are more likely spoil their children, they give the child whatever the child wants. This is detrimental for the childs future. For the society, if the young mother is allowed to have enough time to take care the child who are more likely to become a productive and good member of the society.
In conclusion, although there are some drawbacks for companies to give young mother time off, their families and the society will definitely benefit more from this policy.
Let’s run through some feedback on the scores before we look at the corrected essay that you asked for.
Content (内容): 6
You are on topic and the second and third paragraphs are obviously one for, and one against. The second paragraph contains two points, however, which are basically different and a native speaker would have used two. The problem is that the second point about the company paying insurance is not developed at all (and also suffers from a breakdown in prepositions (in) and appropriacy (insurance) which makes the second point even less clear). The conclusion is quite nice, but suffers from introducing the description 'policy' for the first time. A higher level essay, therefore, has clearer points (观点), and they are all developed well, and the conclusion supports them without adding any new information.
Logic: 6
This is fine for a 6. There are issues with referencing which mean the essay is not near a 7 for logic. For example: "This can be difficult, if few people are able to do the young mothers job that need long time training or experiences." Here it is not clear what the relative pronoun 'that' refers to, and in fact it seems it should have been re-written to form part of the conditional structure to which it belongs, but the writer is unable to do it. This is typical of some other errors, and also there are places where the relationship between ideas is not well marked at all, for example the relationship between 'one child policy, centre of the universe, grandparents spoil' etc, which are not well linked. Overall, some good use of sequencers (Although, firstly, secondly) and the flow of the essay is the right fit for a Logic band 6.
Vocab: 6
This is difficult to rate- the score you get will depend a lot on your examiner and how many mistakes you make when writing the essay using pencil on the day. There are some nice examples of collocation which would lift the score to a 7 for vocab (find someone to replace the ... position),(be a burden for the company),(beneficial for the childs upbringing),(detrimental for the childs future). But this is spoiled by repeated lower level inaccuracy (unable to use collocation "give birth"),(pregnant - pregnant women),(long time training - do training for a long time),(in a short time - for a short time),(delay - deny). Essentially if you had one less mistake and a generous examiner you might get a 7 for vocab, but one less high level phrase and a strict examiner and you might get a 5. For a higher level score you need to focus on making fewer mistakes in your collocation.
Grammar: 6
This is the weakest part of the essay. There is correct use of relative pronouns (that) conditional clauses (if) and infinitive for purpose (to), but also several errors for all of these, particularly at the end. A complete breakdown in use of relative pronouns in the penultimate sentence means that an examiner who can't speak Chinese probably can't understand it. Also, in this penultimate paragraph, there are large numbers of subject-verb-object simple structures which are typical of a band 5 essay. Because some correct complex sentences are present it gets a six, but one or two more errors in these and the essay would be given 5 for grammar.
Overall Score: 6.
In a good day you might luck a 6.5, but you are more likely to make mistakes when you write with pencil which would reduce your score to a 5.5.
Finally, you said it would be useful to have a corrected version of the essay, with changes highlighted in red. See if the following is what you were looking for:
It has become far more normal for pregnant women to have time off after they give birth to their next generation. Personally, I believe that the benefits of this outweigh its drawbacks.
It is true that there are some drawbacks for companies which give their young mothers time off. First of all, a company needs to find someone to replace the young mother’s position when this company gives time off to the young mother. This can be difficult, if few people are able to do the young mothers job which may need long training or experience. The company is unlikely to find someone to do this job for a short time as when the young mother returns to the company, the new worker has to leave or the company needs to employ one more person. This could be a burden for the company. Secondly, extra money is needed to pay for the young mother when they are on leave. In China, for example, companies need to pay salary and benefits for the young mothers when they look after their infants during that short time.
However, it is advantageous not only for families but also for society if women are allowed to have time off after their babies are born. For a family, it is beneficial for the upbringing of a child if its mother has enough time to keep it company. Although their grandparents are able to look after young infants, no one can deny that a mother is the best person to do this job.
In China we have the one child policy. So for many families, especially in China, the child is the centre of the universe, therefore grandparents are more likely spoil their grandchildren, and give the child whatever it wants. This is detrimental for the child’s future. For society, if the young mother is allowed to have enough time to take care of her child it is more likely to become a productive and good member of society.
In conclusion, although there are some drawbacks for companies to give young mothers time off, their families and society will definitely benefit more from maternity leave.
Remember, this essay now doesn’t have any obvious mistakes, but doesn’t include changes in logic, such as the second drawback in paragraph 2 which would be better expanded into another paragraph, and I haven’t corrected overuse of the phrase ‘young mother’ which would be better finding other alternatives for (such as ‘mother’, ‘new mother’, ‘parent’, ‘new parent’ etc etc).
Now let’s look at Task 1.
Here’s your original answer:
The bar chart illustrates the main reasons why young boys watched the Formula one in March 2007
It is clear that most young boys followed the Formula one because of excitement and speed of cars. There was less than ten percent young males whose reasons were not given in this bar chart.
Looking at the bar chart in details, we can find out that more than fifty percent young males watched Formula one for excitement and the figure for speed of cars was slight less than excitement. 44% young males followed the Formula one because of sport technology. Around one third young males watch this game because they were interested in drivers and teams,36% and 29% separately. The figure for modern was just under one forth in the same year. Meanwhile, the figures for glamour, brands and favourite sport were quite similar, about on eighth. Less than ten percent young males followed the Formula one because of honesty and fairness. We do not know the reasons for seven percent young boys why then followed Formula one from this chart.
So, as I said in my first draft, I thought this would be an overall score of 6, although, as I also said about Task 2 it might well become a 5.5 if you had written it in 20 minutes using pencil.
Content (内容) 6.
Full, and covers everything. Saying that you don't know the last 7% in the overview is odd (maybe you wanted to use your ‘whose’ sentence - bad choice as it reduces the score). However, it does look a little like you just went through the data one by one, rather than finding any real differences between information, for example that glamour and brands are clearly less important and commenting that the graph only shows data about boys. This ability to notice interesting things from the data and CATEGORIZE the data is your main area of improvement, in my opinion, in your whole IELTS test.
Logic: 6
The logic is satisfactory - enough for a six. The inclusion of a minor detail in the overview paragraph is a pity, and some innappropriacy (‘seperately’, instead of ‘respectively’) holds the score to a six. In any case, the overview also has one big piece of information followed by the smallest. A higher level candidate would use a linking word to show contrast here: ‘however just under 10 percent of males didn’t have any of the reasons given’ or something to that effect. The last sentence also has a problem with referencing (words like his, her, its which refer back to things mentioned before), which I would probably mark down as a grammar problem though (see below).
Vocab: 6
Vocab is fine for a six. Nice paraphrasing, but a bit too much. A selection of phrases with higher appropriacy would lift the score. ‘The figure for modern was just under one forth in the same year’ is an example of the lumpy way you have used words from the graph and tried to add that to different ways of saying the numbers. A higher level candidate would have said something like ‘Just under one fourth of the males in the survey said that the modernity of Formula One was a reason for being a follower’. This is real paraphrasing. Note the change of word type for ‘modern’ and ‘following’. This ability to be flexible in Task 1 is so important because the words you have to use are given in the chart or diagram.
Grammar: 6
Also fine for a six. There is a mixture of sentences, but a complete balls up of the relative clause/attempt at referencing in the last sentence is an example of the inaccuracy that means you don’t get a higher score, both for this and the Logic score. This is a bigger problem in your Task 2 essay though, so in Task 1 you should focus more on being flexible with vocabulary.
Overall Task 1 Score: 6.
Remember, typing means that silly spelling mistakes are removed: you always have these in your handwritten essays. In some cases this can reduce your vocab score to a 5.
So, overall you would have got a 6 for these two tasks together.
You need to focus on:
1. On reducing mistakes with collocations in your vocabulary. Without these you are much more likely to get a higher score. This is especially important in Task 1 because there is such a small amount of vocabulary that you actually can use. You need to understand the differences between nouns, adjectives, verb forms and move between these using the vocabulary given.
2. On reducing grammatical mistakes. Some less experienced examiners mark candidates with mistakes very harshly, so in an unlucky day this will affect your score a lot. As I mentioned in the feedback above, these mistakes become more obvious in Task 2 where you have much more space to show off what grammar structures you know, but also a greater chance that you will make obvious mistakes. Go back and review the work we did a long time ago on ‘that, which, who’, as these relative pronouns are essential for a band 6 candidate to have some control of. We did a whole class on it last year if I remember correctly.
3. Task 1 reveals your lack of flexibility. This is very, very common in China, because students prepare a 格式, and then use it whatever the question is. This is OK for a 6 in task 2, but never works in task 1. Your task 1 score will be pulling down your overall writing score. You need to learn to CATEGORIZE THE DATA and do it differently for every task 2 presented. Look for what interesting new things about the world we can learn from the graph/bar chart/pie chart, however boring the data set is. This, Leo is the key to your higher writing score, your key to passing IELTS, and indeed your key to moving to Australia. |
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