In my experience it generally takes longer for the writing to reach these bands and one of the main reasons is that many students don’t really know exactly what they need to do in order to give the examiner what they want.
Here are some things that you MUST bear in mind for IELTS Bands 7 and 8
This is how to do it
- Write in in your own voice – don’t try to copy other pieces of writing. Use them for vocabulary and ways of saying things but make these your own.
- Follow the band descriptors – you MUST adhere to these, if you don’t then it’s impossible to achieve a high score.
- Don’t make any grammar errors (Band 9 must be flawless for Band 7 and 8 there is a low tolerance).
- Don’t repeat words and phrases – to do this you MUST be thinking about language as you write and NOT the topic of the task.
- Plan well – this helps you focus on language rather than the topic as you write.
- Do it in the time – this means; plan, write and check both task 1 and 2 in 20 and 40 minutes respectively.
- Less is more – with writing doing too many tasks is counter-productive (unless someone is checking it) – work more on the mechanics (vocabulary, sentence structures, planning, spelling etc.) – if you write 10 tasks all at once I can guarantee they will ALL have the same mistakes and you’ll be re-enforcing your errors!
- Get someone who knows what they are doing to check it – if you pay for anything in IELTS pay for a writing check. It’s almost impossible to do this yourself.
- Get good feedback – a simple band score is not helpful - you need to know WHERE the errors are and exactly HOW to improve your writing.
- Now practise all of these things and there will be a point at which you know that you can get the score in the exam. How long this takes will depend on where you are now.
Check out this webinar for more about IELTS Writing and how I can help you to achieve your band: