IELTS Writing Practice
IELTS speaking practice
Academic IELTS writing practice
IELTS listening practice
Academic IELTS reading practice
Academic IELTS writing practice
There are 2 Tasks in the writing exam and you have an hour. In this time you need to plan, write and check your work.
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Timing is very important. It is better to increase the time spent on planning, and reduce the time spent on writing and checking. If your writing is well planned, you should be able to write quickly without having to stop to think, and there should be fewer problems to correct.
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Word count is also important. You need to write at least 150 words for Task 1 and 250 words for Task 2. You are penalised if you write less than the required number of words. If you write a lot more words, the examiner will not assess them all. You could be spending too much time writing and not enough time planning. The quality of your writing will probably suffer, as you may not be answering the question, and you may have less time to check your writing at the end. Again this is linked to the reality of academic life, as at university you will need to reach certain word counts in your essays and you need to check carefully that you don’t write too much or too little. Learn to recognise how long 150 words is in your handwriting, since you don’t really have time to count.
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Planning is essential. Read the task and underline the key words. Key words helps you to identify exactly what it is that the examiners want you to write about. If you plan carefully then you can avoid repeating the same ideas in your essay.
Some other advice:
- Clearly divide paragraphs.
- Don’t repeat ideas in a different way.
- Stick to the topic.
- Paragraph simply with one idea in each paragraph.
- Avoid informal language.
- Get used to always spending several minutes re-reading and correcting your essays.
- Don’t memorise model answers, they won’t fit the question and you will make more careless mistakes.
