Shadowing Practice: He Stopped Thinking and Jumped to Band 7 - Learn English Speaking with YouTube
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Most people quit after a few failures,
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Most people quit after a few failures,
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but Ding failed IELTS writing 10 times while acing every other part of the test.
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I'm going to show you the exact change he made in just two weeks
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that finally got him the writing score that he needed,
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and how you can use it to boost your own writing score.
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So one day, I got this message from Ding.
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Chris, I've been trying for over one year, 10 attempts.
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I scored 8 in listening and reading,
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but writing is always 6.5.
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I don't know what's stopping me.
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Please help.
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And I replied, send me your last three essays.
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You see, Ding wasn't struggling because he was bad at English.
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He's an IT engineer, he's smart, he's logical, he's professional.
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And he'd been listening to English podcasts for years,
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reading English articles daily and building up his vocabulary every single day.
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But every writing test, just 6.5.
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I actually didn't know what's the obstacle stopping me from getting any higher school.
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And like most IELTS students stuck at 6.5,
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he did what seemed logical.
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He went on to Google and he searched how to improve IELTS rating.
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And every article seemed to say the same thing.
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Use big words, use fancy vocabulary,
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and it's guaranteed to work.
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So he memorized lists of high-level words,
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and he built his vocabulary from 4,000 words to 6,000 words.
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But when he took the test again, guess what score?
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6.5.
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When I looked at his essays,
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I told him something that was quite shocking to him.
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Your problem isn't your vocabulary.
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Problem is you're trying to do too many things at the same time.
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Think about one of those really annoying people that walk down busy city streets looking down at their phone,
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stopping everybody walking and banging into things and causing accidents.
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Are they bad at walking?
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No. Are they complete idiots?
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Probably not.
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They know how to walk.
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They know how to look at their phone.
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They're doing those at the same time
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and they're turning a simple task into a very very difficult task and making everybody around them mad.
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When we looked at Ding's essays,
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they were filled with all of these minor errors.
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Small spelling mistakes, small grammar mistakes.
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Not because he didn't understand how to use that grammar or how to spell that word,
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but because he was trying to do so many things at the same time,
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it was forcing him to make mistakes when these were completely avoidable.
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So let me show you exactly what we taught Ding and you can start improving today immediately.
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So here's what he was writing.
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Implementation of comprehensive healthcare protocols necessitates multidisciplinary collaboration between medical practitioners to facilitate optimal patient outcomes.
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So if we have a look,
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protocols necessitates, that's a grammar error.
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And then the second mistake is he's not really sure what necessitates means in this context,
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and he spells it incorrectly.
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Third, facilitate optimal patient outcomes.
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It just sounds like he swallowed a medical textbook.
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It doesn't sound like he actually knows what he's talking about here.
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And fourth, the examiner is reading about 100 essays in a day.
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They don't want to decode complex sentences.
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Don't give the examiner a headache.
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Make their job as easy as possible.
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So instead of all that,
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we just said write it like this.
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Doctors and nurses need to work together to help patients get better.
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Same meaning, zero errors and the examiner can look at that sentence and understand what it means instantly.
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Simple language doesn't lower your score,
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it improves your score because it improves communication.
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What lowers your score?
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Grammar errors, spelling errors, unclear communication,
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vocabulary that the examiner doesn't even understand.
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So let me teach you the three simple rules that we taught Dane that massively improved his score.
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Rule number one, close all mental tabs except three.
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When you write, your brain should only focus on three things.
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Number one, answer the question.
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Number two, be clear.
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And then number three, avoid as many errors as possible.
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That's it.
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That's all you need.
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If all you did was those three things you would massively
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improve your score rule number two become your own grammar detective
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after ding got feedback on three essays from me he noticed
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the pattern he only really had two grammar errors consistency of the plurals
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and singles and sometimes the tense issue here's what he did
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and you can do the same thing right now even
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if you have different grammar errors he wrote He wrote an essay and then spent 15 minutes hunting for those two errors.
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After just a couple of weeks,
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Ding started to notice these all the time.
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And he started to prevent them before he even wrote them.
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Once you have been there,
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you notice that, oh, I have made this wrong.
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I should probably choose another word.
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I should probably avoid these kind of things.
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So he went from his whole essay just being covered in red marks when I gave him feedback
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to only having one or two little mistakes.
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So what you need to do is you need to understand what your common grammar errors are,
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and then you need to become that grammar detective.
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And then finally, rule number three,
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the most important one, 100% rule.
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This changed everything for Ding,
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and has changed everything for hundreds,
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probably thousands of our students.
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Before following this rule, he used words that he was 70 or 80% sure about.
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He kind of knew the meaning,
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he kind of knew the collocations,
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he kind of knew the grammar,
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but he wasn't 100% sure.
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He would think like, that sounds right, I'll try that.
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You shouldn't think in these terms.
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What you should do instead is only use words you are 100% sure about.
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You know the meaning, you know the spelling,
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you know the grammar, even if it is a simple word,
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you should use that word instead of something more complex that you're not 100% sure about.
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Think about it this way,
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would you drive a car if you're 80% sure that the brakes would work?
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No. So when Ding wanted to write necessitates,
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he'd ask himself, am I 100% sure about this?
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Do I really know what it means?
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No. What's a simpler way of saying this?
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So we would write needs,
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it was simple, it was clear,
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it was error free, and it will dramatically improve your score if you do that over and over again in your essays.
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But even after all that,
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and Ding following those three rules,
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who's still struggling with something a lot of you struggle with, generating ideas.
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This is really important for a lot of you watching.
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I'm not picking on certain countries or anything like that.
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It's just a reality and we deal with this all the time.
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In many countries and many educational systems,
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students learn through memorization, by repetition and by following examples.
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You guys should be really serious about the critical thinking if you're from some certain Asian countries.
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Because of some education issues here or other countries,
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you guys probably don't have a chance to find the right way to put down your thoughts.
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Now I'm not saying one system is better than the other but the system that you want to go into,
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which is the western system, emphasizes critical thinking.
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Generating original ideas and original arguments and evaluating different solutions from different angles.
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Thinking independently.
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These are skills.
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Think of them as mental muscles.
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Like muscles, if you don't use them, they're not very strong.
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So what did we get Ding to do?
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Well we got him to exercise these muscles.
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We got him to practice thinking,
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not just writing, because your writing is basically just you taking the ideas from your brain and putting them on paper.
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If your thinking is not clear,
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your essay will not be clear.
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So for every essay topic,
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before writing anything, he would ask himself three questions.
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What are different perspectives on this?
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What would someone in a completely different country
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or a different socioeconomic class what would they think what would they disagree with me on
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and why and finally what real world examples support each of these sides
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so thinking about things from different angles
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and then coming up with what he thought independently
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but here's where ding story gets really interesting two weeks before his test he was sitting at his computer
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and he was just staring at a screen.
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He'd just finished his first week of practicing using our method.
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And he started doubting.
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He started asking himself, what if this doesn't work?
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And his family were putting pressure on him and asking him when he'd finally pass this silly English exam.
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His immigration plans were on hold,
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over a year wasted and thousands of dollars wasted.
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And here's the thing about Ding's story that I really respect.
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He had to make a choice.
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He could go back to memorizing vocabulary,
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back to trying to impress the examiner,
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back to the method that had failed him ten times,
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or he could trust something completely different.
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He had to take a leap of faith.
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And when he came to me, he was completely overwhelmed.
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He was worried about everything.
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All the advice that he'd been given before by all these past teachers
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and courses and advice that he sees on YouTube was just swirling around in his head.
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And I told him, let's just forget about everything.
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For the next two weeks,
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just focus on clearly answering the question and reducing the number of mistakes that you're making.
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Just do those two things and that's going to remove all of this overwhelm.
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And over the next week, he wrote 10 essays.
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In every essay, he spent about 15 minutes at the end hunting those common errors.
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Every essay replacing uncertain words with certain ones.
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And every essay practicing thinking critically from multiple different angles.
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Just clear, accurate English.
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And when test day arrived,
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Ding walked into the test center with a new attitude.
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His brain wasn't juggling a hundred things anymore.
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And after he'd finished his essay on test day,
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he did something he'd never done before.
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Because he spent his time just doing these simple things,
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he had ten minutes at the end.
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And he spent those ten minutes checking his entire essay and fixing all of the different errors.
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And he actually said he found four at the end.
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Four errors that would have lowered his score and led to 6.5 again.
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Two weeks later his results arrived.
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Overall 7.5, 8 for listening,
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8.5 for reading, 7 for writing, 7 for speaking.
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Not by learning more but using what was there all along.
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All he did was use his own ideas,
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his own intelligence, his own English that he was already proficient in
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and just showed the the examiner what he was capable of.
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Got the score I really wanted.
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I've been working there for a very long time,
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so I'm really happy I got it, finally.
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Today, Ding is applying for Canadian immigration.
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The score that held him back for over a year finally achieved.
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If you'd like to join the same VIP course that helped Ding get his scores,
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all you have to do is just go below into the description,
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and you will find a link that will give you 10% off.
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If you want to watch more success stories telling you how to improve your IELTS score, click here.
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About This Lesson
In this lesson, you will explore the journey of an English learner named Ding, who faced challenges in achieving his desired IELTS writing score despite being proficient in other areas of the test. You will understand the importance of focusing on clarity and minimizing errors in your writing. This lesson will provide you with actionable strategies to enhance your writing skills and improve your overall English proficiency, including key vocabulary and phrases to elevate your communication.
Key Vocabulary & Phrases
- Multidisciplinary collaboration: Working together across different fields or specialties.
- Optimal: Most favorable or best for a particular situation.
- Implementation: The process of putting a decision or plan into effect.
- Facilitate: To make a process easier or more achievable.
- Comprehensive: Thorough and inclusive, covering all or nearly all elements.
- Minor errors: Small mistakes in writing or speech that can affect clarity.
- Accidents: Unplanned events that can lead to mistakes or errors, often causing confusion.
- Proficient: Having a high degree of skill or expertise in a particular area.
Practice Tips
To improve your English pronunciation and effectively use the vocabulary from this lesson, consider the following practice tips:
- Shadow Speak: Listen to the transcript and repeat it aloud. Pay attention to the speed and tone of the speaker. This exercise will help you internalize the rhythm and intonation patterns of English.
- Slow it down: Since the content may be delivered rapidly, practice shadowing at a slower speed initially. Gradually increase the pace as you become more comfortable with the material.
- Focus on clarity: As you practice shadow speech, emphasize clarity in your pronunciation. Reducing minor errors in speech will help you convey your ideas more effectively.
- Record yourself: Use a recording device or app to capture your shadowing sessions. Listen back to identify areas where you can improve your pronunciation and reduce errors.
- Repeat regularly: Frequent practice is key. Set aside time each day to engage in shadowspeaks, focused on different sections of the transcript to enhance your familiarity with various contexts.
By incorporating these techniques into your routine, you can significantly enhance your writing and speaking abilities, ensuring that your ideas come across as clearly and effectively as possible.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.
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