Welcome to course 2, module 4. The first part of this presentation about iBT Independent Writing Task. We're going to focus on the task structure and see how you can get ready to use your time and plan your answer. Let's take a look at the structure of the test first. As we've read, you're going to have 30 minutes to answer a question and your answer needs to be about 300 words long. It's important to right the body, your personal opinions about the question asked, and there's no right or wrong answer to this question, you need to type your answers on the computer. After you have completed the intake raided writing task, you will see the directions for the independent writing task. After you click on this misdirections, you will see the prompt or the topic that you must write about. You will be able to see the prom as you are working on the response, your screen will look like this, on the left side, you will see the direction and the question and on the right side, you'll be able to type your answers. There are some useful features that you should use, you will have to cut button, paste button, undo button and another useful feature here is the word count, and you can see how many words you have typed. For this question, the readers are looking for three main things. One, development, that means the readers are looking for how well you develop the topic with your details, examples, and reasons. If you just use a lot of words and sentences that don't really support the points you are making about the topic. Or if you just develop ideas not related to the topic, you'll receive a low score. Second, organization, this basically means a reader can read your essay from beginning to end without becoming confused, you can help the reader follow your ideas by writing in paragraphs and using good transitions. The third criterion is language use, readers are looking for things like sentence structure, word choice, and vocabulary. It's also important that you use grammar that's strong and consistent. We will talk about all these three in course number 3 when we talk about tips and strategies in writing. Now we're ready to start, how are you going to start planning your essay? The first step is reading the essay prompt or the question very carefully. Then you're going to brainstorm or think about the prompt and writing everything that comes to your mind. Three, plan your response and write a very short outline that can help you organize your thoughts. First step is reading the prompt, that means reading the prompt very carefully to understand all the parts of the question. Because sometimes some of the prompts or questions have several parts, then you need to make sure you can paraphrase that question, this will help you understand the prompt more thoroughly. Here is an example, some learners think doing assignments with friends is more helpful other people prefer to study alone. Which side do you agree with? Explain why using specific details and reasons. Now let's analyze this prompt this prompt says that there are two opinions regarding how learners prefer to do their assignments, a, some people prefer to do their assignment with friends, b, some people prefer to do their assignments alone. You need to decide which of these positions you want to support. If you want to choose the first, then you need to make sure there are enough good reasons to help you defend your opinion. If you find a stronger reasons that supports studying alone, then you need to stick with that? Next step is brainstorming, when you gather ideas and think and write any ideas that come to your mind, it will prepare you to focus and pay attention to the topic. In this section, you need to think about quantity over quality. The more ideas you write, the better, you don't need to worry about them being right or wrong, you'll have a chance to go through them and pick the ones that you want to use in your answer. Now you can start planning the essay, the first step in planning has to choose your basic thesis. Thesis is the controlling or central idea of an essay. This simply means choosing what you want to support or agree with. Remember that when you choose a thesis, there's no right or wrong answer. Next, you need to choose your reasons. These reasons need to be strong enough to support your thesis. Next, you need to write a simple outline, you don't have to write a formal outline, just a basic plan for your four or five paragraphs. You may be tempted to skip this step to save time, but an outline will actually save you time as it will help you focus and keep your essay organized. Finally, before you continue, let's think about the time that you have. As you remember, you're going to have 30 minutes for this question. Ideally, you don't want to spend more than five minutes in understanding the prompt, brainstorming and planning your essay. This is the end of part 1 of this presentation. In the second part, we're going to look at some useful templates that can save you some time as you plan and type your response. See you in the second part of this presentation.
