IELTS Academic Writing tips for students
This is a special request from a student, and is basically a list of what look like the best links from a quick read through some sites I found in approximate order of usefulness or accuracy (with the caveat that I didn’t read most of them in detail):
How to Prepare for IELTS Writing (printable PDF booklet from City University of Hong Kong)
Good Luck IELTS IELTS Writing Tips
Your IELTS Guide IELTS Writing Tips
A Teacher’s Odyssey IELTS Tips and Writing Makeovers
And here are some of my own tips, very briefly:
For both tasks
- Read the questions carefully and underline the important words
- It must be clearly legible, but there is nothing wrong with crossing out (rather than erasing), adding words above the line with a little arrow to show where the word should go, or even inserting whole lines with an arrow, as long as it is very clear what you mean
- Avoid one sentence paragraphs, with the possible exception of the first paragraph of Task 1 or the conclusion of Task 2 if you have already given your point of view in the introduction and you are running out of time
- Try to use words and expressions other than those that are written in the questions, but don’t worry about it too much
- When you are doing practice exams at home, recreate the exam conditions as closely as possible. Don’t look at the question until you are ready to start writing, don’t take a break between Task 1 and Task 2, and don’t use a dictionary or write it on a computer
- If you have longer to prepare for the exam, it is worth doing the first few practice papers on a computer to learn from SpellCheck. Make sure you write down its useful spelling corrections and learn them
- When you have finished a timed task, look at the model task, look in your textbook, use your dictionary etc to see how you could have written it better. If you are going to give it to a teacher to check and they won’t actually be giving you a mark, give them a rewritten version so that they can concentrate on correcting the things that you have missed
For Task One
- Spend three or four minutes planning, and write a paragraph plan with very brief notes. This will help you analyse the main points to avoid this:
- Avoid describing the information point by point
- Make sure you check any times on the axes and use the correct tenses. For a line graph, it is likely to be Simple Past but could be Present Simple if it is something that repeats every day
- Possible paragraph structure: (1) Explain what the diagram(s) or graph(s) represent, with possibly some information such as what the axes represent. Try to use different words to those on the question sheet. (2) Explain what the things represented have in common, the general trends, or the most important information (3) Explain how they are different, some things that are different to the general trend, or some less important information (4) You don’t need to bother with a conclusion unless you are under length, so you can usually stop at paragraph 3. If you do need a conclusion, summarize what you said before in different words.
- If you need to combine information from two different graphs etc, you can use one paragraph for the most important information from each, but it is better to divide it up in another way (as long as an idea of how to do so comes quickly and doesn’t make your planning time drift over 5 minutes)
- Remember that the information on the graph or diagram is simplified and that you’ll need grammar like articles in your writing
- Make sure that you practice all the types of tasks that could come up, including flow charts and tables of figures and tasks that include more than one source
- Don’t interpret the data unless they ask you to (very rare), just stick to describing it (but see first point above)
- Leave one or two minutes for editing
- Under no circumstances go over 20 minutes, as Task Two is more important. Get up to the minimum number of words, edit if you can, and move on
For Task Two
- Always write a brief plan, using about 5 minutes for this stage
- Brainstorm your ideas and try to organise them into paragraphs. If you don’t have enough pros or cons to make a paragraph, you’ll need to write a one sided argument (unless the question specifically asks for both sides). Make sure you still organise the ideas into clear paragraphs by making links between different ideas. The quickest way of doing this is often just to circle ideas to put them together.
- If you are going to give a one sided argument, state if you agree or disagree in the first paragraph (introduction). This doesn’t need to be your real opinion, just the side that you came up with most ideas for in the brainstorming stage. The conclusion can be difficult for this format, you basically need to just summarize what you said before (in different words and very briefly) and emphasize your point of view.
- If you are going to write a pros and cons, don’t give your view until the conclusion.
- The first few sentences of any Task Two should restate the question, analyse it and/ or say why it is topical, interesting and/ or important. The final line of the introduction should say what is coming up (basically explaining the paragraph structure)- this shows how important planning is!
- Avoid introducing one or two new points in the final paragraph unless you are desperate to get up to the minimum number of words in time. If that is the case, if you have done a one sided argument you can write “Although there are many counter arguments such as…” If it is a pros and cons essay you can write “Due to the arguments given above and other relevant factors such as…, my view is that…” In both cases, just list points rather than expanding on any of them (which would make them worthy of a paragraph of their own).
- There are no points for good ideas, only for language. As soon as you have enough ideas to make a piece of writing, write!
Tips only mainly for those needing very high marks
- Try to avoid repeating language, use synonyms etc to avoid it
- Avoid phrasal verbs (but sometimes there is no non phrasal verb way of saying something, in which case it is okay)
- Try to use academic English (although you can get perfect marks without being very academic and formal, it can’t hurt and shows a high level)
- You can use British, American or Australian English and even mix them up a little if you like, but try to make your spelling etc as consistent as possible, e.g. don’t write “kilometer” and then “centimetre”
Yes, that was very briefly! I could (and do) go on for much longer than that in my classes…
Agreement? Disagreement? Comments below please:
Tags: Tips
June 25th, 2009 at 2:15 pm
Thanks, Alex for the linklove!
You beat me into writing this article. But I have some additional thoughts which I will feature in my future post.
July 13th, 2009 at 4:25 am
Here are some more nice hints:
I do tell students that IELTS ‘task 2 is a ’strange animal’ because they have to write about a topic without having any expert knowledge (unless they get lucky with the question) and yet make it look ‘academic’! I do teach them some skills which I hope are transferable to academic writing:
Hedging: ‘there seems to be a general trend towards…’, ‘it has been suggested that…’, ‘there is evidence that …’
Reductio ad absurdam (though I don’t usually teach the phrase) ‘it would be irresponsible if …’ ‘one cannot merely assume that …’, ‘the consequences of X would be disastrous/counter’productive/unpredictable…’
Alternating long and short sentences.
Thinking long and hard before using ‘you’ eg: ‘If you wish to be successful in your professional life, you have to acquire good time management skills’ (not very appropriate if the reader is an IELTS examiner!)
Ways of avoiding redundancy without falling into the trap of ‘false synonyms’ – I find a lot of students who try to pack words like ‘citizens’, ‘inhabitants’, ‘residents’, ‘consumers’ etc into their essay in order to avoid using ‘people’ 15 times. Actually, as you know of course, academic writing tolerates more redundancy than most – I’m thinking of the sciences and law, for example. The solution is often a pronoun or other basic word: ‘many’, ’some’, ‘those who’
The best answer to a complex question in Task 2 Writing and in part 3 of the speaking test is usually ‘it depends’. That is why they ask candidates ‘to what extent do you agree or disagree’.
Not over-simplifying – if a problem were that easy to solve it would have been solved by now.
Not just saying ‘the government should do X’ – which government? Local or national? State or federal? Which countries?
Leave their prejudices and received opinions outside the test hall. I had one student who, when writing about how parents should share the burden of raising children, ‘went off on one’ and produced a 350-word rant on why fathers should discipline their families (wife included!)
From time to time, define terms (without patronising the reader) If the question is vague, pounce on those elements in the question which need to be clarified before any sensible discussion can take place. For example:
‘Studying the English language in an English-speaking country is the best but not the only way to learn the language.’ Do you agree or disagree with this statement?
The question doesn’t say who the learners are – are they affluent youngsters whose parents can afford to send them to the UK for 3 months? Are they less well-off but hard-working and resourceful 20-somethings who can come to the UK on their own? Are they complete beginners or do they have a sound basic knowledge? Are they keen to learn or not?
‘The position of women in society has changed markedly in the last 20 years. Many of the problems young people now experience, such as juvenile delinquency, arise from the fact that married women now work and are not at home to care for their children. To what extent do you agree or disagree with this opinion?’
Well, for a start the statement is obviously not applicable to any number of countries – in some countries it could be argued that women have less freedom to go to work now than they had in the 1970s. In others, juvenile delinquency hardly exists at all because children are busy working the land, making mud bricks or picking through piles of rubbish to scrape a living. Moreover, the statement presupposes that all mothers are married! It seems to me that if a test-taker is faced with a question like this, s/he is faced with two alternatives – (1) write about the statement as if s/he lived in the UK and shared that social reality ie be a ‘good student’ and do what seems to be expected of her/him, or (2) disagree with the statement on the grounds that it misrepresents the situation in at least half the globe! I know which approach I would be inclined to go with.
From here:
http://iatefl.britishcouncil.org/2009/forum/ielts-and-toefl
July 22nd, 2009 at 9:04 pm
Thanks to the two of you for outstanding tips and resources!
January 10th, 2010 at 8:31 pm
Just a couple of quickies relating to planning the essay. I’d go for 10 minutes on planning. It seems a lot I know but there is logic here.
You only have to write 250 words: how long does that take? At 10 words a minute, 25 minutes. Think of TOEFL where you need to write 300 words in 30 minutes – it obviously can be done. I can normally persuade students into this by getting them to time a paragraph in class – typically it takes 5 minutes. Then all you have to do is repeat that 4 times – simple really.
The benefit of this approach is that it leaves you time to think of vocabulary to use in the essay. The more time you give to this, the more chance you have of getting the words right. As you so correctly say – it is a test of English not ideas.
The second point is in the planning stage you don’t need to think of ideas at all really. You don’t need ideas because the ideas are simply “I agree” and “I disagree” – it works for almost all known IELTS essays. What you do instead is think of “reasons” and “examples” why you agree or disagree. This is much easier to do under the pressure of exam conditions and has the huge benefit of making your writing coherent. In fact, if you have too many ideas or too complex ideas, the chances are that the essay will become overcomplex. It’s an exam essay, not an academic essay.