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The key thing IELTS Examiners want you to do is present main ideas and then develop them by ‘extending and supporting.’
By developing an idea, you are giving the reader a clearer understanding of why the main idea is a good or bad idea.
If you want to see how this actually works out with various real questions from the test, you can click here to read my sample answers.
Dave
What are supporting ideas?
Supporting ideas are a combination of explanation and examples (both general and specific).
This may include talking about the result or effect of something, or how a situation is made better or worse by something.
Let’s look at an example question:
In some countries the average weight of people is increasing and their levels of health and fitness are decreasing.
What do you think are the causes of these problems and what measures could be taken to solve them?
For the first body paragraph you should discuss the causes.
Below is a breakdown of the main and supporting ideas for this paragraph:
Main idea: One of the main causes of obesity is unhealthy diets
General example: processed food has become very common
Explanation 1: high levels of sugar and salt
Explanation 2: lots of marketing – especially aimed at children
Result: kids have bad habits – continue when adults
Specific examples: soft drinks e.g. coke, fast food e.g. burgers, pizza
How do I link my supporting ideas?
One way to make your paragraph clearer is to your link ideas using vocabulary phrases, which help the reader follow your idea development.
Phrases include the following:
The main causes of _______ is…
This situation is made worse because…
This results in…
Good examples include…
This has been confirmed by….
Good linking phrases are like landmarks on a map when you’re finding your way around a new city.
They really help the reader to know exactly what kind of idea they are reading and where they are in your discussion.
With practice they will help you to logically organise your supporting ideas into clear, cohesive body paragraphs.
Here is the sample paragraph with the ideas and linking phrases all together:
One of the main causes of obesity and poor health is unhealthy diets. In many parts of the world, processed food, which contains high levels of sugar and salt is readily available. This situation is made worse because this food is supported by large advertising campaigns, which are increasingly aimed at children. This results in young people developing bad habits at an early age, which continue into adulthood. Good examples include soft drinks such as Coke, as well as fast food e.g. pizza and burgers. This has been confirmed by a recent study in the USA which showed that the majority of obese people had a poor diet containing high levels of junk food.
Should I include fake evidence?
You can see from the above paragraph, that the final supporting idea includes scientific evidence.
Many IELTS teachers suggest including this kind of supporting idea as it makes your argument really clear and strong.
However, you should be careful not to be too specific as some examiners might mark you down if it’s really obvious that you’re just making it up.
Compare the following two examples:
General (good!):
This has been confirmed by a recent study in the USA which showed that the majority of obese people had a poor diet containing high levels of junk food.
Too specific (bad!):
This has been confirmed by a recent study from the University of Michigan which showed that 87% of obese people ate junk food more than four times a week.
Therefore keep your evidence as general as possible. Don’t include any data, just general conclusions.
The IELTS examiner has to be able to accept that you are writing this from memory.
If it’s too specific then the examiner will find it difficult to believe that you were able to remember all this data even though you didn’t know what the question would be.
Now it’s your turn! Put your answers in the comments.
In some countries the average weight of people is increasing and their levels of health and fitness are decreasing.
What do you think are the causes of these problems and what measures could be taken to solve them?
Hi, I just find this article really helpful specially the part about fake evidence. Thanks a million
Thank you for the feedback and glad to help!
People’s weight is on the rise, while their overall health and fitness are experienced a steady decrease. A poor diet coupled with a lack of exercise can be considered as main roots of this disturbing issue. Fortunately, there are some strategies that can be implement to fight it back.
Firstly, people are gaining weight due to the consumption of bad and unhealthy foods. For example, a regular meal is quite often made up by trans fats, lots of starchy carbs such as white bread or pasta, and little or nothing of green leaves. All of these have nothing of nutritional benefits, just make the body gain extra pounds easily. A sedentary lifestyle is the second cause of this alarming reality. Many individuals work long hours during weekdays and even weekends and have no time to working out, or just simply prefer sit in front of a TV screen to relax in their free time. This inactive lifestyle, according to the latest report of World Health Organization (WHS), unfailing leads not only to an increase in weight but also to suffer different obesity-related diseases such as diabetes or cancer, to name a few.
Despite the above-mentioned, there are effective ways to tackle this problem. Governments and educational centers can join forces to run informative campaigns to educate citizens about the greatest benefits of eating a diet rich in veggies and fruits, and how by doing so they will see positive results in the bodies, meaning less pounds and more energy and health. Furthermore, new and well-equipped public sport facilities can be built in the communities, so that will be act like a magnet for many families, who will be attracted to working out rather that staying at home.
In conclusion, although there must be others reasons, eating unhealthy products and having an sedentary life definitely represents the major factors why population is getting bigger in size, impacting badly on their health. However, governments and educators can made a positive changes by implementing wise strategies to face this problematic.
Good effort!
Some corrections: People’s weight is on the rise, while their overall health and fitness are experienced to decrease steadily. A poor diet coupled with a lack of exercise can be considered as the main roots of this disturbing issue. Fortunately, there are some strategies that can be implemented to combat this.
Firstly, people are gaining weight due to the consumption of bad and unhealthy foods. For example, a regular meal is quite often made up by trans fats, lots of starchy carbs such as white bread or pasta, and little or nothing in terms of leafy greens. All of these have little nutritional benefit and just make the body gain extra pounds easily. A sedentary lifestyle is the second cause of this alarming reality. Many individuals work long hours during weekdays and even weekends and have no time to working out, or just simply prefer sit in front of a TV screen to relax in their free time. This inactive lifestyle, according to the latest report of World Health Organization (WHS), unfailing leads not only to an increase in weight but also to various obesity-related diseases such as diabetes or cancer, to name a few.
Despite the above-mentioned causes, there are effective ways to tackle this problem. Governments and educational centers can join forces to run informative campaigns to educate citizens about the greatest benefits of eating a diet rich in veggies and fruits, and how by doing so they will see positive results in the bodies, meaning less pounds and more energy and health. Furthermore, new and well-equipped public sport facilities can be built in the communities, so that will be act like a magnet for many families, who will be attracted to working out rather than staying at home. (This paragraph needs more development)
In conclusion, although there must be others reasons, eating unhealthy products and having an sedentary life definitely represents the major factors why the population is gaining weight which impacts badly on their overall health. However, governments and educators can make a positive changes by implementing wise strategies to face this problem.
Thank you so much. I thought I would be disappointed with myself after your feedback. Fortunately, I did not make a ton of mistakes, just a few (a face smiling). You are right, my third paragraph is weak and not convincing. I was beyond 300 words, so I just stopped there, no more ideas came to my mind. Can I interpret your “good” as acceptable 6.5? (a concerned face)
Thanks!..
I think it can manage 6.5 with 7s for task achievement, coherence and 6s for vocabulary and grammar – but it is close!
One of the main causes of obesity is a lack of exercise. Nowadays people are too busy to exercise. The long work hours result in adopting sedentary lifestyle. Furthermore, scarcity of sport amenities with flexible hours and descendent fee deter people of having active life. According to recent study in the USA, majority of middle-class people afflicted by the huge costs of gyms. These all have lead human being to be more and more overweighted
One of the main causes of obesity is a lack of exercise. Nowadays people are too busy to exercise. The long work hours result in adopting sedentary lifestyle. Furthermore, scarcity of sport amenities with flexible hours and descendent fee deter people of having an active life. According to a recent study in the USA, the majority of middle-class people afflicted by the huge costs of gyms. These all have lead human being to be more and more overweight.
Well written! Some corrections:
One of the main causes of obesity is a lack of exercise. Nowadays people are too busy to exercise. Long work hours often result in adopting a sedentary lifestyle. Furthermore, scarcity of sport amenities with flexible hours and affordable fees deter people from having an active life. According to a recent study in the USA, the majority of middle-class are deterred by the huge costs of gyms. These all have lead human beings to be more and more overweight.
Keep your claims weak!
Thanks a ton
you mean i need more supporing sentences?
No, I mean don’t make statemets like all people have adopted a sedentary lifestyle – better to keep it weak and say ‘many people’ or ‘some’
I saw the sample essay by Mai posted on this website on the same topic. Where one of your checkers has commented that “Be careful and not to repeat simple vocab (Foods)” and marked down in the lexical resources part. But there are very fewer alternatives to the word “food”. You have also repeated food many times.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dkzY20EnjvWLtM697A5rz-2QHMCmLGEV/view
What this person would have done differently to get a higher score in vocab too?
If you look closely at that essay you will see that there are a lot of ways to paraphrase food instead of saying it 3 times in a sentence. Such as watching what you eat, having a better diet, good nutrition, eating healthier, etc.
Is that clear?
One of the main causes of obesity is lack of exercise. People are living a sedentary lifestyle due to long working hours. In other words, physical activity has been overlooked because of the hectic work schedule. Moreover, individuals gets involved in a lot of sitting and ignores doing any sort of outdoor activity. As a result, many people consume more calories than they burn through exercise. For instance, a recent study in the USA indicates majority of the population avoids healthier activities such as gardening and walking which has a major impact on an individual.
Great work!
But please try to cut down on the linking words to start every sentence – try to limit yourself to 2 per paragraph maximum!
The main cause of obesity is sedentary lifestyle of people. These days people do less physical work. The emergence of video games has aggravate the situation as people find 3D video games a better way to spend their leisure time as compared to outdoor games. This result in overweight of people. This has been proved by a recent survey in the USA which showed that the majority of obese people used to do quite small amount of physical exercise.
That is very well-focused and supported – keep it up Harsh!
Thank you Dave!
You’re welcome!
The main cause of obesity is lack of exercise. In many parts of the world, people have sedentary lifestyles. This situation is further made worse by their working in front of computers for long hours. This results into weight gain and several health problems. Good example include avoidance of going to gym or using lifts instead of stairs and then spending the entire day in office with not major movements. This has been confirmed by a recent survey in New York that obese people had inactive lifestyle containing minimal physical work.
The sedentary lifestyle has become one of the causes of this alarming issue, related to that the rhythm of life nowadays goes too fast. This situation leads that some people are always on a busy condition with their nearly half-day work. Moreover, some are glued to their digital toys such as smart phone, personal computer, desktop, video games, etc. in order to get rid of stress. Therefore, they have sat or lain usually on their bed and seem not into in doing the workouts.
I’m a little unclear on your main idea – life is too fast? How does that relate to your support about using phones?
1- Having fast food more than usual
2- Having a fast-paced life
3- being tempted with Ads
4- Most of the time high-fat foods are delicious
Are these acceptable?
Yes, those are all fine, Moon!
One of the main causes of obesity is a lack of exercise. Today’s life style has lead people to less exercise. All over the globe, the pace of living has become way faster than earlier. A decent life now is not restricted to what was in the past, and in order to cope with it one has to put further effort. For example, a recent study revealed that most people who suffer from obesity are those who are busier. Therefore, it’s quite clear that lack of exercise undoubtedly impacts the health of people.
Hoping someone will point out the mistakes, if any.
One of the major reasons for the increase in obesity is the lack of exercise. In recent times people tend to have a sedentary lifestyle, due to the exhausting working hours especially for office workers as they spend most of their time sitting at their desks. As a result, physical activity is overlooked because of the hectic work schedules, which affects their weights negatively. Another factor contributing to the rise in the number of overweight people is the excessive consumption of online media and games while sitting idly for hours. Children and young teenagers, for instance, avoid outdoor activities and spend a significant amount of time playing video games and watching movies, thus impacting their weight and physique.
Good start!
Keep providing that level of detail! Try to weaken your claims slightly with modal verbs, C.V.
Hi, Please check if you can. Thank you so much.
A key concern for many countries is its obese people. The sedentary lifestyle and unhealthy diet patterns are the chief issues associated with obesity. I will elaborate on the main reasons further and discuss the possible solutions for the issue.
Primarily, obesity is caused by unhealthy eating habits. Today, everyone binges upon junk foods such as pizza and burger. As evident in a recent research, the junk food is loaded with high cholesterol, salt and sugar contents which leads to obesity in people. Furthermore, the empty calories present in processed foods fail to provide enough energy to the body. Probing further it was realized that the attractive marketing by companies lure everyone to buy these products. A sedentary lifestyle is another concern which obscures in maintaining health and fitness. Today, people are more involved in video games rather than exercising or playing some outdoor sport. Life has become extremely busy and stressful, nowadays, and people prefer to spend their leisure time relaxing in the vicinity of their homes with the technology. Kids also follow the footprints of their parents and remain engrossed in screens. Such a lifestyle badly impact people’s fitness levels and causes obesity.
To overcome this issue, firstly, people need to develop healthy eating habits. By choosing nutritious foods, snacking on fruits or nuts will cut down the amount of fat content, provide enough nutrients, and maintain the energy levels of the body. Indulging in some sort of exercise will further solve the issue. People should opt for outdoor activities such as swimming, jogging or play any sport to keep their health up to the mark.
Overall, the obese population is a major concern for many nations which can be resolved by opting good habits such as eating nutritious diets and following a fitness regime or participating in outdoor activities.
Great effort, Sonia!
Be careful with your level of formality though – you have some nice academic phrases but some are just a bit off.
Keep practicing and be self-critical to make more progress – keep it up!
Dear Dave,
Would you mind checking this paragarph out and enlighten me ?
One prime reason for deteriorating health and fitness of people is lack of physical exercise in everyday life. This is due to the lifestyle they are used to spares a little time available for engaging into workout or going to a fitness center. Particularly, the urban people are mostly engaged in desk jobs that involves sitting long hours with a minimum requirement of physical movement which leads to obesity. The situation is made worse because people are addicted to gadgets like smartphones that keeps on engaging them for rest of the time after work-hours. This result in further idle sitting with no physical activities, resulting is weight gain and other derived diseases.
Sure, Saha, it’s a good start but try to be a little more nuanced in your writing and account for different people.
Those facts aren’t true about everyone and you can show off your vocabulary and grammar by making more nuanced claims!
Keep working hard!
With the advancement in the field of technology, specifically in the areas of work and food industry, therefore resulted in the occurrence of more weight gain issues within our societies, due to reduction in the physical activity in the workplace and easy availability of processed food at our disposal. The main cause for prevalence of obesity is due to improper diet and lack of exercise, serious steps should be taken by the Government to tackle these issues.
One of the main causes of obesity is due to lack of healthy diet in everyday life. Because, nowadays it cheaper to fill the appetite with fast food instead of healthy food, as it is easily available in huge quantities and can be procured without much efforts at cheaper price as compared to a healthy meal. The situation is even worse when the fast food companies market their products regressively in such a way it even influences the children to buy and eat at the risk of avoiding healthy meal and making it a habit for their lifetime. A very good example is of price of a McDonald’s burger comes way cheaper than that of an apple, and the burger is filling than apple. Another major cause is due to lack of physical activities such exercise, jogging, playing, etc in our daily lives. Due to improvement in technology has took the transformation of old machineries, which used hard labour had been turned into latest computer, which in turn require minimal physical movements in our daily lives. This has made the lives of people challenging to live in such situation.
Government should intervene by taking some harsh steps to make the lives of their citizen more productive and healthier. They should closely monitor the fast food companies by setting standards to market the products in a healthy manner and avoid using unhealth preservatives, and urge the corporate to reduce the working hours of their employees and encourage them to do physical activities in their free time and making them available to fitness infrastructure in the organisation itself. The Government should create more plans to build fitness parks at every suitable area possible at a cheaper price or even free of cost.
In conclusion, it is a serious concern that health of its citizens is deteriorating living in a lifestyle lack of proper diet and adequate exercise, and it could even get worse if necessary actions are not taken by the Government.
Sir, can you please give feedback and band based on my essay above
thank you
Great work again, Francis!
Careful with putting too many subordinates in a sentence like you do in your first one – simplify and aim for more accurate grammar.
There are also some informal collocations like harsh steps – be a little more academic.
Keep up the hard work!
Hi Dave, thanks for spending your priceless time to read my message!
I am struggle with reason(s), which then support my main idea
When making an outline, I usually encounter 2 situations:
As a result, with former situation, I have topic sentence BUT NO REASON. Latter situation, I DONT HAVE TOPIC SENTENCE but I have my reasons.
Can you help me out? This problem is such an obstacle for my writing.
The main cause of fatness in people these days is due to lack of physical movement of body. One of the prominent reasons is people are fully consumed with work in their life. For instance , nowadays it is advised to work more than office hours or business hours to make more money. This results in deficiency of fitness among people and also severe health issues like cervical, migraine etc. Secondly, the young generation these days prefer to stay inside home and play video games. As a consequence, the physical utilization of body remains less . It is proved in recent survey which by taken by WHO that most of the people nowadays are in hustle of making money at the cost of being unhealthy and unfit.
Sir could you please check this and comment on this.
The main cause of fatness in people these days is due to lack of physical movement of body. One of the prominent reasons is people are fully consumed with work in their life. For instance , nowadays it is advised to work more than office hours or business hours to make more money. This results in deficiency of fitness among people and also severe health issues like cervical, migraine etc. Secondly, the young generation these days prefer to stay inside home and play video games. As a consequence, the physical utilization of body remains less . It is proved in recent survey which by taken by WHO that most of the people nowadays are in hustle of making money at the cost of being unhealthy and unfit.
Sir could you please provide any comments on this.
Words like ‘fatness’ are too informal, Subham.
Good work developing your ideas but even better if you could focus on a single main idea – love the specificity at the end!
Sir could you please let me know in my paragraph have I included two main ideas? Could you please specifically point out. It would help me a lot .
One of the causes of obesity is lack of exercise.The reason is that people don’t usually have time because of their busy schedule,either they are in the office or at home watching movies.However,they view exercise as a form of punishment which can be stressful for them,this results to overweight especially among teenagers.For instance,majority of the population in the UK,especially the youngsters are most affected because they eat more of fatty foods and sugar which contains high calories without burning them off.these therefore leads to obesity and also their health will be affected too by having juvenile diabetes and heart disease
One of the most important cause of obesity is lack of regular exercises. Since the advent of technology, people have become busy spending many hours in front of screens, watching different types of movies and tv. Shows. Most of the young men are addicted to the video games that’s why they do not have time doing some exercises. In the past, the people’s lifestyle was dynamic, opposite to the recent static one which has made people always lazy as they use cars instead of walking.
Good work, Samar!
Careful with your plural and singular and some informal vocabulary.
People`s health has been effected by various factor in modern world. Many believes that increasing in weigh cause some dire ramification to vigor. In the current essay I aim to reveal the causes and introduce some solution for that.
Firstly, the variety of junk food consumption has been increased rapidly over the recent years, which is filled with fat, sugar, salt and other harmful ingredient. Hence, over-consumption of these unhealthy foods has been responsible for critical problems such as diet, cancer, and blood pressure. This situation has been getting worse because offspring who are used to consume junk foods several days in week will suffer from various, and sundry illness in their early ages, and even death in the long run. Secondly, most does not have enough activity in their day, therefore they end up being couch or mouse potatoes. As an result, if they continue this lifestyle for a long time they would end up like junk food consumers. In addition, WHO ( world health organization) contain that having daily activity is one the major health Maintenace, and at top of that, it bring resistance and immunity against disease.
Despite the above mentioned causes, there are effective ways to tackle this problem. Government and educational centers should join forces to run informative campaigns to educate citizen about merits occur in natural and more healthy foods. As an illustration, should they drink green tea 2 time per day, this would decline the amount of unnecessary fats. Another thing is that, establishing sports facilities and giving extra benefits, such as homemade food recipes and workout plans can attract people attention to having activities in their life. However, these mentioned solution does not mean we should deprives our self of fast foods, actually if use it in the appropriate limits it would not cause any harm.
All in all, body health is an essential part of our life and we should look after it with having workout or paying attention to our meals. Meanwhile, only time will tell us about how it would be treated over the coming years.
Recent data from some nations of the world point out that more individuals are gaining weight while there is a steady decline in their health and wellbeing. This trend is attributed to an increase in consumption of unhealthy meals and a sedentary lifestyle. To reduce and possibly reverse this trend, engagement of a coach is advised.
An unhealthy diet is the leading cause of obesity around the world. Fast-food restaurants at almost every corner of the street with most food options high in sugar and salt contribute significantly to this menace. Also, on television and radio, more advertisements of sugary foods and pizzas targeted at young children are increasing. These kids pick up this habit and carry it over to adulthood, where they become more inactive, increasing the likelihood of weight gain.
The nature of work carried out nowadays is sedentary. Most activities are automated, and humans tend to be less active at work and usually binge to keep awake at work. The average office worker arrives at work by eight in the morning and leaves at five in the evening, sitting at one place for more than ninety-five percent of this time. He leaves the office, gets into his car, and may commute for another one hour. Of course, when he gets home, he is tired, eats, and goes to bed without partaking in any exercise.
It is advised that a professional health coach is engaged to help with the negative effect of our lifestyle choices. The coach’s responsibility will be to manage both the nutritional requirement and physical activities of the client and ensure a healthy and fit client. To achieve this, the health baseline will be established, the health target set, and the client committed and accountable to the coach to ensure the attainment of the set goals of reducing obesity is achieved.
In conclusion, weight gain will increase because of the kind of food we eat and the idle nature of our work if no deliberate action is taken. Hence, we must seek help by engaging a fitness expert and be committed to achieving better health if we must reverse these statistics going forward.
Really nice work, Ebi! It is a little long – try to just write 3 paragraphs.
There are also a lot of little mistakes with subordinate clauses, including conditionals…
Keep working hard!
Nice Ebi, but it is a little on the long side – try to write 4 paragraphs instead of 5.
Also avoid using ‘we’ – good hypothetical examples, though!
One of the main causes of obesity is a lack of exercise. This is due to the fact that people are too busy, and exercise is not a priority for them. In addition, the work-life balance of modern era is not well managed, causing many to spend more than on work being sedentary, which is a detrimental to their health. As a human being, it is a natural tendency to procrastinate when it comes to strenuous sports involving physical activities due to many distractions, such as social media and television, that could deter our motivation on improving our physique.
Good Herwin!
Good if you can make those examples even more specific and detailed!
when I am writing just one main idea, my essay comes out really short. Can I write two main ideas to support my view with an explanation and example?
One of the crucial cause of obesity is not having enough exercise.This occurs mostly as a consequence of sedentary lifestyle as people prefer to sit indoors rather than going for a walk or playing in outdoors.Another major factor is that they are working hard in order to meet up the requirements of this competitive era. As a result, they might be unable to find time for themselves. In addition to it, they tend to go to gyms as compared to the parks; therefore, they do not find plenty of time to go for a workout. So, rather than doing something such as some simple physical exercise, they are doing nothing and it results in an increasing number of people becoming obese.
There is no doubt that one of the main reasons of obesity is lack of exercise. The significant cause of this is that nowadays, individuals are too busy to have free time for doing outdoor activities. This problem is deteriorated when technological advancements prevent people from being active, subsequently, more and more calories turn into fat in their bodies.