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Writing Task 1

Writing Correction Service 10% Discount for Group Members

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Are you ready for the IELTS Writing Tasks?

Writing is said to be the hardest of all the four IELTS skills to master. This is not because it is more difficult than the other skills, but because students do not get good feedback.

IELTS Advantage offers a unique correction service that helps students improve their IELTS writing skills and produce better essays.

Our service includes:

  • 4 pages of feedback.
  • Correction of grammar and vocabulary mistakes.
  • Suggestions on how to improve your ideas, vocabulary, writing skills, academic language and structure.
  • An examiner’s report on each of the four marking criteria and ways to improve your score.
  • A reliable IELTS band score.
  • Band 9 sample answer.
  • Free lessons on IELTSAdvantage.com
  • Essays returned within 24 hours* of sending.

Don’t risk doing the test before you get expert feedback. The IELTS exam is very expensive, you don’t want to have to repeat it. Get your essays checked and pass first time.

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  1. Choose the package you want below.
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  3. Do the questions at home and then email them back to us.
  4. We will reply with your corrections and examiner’s report within 24 hours*.

If you have any problems we have 24-hour email support at mail@ieltsadvantage.com

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So far we have 100% customer satisfaction and I work hard to keep it that way. Here are just a few satisfied customers. You can also look at the comments at the bottom of the page for more positive reviews.

I did the IELTS test last year and got 8 in my reading and listening, but only 5 in my writing. Chris showed me how to write the IELTS way. He also has great free writing resources on his site which made it possible for me to improve really quickly. After practicing with his method I got the 7.5 I needed to attend medical school.

– Aarav, India

I was making the same grammar mistakes over and over again, but Chris was able to show me how to fix these and this really helped me improve my essays. After fixing so many silly mistakes my essays were much clearer and easy to read. I got the 6.5 I needed to attend university in America.

– Ha, Vietnam

Before Chris showed me how to write an effective essay I was doing all the wrong things. Chris showed me how to give the examiners exactly what they want and nothing else. Thank you.

– Rodrigo, Philippines

I have tried other services and this was by far the best. I can’t believe how much detail you gave me and how quickly I could improve. Thank you so much my teacher.

– Noon, Thailand

Sample

Below is a sample feedback report. Your feedback report will contain the same level of detail.

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I have authored over 100 free articles on IELTS and my goal is to help as many people as I can for free. Essay correction is the only service that I offer on my site that requires people to pay money because it takes a long time to correct each essay and it allows me to keep writing free articles. Look at the comments on my site and you will see thousands of people who are very happy with everything I do.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Most of you questions should be answered below, but if there is anything else you need help with please email me- mail@ieltsadvantage.com

Can I pay in my own currency? I don’t want to pay in US Dollars. 

Sure you can pay in your own currency using a credit card or debit card. The amount is in US Dollars but it will be converted to your own currency.

Do you correct both Academic and General Training Essays? 

Yes. You will be sent a pack with both types of question.

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You will be given a list of questions when you buy. There is a very wide selection of over 30 Task 1 and Task 2 questions. You should choose your questions from this list. This is to ensure the questions are real and to maintain quality.

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Top 6 Mistakes General Training Students Make

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PLxVg7gSbTRAwQU4zdOR--PN13K5BcBdYfgwd9Q4nnt0ey2nwfrKjgiDSpKbPLB7EEGsyMGl5sZZJwLS4RfQrQ=s0 Top 6 Mistakes General Training Students Make

What is the difference between General Training and Academic IELTS?

  • The Listening and Speaking tests are exactly the same for both.
  • The Reading tests are slightly different because the reading texts are different.
    • The Academic test has academic texts from text books, journals etc.
    • The General Training test has texts from every day life and the world of work.
  • Task 2 Writing is the same for both Academic and General Training.

The biggest difference is Task 1 Writing and this is where students make the most mistakes.

The top 6 mistakes are:

  1. Tone
  2. Paragraphing
  3. Development
  4. Relevancy
  5. Grammar and Vocabulary
  6. Complacency (the biggest one).

Check out the video above for a more detailed look at these.

You might also be interested in:

General Training Task 1 Strategy

Task 1 Letter Writing Tips

Is Writing Task 1 Important?

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At least once a week I get a student who emails me saying that they got a 6.5 yet again and they are stuck on this score. When we look at the main reason for this result, one common thing comes up again and again- they didn’t prepare for Task 1 properly.

In the IELTS Writing test you will have to write two essays- Task 1 and Task 2. There is a lot of confusion and lots of misleading advice about whether Task 1 is important or not.

Some of the misleading things I have heard are:

  • You don’t need to write a good Task 1. Just focus on Task 2.
  • Task 2 is worth more marks, so you should focus on it.
  • You can write a very good Task 2 essay and a bad Task 1 essay and still get a good mark.
  • Task 1 is very short, so spend most of your time on Task 2.

This is all very bad advice. Why? One of the main differences between students who get Band 5.5-6.5 and students who get 7.0 + is that 7.0 + students are equally good at both Task 1 and Task 2.

Most students spend between 80-90% of their time making sure they get Task 2 correct and mostly ignore Task 1.

How Much is Task 1 Worth?

Task 1 is worth a third of your total marks and Task 2 is worth two thirds. This is very significant.

Task 1 and Task 2 are marked separately. These two marks are then put together and a final score is reached.

A very common scenario is when a student writes a very good Task 2 essay and gets a 7 for that essay, but they only gets a 6 for Task 1. This reduces their overall score to 6.5.

Strategy

So how much time should you spend preparing for Task 1? You should spend at least a third of the time you are spending on writing preparation on Task 1. So if you are practicing your writing for 3 hours per day, you should spend at least one of them on just Task 1.

Task 1 Academic is very difficult for most people, because they are not used to analysing data and it requires a completely new set of skills that take time to master.

There is also very specific grammar and vocabulary that you need to learn in order to be able to cope with Task 1 Academic.

Finally, there are 7 different types of Task 1 Academic question and each of them requires a different approach. If you learn a good method for each of them, you are more likely to do well. If you don’t, you are likely to get a shock on exam day and fail to get the score you need.

For those of your doing General Training, you don’t have to analyse data; instead you have to write a letter. However, many GT students get complacent because they think they know how to write a letter. This may be true, but IELTS wants you to write the letter their way, so there are lots of things that you must learn before you can get a high score.

Preparation

Task 2 is very important. You should fully prepare for that part of the test, but you should not ignore Task 1.

You should make sure that you are familiar with the following things for Task 1 Academic:

  • Each of the 7 types of question.
  • How to pick out key features and include them in an overview.
  • How to support key features with accurate data.
  • Paragraph structure.
  • Grammar and vocabulary needed to describe data and processes.

You should make sure that you are familiar with the following things for Task 1 General Training:

  • Different types of letter i.e. formal and informal.
  • Paragraph structure.
  • How to develop main points.
  • Formal and informal language.

For more information please visit our Task 1 page.

Skip a Line and Use a Pencil

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Keep-the-Examiner-Happy-lossy-e1453523053240 Skip a Line and Use a Pencil

Paragraphing

When marking someone’s IELTS Writing it is very frustrating when you see one big block of text. What I mean by this is a full essay that has just one paragraph.

Did the student mean to write one paragraph? Probably not. However, it is impossible for the examiner to know where one paragraph ends and the other starts if you don’t make it very clear to them.

Simply using an indent is normally not good enough because under exam conditions, people don’t think about making neat indents; they just write as quickly as possible.

If you don’t skip a line, then three things could happen:

  1. You will receive a Band 5 or below for Coherence and Cohesion because you have not demonstrated any knowledge of paragraphing.
  2. You will also lower your mark for Coherence because an essay with no paragraphs is very difficult to understand.
  3. You will make the examiner’s job more difficult than it needs to be and this is probably not a very good idea.

I used to work in a law firm before I became a teacher and one of the partners would regularly delete emails without reading them if they didn’t have clear paragraphs. He would do this even if the email was from an important client. He used to say ‘If they don’t have enough respect for me to simply hit the space bar on their keyboard, then they don’t deserve my time.’

You can avoid this by simply skipping a line or two between paragraphs. Two would be better, for reasons I will explain below.

Editing

If you look at the video below of me writing an essay under exam conditions you will notice that I did a lot of ediiting i.e. deleting and changing what I wrote.

I advise all of my students to read each sentence after they write it and then read each paragraph after they write it and then finally review everything at the end. If you do this you will avoid so many mistakes, but you will also have to do lots of editing.

First of all, if you have skipped two lines in between your paragraphs, you will have lots of room to edit. Don’t worry about running out of paper, you can ask for more.

Secondly, it is much easier to simply use a pencil and eraser. If you are running out of time then feel free to draw a line through the parts you want to delete, but an eraser is much better.

Those two tips above will help you enormously on exam day.

From Band 6 to 8 in 6 Weeks

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Tina is one of my 1 on 1 students and she jumped an amazing 2 bands in her writing in just 6 weeks.

I decided to share her story because there are lots of things everyone can learn from it including:

  1. How to turn your weaknesses into strengths.
  2. How to make a study plan.
  3. The number one way to improve your vocabulary.
  4. Reduce the amount of small grammar mistakes .
  5. Organise your essay so that the IELTS examiner will easily understand all your main points.

Click play to hear Tina’s story.

I hope you enjoyed the video. If you have any questions, please feel free to leave a comment below or join the conversation over on our Facebook page.

5 Common Task 1 Mistakes That Stop You Getting Over a Band 6

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Last month I launched our new writing correction service and after marking hundreds of Task 1 essays I noticed that most students make the same mistakes. Below are the 5 most common mistakes and how you can fix them and improve your writing.

Not Writing a Clear Overview

This is the most important part of your whole essay.

The overview is a short paragraph that tells the reader 2 or 3 of the most significant things about the chart, graph, table etc. It should contain no data and instead describe the main features in general terms.

If you look at the IELTS Marking Criteria for Task 1 it states that in order to get a Band 7 candidates must ‘present a clear overview of main trends, differences or stages.’ In other words, if you don’t write a clear overview you can’t get a Band 7 or above.

Click the following link for more information on how to write an effective overview.

Writing About Everything

Every Academic Task 1 question states ‘Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features...’. ‘Summarise’ means that you only mention the main points, or as the question states ‘the main features.’

Lots of students try to write about every piece of information they see. This normally leads to a very disorganised essay and often means that you run out of time, or even worse, run over time and fail to complete Task 2.

Always keep in mind that the task is as much about what you do not write as you do write. This is often a case of prioritising. I tell my students when writing the overview that they can only tell the examiner 3 things and three things only about the graph and this prioritisation helps them write a more effective overview.

Over-complicating the Question  

The examiners know that you have never seen the graph or chart before and that you only have 20 minutes to write about it, so they are not expecting miracles. To help you, the graphs are much simpler that you think. Look at the graph below and try to spot the three general trends. Try not to get caught up in the detail, just focus on what is happening generally from the start date to the end.

IELTS-Academic-Writing-Task-1 5 Common Task 1 Mistakes That Stop You Getting Over a Band 6

In general, one goes up, one goes down and one stays relatively stable. It is often that simple. If you reported those three main trends you would be correct, but many students (especially the higher level ones) think that this is too simple and try to find data that is not really there to find.

Not Organising Ideas Logically

The most logical way to organise a Task 1 essay is:

Paragraph 1- Introduction

Paragraph 2- Overview of main features

Paragraph 3- Details of main features 1

Paragraph 4- Details of main features 2

You could hand a Band 9 answer to a stranger and they would be able to read it once and then be able to roughly draw the graph or chart. Paragraphing and grouping ideas together logically help the reader understand everything more easily. See our lesson on Task 1 charts for more details about the structure above.

Describing Data Incorrectly

Describing general trends and changes in data requires very specific grammar structures and vocabulary.

The most common mistake is probably trying to use grammar or vocabulary you are not sure about. Remember that the grammar and meaning need to be correct, or you risk losing marks.

You should also avoid describing data too precisely. For example, if you look at the figure for ‘Car Theft’ in 2003, it would be better to say ‘approximately/around 2300’ or ‘just under 2500’ than ‘2300’ because we don’t know what the figures are exactly from just looking at the graph.

Please take a look at our grammar and vocabulary guide for lots of different structures and phrases you can use in Task 1.

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