I want to tell you about three things that you must do in your IELTS writing, whether you're doing academic or general training, you must do the same three things in order to prepare well and be successful in the writing part of your exam.
So, if you are struggling with your writing or finding the writing challenging, then you need to discover whether you're doing these three things. I want to start by telling you a little story, a story about a new student of mine with whom I’m working mostly on writing with a little bit of speaking. Yesterday, which was our third lesson, I was asking how long it took him to do the writing and he sort of grinned and said it took him 2 hours to do task one. I was a little surprised because he'd already taken the exam three times.
I was curious to find out why it took so long. To cut a long story short, it transpired that in the three previous exams that he had taken, he hadn't practiced doing any task one writing. As you can imagine, I was quite flabbergasted that somebody would go into an exam and not actually practice the writing beforehand. But he told me that a lot of his friends had done this. They just assumed that they could tackle the writing fairly easily and that to me was quite an eye opener about IELTS students’ practice.
So, I got to thinking that maybe there are lots of students who are going into the exam and not actually doing much writing before the test. Clearly if you are looking to get a high band, and this particular student, as with most of my students, is looking to get a seven at least, then I don't understand why you would go into an exam without ever having practiced. Writing a task one piece and taking 2 hours is not necessarily a problem in itself. When you are practising, in fact, sometimes it's a good thing to do so that you can really get to the heart of what a task one or a task two band seven or eight writing really looks like and really feels like to write. But - what IS a problem is not actually preparing well enough for your IELTS exam – any part of it.
Now having told you that story, I want to tell you about three things which, if you are in the same position as my student, I assume you are not doing (he certainly is now because I'm showing and guiding him).
IELTS Writing Tip 1 - Write Actively
The first thing that's really important is that your writing must be done actively. That means you cannot get IELTS writing by osmosis. You cannot absorb it. You cannot get it by simply watching YouTube. (The same is true of speaking, you have to open your mouth and say the words and hope that they come out in a coherent way). These are active things you must physically do them - physically put those words on the paper.
Also, the parameters set in the band descriptors need to be included. If you don't have complex sentences, there is no way you can get seven. If you don't have a good joined up piece with lots of coherence throughout the paragraphs and sentences then you cannot get band seven. If you don't have a wide range of vocabulary, you cannot get band seven.
It doesn't matter how fantastic your ideas are.
If you don't have the mechanics down; meaning you make lots of vocabulary mistakes, spelling errors, or punctuation and grammar errors, you cannot get band seven. It's as simple as that. You can't do it virtually by looking at your friend’s band seven and thinking, "I'll write something like that”. Simply put - you have to write your own tasks.
IELTS Writing Tip 2 - Write from your experience
The second thing is that this is an internal process. It's not an external process - what I mean is that your writing comes from inside you. It comes from your ideas, it comes from your experience, and most importantly, it comes from your knowledge of the English language. It is something that is inside you, in your brain. Therefore, it is not something that you can look at on YouTube or the internet or even in a book, and copy. It's really not possible. The only possible way you can write like that is to memorise. If you memorise the essay and regurgitate it in the exam, the examiner is going to spot it a mile off.
I've been an examiner, I know this. You can tell immediately when somebody has copied something and memorised it. Also, whatever you memorise may not exactly fit the question, even though the topic might be the same, the actual wording of the question might be slightly different. This is why it has to come from you, the things that you've read, the things that you've experienced, the ideas that you have, or have seen on television or on the Internet or in the real world.
All of these things inform what you write in your IELTS tasks.
IELTS Writing Tip 3 - Do the work
The third point is that writing is a physical activity. You actually have to put a pen in your hand or put a keyboard under your fingers and physically do it. It's an interaction between all that internal stuff in your brain from your experience, maybe even in your heart, and the physical transposing of it onto a piece of paper or an internet screen.
Through this process, you are bringing alive your ideas through the language - that's production.
If you don't produce and do those three things, the activity, the internal processing, and the actual writing or typing of your ideas onto paper, then I cannot see how you can go into the exam comfortably and do the writing.
The second part of the writing process is the language you are putting down and how good it is. The only way you can really know that is, I believe, by having somebody look at what you've done and advise you about where you are and what exactly you need to do in order to reach your target. That's where a teacher, like me, will come into your process, because teachers know how to develop your writing, in order to help you to get it all down in the very best language possible.
We know that because, we are experts in English language and trained to help students develop language skills. An IELTS teacher, like me, will also have a lot of experience of the actual IELTS exam too (in my case from a teaching point of view and an examining point of view). A good teacher will know immediately what's wrong - what you haven't put in, what you've put in that doesn't need to be there, and how you can change and develop your writing.
So, that is why, when I go back to the story of my student, I am quite blown away by the fact that some students are prepared go into the exam completely blind!
Why would you do that? It seems to me a waste of money, a waste of time, a waste of an opportunity. If you are not doing the 3 things I have outlined above, then I think your chances of getting a high band are quite slim and I don't want you to be in that position.
So please remember this is an active, physical, internal process, and make sure that in your IELTS you are doing everything that you need to do to get the best score possible.
If you want my help to do that, then I have a brilliant writing course IELTS Writing Bootcamp which gives you everything you need to make this physical process happen and get you to the band you want in your IELTS exam.
Follow the link to find out more: