Proper Planning

Hands up if you have had the following experience:

You are in your warm bed 5 o'clock in the morning and in your dreamy state you hear a storm roaring outside. Then suddenly, somewhere in your brain a voice emerges, it asks, "Have you put the garbage bins out for collection?"
You hate to admit it but the answer is "no". 
The voice continues, "You should put them out now before the garbage truck comes." 
That's true, but it's freezing cold outside and rainy too. 
"If you don't take them out now, you will be stuck with stinky garbage for a week and you will regret." 
Since the voice shows no mercy, you get up, get dressed, and venture into the stormy darkness to wheel the lovely bins. When you head back in, you are all wet and shivering like mad. There's no way to go back to sleep.

The above experience happened to me last Tuesday morning. Did anyone read on the news that Victoria was ripped by a "weather bomb" that day with winds of up to 130 km per hour?

Yarra River flooded its banks 24/6/2014

Interesting story. And the moral of the story is: Plan. Ahead.

IELTS task 2 writing requires us to write a 250 word essay to discuss an issue. We should allocate no more than 40 mins on that so a decent essay plan is very important because it would increase your efficiency. Basically, there are three types of question: 

1. Do you agree or disagree with the statement?

2. What's your opinion regarding the point of view?

3. What are the causes for the problem and what are the effects/possible solutions? 

Regardless of how they put their question, I would suggest writing 5 paragraphs. For the first two types, we can make a plan like this:

Para 1: Intro (paraphrase the question and state your opinion)

Para 2: Supporting reason 1 

Para 3: Supporting reason 2

Para 4: The opposite point of view and your rebuttal against it

Para 5: Conclusion

For type 3, we make a slightly different plan based on the 5-paragraph structure:

Para 1: Intro (paraphrase the question and make a general statement about the causes of the problem)

Para 2: Cause 1 

Para 3: Cause 2

Para 4: Effects/ Possible solutions

Para 5: Conclusion

Why 5 paragraphs?

Well, there are so many ways to tackle an IELTS essay and many would suggest writing only two body paragraphs, hence a 4-paragraph structure. Nothing wrong with that. The advantage of putting three body paragraphs is to reduce the length of each paragraph so they are easier to handle. The fact is, many students tend to "get carried away" when they try to elaborate an idea within a paragraph. They tend to temporarily forget the main point of the argument as stated in their introduction; as a result, the ideas presented in the body paragraphs do not answer the question.

Let me show you how it works with an example in the next post :)

Confession of a Procrastinator

About two years ago, I came across a popular theory online developed by a Stanford Professor in Philosophy whose name is John Perry. Let's not yawn just yet, because the "theory" is more like a fun parody rather than one of those hardcore and long-winded chains of thought. The theory is called Structured Procrastination. I'm not an internet expert who knows before everybody else what's hot in the cyber world and I guess by the time I realised the theory's existence many people might have already heard of that. Well, I could be late, but it doesn't change my opinion of it - that guy's essays are ridiculously funny.

He published a book on it too

If you haven't visited the procrastinating webpage, I think you should. It means to offer a self-help program for procrastinators by making them productive without changing their procrastinating manner. Sounds great, doesn't it? We all know how hard it is to shake a bad attitude. I consider myself an occasional or maybe seasonal procrastinator, and I think the theory would work for me.

For instance, I was supposed to post stuff on this blog a few months ago but since I am in my procrastinating state of mind, I prefer to clean the house, change into my Lycra gear to do yoga, even peel and core seven Granny Smiths to make apple crumble. I was ready to undertake more complicated tasks just to run away from the most pressing one on the list. I'm pretty sure everyone behaves that way from time to time - some more often than others.

So, one of the method Prof. Perry suggests is by using a to-do list which breaks down one task into smaller portions. For example, instead of writing on the yellow sticky note: "Write a blog entry", I write: 1.Turn on your laptop and position it in a well-lit spot; 2. Log on to Blogger; 3. Put a sexy heading; 4. Write four lines; 5.Drink a glass of water; and so on. By so doing, we enjoy the thrill of checking the listed items every two minutes and feel so productive - almost like a non-procrastinator. Not a bad way to lure me in.

I have some students who are somewhat reluctant to study for IELTS. They can take half a day to write a 250 word essay and one whole day to finish three reading passages. Well, why don't we try the method above? Make a list: 1. Take out your IELTS practice test; 2. Find some room on your desk; 3. Read the writing Task 2 question; 4. Draw a table for the essay plan; 5. One sip of tea as you put down the main idea for the first paragraph... 

Wait a second, what is an essay plan?

More on that next time :)