Introduction to LPAT Writing

Introduction to LPAT Writing is a 12 hour training course. It is intensive and focused on the LPAT Writing essay task and is suitable for any candidate, from a first time candidate who speaks English as a second language to native speakers of English.

What you’ll do

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    Learn how to analyse the essay question and identify the explicit and implicit elements of the task.

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    Identify the audience and author, and based on the explicit and implicit task elements, define the central purpose of your essay.

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    Construct a complete introduction to your essay that fulfills the requirements for task completion and lays the foundation for a coherent and organised answer.

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    Plan and execute a conclusion that perfectly fulfills the central purpose of your essay.

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    Understand the text types used in the LPAT Writing exam and practice executing these.

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    Create effective PIE paragraphs that support and elaborate your essay’s central purpose.

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    Practice using different text genres to achieve broad lexical and grammatical range.

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    Understand and achieve coherence at the levels of the whole essay, between paragraphs and from sentence to sentence.

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    Identify and address the most frequent usage errors in your writing with a view to fulfilling the requirement for grammatical accuracy.

Prospectus

  • Session 1

    We review the source text and an essay question. We identify the author, audience and communicative purpose. Based on these, we develop the introduction.

  • Session 2

    We discuss the creation of PIE paragraphs. This covers the notion of the proposition, and how this can be illustrated.

  • Session 3

    We discuss the notion of logical progression of ideas and the way we can achieve this through the use of hyper-themes/macro-themes.

  • Session 4

    We explore the speech text type and discuss the choices that are open to us for our definition of author. We introduce the shared experience text genre and the way that using different text genres help us create grammatical and lexical range.

  • Session 5

    We discuss how we can achieve coherence at the level of sentence-to-sentence, and further delve into defining audience and author.

  • Session 6

    We discuss the letter text type and identify its features. We review the advising text genre.

  • Session 7

    We further consider how the relationship between author and audience can affect our use of language. We introduce the instructing text genre.

  • Session 8

    We introduce the notion of the concessionary argument. Alongside this, we discuss how the narrating text genre can be used to illustrate a proposition.

  • Session 9

    We introduce the letter to the editor text type. The issue of audience is particularly important, and tricky, here.

  • Session 10

    We look at alternative ways of beginning the letter to the editor text type. We discuss the reviewing text genre.

  • Session 11

    We introduce the proposal text type. We explore the relationship between a teacher and school management and understand how this affects communicative purpose.

  • Session 12

    We reflect on the essays we have written. In light of the knowledge we have gained about text types, text genres and coherence strategies, we consider their strengths and weaknesses.

✺ Frequently asked questions ✺

  • The course is taught entirely in English.

  • Our LPAT trainer, Mr May, is based in New Zealand. Because of this, all LPAT training is conducted online using Zoom.

  • Assume about 2 hours of self-study for each hour spent with your trainer.

  • You are expected to complete one LPAT essay after each training session. You will need to submit this work in good time for Mr May to evaluate in readiness for the next session.

  • In this case, we will complete the essays together, during the training. This usually means it will take quite a bit longer than 12 one hour sessions to complete the entire programme.

  • Mr May holds an undergraduate degree in linguistics and several post-graduate qualifications in English language teaching and linguistics.

  • Mr May has been helping people prepare for LPAT since 2003. He typically works with about 15 to 20 people each year.

    Incidentally, Mr May himself attended the LPAT exam in 2003 and achieved scores of ‘5’ in all parts of the assessment.

  • That depends on a number of factors. We recommend that you contact Fiona, our office manager. She will arrange for you to go through our custom assessment process so we can give you an estimate of where you are and where you need to be.

Book an Assessment.

Before beginning training for the LPAT Writing assessment, we strongly recommend, though do not insist, that applicants complete our LPAT Writing assessment. This provides important benchmark and proficiency information that will allow our LPAT trainer, Mr May, to optimise the 12 week programme so that you make the best possible progress.

This assessment consists of an essay topic to write at home, followed by a 30 minute meeting with Mr May on Zoom.

There is a charge of HKD200 for this assessment. You can book this assessment online using the booking tool at the right, and paying by credit card, or by calling Ms Li at 5282-0157 to make other arrangements.