🦋 IELTS Writing: paraphrasing the topic 🦋

It's a nice, sunny Saturday afternoon... and what is Irina doing? Checking IELTS essays, of course. Today I want to share one thing I noticed in my student's introductions.

📝 Topic: "Advertising can change people's priorities and have a negative impact on their lives. To what extent do you agree or disagree?"

📝 Student's essay: "It is sometimes argued that advertising can alter people’s values and have a negative influence on their lives."

OK, technically, the student paraphrased the topic. But the paraphrase is very close to the original despite the fact that it contains different lexical items.

📝 My paraphrase: "There is an opinion that people can be affected by advertising to such an extent that the quality of their lives deteriorates significantly."

Let's try to zero in on what exactly makes my paraphrase different from the original? Well, lexical items for sure, but also the sentence structure.

One thing that allowed me to use a new sentence structure is using different subjects. For example, in the topic we had "advertising can change people's priorities" - then why don't we make "people" or "priorities" the subject of the sentence? Or, "have a negative impact on their lives" - why don't we make "lives" the subject?

Use this simple technique: try changing the subject of the sentence. Chances are the whole structure will be changed.

📝 And now, try to implement this simple technique and paraphrase this essay topic: "Some people think that rising prices on the fuel for cars and other vehicles can solve different environmental problems."