I have heard on the grapevine recently, that examiners are reporting issues with Task Fulfilment. This is the first of the band descriptors and it basically looks at whether you are answering the question adequately.
Where this breaks down in the writing task is generally related to not reading the question carefully enough, mis-reading or mis-interpreting the question or changing direction part way through the task so that things go off in a different direction to those the question was asking about. These are all easy things to do and happen quite frequently. Often the focus is on the main topic of the question rather than the actual, aspect of this topic is being asked and this leads to a task which tells the examiner all about the candidates knowledge of this topic but not how others feel, or what their opinion is or whether there are problems and solutions related to it.
It is highly unlikely that you will get a question that asks you to write everything you know about the Environment or Global Warming so it’s important not to do this. The very first thing to do in the writing test is to analyse the question carefully and interpret it well so you understand exactly what you need to do. Then you need to draw out some ideas around this, find some reasons, evidence and examples to strengthen your ideas and organise all of this into sensible paragraphs.
If you don’t do this you are risking falling down at the very first hurdle.
This initial process is called – planning!
I am always talking about planning but it is important and I cannot stress enough how a good plan can not only stop you from writing the wrong task but also save you a lot of time. In addition it makes sure that you focus on the language (after all IELTS is a language exam) you use to put forward your ideas and should give you time to check your work at the end as well as maybe a few minutes to twiddle your thumbs
So the key to making sure you get a good score on Task Fulfilment and indeed all the other band descriptors too, is to create a good, useful plan.
There are some examples of plans for Task 2 with the sample written task in the free resources section on my website: www.ieltslearningtips.com