Are you always on your phone?

You are going to

• listen to someone talking about the advantages and disadvantages of technology and do a gap-fill 
• practise essay planning
• write an argument essay 

Note this post can be used in combination with  Could you live without it?







1) Discuss

• Are you always on your phone?
• How often do you use your phone?
• What do you use it for?
• What are the good things and bad things about smartphones?
• Can you think of any situations when it would be inappropriate to use a phone?
• Are we addicted to technology now?

2) Match
You are going to listen to someone talking about the advantages and disadvantages of technology.
Before you listen. Look at the exercise below. If you were writing an essay on this subject what would make the best order of sentences?

3) Listen
Alison Treharne is talking about technology on BBC Radio Devon.
According to her;

• What are the good things?
• What are the bad things?
• Does she follow the structure above for talking about the topic?

listen to ‘Pause For Thought with Alison Treharne’ on Audioboo

4) Listen
Listen again and fill in the gaps.

Printable worksheet here






5) Write 
Use some of your own ideas and Alison's ideas to answer the question below.
Remember;

1. Introduce the topic to be discussed.
2. Explain the topic to be discussed
3. Restate the question in you own words (what are you going to tell us about?)
4. Give some advantages and disadvantages
5. Support your ideas with some specific examples of advantages and disadvantages
6. Give you conclusion (you can restate the question and give an an opinion)

"Nowadays the way many people interact with each other has changed because of technology. In what ways has technology affected the types of relationships that people make? Has this been a positive or negative development?"
(IELTS - 250 words) 






Read
Mobile phones are ruining relationships
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/9714616/Mobile-phone-addiction-ruining-relationships.html





More
Now try these posts

• Could you live without it? Mobile phones, Living without electricity, Advantages and disadvantages, IELTS, Intermediate, Linking words, Listening, Reading, Smartphones, Writing an argument, Contrasting, Technology

• IELTS: Writing introductions for task 2  Advanced, IELTS, Reading, Upper Intermediate, Writing, Writing introductions for argument essays

• More technology means more communication? Communication, Crossword, IELTS, Intermediate, Technology, Upper Intermediate , Writing an argument  

• Sexting: is technology endangering teenagers? Advanced, Discussion Activities, Health and Safety, IELTS, Listening, Sexting, Smartphones, Technology, Upper Intermediate

•  Should parents follow their children on facebook? Communication, Connectives, Intermediate, Internet, Linking words, Listening, Social networks, Technology, Upper Intermediate, Writing an argument

IELTS: Writing introductions for task 2 / Reading news articles

Structuring introductions in IELTS task 2 questions / argument essays

You are going to

1. Read a BBC news article

2. Look at the introduction.

3. Use the introduction model for writing task 2 essays

4. Look at more news articles for IELTS vocabulary practice

Discuss

• How do you usually write your introductions?
• Do you plan your essays?
• Do you think of ideas and how to organize them?
• How do you organize your ideas?
• How should we organize our introductions?

Structure is very important in IELTS writing task 2. 

An IELTS essay should be written in a way that shows you can develop your ideas in a logical way. This is also true of the introduction.


Here ia a very good example from the BBC website.called "Is the internet going to be the death of television?" by Fiona Graham.

Read the introduction. 

• How is it organized? 
• How many sentences are there? 
• What does each sentences do?
• Does the writer introduce the topic and ideas? In what order?
• Does she tell you what she is going to discuss (state her aims)?

In August 2010, the end of the age of television as we know it was widely predicted. The US pay TV market had suffered its first ever drop in subscribers. In the end the economy was roundly found to blame, with cable packages being sacrificed as families were forced to tighten their belts. But some commentators pointed to this as the inevitable result of the growth of on demand and over the top offerings available on the internet. So is technology killing what we think of as traditional television - and taking pay TV operators with it?


Look again at how the introduction is written. There are 3 parts.

1 - Introduce the topic = In August 2010, the end of the age of television as we know it was widely predicted.

2 - State the question / problem for discussion = The US pay TV market had suffered its first ever drop in subscribers. In the end the economy was roundly found to blame, with cable packages being sacrificed as families were forced to tighten their belts. But some commentators pointed to this as the inevitable result of the growth of on demand and over the top offerings available on the internet.

3 - State your aims / rewrite the question = So is technology killing what we think of as traditional television - and taking pay TV operators with it?

This can also be used as a good model for IELTS task 2 introductions. 
So, a typical task 2 introduction could be

1 - Introduce the topic

2 - State the question / problem for discussion

3 - State your aims / rewrite the question

This technique is quite often used in  academic writing and journalism.

Here are some more examples which follow this introduction style.

Can celebrities expect privacy?
By Genevieve Hassan http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-14151678

Is smoking in cars dangerous?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-14142992

Plagiarism: The Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V boom
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-12613617




Reading
Click the link to read the rest of   "Is the internet going to be the death of television?"  and take note of the ideas.
What is the writer's conclusion? Is the internet defnitely going to kill TV?

Writing

1) Paractise writing introductions. Go here http://www.goodluckielts.com/IELTS-essay-topics.html
Choose some essay titles and only write the introductions. Use the introduction plan above as a guide.

2) Think about the ideas in the article above and write an answer in an IELTS style to this question.
 "Is the internet going to be the death of television?"( 250 words)




More reading news for IELTS practice here
http://www.scoop.it/t/reading-news-for-ielts
Read these articles and familiarize yourself with the ideas and vocabulary needed for IELTS academic task 1 and 2 writing tasks.
Read as much as you can. The news is especially good for vocabulary needed to get a good IELTS score.