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Outlining, outlining, outlining.

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I can't speak enough to the benefits of doing an outline for your standard academic essay.

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Outlining is the key to time management.

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Most students don't realise this, but learning how to do great outlines will absolutely boost your

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score beyond what you thought was possible.

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What I personally teach a student how to do the academic essay.

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The first step that I teach is outlining.

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I won't let a student write a paragraph or a sentence until they have actually mastered the ability

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to outline.

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Because that's that's the that's the starting point.

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That's the starting point.

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So now let's go ahead and move forward with how to really answer an essay question by first outlining

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it.

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So what is an outline?

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An outline is a blueprint.

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It's a general plan of what you're going to talk about in your essay.

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There are three main parts to an outline.

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You have to be able to take a position.

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Right.

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What are you.

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How are you going to answer it?

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Do you agree or do you disagree?

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What choice are you going to make?

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Then you need to decide on your controlling ideas.

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Controlling ideas are the controlling idea is the focus of a body paragraph.

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Everybody paragraph only talks about one controlling idea not to three, four or five controlling ideas.

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When you do that, you completely use coherence, lose coherence.

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Outlining helps to prevent that from happening.

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And then finally, after deciding on your two controlling ideas, you're going to think about and write

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down 1 to 2 supporting details for each controlling idea.

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Typically, the way that I teach my students, we write down two details for each controlling idea.

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However, it is possible to write a body paragraph using only one controlling idea.

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You just have to really expand and extend and discuss that one controlling idea.

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Really, really.

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Well.

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The outline.

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Another way to think about the outline is a skeleton like the human body.

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What you have.

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The human body is a skeleton.

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Right.

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The skeleton, everything else.

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Once you have the skeleton, all the other parts, everything fits in where it's supposed to belong

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right now.

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When you actually write the essay, that's when you're going to do your analysis and your explanation.

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But the outlining is what makes it really easy.

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So here are some of the benefits of outlining.

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Number one, it helps you to plan your body paragraphs and stay focused.

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So many students lose points because they lose focus.

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An outline actually saves time.

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Saves time.

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Some some students feel like, man, I'm using 2 minutes to outline and organize my ideas.

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I could be using that time writing.

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Actually what you're going to do if you don't do an outline is you're going to have incoherent essays

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that are all over the place messy, and you're going to take too much time, right?

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When you finish an outline, you can write really, really quickly and it makes your writing to be concise

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with smoother transitions and an elimination of drifting.

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When when I.

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When I say the word drifting, I'm talking about your thoughts.

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I'm talking about stopping the writing process and then drifting off into thought about what you're

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going to say next.

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That really messes up your ability to score very, very well.

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So here are a few steps to outlining.

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Number one, we're going to answer the question or make a choice to decide on the two controlling ideas

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and three deciding on 1 to 2 specific details for each controlling.

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So now we're going to look at some outlining examples.

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I'm going to show you the essay question and the outline that you would that I created for that essay

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question.

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There are 1000 ways, 1000 different ideas.

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Right.

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So it doesn't mean that my ideas are the perfect ideas.

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They're my ideas.

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Your controlling ideas and details could be completely different, but still answer the question in

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a perfect way.

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As always, you can practice along with me.

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So when the question pops up on the screen, you just you can just pause, pause the lecture, pause

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the lecture, and then go ahead and do your own outline practice.

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And if you're going to do that, make sure you have paper next to you and that you have a clock set

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on 3 minutes.

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That's the maximum amount of time that I'm going to give you to do an outline.

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A lot of my students finish in 2 minutes, but 3 minutes is the maximum time that you can take with

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your time constraints.

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So when we talk about the outlined format, there are a few different ways that people like to do it.

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Me personally, I use the outline that you see right here on the screen right now.

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1ab to a, B, that's it.

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Controlling idea detail one detail to second controlling idea detail one detail to when you're doing

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an outline, don't write unnecessary words.

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And also, we're not writing sentences.

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Do not write full sentences.

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Using be verbs.

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Is are was were prepositions, auxiliary verbs, helping all these all these non content words.

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Right by now, you should know that there is a difference between content, words, content and functional

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words.

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Right.

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Don't put any functional words in your outline.

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No functional words.

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Everything is just the content word.

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You going to keep it short and concise?

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So let's now look at some outlines.

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And as I said earlier, you're more than welcome to pause the lecture.

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After I read the question, I have the clock set on 3 minutes and do your own outline.

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So the first question reads.

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Some people feel that boarding schools are an excellent option for children, while other people disagree

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for many reasons.

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Consider both sides of this debate and conclude.

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So here is my outline.

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The first body paragraph.

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Boarding schools are good.

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That's my first controlling idea.

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And then my first detail is one reason why they're good is because you can learn another language.

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The second reason why is you can prepare for university or work.

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My second controlling idea is pretty obvious because the question says that boarding schools are bad.

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People disagree with them.

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They give a lack of emotional expression to students, and students live under observation or surveillance.

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So this is my outline.

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Having an outline in front of you and being able to refer back to an outline while you're writing helps

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you go faster and keeps you focused.

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So when I'm writing, I know already what my what's going to be in my topic sentence.

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I know my first.

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I know what the subject or the subject?

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Yes, the subject of my first detail.

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I just know that I need to expand and explain why learning another language is good or.

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Or explain how boarding schools help to accomplish that goal.

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That's really what you're going to do.

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And then in terms of preparing university, preparing for university of work, the only thing I need

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to focus on doing when I'm writing is expanding or explaining how boarding schools prepare you for that.

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And then I have to talk about why some people feel they are bad.

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And I have to explain.

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How do they give a lack of emotional expression?

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Explain.

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How does.

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What?

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What's the problem with living under the observation or surveillance?

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Is that explaining part that separates you from getting a low score or a high score on these academic

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essay?

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Let's look at analysis.

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Number two, for those of you that are going to do it on your own, you can pause it and then come back.

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The question reads, Overpopulation in major centers around the world is a major issue.

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What are the problems associated with this?

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What can be done to solve these problems?

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Here is my outline.

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Again, this outline is very straightforward because the question gives us the controlling idea.

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The controlling ideas.

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Some essay questions are more difficult to outline than others.

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The essay question the agree or disagree question is the most challenging one, because you have to

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decide on your own what, what, what, what's going to be controlling idea one and then controlling

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idea two.

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This is the reason why on the exam they love giving this question.

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Also a question that just ask you for your opinion can be more challenging to outline because they're

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not telling you what's going to be the controlling idea, the easier ones advantage, disadvantage.

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They're telling you the controlling ideas problem, solution, telling you the controlling ideas to

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embedded questions, telling you the controlling ideas.

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So here, look at my outline.

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Problems with overcrowding, controlling idea one and then about two problems.

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I will discuss urban pollution and unemployment and then body paragraph number two, it says solutions

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to overcrowding.

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And I'm going to talk about building eco friendly cities to address the urban pollution problem and

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matching jobs to community skills to address the unemployment problem.

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Right.

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I already have my information, so now I can just quickly write it and just really focus on the expanding

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explaining part.

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Let's look at out line number three again.

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Paul's if you want to work it out for yourself.

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Tobacco should be treated as illegal like other drugs.

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Smoking has not a single positive issue, but lots of negative effects should be effects, therefore

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should be banned.

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The first sentence in the last sentence are basically saying the same thing when the saying it should

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be treated as illegal.

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That's the same thing as saying it should be banned.

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Very often they'll do that.

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Very often they'll do that.

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The first the first and last sentence in that question are basically repeats.

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All right.

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So here's my outline.

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First, I want to talk about that it should not be made illegal.

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That's my controlling idea.

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One, I'm going to talk about it from a rights issue and a freedom of choice issue.

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And then I'm going to disagree with that second part by saying that it does have positive attributes.

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So my controlling idea one and controlling idea to correlate to each other.

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I want to talk I'm going to talk about the positive attribute of weight loss.

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And then the second one will be from an article that I read recently.

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It talks about smoking, reduces the chances for Parkinson's disease, which is really surprising.

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But that's why reading is so important.

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I read a lot.

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And when you read a lot, I mean, just read in general, not not for any particular exam, but just

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reading a lot just gives you a lot of information and ideas.

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Let's look at outline analysis number four.

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Here we have an agree or disagree question.

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The international community has asked the public to act immediately on reduction of fossil fuel consumption.

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To what extent do you agree or disagree?

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All right.

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So this is a to what extent question.

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Now, for me personally, I just love to agree or disagree completely flat out trying to walk the timeline,

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trying to walk the wire, you know, between the with the.

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To what extent do you agree or disagree?

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A lot of students mess up when they try to answer it that way.

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I normally advise completely agree or completely disagree.

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Here's my outline where I completely agree.

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I'm going to first talk about that.

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It should be reduced because of pollution.

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That's my controlling idea.

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One and the reasons are global warming and water pollution.

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And then my second controlling idea deals with alternative sources, which are wind farms, wind farms

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and solar power.

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Maybe you came up with something similar to what I did, which is great.

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Again, you can have completely different ideas about why you agree or disagree.

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Here is our outline analysis.

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Number five.

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Do you think it's best when facing a problem to ask someone with more experience for advice about the

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problem?

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It should be about the problem, not them problem.

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The problem?

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Or do you feel that you should find information suggested through internet research?

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Which do you think is the best option?

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Use specific, not memorised examples and details.

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Right now this question.

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Has a lot of language.

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But if I were simplifying it, I would just say, if I have a problem, should I ask my best friend

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or go look for information on the Internet?

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That's basically basically what they're asking you.

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Right.

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Not really.

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Your best friend or your best friend has experience.

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So really, if I have a problem, should I go ask my uncle who's been who is 80 years old and has a

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lot of experience?

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Or should I go look on my own on the Internet?

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That's a simplified way of thinking about this question.

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In terms of the outline, I have to make a choice.

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So for me, my choice is an experienced person.

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My first controlling idea is dealing with past themes being similar to the present.

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Talking about that things that happen in the past are similar to things in the present.

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Different details.

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Same past solution is my first detail.

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Access to specialized knowledge is my second detail.

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Number two, they can act as a sounding board.

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Right.

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The experienced person can act as a sounding board, can take the problems to the listener.

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And that leads to solutions.

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Or the person listening as a sounding board can reveal our ignorance or our wrong thoughts.

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This is actually a really complicated question.

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I would hate getting this question.

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I mean, we can do it.

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I can do it.

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You know, but it's not it's not it's not an easy question to do.

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All right.

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So thank you very much for joining me.

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In part number one of outlining.

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And in the next lecture, we'll move forward with doing some more outlines of the essay questions.

248
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Thanks a lot.