Home

Header Right

Main navigation

Home > IELTS Blog > Writing Task 2

Writing Task 2

Writing Correction Service 10% Discount for Group Members

By Leave a Comment

 

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.

How does the process work?

  1. Choose the package you want below.
  2. You will be immediately sent a package of real essay questions to your email.
  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

Testimonials

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.

PDF Sample 

Questions?

You can purchase below, but if you have any questions please feel free to email me at mail@ieltsadvantage.com

Purchase Method

Click the ‘Buy Now’ buttons below to pay by credit card or debit card.

You can then instantly download your Welcome Pack with all the instructions and questions you need.

1 essay correction- $25 $22.50 USD 10% OFF

This package contains one correction, feedback, suggestions for improvement and sample essay.

Credit or Debit Card:

buy-now Writing Correction Service 10% Discount for Group Members

3 essay corrections- $65 $58.50 USD 10% OFF

This package contains three corrections, feedback, suggestions for improvement and sample essays.

Credit or Debit Card:

buy-now Writing Correction Service 10% Discount for Group Members

5 essay corrections- $100 $90 USD 10% OFF

This package contains five corrections, feedback, suggestions for improvement and sample essays.

Credit or Debit Card:

buy-now Writing Correction Service 10% Discount for Group Members

You will be instantly sent a PDF document with all the questions and how to easily send your essay to me.

Prices are in US Dollars but you can pay in your own currency by clicking the buttons above. All transactions are 100% safe and secure.

This is currently the only method by which I can accept payments, but if you have any others ideas, please email me.

Can I trust your site? 

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.

I am also trusted and linked to from the BBC, the British Council and Oxford University. Just click any of the links to see their links to my site.

All our payments are safe and secure. If you are not 100% happy, just send me an email and I will refund your money.

Trust is my number one priority and my site can’t survive without it, so please know that we take it very seriously.

If you have any questions you can always email me at mail@ieltsadvantage.com. I can also allow you to speak to many happy customers.

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.

Can I choose my own questions? 

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.

Can I send you one essay at a time? 

Yes, no problem.

Can I send you different essays on different days?

Yes, no problem.

What happens if I am not happy? 

If you don’t think that our service improves your writing we will issue a refund.

Are you an IELTS examiner? 

IELTS examiners are not allowed to tell people they are actual examiners, so even if I was one, I couldn’t tell you.

Does one essay include both Task 1 and Task 2?

No, one essay means one essay.

Is your service really 24 hours?

Yes, but I do not work on Saturdays or Sundays. If you send your essay on Friday evening or Saturday, you will not receive it back until the following Monday. At any other time of the week, you will always get your feedback within 24 hours.

Refund Policy:

If you are not 100% satisfied with your purchase, you can email us and get a full refund.

You can get a refund within 30 days from the date you purchase.

 

 

A Guide to Telling the IELTS Examiner Lies

By 8 Comments

I was chatting to an IELTS examiner about things that stop students doing well on their speaking and writing tests and one thing he said was really interesting- ‘The speaking and writing tests are not lie detector tests.’

Lie_detector_test-300x219 A Guide to Telling the IELTS Examiner Lies

What he means is that many students think that you have to tell the absolute truth. You don’t.

For example, a student in his class was asked to describe their favourite outfit during a practice exercise. The student said they couldn’t remember any details about their favourite outfit, so they stopped speaking after 10 seconds. When asked about this, the student explained that they really couldn’t remember anything, so there was nothing they could do. There was, lie!

You will never lose marks for being dishonest during the test, as long as your lies sound plausible and answer the question.

For example, the student above could have simply invented their favourite outfit and then added imaginary details. In this way they would have been telling a story that is false, but they would get a much higher score for their answer because it was fully developed.

Below are some other ways you can use lies to help you:

Part 1 Speaking

Most of these questions will be about you, so you shouldn’t really have to lie. However, there might be some things that you can’t remember. When this happens you can simply elaborate with a few things that might not be true.

For example, you might be asked to tell the examiner about your house. If you can’t remember the names of the rooms or the different furniture, simply tell them about rooms/furniture that you can remember, even if they are not actually in your home.

Part 2 Speaking

People often run out of things to say in this part and it is much easier if you can make things up.

You might have to describe your favourite book or the last movie you watched. If you can’t remember some of the details, don’t panic, simply add in false details. Don’t worry, the examiner is never going to stop you and tell you that it is untrue. It is much better to lie and keep talking, than hesitate or pause because you have nothing to talk about.

For example, I asked a student to talk about the last movie they saw. I don’t know why, but they said they couldn’t remember the last movie. I told them to just tell me about any movie they could remember. ‘Isn’t that telling lies?’ said the student. It doesn’t matter, it is a speaking test, not an honesty test.

Part 3 Speaking

This is probably the part that will help you the most because you will be asked questions that you might not know much about and the examiner also wants you to give fully developed, extended answers.

If you know nothing about what the examiner is asking because you have no experience dealing with that topic, pretend you do. I was doing a speaking test today and I asked a student two questions:

  1. Are police respected in your country?
  2. Who is respected more, police or lawyers?

She had no idea how to answer these because she said she had never met a police officer or a lawyer in her entire life. Her answers were not so good because of this and her fluency really suffered. Instead she could have simply made up some stories or facts and told me what she thought. It would have been much better for her to speculate what people think of police and lawyers, than to stumble through her answers with mostly ‘ummms’ and ‘ahhhhs’.

Remember there is no right or wrong answer to these questions. The examiner is not testing your ability to give a ‘correct’ answer, they are testing your ability to communicate in English.

Writing Task 2

Each of your main ideas in your essay should be supported by an example. This helps to fully develop your ideas and boosts your score. One of the complaints I hear from students is that they cannot think of examples. Again, make them up.

You have to be more careful with these because they really must sound plausible. I was teaching a student this technique and in their next essay about banning smoking in public places they said ‘92% of British people died from passive smoking last year.’ This is a made up example, but it is totally unbelievable. You should only use made up examples that make sense and actually help support your main idea.

Won’t the examiner check?

No. The examiners won’t be taking out their phones and checking all of your facts. They are testing your ability to communicate in English, not how truthful you sound.

Should I lie as much as possible?

No. This is not what this guide is about. Telling the truth should always be your first option because it is much easier to talk about something that is real. However, if you are struggling to find an answer, don’t be afraid to make some details up.

I hope you found the above useful. For more information about IELTS, please feel free to have a look around the site.

IELTS Writing Task 2 Exercise

By 8 Comments

I recently gave the question below to a group of students and most of them made at least one major mistake that lowered their overall mark.

I thought it would be a good exercise to discuss and analyse this question in order to help you with future questions and raise your awareness about what examiners expect in the real test.

Please do the three exercises below without looking at the sample question and then watch the video below.

Exercise 1- Question Analysis

Look at the question below and simply think about how you might answer it. Think about what the examiner wants you to do. This should take you around 1-2 minutes.

The threat of nuclear weapons maintains world peace. Nuclear power provides cheap and clean energy.

The benefits of nuclear technology far outweigh the disadvantages.

To what extent do you agree or disagree?

Exercise 2- Ideas

Look at the question again and think about relevant main ideas that you could use in your article. These will be your main points. Again this should only take you 1-2 minutes.

Exercise 3- Structure

Try to fit your ideas into the general structure below.

Paragraph 1- Introduction

Paragraph 2- Main Body 1

Paragraph 3- Main Body 2

Paragraph 4- Conclusion

Common Mistakes

After doing these three exercises most people have already made at least one crucial mistake that lowers their mark. Below is a video that highlights the key mistakes people make in this question.

Sample Answer

It is often argued that nuclear arsenals keep the world safe and that nuclear energy is an inexpensive and environmentally friendly source of power. This essay totally disagrees that these benefits outweigh the drawbacks because the downsides are the eradication of mankind and the destruction of the planet.

Believing that major powers having nuclear warheads pointed at one another is a good thing because it ensures super powers will not go to war is foolish. This is because it only takes one mistake or a rogue commander to trigger a nuclear conflict and this is a conflict most of us would not survive. For example, during the Cuban Missile Crisis the United States and the USSR came extremely close to launching their missiles and this demonstrates that they are not actually the ultimate deterrent and nuclear war is possible.

The idea that nuclear fission is a clean source of energy has been dispelled by numerous high profile accidents at nuclear power plants. These disasters show just how harmful and long lasting a leak of nuclear material can be and the contamination is not worth it when other sources of energy are available. For example, the Fukushima disaster has polluted huge parts of the Pacific Ocean and it has been reported that fish as far away as California have dangerous levels of radiation. To make matters worse, solar and wind energy could replace nuclear energy tomorrow if there was the political will to do so.

In conclusion, this essay disagrees with the opinion that nuclear technology is beneficial rather than dangerous because the consequences of using nuclear energy in the wrong way are so catastrophic to both our species and the Earth itself.

Recent Confusing Questions

By 4 Comments

A lot of you send me your Writing questions after you do your exam. Recently, there have been a few very confusing questions. One student even emailed me to say that he probably won’t do very well because he found it difficult to focus because one person was crying throughout most of the Writing test.

But don’t worry. The best thing to do in these situations is to analyse the questions, think about the best way to answer them and you will improve your technique. You should see these difficult questions as a chance to improve, not an excuse to give up.

Below I will look at 4 recent questions and discuss:

  • why they are confusing;
  • what type of question they are and
  • the structure I would recommend using.

Questions Types

In general, I believe that there are five general question types for Writing Task 2. They are:

  1. Opinion (Agree or Disagree)
  2. Discussion (Discuss Both Views)
  3. Advantages and Disadvantages
  4. Problems/Causes and Solutions
  5. Double Questions (Two Questions)

Question types are important because it affects how we answer the question and the overall structure of the essay.

Beware of Fake Questions

Lots of websites and books make up their own questions. This is fine if you know what you are doing, but not so good if you don’t. IELTS has a very standard format for writing questions and if this format is not strictly followed, the result will be a very misleading question.

If you find a question that you do not understand, check that it comes from a reliable source first. Remember that not all websites and books are reliable sources.

Question 1

There is an increasing trend of old people living longer in many countries around the world.

Do you think this has a positive or a negative effect on the population as a whole?

Why is this question confusing?

The main reason students get confused about this question are the words ‘positive’ and ‘negative’. Many feel that because these are two opposites that they must discuss both of these.

‘Positive’ and ‘negative’ are also very similar to ‘advantages’ and ‘disadvantages’, therefore many students believe that this question should be answered as an ‘advantages and disadvantages’ question.

The most important words above are ‘Do you think’. These three words indicate that the examiner wants to know your opinion. It also indicates that you do not have to discuss both positives and negatives, or in other words, you don’t have to answer this question as an ‘advantages and disadvantages’ question.

The other thing that might cause students trouble are the words ‘the population as a whole’. This means that you have to talk about the whole population and not specific people or specific groups of people.

What type of question is it?

The words ‘Do you think‘ indicates that this is an opinion question.

I would advise my students to simply pick one side, either positive or negative, and say why you have this point of view.

You could also give a balanced answer and say that you think it is both positive and negative, but I think this is an overly complicated way to answer the question and it will not get you higher marks.

Structure

If I agreed that it has a positive effect, I would use the following structure:

Paragraph 1- Introduction

Paragraph 2- First reason why I think it is positive

Paragraph 3- Second reason why I think it is positive

Paragraph 4- Conclusion

If I think it has a negative effect, I would use the same structure but give two reasons why I think it is negative.

Question 2

Nowadays more and more people read news on the Internet. Nevertheless, newspapers will remain an important source of news and information for the majority of people.

Do you agree or disagree with this statement?

Why is this question confusing?

The question statement ‘Nowadays more and more people read news on the Internet. Nevertheless, newspapers will remain an important source of news and information for the majority of people.’ has two sentences and therefore many students believe that this should be answered as a ‘discuss both views’ question.

However, if you look at the question, the first sentence is only for background purposes. It is really just giving you information to help you with the question. The most important sentence is the second sentence. It states ‘Nevertheless, newspapers will remain an important source of news and information for the majority of people.’

What type of question is it?

This is an opinion question. It is asking you if you agree or disagree with the second sentence. In other words, do you agree that newspapers will remain an important source of news and information or do you disagree?

You do not have to discuss the merits of old style newspapers vs news on the internet, you simply must say if you agree or disagree with the second sentence and why.

Structure

If I agreed with the statement, I would use the following structure:

Paragraph 1- Introduction

Paragraph 2- First reason why you agree

Paragraph 3- Second reason why you agree

Paragraph 4- Conclusion

If I disagree, I would simply state two reasons why I disagree in paragraphs 2 and 3.

Question 3

Some people think the main purpose of school is to turn children into good citizens and workers, rather than to benefit them as individuals.

To what extent do you agree or disagree?

Why is this question confusing?

The question seems like it has two opposing views. Normally, when there are two opposing views the question will ask you to discuss both of these views. Even though the question asks you if you agree or disagree, many students answered this question like a discussion question and many did not give their opinion at all.

However, if you read the question statement again, it does not have two opposing views, it has only one view- that the main purpose of school is to turn children into good citizens and workers.

What type of question is it?

This is an opinion question. Therefore, your job is to say whether you agree that the main purpose of schools is to turn children into good citizens and workers or that you disagree with that statement.

It is rare to get a question that is this confusing. Don’t worry, the vast majority of opinion questions are not like this.

Structure

If I agreed with the statement, I would use the following structure:

Paragraph 1- Introduction

Paragraph 2- First reason why you agree

Paragraph 3- Second reason why you agree

Paragraph 4- Conclusion

If I disagree, I would simply state two reasons why I disagree in paragraphs 2 and 3.

Again, it is possible to give a balanced answer and say you both agree and disagree, but I think, for most students, this is a very difficult thing to do and it normally results in more mistakes and lower marks.

Question 4

Research indicates that the characteristics we are born with have much more influence on our personality and development than any experiences we may have in our life.

Which do you consider to be the major influence?

Why is this question confusing?

The main reason this is confusing is the last sentence ‘Which do you consider to be the major influence?’. This does not follow any of the normal question formats. However, the key words in this sentence are ‘Which do you consider‘? They are asking you to pick one. This is therefore an opinion question.

It is also confusing because there are two opposing views, so many people would instantly think that this is a discussion question.

What type of question is it?

They are asking what ‘you‘ think and they are asking you to pick one side by asking you ‘which‘, therefore, this is an opinion question.

You could discuss both views, but you must state which one you think is the major influence. The easiest way to do this is simply pick one side and give two good reasons why you think this.

Structure

If I agreed with the statement, I would use the following structure:

Paragraph 1- Introduction

Paragraph 2- First reason why I think one side is the major influence

Paragraph 3- Second reason why I think one side is the major influence

Paragraph 4- Conclusion

Conclusions

  1. Questions will not always follow the standard format.
  2. Just because it appears that there are two opposing views, does not mean you have to discuss both sides.
  3. Look at the last sentence carefully. This will tell you what the examiner wants you to do.
  4. Spend at least a minute reading and thinking about what the question wants you to do.

qLpje9uaEmTQCb7uI42tFFX_2SBSixcYAzf2iMEoDgkCIjP4pfZxxsg4-X5pQqxRDzyy7YCdO5O_vfVhDRDG=s0 Recent Confusing Questions

IELTS Essay Topics

By Leave a Comment

IELTS-essay-topics IELTS Essay Topics

Most people doing IELTS Writing Task 2 get stressed out about which IELTS essay topics they will face. They worry about getting an unfamiliar topic and not having any good ideas or enough vocabulary to complete the task.

This article will help you by giving you the most common IELTS essay topics and showing you how to use these to get higher scores.

Why is it important to know the IELTS essay topics?

If you are familiar with the most common topics you will have a huge advantage because you will be better at two of the most important things:

  1. Thinking of relevant ideas
  2. Vocabulary

Idea Generation

Of all the things people worry about when doing Task 2, not having enough ideas to complete the essay is normally top of the list. However, you should remember that IELTS is not a test of your knowledge, it is a test of your English. The examiners do not expect you to be an expert on the essay topic, they just want you to show that you can write clearly and persuasively in English.

You should also realise that IELTS is a global exam and when the writers of the exam are making the questions, their main concern is writing questions that can be understood by nearly everyone in the world. For example, common IELTS essay topics are education, crime and health. Everyone in the world has an opinion on these everyday topics and you need to understand that the examiners are not looking for the ‘best’ ideas, they are just looking for relevant ideas.

Let’s look at an example question on the topic of international aid:

Rich countries should help poorer countries when they suffer natural disasters. Do you agree?

You don’t have to think of the ‘best’ ideas, you just have to think of two ideas that are relevant to this question. Reasons why rich countries should help are:

  • It is the morally correct thing to do.
  • They have legal obligations under international law.
  • Not helping will result in many deaths and suffering.
  • They have more than enough money to do this.
  • It is in their interests to do so for the peace and security of the world.
  • Some of their own people might be involved in the disaster.
  • Every rich country has a fund for disaster relief within their budget.
  • They might suffer a disaster one day too and need help from the international community.

You obviously do not need to think of this many ideas and some of the ideas are better than others, but the point I am trying to make is that there are lots of ‘relevant’ ideas you could think of.

Despite this, you will obviously be more confident and be able to think of ideas more quickly if you are familiar with the common topics. Below I will show you how you can use the common IELTS essay topics to learn about the general topics and improve your English at the same time.

Vocabulary

25% of your marks come from vocabulary and this is directly linked to IELTS essay topics. One of the main ways the examiner will judge your vocabulary is something called ‘topic specific vocabulary’. The idea is that someone with a wide ranging vocabulary should be able to talk about any of the common essay topics easily using words that are specific to that topic.

For example, if the question was the same as above, you would be expected to use words like ‘international aid’, ‘wealthy’, ‘developed’, ‘developing’, ‘earthquake’, ‘hurricane’, ‘relief fund’, ‘obligation’, ‘moral’ etc. These are words that you use specifically to talk about the essay topic. You don’t have to use these words, but they would help.

Therefore, the more familiar you are with the topic, the more topic specific vocabulary you will know and the higher your score will be. Knowing the most common IELTS essay topics allows you to focus on the most important vocabulary. Below I will show you the most common topics and some of the more important words you should know.

Are IELTS essay topics predictable?

Yes and no. You will obviously not be able to predict the exact topic that will come up. There are just too many to do this and it would be a very easy test if you knew what the exact topic was going to be.

However, there are between 10 common topics that come up more than others. You should focus on these first, especially if you don’t have much time before the test.

The most common IELTS essay topics are:

I think that technology, health, education and the environment are the most important topics and will feature regularly in the future.

For more information on the most common topics, please visit my most common topics page.

How can I use the most common topics?

There are two main ways you can use the most common IELTS essay topics to your advantage. The first is to familiarise yourself with them while practicing and improving your English and the second is to focus on topic specific vocabulary.

Common Topic Familiarisation

If you are going to do well in the IELTS test you need to be using and exposing yourself to English everyday. You should be reading, listening, writing and speaking in English as much as possible. You can therefore make sure that if you are listening to or reading something in English you do it within the common topics. For example, you could listen to a podcast on technology one day and then read a newspaper report about education or health the next day. Most of the questions are on current topics, therefore staying up to date with what is happening in the world will really help you think of ideas.

For example, three of the biggest news stories of 2015 were the refugee crisis, terrorism and internet privacy issues. These topics have, unsurprisingly, already appeared on the IELTS writing paper this year.

Please check out my 25 online language learning tools for lots of ways you can study within the common topics at home for free.

If you really want to get advanced, you could also try making up your own questions based on the news of the day and then give these questions to a study partner. This is something that I do with my classes. They go to a popular news site like the BBC and write a Task 2 question based on one of the stories they were reading about and then they give it to a classmate who does the essay for homework.

Vocabulary- Notebook

There are two things you can do here: start a vocabulary notebook and focus on key topic-specific vocabulary.

As mentioned above, you should be listening to and reading English as much as possible before your test. This will not only improve your listening and reading skills, but will, more importantly, expand your vocabulary.

When you are reading or listening you will always notice words that you don’t know. Most students simply look these up immediately in the dictionary and then forget about them. I think this is a total waste of time because the words do not stay in your head and you never use them again. A much better thing to do is to start a vocabulary notebook. This is the single most effective way to improve your vocabulary. Follow the steps below:

  1. Buy a notebook that you will only use for vocabulary.
  2. When you see or hear a new word try to guess the meaning from the context of the sentence or paragraph. This step is very important because it is an essential skill to develop and will help you remember the words.
  3. Check the meaning after you have guessed it in the dictionary.
  4. Note the new word and the definition in your vocabulary notebook.
  5. Note down some of the following things beside the new word:
    1. Synonyms
    2. Antonyms
    3. Pronunciation
    4. Word forms
    5. Sentences
    6. Pictures
    7. Examples
  6. Review the list of words and test yourself on these words after one week, two weeks, one month and two months. Soon you will have expanded your vocabulary dramatically.

You can also do this using apps like Memrise to record and review vocabulary.

Vocabulary- Topic Specific Words

As mentioned above, one of the ways in which the examiner judges your vocabulary is how many topic specific words you use. Learning these words before the exam for the most common essay topics should help you get a higher vocabulary score.

However, one of the worst things you could do is simply learn a list of words and insert them into your essay. This is not how good vocabulary works and the examiners are trained to spot this. Your focus should always be on accuracy i.e. using words correctly. Because of this I advise my students to use the 100% rule.

100% Rule

You should never use any word or phrase in IELTS essays if you are not 100% sure about it. By 100% I mean that you are sure about its:

  • Meaning
  • Collocations
  • Synonyms
  • Antonyms
  • Grammar

If you are not 100% sure about the things above, then do not use it. If you do, you will probably get it wrong and this will lower your band score.

Vocabulary for Four Most Common Topics

Below are some key words and phrases for the four most common IELTS Task 2 essay topics:

IELTS-Essay-topics-environment IELTS Essay Topics

IELTS-essay-topics-technology IELTS Essay Topics

IELTS-Essay-topics-education IELTS Essay Topics

IELTS-essay-topics-health IELTS Essay Topics

Word Circles

For all of the words above I have made word circles like the one below:

img_0253-e1454656841862 IELTS Essay Topics

These will help you remember them and they are based on the 100% rule I mentioned above.

Click there link below to access all of them:

Skip a Line and Use a Pencil

By 13 Comments

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.

Connect With Us

8,843Subscriber
1,326Followers

FREE IELTS Vocabulary eBook!