Course 3: TOEFL, IELTS, MELAB, GMAT essay

Description

Your essay is marked based on four criteria: content, vocabulary, grammar, and organization. The essay writing course helps you practise organizing your thoughts by doing an effective brainstorming session and use that to improve the content of your essay. You will discuss and write on some of the topics that appear on these tests and learn how to generate ideas before starting writing. This exercise will help activate the vocabulary that is related to those topics. You will review the simple, compound, and complex sentence structures required to write strong error-free sentences to make clearer arguments that prove your opinion. To properly organize your essay, you will learn to write clear thesis statements in the introductory paragraph that contain your opinion followed by a blueprint of two or three main ideas that you want to support in the middle paragraphs. In the middle paragraphs you will learn how to write strong convincing supports for the claims you made in the thesis statement. Finally, your concluding paragraph restates the thesis and clinches the essay.

Objective

To help the candidate learn the SYSTEM of English academic writing and to have a precise, organized plan before going to the test centre.

Who should attend

Candidates who want to pay extra attention to the problem of writing and want a solution to it. The course is particularly useful to those who need precise questions to their writing problems and need precise answers to them. A minimum LINC 5 entry level is required.

Program outcomes

Overview of the essay topics

Overview of essay organization

Sentence structure

• Compound sentences
  • coordinating conjunctions (and, or, so, yet, for)
    
  • correlative conjunctions( either .. or, neither .. nor, not only, ... but also)
• Complex sentences
  • Adjective clauses
    • defining (e.g. "The men who founded this country were great people)
      
    • non-defining (e.g. "Toronto, which is the capital of Ontario, offers many business opportunities.")
      
  • Adverb clauses
    
    • Time (e,g. "After he received his TOEFL score, he took a sigh of relief.")
      
    • Concession (e.g. "Although he has all a man can wish for, he is not happy.")
      
    • Conditionals ( e.g. "We will offer you a 20% discount provided you pay the full amount upfront.")
      
    • Cause (e.g. " Toronto's population is increasing because many new immigrants settle there.")
      
    • Purpose (e.g. " she took the essay writing course so that she could get a better score.")
      
    • Place (e.g. "Wherever there is water, there is life.)
      
• Simple sentences
  
  • connected with conjunctive adverbs
    
    • Addition (e.g. " The speaker spoke in a monotone; further, he digressed from the topic too much.)
      
    • Contrast ( e.g. "Public transit workers have been on strike a week; nevertheless, no agreement is in sight yet.)
      
    • Comparison (e.g. "Jim went to the Queen's university; his daughter, likewise, did her studies there."
      
    • Result (e.g. "He studied hard enough for the TOEFL; consequently, he received a 250 score.)
      
    • Time (e.g. "The Town Council first discussed the new building proposal; subsequently, it ratified the homelessness issue."

Topic sentence

• Limited subject (topic)
  
• Precise opinion (main idea)

Writing supporting sentences by applying

• Examples
  • Quick examples
    
  • narrative examples
• Logic
  
  • Inductive reasoning
    
  • Deductive reasoning
• Appealing to authority
  
• Statistics
  

Achieving Unity

• Relevance
  
• Contradiction
  

Achieving Coherence

• Through reminder words
  
• Through explanation of support
  
• Through transitions
  

Writing the thesis statement

Writing the blueprint

Introductory paragraph

• Motivator

Concluding Paragraph

• Reworded topic sentence
  
• Clincher
  

Essay checklist