Skip to content

IELTS Preparation tips

The best ways to study for the four IELTS sub-tests: Listening, Reading, Writing and Speaking

The IELTS Writing Task 2 explained

I said this many times and I will repeat it again, “To write a good IELTS essay, you need to get into your examiner’s head”. You’ve got to understand what makes you gain or lose marks, because once you do – you can’t go wrong. What I am about to reveal here can be found in the IELTS official site, but I am explaining it in simple English.

This is how they grade your essay: you receive points for Task Response, Coherence and Cohesion, Lexical Resource, Grammatical Range and Accuracy. Looks heavy? Never mind, here comes the simple English version:

“Task Response” means that your essay shows that you considered and covered all the aspects of the topic. Let’s take this topic for example – “Internet: connecting or isolating people?”. Those who only chose to write about how Internet connects people – lose marks, those who only chose to write about how Internet isolates people – lose marks, those who compare and contrast both sides of the Internet and give arguments for and against – gain marks.

“Coherence and Cohesion” means how well you connected the paragraphs and sentences inside each paragraph. You see, all of your paragraphs need to be logically connected. For example, if paragraph 1 explains the advantages of the Internet, and paragraph 2 explains its disadvantages, then paragraph 1 should have a last sentence saying something like this: “In spite of Internet being a great help in communication, its drawbacks should not be overlooked”. This sentence creates the connection between 1st and 2nd paragraphs. If it weren’t there, the examiner could have thought that you jumped from advantages to disadvantages without a reason. The same rule applies to sentences inside the paragraph. Every sentence should lead to the next one.

“Lexical Resource” means vocabulary and different types of sentences, simple and complex. You should be able to use words and their synonyms.

“Grammatical Range and Accuracy” means spelling and grammar of sentences. You should be able to spell the words correctly, do not forget the articles “a/an” and “the”, the punctuation is also important, and so on – you get the picture, don’t you?

One more important thing to know: the four criteria are equally weighted. It means that if you forgot about the “Coherence and Cohesion” in your essay, you will lose 1/4 of your essay points.

It is quite possible that after reading this explanation you still couldn’t write a good IELTS essay. This is where “Ace The IELTS” book comes in. It has a full chapter dedicated to IELTS essays, which explains from A to Z the whole process of essay writing and makes it so easy that a child could do it.

There are topics of essays for you to practice on and our teachers are waiting to check your essays and make sure you are ready for the real IELTS test. And, of course, I am here to answer your questions, solve your problems and support you every step of the way, write me to simone[at]IELTS-Blog.com

Tips for the Writing Task 1 of the IELTS Academic test

As I promised to many of you, this is what you need to know about the Academic IELTS Test Writing Task 1.

The task here is to describe a graph in a report. The report is intended for a university lecturer, so the language you use should be appropriate.

There are several different graphs you could see in a Writing Task 1:

  • Single line graph – see example
  • Double line graph – see example
  • Bar graph (Single, Double or Triple bar graph) – see example
  • Pie chart – see example
  • Table – see example
  • Process

    • No matter what graph, diagram or table you are describing, you shouldn’t break these rules:

  • Your report must be of at least 150 words written in 20 minutes.
  • You shouldn’t write your opinion or copy words from the task prompt – rephrase and use synonyms instead.
  • Never use bullets, write as if you were writing an essay or a letter.

    • When your Academic Writing Task 1 is graded by IELTS examiners, they look for this structure:

    Introduction
    Overview
    Body

    The Introduction should state what the graph/chart is describing, this is basically the task prompt that has been rephrased to some extent.

    The Overview should talk about the most noticeable features/trends you can see on the graph. Remember that you are describing a graph to someone who can’t see it, so you need to visualise it for them. Don’t mention any particular figures in the overview paragraph, only the trends.

    The Body should describe the most important trends in more detail, while all information is summarised to avoid unnecessary detail. For example, if there is a graph that has 2 peaks, you should mention them; tell when those peaks appeared and what the peak values are. Notice how many distinctive features the diagram has and divide information into paragraphs, one paragraph per feature. You should link the paragraphs by sentences that logically connect them to one another.

    Important! You need to write about all the periods of time and all the subjects of graph. If it shows several years (1992, 1993, 1994) – write about all of them, if it is about men and women – write about both. Remember, summarizing doesn’t mean throwing away information. The secret here is to select what’s important, organize it, compare and contrast.

    The Conclusion should sum up the global trends shown on the graph and compare them if possible.

    And if you need some sample answers, here they are, enjoy.