How to Generate Ideas for Any Cambridge Essay (Even When Your Mind Is Blank)

“I don’t have any ideas.”
 “I’m not creative.”
 “I don’t know what to write.”

If you’ve ever thought this during a Cambridge exam, this episode is for you.

In this week’s podcast, I break down why this problem happens and, more importantly, how to fix it quickly and practically.

 If this episode helped you, make sure you subscribe or follow the podcast so you don’t miss next week’s training, and if you need help with your English, send me a message on Instagram and let's chat. 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Good morning everybody and welcome to the Cambridge Advanced Accelerator. My name is Cheryl, and I'm here to give you a bit of Monday motivation going into the week. I said that word a bit weird. Motivation. Motivation. Monday motivation going into the week. So let's get this week off to a flying start. In this week's podcast, I want to answer a question that I have been asked several times over the past week, and it is about writing. And what we're going to look at today with writing is the problem of not knowing what to write. The problem of having that mental block when you go to write and sitting for what feels like hours just trying to think of ideas. So a lot of people come to me and say, I'm not creative, Cheryl. I don't have any good ideas when it comes to writing. And this often creates the same problem with speaking. When students say, I'm really bad at speaking, I'm terrible, I've got terrible language, I've got terrible vocabulary. But it's actually not the vocabulary, it's like they don't they don't have an opinion on the question. So then it's quite hard to logically to construct that answer and use nice vocabulary. It's pretty impossible to do that if you don't have an idea to start with. Okay, so that's what we're going to look at today. Uh, how to get ideas for your writing and for your speaking. So this is going to be a really practical session, guys. So if you're not driving or anything, grab a pen and make some notes, okay? So first thing that we're going to do is we're going to make a list of common vocabulary topics or common topics that appear in the writing exam, which is pretty much the same topics that appear in the speaking exam, which is pretty much the same topics that appear in the reading and the listening exam as well. Okay. So we're going to make a list of these topics. For example, the environment, education, work, technology. These are the four big ones, right? So make a list. If you're one of my students already, just take the topic that we're studying this week, okay? Take that topic. Let's let's pick the environment because this is the the biggest one in the exam. Okay. So write down environment. All I want you to do under that is go away and have a think about five words or phrases that you could use that are reasonably advanced to talk about the environment. For example, the first one that springs to mind for me is global warming. Climate change. We need to reduce our carbon footprint. Things like this, okay? You'd I don't want you to make a list of 40 words connected to the environment, okay? But I want you to pick five maximum, preferably, phrases rather than individual words. Like we need to reduce our carbon footprint, okay? Five phrases. We've got the word environment at the top, okay. This gives us our advanced vocabulary on the environment. Woohoo! We didn't need to learn 200 words on the environment, we've just got five. This is like our cheat sheet, okay? Our cheat sheet for writing about the environment. So we've got five words. Next, I want you to have a think about what are the big topics surrounding the environment? What does everybody talk about on the news? What are the big problems? What what what are the what are the main themes, the main ideas? If you're not sure, just go and read a couple of newspaper articles on the topic, which is also gonna give you nice vocabulary. Okay, so having a think or watch some news, read The Guardian, Google The Guardian, the environment. What topics are coming up? It's probably gonna be problems that we're facing in the environment today, and solutions to those problems, right? So, what's the big problem and how can we fix it? Those are the mo the main ones with the environment, right? So start thinking about that. What are your opinions on that? What are the big problems? And what do you think? How can we solve those? If you don't have opinions of your own on how to solve them, steal them. Steal them, read about other people's opinions and steal those. Steal the ones you agree with. Okay, put that on your little cheat sheet about the environment. Now you have the main ideas to talk about and five vocabulary points that you can use when you're talking about those things. Okay, what can we do next to practice it? So I'm gonna have that at the top of my little cheat sheet on the environment. I would practice this a little bit with my speaking. I'd maybe ask Chat GBT to ask me five questions about the environment. Okay, um, see what it comes up with. And with those ideas and opinions that you've now thought of, try and answer those questions. It's gonna be much easier now because you have ideas on the topic. You've prepared it in advance. Okay. Um when you're coming to write an essay, if you have that kind of information already thought of, when you come to write an essay, and it's always the same topics, okay, you're gonna look at your um, you're gonna look at the title of the essay and think, okay, oh, this one's on the environment. Okay, what are my my main ideas that I have on the environment? Okay, and how can I incorporate that into my piece of writing? And that's really going to help you. The thing is, when people say, I I'm not creative, I don't have any ideas. Think about anybody writing or or speaking. If I'm going to give a TED talk, I'm not just going to turn up and talk about the first thing that comes into my head. I'm going to research it and prepare it and practice it in advance. So it's the same thing for you going into the exam. When you go into the exam, it's not going to be the first time that you've thought about those things. Okay? We're going to prepare it in advance so that we're confident on the main topics that appear. Same for writing. When you see the day of the exam, it shouldn't be the first time that you've ever written an essay. Or you should have written multiple essays before you go and do your exam so that you're comfortable with the different topics that might appear in the exam. Okay? So the first time you ever write an essay on a topic, totally normal that you're not going to have ideas. Okay. Think about them, take a little bit longer and write them down. Okay. But try not to get too lazy and just ask Chat GPT to do the thinking for you. Because the thinking bit is where the magic happens. If we let AI do all the thinking for us, then it's going to be more and more difficult when you get to the day of the exam. If you've let AI think for you in every single essay you've written, then on the day of the exam, when you don't have it, you're going to struggle. Okay? So just take a little bit longer to write your essay, but do the thinking yourself. Think of your opinions, think of your ideas. Look at your research that you've done in advance. Okay? Um, so those would be my biggest tips for helping you um helping you with ideas for writing and speaking. Let's look at an example of this, okay? Um, so I'm gonna grab a book of um past papers and look at an example writing task, okay? And I'm gonna brainstorm some ideas for this writing task. Okay, so writing task I've got here is ways of keeping the urban environment clean and tidy. Okay, urban environment, so cities. Ways of keeping cities clean and tidy. Clean and tidy is kind of on our environment topic, no? Problems and solutions. The problem is the the cities are messy, dirty, polluted, and how can we solve that problem? We've got three options given for us legislation, public awareness campaigns, and public services. Now you might read that and be like, oh my god, I have no idea what I would write about that. Well, luckily, there's a little box next to the task that gives you ideas. You don't need to even be creative at all. We can just use the ideas that are given to us. Okay, we're not being tested on our ideas, we're being tested on our English. So if you use the ideas that are given there for you, that's totally fine. Okay? They're not expecting um you to win the Nobel Peace Prize with this essay with these new original ideas. All they want to see is your English level. Okay, so use the ideas that are there if you can't think of any. So for legislation, I was thinking laws or something for that. What's the box say? Laws against polluting should be tougher. Okay, this is an idea. All I would have to do is develop that. Public awareness campaigns, the media need to encourage people to act responsibly. Okay, so the media, news or social media, um telling people to be responsible, be clean, be tidy, and public services. The government needs to spend more on keeping our cities clean. Okay, spend more money, let's have more street cleaners, let's have more um more jobs with uh um with cleaning involved. No, um, so these would be the three options. I need to pick two, okay, and I'm gonna develop those ideas. So always before you write an essay, take five minutes to plan your ideas, okay? And the easy way to develop your answers is to think because okay? So our question is how can we keep cities clean and tidy? Legislation. So laws against polluting should be tougher. So how can I keep uh cities clean and tidy? I can make laws against polluting. This will help keep streets clean and tidy because and then this is my development of the answer. All I need is uh one or two things to develop this idea. So laws against polluting would be tougher. This is going to help keep streets clean and tidy because it will deter people from littering if they have to pay a fine. We can give an example. If people litter on the street, they will have to pay a fine, and this will stop people doing it. We could give another example of a law. Um maybe they could have laws against um uh laws against uh certain cars being in the city centre and only electric cars, which could keep the air cleaner and there would be less pollution. That's enough. I don't need 10 ideas. A couple is fine. That's me developing the idea. Okay. Public awareness campaigns, the media encourage people to be more responsible and that be clean and tidy. So we could talk about influencers on Instagram um uh creating videos to uh to show uh how important it is to stay clean and tidy. And this would help because if a lot of people see it, then they will be more inclined to listen to someone that they look up to and respect on the internet, or if it's on the news, then people um may take it seriously, or more people will be aware of it. Again, that's too many ideas. I only need one or two, and that's it. Okay, so if you're having a block on ideas, just use the ones that are on the paper and think because add one or two extra ideas, and that's it. The ideas do not need to be amazing, it's all about how we are expressing those ideas and how we are structuring them. Okay, um, so I hope that helps. I hope that makes things a little bit simpler for you. Um, if you have any questions, as usual, uh let me know. And guys, have a great week. We'll see you in the next one. Take care, bye bye, ciao.