Speaker 1: Hello everyone, thank you for joining me again and welcome to any new viewers. This is To The Point English with Ben, I'm Ben, and in this video I'm going to give you five tips that will really help to level up your writing skills. Now whether you're preparing for the Cambridge English exams, the B2, C1 Advanced or C2 Proficiency, or maybe another exam like IELTS, or maybe you're not preparing for any exam, this video will be useful because writing has become a little bit of a lost art in modern society because people don't really practice writing as much as they used to perhaps. People are chatting all day, typing and texting, but not really sitting down and writing a complete composition. And I notice that a lot of my students really struggle with this part of the Cambridge English exams. And the biggest problem they have really is that their compositions are a little bit too basic, a little bit too simple. The examiners are looking for complex sentences. And these five tips that I'm going to give you today will help you to do just that. And it's not as complicated as you may think. The first tip is really quite simple but very important. As I said, a lot of my students tend to form quite basic sentences in their writings. It could be a paragraph with five, six, or even seven short basic sentences. And what you need to be able to do is to link those sentences by forming compound sentences. So that's my first tip. Use more compound sentences. A compound sentence is simply a sentence with two or more subjects. So basically it's two independent clauses which you link together or you connect with a linking word of some kind. And you can use one of these seven linking words. So and, but, so, yet, nor, or, and for. So a very simple example. The first text discusses issues of technology in modern society. It doesn't mention social media. Okay, so those are two simple basic sentences. Very simply you can link them by using but. The first text discusses the issue of technology in modern society but it doesn't mention social media. You think that's too simple, well maybe substitute but for yet. So yet it doesn't mention social media. Yet in this context is a synonym of but. If you think the sentence is too basic with but, use yet. But sometimes it's okay to use words like and, but, because, so, for, or. These are words that we use. They're very common and they're common because they're very useful. So that's my first tip. Try to use more compound sentences. Tip number two today is to use more relative clauses in your sentences. Now they could be defining or non-defining clauses or both in different sentences of course. The examiners in the Cambridge English exams are looking for a range, a wide range of grammatical structures. So this is a very simple way of forming more complex sentences and using another grammatical structure. So with relative clauses you'd use one of these words. Who, whose, that, which, where and when. Those are your options. Now as I said they could be defining relative clauses or non-defining relative clauses. Now don't worry too much about the terminology and the grammar. When you see the examples I'm sure you'll understand better and you'll see that it's not so complicated and quite simple to add to your essays or your reports or your articles to make it more advanced and more sophisticated. So an example of a non-defining relative clause is climate change which has been an issue for many decades will continue to be a problem. So here we have climate change will continue to be a problem. That's a sentence on its own but if you put a non-defining relative clause in the middle between the commas then you're adding extra non-essential information. It's not defining the subject. It's just extra information. So climate change which has been an issue for many decades will continue to be a problem. A quick look at a defining relative clause. The issue which concerns most people nowadays is climate change. So here the clause, the relative clause is not between commas because it's a defining relative clause. It's defining issue. So which issue is it because there are many issues but you need to define which issue with the clause. So in this case the issue which most people are worried about, that particular issue is climate change. So it's essential information. It's necessary for the sentence to make sense. So let's look at number three now. Inversion. Now inversion is a grammar area that we don't really use that much in spoken English. Especially not colloquial day-to-day English. But it's very useful for your writings especially more formal writing tasks. I made a video on inversion a few months ago which I'll share in the description and I'll go into the detail of the grammar and the structure. But for this video I'll just give you an example sentence. So the normal sentence would be we can reduce our carbon footprint by taking public transport and eating less meat. You'll have noticed that I use a lot of examples about the climate change and the environment because it's very common in the exams. But yeah we can reduce our carbon footprint by taking public transport and eating less meat. So that's just a normal sentence but with the inversion structure it would be not only can we reduce our carbon footprint by taking public transport but also by eating less meat. So not only can we. So remember with inversion the verb and the subject change places they invert. Again check out my video for much more detailed explanation than that but you can use one example of inversion in your essay for example you will get more points because it's what examiners are looking for a range of grammatical structures. And the fourth tip is to use more cleft sentences. Now cleft sentences are also examples of complex sentences so they contain more than one clause and the idea of a cleft sentence is to change the order of the information in the sentence to add emphasis or to focus on one particular piece of information in the sentence over another. So again similar to inversion but a slightly different structure and with different clauses. So again the best way to explain it with an example. So the normal sentence would be more investment needs to be made in education. But as a cleft sentence you could say it is education that needs more investment. Okay so it is an education that needs more investment. So you're starting with it is education it's an extra clause and although it contains the same information it's expressed in a different way. So again the examiners are looking for that type of thing something which can demonstrate to them that you understand and can use these more complex grammatical structures and form complex sentences. Again this is not the video to go into detail about all the grammar but just be aware that using a cleft sentence can really get you some extra marks in your writing. And my final tip, tip number five is to use the passive voice. Now that may seem quite simple quite a simple tip but I've noticed with my students they don't use the passive voice enough. It's a very simple technique to make a text more formal. Your essay for example, the report, the proposal, some articles depending on the target reader. Remember you should always keep in mind the target reader when you're writing your compositions. So an example scientists believe that the earth is getting warmer. So scientists believe that the earth is getting warmer that's a normal active sentence but if you change it to passive it is believed that the earth is getting warmer. In this case it's not really necessary to specify that it's scientists who believe this. You imagine if you're writing an essay or a report or whatever that you know it's an expert so scientists are probably the ones that believe this. So you don't need to mention the agent, the people who believe this, you just say it is believed that's a much more appropriate structure for a formal writing composition. You should know how to construct the passive voice it's just about thinking about it and while you're writing or in the planning stages of writing just thinking about how you're going to include it in your essay or whatever composition you're writing. One bonus tip for you today I've mentioned this before in other videos but you really should be using a wide range of cohesive devices or linkers or connectors whatever you want to call them but cohesive devices are very important to help with the flow of the composition, the writing composition. So they could be very basic ones as I said like and, but, because, so or they could be more advanced, sophisticated like furthermore, moreover, nevertheless because you need to think about how it flows, how the reader is going to read it. I correct dozens and dozens of these compositions of my students every month and some just are nice to read, they're pleasant to read because they flow in a natural way and some I have to force myself to get through them because it's stopping and starting and these cohesive devices are not used effectively or maybe not used at all. And you can use these cohesive devices to link sentences, to link ideas, to present ideas, to contrast ideas and if you use them effectively it really will improve your compositions. Okay those are my tips for today I hope they help you start practicing them the more you practice the more you will understand how to use this grammar and these techniques and over time they'll just become natural to include them in your compositions. Okay thank you for joining me and I'll see you very soon for another video. Take care. Bye. Bye.