It Goes Without Certainty - follow up with explanations of practice exercise

As with learning any skill, developing the ability to craft an IELTS essay requires that people learn a wide variety of micro-skills at different stages along the way. We've been talking about a micro-skill: the use and mis-use of certain "set phrases", specifically those which express certainty. Learners make typical mistakes with them that an expert sees made again and again. 



When I was learning to play golf, it seemed I couldn't ever hit the ball and make it go straight; it always made a big curve to the right and ended up well away from where I was intending it to go. Frustrated, I made up for it by aiming FAR over to left when addressing the ball, and then when I "sliced" to the right, it would hopefully land in the middle.

The golf pro at the driving range smiled and nodded and told me I was letting the head of the club slip a little bit just as it was hitting the ball, hence, my slice.

He'd seen thousands of people making the same mistake I was making, but his advice didn't help me right away. I kept slicing the ball anyways because I couldn't feel what he was trying to teach me. Sure, I knew what I was doing wrong, but I didn't know how NOT to do it!

Comparing golfing to doing the IELTS Task 2 writing, hitting the ball straight would be like presenting an extended, supported and well-developed response (see the TR band descriptors). I was stuck at being a Band 6 golfer because my skills had not developed enough yet. So I did weird things like aim in the wrong direction because I knew it wouldn't go there. 
One weird thing I see IELTS writers do is to try to create support by using very strong expressions of certainty.

When learners try to use set phrases, particularly ones like we're talking about here, often enough the direction of the essay (the ball) slices badly and the essay hits a tree. An expert tells you that you're overgeneralizing, and just like I felt when the golf-pro told me my problem, you might not feel what you're doing wrong. 

 Before posting the blog prior to this, I created a poll at the Facebook group, IELTS Tips and Tricks. I used the questions I'd created for the exercise in yesterdays blog and invited users to click as many as they thought were correct usages of an expression of certainty. At the moment, the only correct usage of the 6 has pulled into 4th place, but that was only after I'd revealed my answer. It had been in last place! 

I thought I'd take the time this morning to explain each sentence and how a little slip of the club turns each from a fact to an opinion and give an example which straightens the sentence out, resulting in something that might help the essay progress down the fairway.

We'll start with the fewest votes and move up.

1. It goes without saying that the internet has made all of our lives more dangerous.

The word "all" is the killer word here. My 80 year-old aunt living in retirement community in the desert hasn't had her life made more dangerous. What if I wrote "..has made LIFE more dangerous"? Even that's flawed because we don't know exactly what has made life more dangerous, and many arguments can be made that the internet has made our lives safer. Here's a safe use of that expression on the same topic:

1. It goes without saying that the rise of the Internet has occurred at the same as the world becoming more dangerous.

Moving on... 

 Salary is not, of course, the most important consideration in choosing a job.

Here our set expression of certainty comes in the middle of the sentence, which does nothing to the meaning, but does show a less common way of structuring a sentence. This one should be easy. 

Salary is not, of course, the ONLY important consideration...

Salary IS, of course, the most important consideration...

You'd have to make a great argument to support the second sentence there!

There is no denying that countries that have a lot of sports facilities have a higher level of overall public health than those that don’t.

 How could you possibly know such a small detail with such certainty? The USA might have more gyms, public tennis courts, basketball courts, etc., than any other country in the world, but life expectancy is about 20th in the world (I know this because it's the kind of thing American news likes to talk about). A fix?

There is no denying that some countries spend a great deal more on public health than do others.

Yeah, it's off topic a bit, but I just want to finish at this point. 

Without a doubt, children require the socialization opportunities that schools provide in order to become well-adjusted adults. 

Well you could certainly use this point as an excellent explanation for an opinion. There's plenty of examples of children who are very maladjusted socially and who never attended regular school. There are perhaps just as many instances (in the West) of children who are "home schooled" and thrive as adults. Fix? 

Without a doubt, children have socialization opportunities at a traditional school that can not be equaled by those afforded to the home-schooled. 

And lastly, the #1 vote-getter, the one that the greatest number of you thought was a fair use of an expression of certainty...

It is undoubtedly true that all languages are equally important.

From a moral, socially-conscious point of view, I totally agree. But IELTS essays are not expressions of morality but explorations of the truth. We have our opinions and need to express them, and we can express whatever degree of certainty there as we wish. Just hedge a little bit. 

I am undoubtedly of the mind that all languages are equally important...
 
I have no doubts that all languages are equally important to their particular cultures. 

Lastly we have the accurate use:

  Needless to say, modernity is a time of tremendous change on many levels.

First off, you should really get a feel for the word "modernity". It's uncommon vocabulary, and worth putting in your tool box of lexis. Given how often Task 2 essays talk about how our modern world has changed or is changing, the problems thereof, modern technology and trends... blah blah blah... I'm actually quite surprised I can't remember ever seeing it once.

Understand, however, that modernity is only at it's most basic form the noun form of the adjective "modern". To use the word with "precise meaning" (as in LR), "modernity" goes back a few hundred years.  It is rational thought versus just accepting what you're told. Modernity is the successor of tradition. Anyways, here's a 10 minute course in modernity.