Selasa, 26 Februari 2013

Writing IELTS: The Application of Brainstorming

In writing IELTS, your ability in utilizing standard written English, organizing and explaining your thoughts, plus supporting those thoughts with reasons and examples will be scored.

One thing that you can apply to help you completing two tasks in writing section is brainstorming. What is brainstorming? Alex Osborn states that “brainstorming is a conference technique by which a group attempts to find a solution for a specific problem by amassing all the ideas spontaneously by its members.” Another definition which is simpler explains that brainstorming is a process for generating new ideas.

Brainstorming itself is divided into two:
1. Traditional brainstorming
The common form used in this kind of brainstorming is in group form. There is a group of people sitting together. They give their idea on the motion given to them. They are free in giving their idea because the ideas will not be judged. This discussion is aimed at gaining as many ideas as possible for later analysis. As the form of the discussion is less formal, the session might result some radical new ideas.

2. Advanced brainstorming
The development of brainstorming technique creates this kind of brainstorming. This type of brainstorming combines the use of new technologies. There are some people who claim that this kind of brainstorming is more effective than the traditional one.

In the application of brainstorming in writing section, you can do both types above. For individual exercise, you can get help from brainstorming software that is offered from advanced type. On the other hand, when you have a partner, then you can train your brainstorming skill with your partner.
Brainstorming itself is very beneficial in IELTS because it can help you to collect some ideas in a quite short time. Allocate for about 3-5 minutes to do this step. You should write down the ideas that you might have on the topic or visual information given. In this stage, you should make everything goes down. You can use the scratch paper provided to write down all idea that you have, no matter how good it is. If you can type fast, you could use word processor instead of paper. Later, you just need to pick the good ideas from all ideas that you have written down.

Reference: IELTS Secrets, copyright 2002 by MO Media, http://www.brainstorming.co.uk/tutorials/whatisbrainstorming.html