After marrying an Asian mail-order bride, you may consider sending her to university in a western country so that she can improve her English communication skills, there by bettering her communication skills with youin your marriage. This will benefit you in various ways, e.g. it will be easier to talk to her if her English is better; she may find a decent job and bring income to the house holdin the future. Therefore, it seems that sending your Asian mail-order bride to university in a western country is a good idea. But the prerequisite of going to university in an English-speaking country is to have reasonably good English, e.g. most universities in Australia, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Canada and the United States ask their candidates to pass an English language exam before going to university.
If your Asian mail-order bride is keen to go to a western university, she must be able to write in English well because most assignments at university will be written assignments.
Frankly, if you expect your mail-order bride from Asia to find a professional job in an English-speaking country, chances are she must have a university degree. Hence, you’d better encourage her to go to university in an English-speaking country in the first place. Since the majority of candidates (international students) who want to go to western universities struggle a lot when it comes to English writing, I’d like to share some tips today.
Build the right structure.
In terms of a basic English essay such as an IELTS test’s Writing Task II essay, your Asian mail-order bride should write four paragraphs: Introduction, Body Paragraph 1, Body Paragraph 2 and Conclusion.
Here is the structure of an argument (you can easily see why you only need one structure for any argument in the IELTS test):
Introduction – Rephrase the question and provide your opinion.
Body Paragraph 1 – Topic sentence; the first main point; supporting sentence; the second main point; supporting sentence; the third main point; supporting sentence. (If you can’t come up with three main points, two main points should be okay.)
Body Paragraph 2 – The fact that the opinion that you disagree with has one valid point; reason/evidence which shows that valid point is not really valid; why your opinion is still true/better.
Conclusion – Summary of the essay; suggestion/recommendation if appropriate.
Here is the structure of a report:
Introduction – Rephrase the question and provide the thesis statement (what this essay is going to discuss).
Body Paragraph 1 (e.g., reasons) – Topic sentence; the first main point; supporting sentence; the second main point; supporting sentence; the third main point; supporting sentence.
Body Paragraph 2 (e.g., solutions) – Topic sentence; the first main point; supporting sentence; the second main point; supporting sentence; the third main point; supporting sentence.
Conclusion – Summary of the essay; suggestion/recommendation if appropriate.
If it’s a mixture type, your Asian mail-order bride can mix and match the above-mentioned two structures. Try your best to use simple sentences to write topics sentences and main point sentences because simple sentences are easy to understand; try to use complex or compound sentences to write supporting sentences because you want your examiner to know that you are able to write in a sophisticated way.
Come up with the right content fast.
In the IELTS writing test, your Asian mail-order bride must be able to come up with the right ideas to write about very quickly. If your bride from Asia uses my method, she will come up with appropriate content in one or two minutes.
My method is: no matter what topic you are writing about, you can always borrow ideas from other topics, as long as your ideas are relevant to the essay. For instance, if the question is asking you whether e-learning should replace traditional classroom learning or not (the topic is education) and your opinion is e-learning should not replace traditional classroom learning, then your ideas can include:
1) staring at a computer for a long time is bad for eyes (this is borrowed from the health topic);
2) the teacher’s face-to-face instructions and support are still very important (this is borrowed from the communication topic);
3) technology is not always reliable (this is borrowed from the technology topic).
In other words, your mail-order bride from Asia should feel free to do brainstorming while looking for ideas to write about. You don’t need to be a great thinker because the English language test only wants to test your English language skills, not your thinking abilities. Therefore, as long as your content makes sense, the essay is fine.
Vary your language and avoid repetition.
In many languages, repetition is encouraged in writing. However, you should try your best to avoid repetition in English writing!
That means you must vary your language. For instance, when you want to repeat a word, you can use a synonym to replace this particular word. Remember that the examiner wants to see that your Asian mail-order bride is able to use different words, different expressions and different sentence patterns throughout an essay! She must demonstrate her ability to use a wide variety of language patterns, so remember to show off your Asian bride’s varied language.
Learn and use skeletons.
What is a skeleton? It is the basic structure of language. In IELTS writing, there are structure skeletons, paragraph skeletons, topic sentence skeletons and supporting sentence skeletons (sometimes skeletons are also known as templates). If an expert writes a sample essay based on the structure that has been mentioned previously, then the basic language structure of that essay will be the structure skeleton which you can borrow so that you can use the same skeleton in your essay.
Remember: borrowing/using other people’s skeletons is not plagiarism because nobody owns any skeletons – skeletons are purely language patterns. As a result, your Asian wife should feel free to use skeletons that she has learned from others.
When your Asian mail-order bride is preparing for the IELTS test, she must accumulate as many skeletons as possible so that she can perform better in the writing test (this action will save a lot of time)! The best way to accumulate skeletons is to take notes while reading sample essays (or any English articles that interests you). For example, when you are reading a sample essay, you can use a pen to underline the skeletons that you can borrow and use in your IELTS essay (especially sentence patterns/structures). If you are still confused, this is how to learn skeletons from me right now:
Have you noticed that in the paragraph above, the second sentence has a skeleton in it? The best way to accumulate skeletons is to take notes while reading sample essays…
Yes, this is a simple example of skeletons. In the future, you may write sentences similar to this skeleton in your essays (e.g., The best way to teach students is to conduct face-to-face communication. The most effective way to learn a second language is topractice daily. The only way to maximize learning is to study online in the 21st century.) Now I think you have understood how to utilize this powerful method.
Learning skeletons is incredibly simple and exciting because you can improve your writing skills very fast during this process! Next time when you read a sample essay, remember to underline each and every skeleton and use the underlined pure gold in your future essay!
If your Asian mail-order bride wants to go to university in an English-speaking country, she must sit the IELTS test nine times out of ten.
