All About IELTS

Welcome to IELTS Success Formula Challenge Day 5. If you’ve just joined IELTS-Blog today, read about the Challenge here.

Today we’re going to handle a problem that Anshad M. from India complained about. He is a nurse who needs a work permit for working in English-speaking countries such as UK, Canada and New Zealand.

To be able to get his dream job, Anshad needs to deal with the following IELTS issue:

“I took my IELTS test a year ago and my Writing module score was pretty low. When I was inside the exam hall, I could not respond to the essay topic properly. The topic was a two way discussion about whether or not creative artists should be supported by the government. Even though the topic was rather simple, I failed to find some rational arguments in the given time and that affected my sentences and brought my score below average. Because of the same reason, Writing Task 1 too didn’t go well. I believe I still may face the same issue in the upcoming examination which I am planning to sit in August and I seek your guidance.

Do you know what “drawing a blank” means? It means to be unable to think of something, to be unable to get information. This is what happens when you get a question on the topic you never thought about – and it’s a very, very common problem (you’re not the only one who has it, Anshad!)

One part of Anshad’s problem is that he didn’t have enough thoughts on the topic. It can be solved by going over a list of typical IELTS essay tasks in preparation for the exam, and thinking in advance about each and every one of them, to have something to say. We post the latest IELTS topics daily on IELTS-Blog.com, and have a large collection of them, which is constantly growing.

Another part of Anshad’s problem is that he didn’t follow a proper essay-writing process. When you know what to do step by step, it helps with managing your time, it helps with writing a good essay and it helps to calm you down, because when you feel in control of the task there is no stress.

IELTS Success Formula does exactly that for you – it teaches you the process, explains the essay types you can get in IELTS, it shows you how to handle each essay type, how many paragraphs to write, what should be written in each paragraph, what sentence structure to use to get a higher score, what vocabulary to use, how to link your sentences while developing your viewpoint and more (have a look at this fitness activities sample). In addition the book reveals you 10 secrets how to impress the assessor with your writing, and how to identify in your writing very common weaknesses so you can avoid them. After doing the fitness activities in the book you will find that 35 minutes is enough to write a great essay and will even have 5 more minutes to check your work.

Writing reports in IELTS, just like writing essays, can be broken down into steps. By following a simple process you can quickly understand the task, what you’re required to do, gather your thoughts and put them in writing, sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph, and when finished, give your work an overall check to ensure quality and quickly find the errors. The types of charts and diagrams or maps you can encounter do affect the report you will be writing, but we cover all of them in great detail in IELTS Success Formula. You won’t be caught unprepared if you went through the Writing Task 1 fitness activities in the book (view a sample here).

To learn more visit the IELTS Success Formula webpage and download a free trial copy (scroll down and look for the download link).