Irina Lutsenko: IELTS, writing, cohesion

"Writing College and Grant Applications" - a mini-course with an American educator 🇺🇸 To make this happen I had to win a grant, but I did, so you get to take an awesome writing course for free! 📝 Course description: This course will focus on how to write applications for a variety of contexts. Oved 4 weeks, attendees will learn about and engage with various parts of the application writing process from understanding prompts and brainstorming to formatting and common mistakes. They will learn the common conventions and expectations for the application types covered in the workshop. Application types: College Applications, Scholarship Applications, Grant Applications, Conference Applications. 📝 Important details: - Name: "Writing College and Grant Applications" - Price: free - Duration: 4 weeks, one 90-minute class a week - Schedule: Monday 18:00-19:30 Moscow time - Start: 30 September - Certificate: with the attendance of 75% of classes - The course is provided by the RELO office. - Commitment to attend and complete is a must! The number of places is limited. To sign up, message me @iraluts. In your first message, introduce yourself properly and tell me about your motivation to join the course in no more than 100 words. 💌 ‼️ People who type like this won't be admitted: "hi,,Irina ! i would Like to sign up for a writing cOurse ." Here is a free lesson in typing: https://t.me/irinalutsenko/310

"Irina, people won't be afraid of you any more if you share this story." A student told me today. (Wait, what? People are afraid of me? Let me know in the comments.) Anyway, here is the story. I am super-organized and focused. But today I screwed up big time - I scheduled an interview with a potential student and didn't show up because I simply forgot about the interview. Forgetting is normal, of course. That's why I put all my arrangements and commitments on Google Calendar. But today, for some unfathomable reason, I didn't open it in the morning. I only realized I had forgotten when the student messaged me on Telegram. Reactions to screw-ups are even more important than screw-ups. Here is what I did: 1️⃣ I apologized profusely and told the person the truth: I forgot. (Which I always do. If I forgot, I say, "Sorry, I forgot." I don't make up "personal emergency" excuses.) 2️⃣ I wrote this story because stories like this are supposed to make me appear more human. (I take pride in appearing to be a robot, but people say I need to appear human.) 3️⃣ I told this story in all my classes today and jumped at the chance to teach the phrase "Happens to the best of us." (See what I did here? I screwed up, but called myself "the best of us" anyway. Smart.) The moral of the story is: Even though I am super-organized, I am only human. Don't be afraid of me.

The pesky "it": a common writing mistake 📝 You know I love good mistakes (= mistakes you can learn from). Here is one from today's IELTS writing class. Can you spot it? "Regarding paper, it can be seen that it experienced a steady growth from 4 million tonnes in 1980 to 12 million tonnes in 2000." The mistake is: "it" is used in two different meanings. 1️⃣ In "it can be seen," "it" is the dummy subject in a passive structure. 2️⃣ In "it experienced," "it" means "paper." But the reader's brain will perceive the first "it" as "paper," so the sentence will read: "Regarding paper, it = the paper can be seen ..." This is confusing. All "it"s in one sentence must refer to the same noun. 💜 The fix? Simply delete "it can be seen" - this phrase is absolutely empty anyway. It contributes nothing but confusion. I'd also say "paper production" rather than just "paper." Did you spot this mistake? Do you use phrases like "it can be seen"? ❓

Patterns and sentence structures 📝 I am a huge fan of patterns and sentence structures that sound awesome and complex, but also natural and unique - not as if they were taken from a grammar section in a text book. Here are some sentences like this from the "New Scientist" magazine: 1️⃣ "Right now, garment workers, as well as being underpaid and overexploited, are also producing an inefficient and downright bonkers amount of clothing." (as well as + ing) 2️⃣ "You might want to control any malicious feelings of envy you have and cultivate benign envy, so that another person’s success motivates you to achieve more rather than making you try to undermine them." (rather than + ing) 3️⃣ "Left unchecked, loneliness can have a physiological impact as detrimental to longevity as smoking or obesity." (reduced clause - left unchecked) 4️⃣ "More surprising is the fact that as the country has ascended to the top of the well-being charts, its economic development has remained remarkably flat." (inverted word order: more + adjective + is + subject) 5️⃣ "If pills aren’t necessarily the answer for people with insomnia, neither are overly simplistic behavioural interventions." (If + negative + neither.) These sentences can almost go straight into your IELTS essay, can't they? 💜 My view on writing is that it is such sentences that give your answer beautiful complexity, unlike, say, the infamous inversion. If these are the types of sentences you want to use in your writing, join my my "Writing with New Scientist" course. It's a writing course based on articles from the New Scientist magazine and geared towards IELTS, but with much less pressure and much less format than in a traditional IELTS writing course. Find out more in the product description below (you don't need an account to view): https://vk.com/market/product/writing-with-new-scientist-47977221-5061302 💌 @iraluts

Speaking with New Scientist - my speaking course based on articles from the "New Scientist" magazine I don't teach a lot of speaking courses (my passion for writing is well-documented). But I do have a couple of groups - we can get a respite from writing, while still discussing deep, thought-provoking, IELTS-y topics. 📝 The course is very rich in language too. To wit, here is a typical worksheet: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tqn0xkQ38AtbiixHA9hHSfrHvMPT3P16IDOwOuSBSjQ/edit Schedules, testimonials, and other details at (you don't need an account to view): https://vk.com/market/product/speaking-with-new-scientist-47977221-5911089 💌 @iraluts

IELTS Writing Task 2: Task Response To highlight a certain flaw to my students, I sometimes write two similar versions of the same paragraph and ask to identify the better one. Here are two versions of the beginning of the first body paragraph on this topic: "The numbers of plants and animals is decreasing in most countries. Why is this happening? What can be done about it?" 🐼 Which has better Task Response? Why? ❓ 1️⃣ "Both reasons for this development stem from human activities. The first one is that as the population of the planet grows, people increasingly encroach on territories where wildlife lives. They do so for a range of purposes, from construction and expansion of cities to clearing the land for farming and agriculture." 2️⃣ "Both reasons for this development stem from human activities. The first one is that as the population of the planet grows, people increasingly encroach on territories where wildlife lives. They do so because they have to invade plant and animal habitats and since the number of people is high, it, in essence, replaces biodiversity." Key: The first version has better Task Response because it develops the previous idea by introducing purposes. The second version simply repeats the previous sentence in different words. Don't confuse repetition of ideas and development of ideas. How would you develop the idea further? What would be your next sentence? Share in the comments. 📝