Academic Task 1
Article 1-作者：qimiao1987

The most glaring issue in this task response is the misuse or deletion of verbs. Note that one cannot simply say, “26% by bus.” There needs to be a verb in there, and most typically in this article the missing one was the ‘to go’ verb or ‘to travel’. Analyze my corrections and you’ll see what I mean.

A conclusion of some sort that summarizes the main points, trends or changes would have helped. Think to yourself about how you could draw all this information together and comment on it in the form of a conclusion of about 3-4 sentences. What did all of these statistics, numbers and modes of transport mean? What can you tell us about this graph that we cannot already see by looking at it? Provide further insight and deeper commentary, but stay relevant to the information provided.

Article 2 - 作者：larui123

At 141 words, the article is 9 words under length. This may not seem like a lot, but failing to meet the required word count would have a major impact on the score if this were for a real examination. Make sure you have reached the 150 word minimum for task 1 and the 250 word minimum for task 2. Don’t immediately get off on the wrong foot. Meet the minimum!

Avoid “more and more”, “fewer and fewer” type phrases. They’re repetitive and say nothing that “more” or “fewer” don’t. Less often means more when it comes to wordiness.

Check those tenses. If you’re talking about 1960, you clearly wouldn’t say “go”; you’d want to say “went”, for example, because it happened in the past.

Article 3 - 作者：flycherry1215

Watch out for sentence fragments that begin with the word “While”. You can see two areas where this is the case. In both, the fragment needs to be part of the previous sentence as a separate clause divided by a comma instead of a period.

When expressing years, we can say “in 1960.” But if you want to express it as a whole decade, as a plural ‘1960s’, you need the ‘the’ article, e.g. “in the 1960s.” Keep that in mind that minor mistakes such as this can be the difference between whole band scores in the grammar section of the score as they signal a lack of grammatical control.

Be careful which words you use as synonyms: “fans” and “supporters” are not accurate substitutes for “users” or “travelers”.

Academic Task 2
Article 4 - 作者：gaochen

Pay attention to paragraphing. The one large paragraph at the beginning and a small paragraph at the end do not properly divide the ideas of the essay. Failure to divide paragraphs properly will result in a limited band score on the examination. Please see my corrections for improvement.

While many parts are well-argued, there are several areas that lack clarity as I’ve pointed out. I begin to get lost when the writer mentions festivals, and uncertain what the connection is between them and modern communication. The writer continues in the next paragraph with festivals, but it’s still not clear. At all costs, remain clear. If the reader cannot understand your basic ideas, it may affect other areas as well, and the reader may lose interest in the essay. Additionally, it would affect the band score in a major way were it for an examination, so if that means simplifying the language to get your message across, perhaps that’s a better option.

Article 5 -作者：ConnieKing

The writer exhibits pretty good control over grammatical accuracy. Article use (an occasional overuse and under-use of “the”) stands out. There are a couple errors of tense, where the writer shifts to the past, but forgets to shift the tense of the verb? (“would” and “could” should have been used in those two mistakes). But overall, the writer has some good ideas and shows real potential. I believe she can eventually surmount her shortcomings with dedication to improvement.

Avoid phrases like, “That’s my opinion,” “that’s my philosophy on the matter”, etc. Of course it’s your opinion; obviously that’s your philosophy! You wrote, the essay, not someone else, thus the fact that it’s your belief should be a given. Such phrases amount to simple repetition. They take away, rather than add anything. Avoid them.

Article 6 - 作者：AngelinaJie

There needs to be a space between punctuation and the word that follows. Compare the originally submitted essay against the corrected one.

“Modern”, not “mordern”. Throughout my reading, I was thinking, ‘Oh, no, is she going to misspell “modern” again?’ Don’t let minor spelling mistakes become a major distraction!

There is a lot of repetition of ideas. Such a short essay doesn’t require so many reminders of the writer’s main idea (especially since it takes most native speakers approximately less than two minutes to read a 250-word essay). Don’t confound the essay by pounding the ideas into your reader. About two references would have been enough. Below is a list of some of the repetitive phrases:

• “…it is unavoidable when people accept new technologies that traditional cultures are easily lost.”
• “In some ways, it equals to tradition is being lost.”
• “Furthermore, there are many modern technologies.”
• “That is the main reason why tradition is being lost.”
• “It is unavoidable that as modern technology develops, traditional cultures are lost.”

General Task 1
Article 7 - 作者：zhzhwy

Watch out for overstating phrasal verbs. As shown by my corrections, the writer has a tendency to use “up” as a tag on several verbs when they’re not needed: “fix up” and “sign up” are indeed phrasal verbs, but they have a slightly different meaning than “fix” and “sign”, which are the correct choice in this context.

Most of the mistakes have a lexical, rather than grammatical, root. Most errors are associated with incorrect word choice. If this letter is an indication of the writer’s needs in a broader sense, I’d suggest more concerted study of vocabulary, paying special attention to synonyms and exact usage. This study can be offset by reading. I always suggest to my students who need to pass writing tests like IELTS or TOEFL to read uncomplicated academic essays on the internet rather than magazines or books for obvious reasons (or in this case letters as well if the writer plans on taking the General Training exam).

Article 8 - 作者：freepoint

Notice how many times I was able to combine some simple sentences into longer, more complex ones. Always keep an eye out for this possibility when writing. It’s not often that sentences begin with “but”, as they’re usually the beginning of a separate clause separated with a comma (this can be seen in my corrections), so this is often a possibility to look out for. If you are considering starting a sentence with “and”, reconsider adding it on to the previous sentence if the previous sentence is not already too long.

General Task 2
Article 9 - 作者：faith2008

The essay presents some well-argued ideas, but unfortunately it has not adequately followed the question given in the prompt. The prompt discusses three key issues: smoking in public, smoking in the office and the question of freedom. This essay addresses the first and third issues well, but ignores office smoking, and therefore, were this to be submitted in an examination, its band score would be severely affected as it only party answers the question. At least some attempt must be made to introduce this portion of the prompt, and if handled right, it could be easily tied in with smoking in public.

A couple areas lack clarity, especially in the mentioning of legal rights of smoking. Does the writer mean ‘moral’ or ‘ethical rights’? Of course, smoking is legal, although restricted in some areas, but the message seems to infer that smoking itself is an illegal act. Clarity, especially when it’s part of your supporting ideas, is vital.?

Article 10 - 作者：ellenli888

There are some grammatical errors which are clearly systematic as they’re made repetitively. A few of the most notable are deletions of articles (“the” is frequently overused). However, accuracy with articles is one of the last skills mastered by non-native speakers, and it doesn’t usually affect the understanding of the essay.

I would have liked to have seen more references to office smoking in the essay. It’s covered in the introduction and brought back in the conclusion, but not alluded to in the rest of the body. A more equal lending of weight, perhaps a paragraph on office/business smoking, would have rounded out the essay more fully.