IELTS Writing Task 2- Prepositions and Determiners Pairwork

IELTS Writing Task Two prepositions and determiners pairwork

Work as a group with one Student A and one Student B worksheet in each group (with two students sharing one worksheet if there are three people in your group). Don’t show your worksheets to each other.

Choose one of the sections on your worksheet and read examples from that section with the same word in bold missing until your partner guesses the missing word. They can only guess once per hint. If you run out of examples before they guess correctly, make up other example sentences with the same missing word, including non-IELTS ones if you can’t think of any more IELTS examples. When they have guessed correctly, read out the ones that they got wrong so they can hear the correct answers, then guess your partner’s missing word in the same way. Take turns doing the same with different sections until your teacher stops you. If you still have examples left after they guess correctly, you can come back to the same section later if you like.

Switch worksheets and do the same, making sure that you start with the most difficult examples this time (because they have already seen those examples).

Ask about any of your phrases or your partner’s phrases which you are not sure of the meaning of, think could have another word in the place in bold, etc.

 

Uses of prepositions and determiners presentation

Try to find prepositions and determiners on the worksheets with these meanings/ uses. Some things on the worksheet have more than one of these meanings/ uses, and some have none.

• __________+ a point in time or space
• __________ + how/ a way of doing something
• __________ + something specific
• __________ + something there is only one of
• __________ + somewhere within a longer space or time (than spaces/ times with “at”)
• __________ + the origin/ source
• __________ + the topic/ subject
• __________ = belonging to/ possessed by
• __________ = finally/ completely
• __________ = in favour/ the opposite of “against”
• __________ = it doesn’t matter which/ we don’t know which
• __________ = not a
• __________ = one
• __________ = similar/ the same
• __________ = the opposite of “to”
• comparative adjective + _________ = more + adjective or adjective+er + ________
• passive voice + ____________ = be + PP + ______________

Check as a class or with the suggested answers.

 

Student A 

A

A good example of this is…

A large number of people hold the view that…

As a consequence of this,…

Just a few years ago…

Recently, there has been quite a lot of passionate debate about…

There is a common view amongst the older generation that…

There is a reasonable chance of this happening within ten years.

There is a widespread belief that in my country that…

This is a huge problem for the next generation.

 

About

I will write about the past and then examine the future.

Thinking about the bad points,…
Though it is worth thinking about all the aspects explained in this essay,…

 

An

An additional example of this is…

An obvious difference between the two situations is…

Taking this city as an example,…

To give an example from my own experience,…

 

At

Another aspect of this topic that is worth looking at is…

At the moment, we are experiencing an increase in the issue of…

At the same time, it can also be said that…

Looking at the advantages first, it should be obvious that…

 

By

By and large, the general public accept the necessity for this.

I can illustrate my point by looking at…

It is thought by many that…

This is by far the best way to deal with…

This is clearly caused by…

This is supported by my own experience, in that…

 

For

For all the reasons given above,…

For instance,…

For that reason,…

For the most part, voters support…

I will give three reasons for my opinion in the paragraphs below.

There are arguments both for and against this idea.

The main reason for this is…

This is extremely important for the younger generation.

 

From

Many people my age in my country suffer from the issue of…

One example of this from my own experience is…

I can illustrate with an example from a programme I saw in which…

There has also been a lot of resistance to this idea from people who focus on…

Turning our attention from the benefits to the drawbacks,…

 

In

All in all, this should have more positive than negative effects on…

Although the arguments against are also quite convincing, in the majority of cases…

Although there are also arguments for, as I said in the introduction I am convinced that…

Despite the disadvantages given in the previous paragraph,…

Having taken all the factors above into account,…

I saw a presentation on TED.com in which…

I will look at the positive and negative consequences of this course of action, in that order.

I will look at the positive and negative effects in turn.

In addition, it could benefit…

In general,…

In many cases, this doesn’t work in practice due to…

 

Of

One effect of this is…

One of the main benefits of this approach is…

One of the short-term consequences of this is…

The main long-term result of this would be…

The root cause of this is…

There are two strongly contrasting points of view on the topic of…

This happens because of…

 

Than

Nonetheless, there are far more pros than cons to…

This is considerably more important than the effect on the older generation.

This would be somewhat better than changing…

 

To

There are both pros and cons to such a policy.

There is also one more advantage to altering government policy on this matter.

This has been very controversial recently due to more attention on the issue of…

This inevitably leads to an increase in…

This situation is very similar to that during the first industrial revolution.

To give just one example,…

To put that another way,…

To summarise the views given above,…

Student B

 

As

As a consequence, many people support…

As a result of this,…

As far as I’m aware,…

As far as this city is concerned,…

As for the second advantage of this idea,…

As I mentioned above,…

As well as those benefits, there are also potential drawbacks.

There are many examples of this, such as…

This could have the same effect as…

This is not nearly as important as…

 

In

In many developing countries there is a problem of…

In modern life,…

In my country many older people think that…

In other words…

In our globalised, hyper-connected world,…

In this essay I will give three reasons why I believe that…

The main argument in favour of this course of action is…

There is an assumption in many places that…

This is absolutely essential in order to…

This means that the government should put much more effort into improving…

This tends to result in…

 

My

I will look at the advantages and disadvantages, and finally give my own opinion.

I will look at the pros, turn my attention to the cons, and use both to come to a conclusion. 

In my personal experience,…

My personal point of view is…

To the best of my knowledge,…

 

No

Although I am no expert on this matter,…

For this reason, I believe that national governments have no choice but to…

I have no doubt that this would help with…

 

Of

A selling point of this plan is…

A well-known illustration of that is…

Another point of view is…

Examples of this include,…

In the vast majority of cases,…

Many younger people are of the opinion that...

Of all the arguments above, by far the most important is…

On

Despite the possible drawbacks, on balance I would conclude that…

I saw a video on YouTube in which…

I will consider the selling points, move on to the drawbacks and lastly…

I will look at the consequences for the children, discuss the effects on families, and…

Moving on to the consequences,…

This has a positive impact on what people think about…

 

The

I can see both points of view, but I lean towards the latter opinion.

In the near future, hopefully people will pay more attention to…

It is also possible to argue the opposite point of view that…

Over the last few years, there has been a substantial amount of bitter conflict over…

Probably the best example of this is…

Since the turn of the millennium, there has been lots of news coverage on the topic of…

Nevertheless, the advantages easily outweigh the disadvantages because….

This is probably due to the fact that…

While all the factors explained above are true for some people, the most important…

Whilst all the arguments above are true, we can safely ignore…

 

To

According to a newspaper article that I read last week,…

I therefore am forced to come to the conclusion that…

I think there are both positive and negative sides to this.

It seems clear to me that…

It seems obvious to me that…

It’s very difficult to generalise, but…

Owing to the expected increase in importance of these factors in the medium term,…

That is to say…

There are also drawbacks to taking such a radical step.

 

Up

An example which backs up this point of view is…

For people growing up nowadays,…

Having weighed up both sides of the argument,…

To sum up what I have written above,...

 

With

Although many people probably disagree with me, I believe…

I don’t really agree with this point of view.

I strongly agree with the former point of view.

Perhaps a majority of parents in the world have to deal with the issue of…

We can all do our part to help with this by…

 

Suggested answers

• __________+ a point in time or space – at
• __________ + how/ a way of doing something – by
• __________ + something specific – the
• __________ + something there is only one of – the
• __________ + somewhere within a longer space or time (than with “at”) – in
• __________ + the origin/ source – from
• __________ + the topic/ subject – about
• __________ = belonging to/ possessed by – of
• __________ = finally/ completely – up
• __________ = in favour/ the opposite of “against” – for
• __________ = it doesn’t matter which/ we don’t know which – a/ an
• __________ = not a – no
• __________ = one – a/ an
• __________ = similar/ the same – as
• __________ = the opposite of “to” – from
• comparative adjective + __________ – than
• passive voice + ____________ – by

 

Brainstorming stage

First of all without looking above, brainstorm at least two suitable sentences for each function below.

Introduction

Setting the scene/ Background to the question/ Rephrasing the question

 

 

Setting out your position (only if you’ll only look at one side of the argument)

 

 

Explaining the structure of the essay/ Explaining the organisation of the essay

 

 

Useful phrases for the body of an IELTS Writing Task Two essay

Strong opinions

 

 

Weak opinions

 

 

Other opinions language

 

 

Supporting your arguments/ Supporting your opinions

Personal experience

 

 

Other people’s experiences/ Other sources

 

 

Giving examples

 

 

Logical arguments (cause and effect, etc)

 

 

Generalising (= Making general statements about people in your country etc)

 

 

Comparing and contrasting

 

 

Advantages and disadvantages/ Looking at both sides

 

 

Problems and solutions

 

 

Talking about importance

 

 

Predictions

 

 

Rephrasing/ Explaining more

 

 

Starting new body paragraphs/ Changing topic

 

 

Useful phrases for ending IELTS Writing Task Two essays

Summarising (when you have already given your opinion in the introduction)

 

 

Linking the conclusion to the content of the essay

 

 

Further point based on the summary/ conclusion (recommendation, prediction, etc)

 

 

Look above for examples, brainstorm more, then compare your answers as a class or with a list of phrases. Then play a different guessing prepositions and determiners game, choosing one function above and reading gapped phrases with different words missing each time.