The “Russian” 5-paragraph IELTS essay
A nationwide conspiracy creating bad writing
All Russian essays are alike.
First, an idea or controversy is introduced.
Then, it is examined, often from several perspectives.
Finally, in the conclusion, the author timidly states their feelings about the matter in the first-person.
Each feature makes me unhappy in its own way.
This model has been thoroughly indoctrinated into graduates of the Russian education system. It is in total contrast to the American model where the quality of a piece of writing hangs almost exclusively on whether or not a thesis is both presented and proved.
I’d wager that this is standard across the Anglophone since the British-Australian run International English Language Testing (IELTS) System demands much the same for a high score on its writing assessments.
Riddle me this: How can you “present a clear position throughout the response” if a position is not presented at the start of the essay?
There are other predictable defects.
The first paragraph will invariably begin “Nowadays” and state something that is absolutely not true “nowadays,” that is, true today in contrast with the past.
Additionally, the reliance on not presenting a thesis but reluctantly and timorously arriving at a position at the end of the essay is both ineffective and annoying.
The paragraph before the conclusion usually features a refutation of all of the reasons to believe the argument the author endorses, right before the author endorses it.
On the IELTS, you have 40 minutes to write an essay in 250+ words, presenting and proving your point.
I’ve been teaching writing in Russia for over 7 years now, and reportedly over 15,000 students have gone through the IELTS training program that I help to instruct, so I don’t think I am leaking any proprietary secrets here.
The best way to write such an essay is to present a position in the first paragraph and develop it in the subsequent two paragraphs before concluding the essay with a brief summary and discussion of the argument’s implications in the fourth.
This is a clear, coherent, and feasible strategy that meets all of the IELTS assessment criteria and, in some cases, produces some interesting writing, too.
It should be obvious that the last thing the reader experiences should be the pleasantly vertiginous feeling of nodding along with the author’s brilliantly argued point rather than suffering whiplash upon being introduced to challenges to it.
It’s just maddening that some stubborn writers insist that this other, nonsensical style, has a right to exist.
It doesn’t.
