Making sure you complete both tasks in IELTS Writing within an hour can be another challenge for many students. The issue that I find is most cited by students is the ability to ‘think’ of ideas quickly and I see many IELTS students spending too long on this therefore cutting down the writing time.
This strategy gets things the wrong way around – you need to spend more time on your actual writing so that you can achieve all the language requirements namely: good, varied, vocabulary, good, varied sentence structures, well-managed coherence, complex sentences and a wide range of cohesive devices to ensure this.
Here are 5 strategies for making sure you can achieve all of this in one hour.
1. Keep your ideas simple
IELTS Writing is not rocket science. The examiner is not looking for revolutionary ideas and philosophies. What they require, primarily, is a well-written task which fulfils the requirements of the question and presents relevant ideas logically and with good style whether you are taking the General or Academic form of the test. Complicated ideas which require a good deal of explanation are not going to be easy to express. Your job is to convince the examiner of your point of view or your suggestions and the very best way of going this is by using great English.
Simple ideas can be greatly persuasive when expressed well.
2. Make a plan
If you are familiar with my posts or webinars you will already know that I advocate good planning again and again. With the best will in the world English is probably, for you, not your native tongue and as such, the chances of making mistakes is high. I certainly remember when I studied French and had to write essays my main concern was not making errors in grammar, spelling or collocation. This should also be yours. A wonderful idea expressed badly is no longer a wonderful idea!
I cannot say this enough, but a good plan will help you control your writing so that it becomes faster, more accurate and fulfils ALL the requirements of the band descriptors. I have many, many students who can testify to this and who - having finally been persuaded by me to develop good plans - went on to achieve their band 7, 7.5 and 8.
3. Create a bank of words, phrases, linking words and sentence beginnings before the exam
By knowing what linguistic devices, vocabulary, types of sentence you want to use before you go to the exam, you will be half way to writing your tasks before you even see the paper. This does not mean memorising a task – this is a very bad idea as examiners can spot memorised tasks a mile away. It means knowing what language you can use accurately that will impress the examiner and express your ideas well.
There will be phrases, words, ways of creating sentences that you will have come across in looking at model answers and that you feel you could also use. Take these and practise using them and gradually they will become part of your writing quite naturally. The more you do this the more your writing will develop until you will be able to construct your task in your head as you read the question. Once you are at this stage then you’ll find the whole process of writing easier and you’ll be able to complete your tasks very quickly indeed.
4. Think about language not ideas as you write
As you create full sentences and paragraphs from your plan – keep language in mind. Think about synonyms for the words you are using often. These can be related to the topic so think about using them as nouns, verbs adjectives as well as synonyms. ‘Child’ can be children, young people a child, a young person, offspring (if related to parents) pupils or a student if related to education (never kids it’s too informal) and so on. Can you find better verbs? Replace ‘is’, ‘have’, ‘can’ when you are able with better verbs (never use ‘get’ there are always better verbs).
Think about linking words, therefore, however but what about moreover, furthermore or nevertheless and conversely. Make sure you understand their function and try not to repeat any of them if possible. The same goes for specific devices such as ‘not only…. but also…’ or ‘respectively’ and ‘namely’ never use them more than once. The variety you put into the language will help you to obtain a higher score as the examiner can see your flexibility in the language.
All your ideas (and you only need one or two) will be in your plan so don’t look for any more. If an idea pops into your head reject it, as it will spoil your plan and also your task.
5. Make time to check your work
If you have planned well and have been thinking about the language as you write then you probably won’t have many mistakes to check but there are always one or two that sneak through. Take a few minutes to check. Build this into your practice so that you will definitely have time to do it. Make a check list of the mistakes that you know you make – articles, agreement, prepositions, pronouns – these are the most common and there will be specific words that you perhaps misspell – put these on your mental list. Check these first and then skim through your task and make sure that there is nothing else.
During your exam practice always read your task out loud this helps to signal anything that is wrong, not clear or doesn’t make sense. You can then correct this. Getting into this habit means that you will be able to check thoroughly and easily as you skim your work in the exam.
It’s all about the practice. None of this will help you much in the exam if you haven’t practised it a lot beforehand.