Personification: a stylistic device that can yell, murmur, wink, and mock 🦋

Personification is the stylistic device we played with in my Creative Writing Club today. This device involves attributing human qualities to inanimate objects.

Here are some examples from our creative session:

🦋 The closed door ...

- The closed door was grinning at me, daring me to open it. (Ekaterina Kachalova)

- The closed door was winking at me with its keyholes as if trying to say "Don't give up, pal!" (Yuliya Gamza)

- The closed door was murmuring in low deep voice as if inviting her to approach and dare take a peek inside. (Evgenia Karabatova)

🦋 The morning cup of coffee …

- The morning cup of coffee was shouting at me angrily: "Wake up, you sleepy bastard. You're late!!" (Ekaterina Kachalova)

- The morning espresso slapped me right in the face. (Taisiya Voloshina)

- The morning cup of coffee waltzed with me through my morning routine. (Lana Gagaeva)

🦋 Your turn. Finish one of the beginnings with personification in the comments:

- The closed door was
- The morning cup of coffee …
- The essay …

Image by the wonderful Anna Skopina 💜

#creativewriting

🌻 My Creative Writing Club 🌻

The summer season of my Creative Writing Club has come to its inevitable end. And it was one of the best seasons ever. The participants were awesome and the engagement was off the charts! Look:

Our Google Doc is 129 pages or 52,966 words long! We have 579 active comments (and counting) - and I mean just Google comments in the special boxes on the right. Plus, there are hundreds of reactions in the forms of hearts and stars.

I want to give you a sneak peak of - and an opportunity to participate in - our last session, in which we studied some fancy stylistic devices.

1️⃣ Polysyndeton = repetition of conjunctions in close succession

For example: "I'm so sorry for missing the deadline for the writing - so much was happening to me, it's ridiculous! My brother's birthday party turned into a disaster, and then my dog suddenly had a puppy, and my best friend moved to Belgrade, and the rain kept pouring down, and my head was exploding... Anyway, I truly am sorry." (By Lana Gagaeva)

2️⃣ Zeugma = the use of a word to modify two or more words in such a way that it applies to each in a different sense

For example: "When he emigrated, he left his job, his apartment and his heart in Saint-Petersburg. He took a flight to New-York early in the morning, never to return, carrying only a small backpack and a dead weight in his soul." (By Anna Skopina)

Your turn. Write a comment about your love for writing - or the lack thereof - using polysyndeton or zeugma or both.

And stay tuned for the next season of my Creative Writing Club. It is free and will remain free because I want to give everyone an opportunity for a creative outlet in the company of like-minded writers. 💜

Image by the wonderful Anna Skopina 🌻

#creativewriting

Coherence and cohesion demystified.

It's plain and simple. This workshop on coherence and cohesion will feature:

- explanation of the difference between coherence and cohesion;
- a summary of most common cohesive devices and techniques (at least eight - yeah, it's not just adverbs or pronouns);
- examples of good and flawed or even non-existing CC;
- exercises and quizzes.

All examples will be based on my IELTS essays, but the fundamental principles are the same for essays in different exams.

📅 Schedule: Saturday, 3 August, 11:00-12:30 Moscow time

📌 Price: 1500 RUB

📍 Place: Zoom

💌 To sign up, dm me at @iraluts

❗️ You will get the pdf of the presentation, but there will be no recordings!

Why don't I record my sessions? ❓

If I decided to make a recording, I would have to ask you to mute yourself and switch off your video, or you would want to do that yourself. But I encourage participation and questions. I don't want to be a talking head, nor do I want to speak into silent black boxes on the screen. I want to be a real live person and expect the same in return. (And don't get me started on potential privacy concerns of the participants.)

#ielts #ieltswriting

Beyond thrilled to announce a joint webinar with Vladimir Pavlovich! 🎉

In our webinar "CPE & IELTS essays: Tips and Tricks," we will compare the skills tested in these international examinations and share model answers we have written for both exams.

The beauty part is you can tap into our expertise for free. Find out more and sign up using the link below. 💜

https://c2pavlovich.com/webinars/2

IELTS Writing Task 2: A really bad paragraph - but why?

One of the things I love doing to my model essays is ruining them to demonstrate a certain point.

And this is exactly what I did in our joint webinar "CPE vs. IELTS essays: Tips and Tricks." See if you can spot what's wrong.

📝 Topic: "Environmental problems should be solved by one international organization rather than each individual government. Do you agree or disagree?"

📝 Body paragraph 3:

"The third reason is that many serious problems affect parts of the Earth that do not belong to one particular country and therefore do not fall under the responsibility of one government. One vivid case in point to illustrate this paradigm is the plastic pollution in world oceans in the form of giant plastic chunks working in conjunction with microplastics having been found as deep as the Mariana hole. Another paragon of seriousness is the depletion of the ozone layer. Not only expecting one country to expend their resources on such major problems would be unfair as this would place an uncalled-for burden on it, but also it would divert the valuable resources from its other issues and priorities. Never will such problems be solved, in turn, if no country is tasked with solving such problems, albeit compounding them."

Which assessment criterion (or criteria) is/are a disaster: Task Response, Coherence and Cohesion, Lexical Resource, Grammatical Range and Accuracy? Why?

Key: Lexical Resource and Grammatical Range and Accuracy. There are A LOT OF awkward phrases there, both in terms of vocabulary and grammar.

#ielts #ieltswritingtask2 #ieltswriting

🌻 Fall 2024: new groups and good old ones 🌻

Click the links for details, schedules, and testimonials. Don't need a VK account to view.

🌻 Writing

1. IELTS writing
A long and thorough skill-building course. Several groups, different levels, tons of writing, tons of feedback.

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2. Writing with New Scientist
A writing course based on articles from the "New Scientist" magazine and geared towards IELTS prep. A perfect pre- or post-IELTS course. Different levels.

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3. Write for real: blogging, non-fiction, creative non-fiction
This course is about finding your voice and sharing your message in writing. To hell with exams - it’s time to write for real!

https://vk.com/market-47977221?w=product-47977221_3696542%2Fquery

🌻 Speaking

Speaking with New Scientist (C1, C1+, C2)
A speaking course based on articles from the "New Scientist" magazine and geared towards IELTS and C2 Proficiency Speaking tasks, but also good for those who have a penchant for deep, meaningful discussions. Very rich in lexis.

https://vk.com/market-47977221?w=product-47977221_5911089%2Fquery

🌻 General English, old groups

1. General English C1: Outcomes Advanced
Schedule: Tuesday 20:00-21:30 MSK

2. C2 Proficiency with New Scientist
A general English course based on articles from the New Scientist magazine with some CPE preparation (speaking and writing tasks). Flipped classroom.
Schedule: Friday 16:00-17:30 MSK.

All classes are taught in real time, on Zoom.

🌻 All enrollments are now open! 🌻

The enrollment process looks like this:
1. I'll ask you to tell me a bit about yourself in a private message. Questions might include: What is your experience of learning English? What is your experience of writing? Have you taken IELTS? What are your goals and course expectations?
2. If you want to enroll in a writing group, I'll give you a placement task. For most groups, it's an IELTS or IELTS-like essay.
3. We'll schedule an interview.

💌 @iraluts

PS: I also have secret groups. One student made a joke - there is a whole underworld of Irina's writing groups. It's not a joke. Very old and experienced students of mine can get admitted. 🦋

Coherence and cohesion demystified.

It's plain and simple. This workshop on coherence and cohesion will feature:

- explanation of the difference between coherence and cohesion;
- a summary of the most common cohesive devices and techniques (at least eight - yeah, it's not just adverbs or pronouns);
- examples of good and flawed or even non-existing CC;
- exercises and quizzes.

All examples will be based on my IELTS essays, but the fundamental principles are the same for essays in different exams.

📅  Wednesday, 28 August, 11:00-12:30 Moscow time

📌 Price: 1500 RUB

📍 Place: in real time on Zoom

💌 To sign up, dm me at @iraluts

❗ You will get the pdf of the presentation, but there will be no recordings!

Why don't I record my sessions? ❓

If I decided to make a recording, I would have to ask you to mute yourself and switch off your video, or you would want to do that yourself. But I encourage participation and questions. I don't want to be a talking head, nor do I want to speak into silent black boxes on the screen. I want to be a real live person and expect the same in return. (And don't get me started on potential privacy concerns of the participants.)

IELTS Writing Task 2: Task Response

To highlight a certain flaw to my students, I sometimes write two similar versions of the same paragraph and ask to identify the better one.

Here are two versions of the beginning of the first body paragraph on this topic: "The numbers of plants and animals is decreasing in most countries. Why is this happening? What can be done about it?" 🐼

Which has better Task Response? Why? ❓

1️⃣ "Both reasons for this development stem from human activities. The first one is that as the population of the planet grows, people increasingly encroach on territories where wildlife lives. They do so for a range of purposes, from construction and expansion of cities to clearing the land for farming and agriculture."

2️⃣ "Both reasons for this development stem from human activities. The first one is that as the population of the planet grows, people increasingly encroach on territories where wildlife lives. They do so because they have to invade plant and animal habitats and since the number of people is high, it, in essence, replaces biodiversity."

Key: The first version has better Task Response because it develops the previous idea by introducing purposes (= something new). The second version simply repeats the previous sentence in different words.

Don't confuse repetition of ideas and development of ideas.

How would you develop the idea further? What would be your next sentence? Share in the comments. 📝

#ieltswriting #ieltswritingtask2

Speaking with New Scientist - my speaking course based on articles from the "New Scientist" magazine

I don't teach a lot of speaking courses (my passion for writing is well-documented). But I do have a couple of groups - we can get a respite from writing, while still discussing deep, thought-provoking, IELTS-y topics.

📝 The course is very rich in language too. To wit, here is a typical worksheet: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tqn0xkQ38AtbiixHA9hHSfrHvMPT3P16IDOwOuSBSjQ/edit

Schedules, testimonials, and other details at (you don't need an account to view): https://vk.com/market/product/speaking-with-new-scientist-47977221-5911089

💌 @iraluts

Patterns and sentence structures 📝

I am a huge fan of patterns and sentence structures that sound awesome and complex, but also natural and unique - not as if they were taken from a grammar section in a text book.

Here are some sentences like this from the "New Scientist" magazine:

1️⃣ "Right now, garment workers, as well as being underpaid and overexploited, are also producing an inefficient and downright bonkers amount of clothing." (as well as + ing)

2️⃣ "You might want to control any malicious feelings of envy you have and cultivate benign envy, so that another person’s success motivates you to achieve more rather than making you try to undermine them." (rather than + ing)

3️⃣ "Left unchecked, loneliness can have a physiological impact as detrimental to longevity as smoking or obesity." (reduced clause - left unchecked)

4️⃣ "More surprising is the fact that as the country has ascended to the top of the well-being charts, its economic development has remained remarkably flat." (inverted word order: more + adjective + is + subject)

5️⃣ "If pills aren’t necessarily the answer for people with insomnia, neither are overly simplistic behavioural interventions." (If + negative + neither.)

These sentences can almost go straight into your IELTS essay, can't they? 💜

My view on writing is that it is such sentences that give your answer beautiful complexity, unlike, say, the infamous inversion.

If these are the types of sentences you want to use in your writing, join my my "Writing with New Scientist" course. It's a writing course based on articles from the New Scientist magazine and geared towards IELTS, but with much less pressure and much less format than in a traditional IELTS writing course.

Find out more in the product denoscription below (you don't need an account to view):

https://vk.com/market/product/writing-with-new-scientist-47977221-5061302

💌 @iraluts

The pesky "it": a common writing mistake 📝

You know I love good mistakes (= mistakes you can learn from). Here is one from today's IELTS writing class. Can you spot it?

"Regarding paper, it can be seen that it experienced a steady growth from 4 million tonnes in 1980 to 12 million tonnes in 2000."

The mistake is: "it" is used in two different meanings.

1️⃣ In "it can be seen," "it" is the dummy subject in a passive structure.

2️⃣ In "it experienced," "it" means "paper."

But the reader's brain will perceive the first "it" as "paper," so the sentence will read: "Regarding paper, it = the paper can be seen ..." This is confusing.

All "it"s in one sentence must refer to the same noun. 💜

The fix? Simply delete "it can be seen" - this phrase is absolutely empty anyway. It contributes nothing but confusion. I'd also say "paper production" rather than just "paper."

Did you spot this mistake? Do you use phrases like "it can be seen"? ❓

"Irina, people won't be afraid of you any more if you share this story."

A student told me today.

(Wait, what? People are afraid of me? Let me know in the comments.)

Anyway, here is the story.

I am super-organized and focused. But today I screwed up big time - I scheduled an interview with a potential student and didn't show up because I simply forgot about the interview.

Forgetting is normal, of course. That's why I put all my arrangements and commitments on Google Calendar. But today, for some unfathomable reason, I didn't open it in the morning. I only realized I had forgotten when the student messaged me on Telegram.

Reactions to screw-ups are even more important than screw-ups.

Here is what I did:

1️⃣ I apologized profusely and told the person the truth: I forgot. (Which I always do. If I forgot, I say, "Sorry, I forgot." I don't make up "personal emergency" excuses.)

2️⃣ I wrote this story because stories like this are supposed to make me appear more human. (I take pride in appearing to be a robot, but people say I need to appear human.)

3️⃣ I told this story in all my classes today and jumped at the chance to teach the phrase "Happens to the best of us." (See what I did here? I screwed up, but called myself "the best of us" anyway. Smart.)

The moral of the story is: Even though I am super-organized, I am only human. Don't be afraid of me.