- You are here:
- Home »
- Blog »
- Prepare for your IELTS Exam »
- How to complete IELTS Writing in less than 60 minutes
How to complete IELTS Writing in less than 60 minutes
Managing IELTS Writing
Continuing the theme of time, I want to say something this week about IELTS Writing. This is the other area where many students are up against the clock and this can cause some stress and worry. Like the reading, it doesn’t have to be like this and students who get band 7 or above in writing can generally complete everything – including planning and checking in 60 minutes easily.
There are strategies that will help you to do this and as with everything, the more you practise these strategies the better you will accomplish the task.
As with the reading there are three things you need to do in your practice and doing ALL THREE will help you manage the time more efficiently.
- Improve your vocabulary and sentence structure
- Practise, practise, practise
- Get it checked
Improve your vocabulary and sentence structure
The examiner expects to see certain things (you can find out what these are in the Band Descriptors). 50% of these relate to actual language ability – spelling, punctuation, grammar and vocabulary – the others are related to the question and organisation of your essay. All of these are important but managing the organisation of your task and interpreting the question are quicker to learn than the language and no matter how many model essays you use to write your practice tasks, if you have fundamental errors in grammar, spelling and punctuation or limited vocabulary, you are unlikely to reach band 7. A student asked me recently if spelling errors would lose any marks in the writing – of course they will, this is a test of the application of English language to various tasks and the language has to be correct and bad spelling is bad English just as bad grammar and punctuation are bad English.
So, check the models, look at the vocabulary and structures and then learn how to use them correctly.
Preparation is everything
A good student of English should have a good grammar book and a good dictionary – make sure you have access to both of these to learn and check.
Practise, practise, practise
This goes without saying. My mantra, which I am certain you’ve heard me say a thousand times, is; “Just knowing about a strategy, technique or particular sentence structure is not enough, you have to practise to improve”.
All of these things are skills based and so the more you practise them the better your skill will be. With writing there is one note of caution, try to have each piece of writing checked for errors before you do the next one – this is the best way to improve. If you write 6 tasks all at once they are likely to all have exactly the same errors.
Get it checked
Getting someone to check is vital – it is almost impossible to correct your own writing. It doesn’t have to be a teacher – someone with a really good knowledge of English could help you to eliminate some of the mistakes and the fewer you have the better.
Clearly an experienced IELTS teacher is the best as they will be able to explain why you have made the mistake so you can avoid this in the future and they will also be able to adjust your vocabulary and introduce you to better sentence structures so you can improve your writing more quickly and effectively.
Manage the Time
Managing the Time
I haven’t mentioned this much yet but there are also three things that are vital to maintaining accuracy as well as speed when you actually write the tasks and especially in the exam itself. These are:
- Planning
- Having a good Framework for your tasks
- Checking
Learning how to do all of these makes your IELTS writing practice effective and saves you a lot of time in the exam.
Planning
This step in the writing process is critical and helps you not only write far more quickly but also control every part of the task. A good plan will give you a strong outline for your essay – it will be the ‘bones’ upon which you will add the ‘flesh’. This means that your essay will not digress from the question, it will be well-organised, it will be faster to write and you will be able to manage the grammar, spelling, punctuation and vocabulary as you write. All this adds up to better writing. A good plan also forces you to choose your ideas at the very beginning so that as you are writing you are ONLY thinking about your English language and style.
In task 1 your planning will be more about organising the data into paragraphs and deciding what to put where. Again once you have decided this then you can focus on language.
The exam is an opportunity to showcase what you can do
Your Unique Framework
In the IELTS exam there are factors such as nerves, the impact of the completed listening and reading tests which you may be worrying about, thinking about the speaking and the fact that this is now the real thing! All of these can have an effect on your writing. It is essential therefore that your writing tasks are not being done absolutely from scratch. By this I mean that you should , when you go to the exam, already have a good idea about how you will write the tasks. What vocabulary you will use, which sentence structures you will use and any language devices you will write to create your tasks. As soon as you see the task, be it Task 1 or Task 2, you should go into automatic pilot. If you have prepared well then this is what will happen. This is a result of practice, knowing what sentences you can write well and without error and which ones you cannot and should probably avoid using.
Most of my students who have been successful at IELTS knew exactly how they were going to write the tasks before the exam and were able to adapt the language they had in their ‘language bank’ to the questions. This ‘framework’ or ‘skeleton’ means that you can write much faster and more accurately.
Checking your Work
Mistakes in writing are easily made. A forgotten article, the wrong preposition, a silly spelling error, I make errors myself and they are annoying and I’m sure when your teacher points this out to you, you are annoyed too – you know this stuff! So if you check your work you will be able to find these ‘silly’ mistakes and stop them from going to the examiner. So, why do most people not check? It makes no sense. Not having enough time is not a good excuse – it’s important. Make it part of your practice.
The good news is that if you follow the advice on planning and having a framework of what you intend to write before you go into the exam, you will have time to check and will be able to stop the examiner seeing these mistakes – and that’s great because it will help your band!
Popular posts
Translate »