hi there it's asiya and in this video i'll tell you what ielts writing is about
why i think that this is the most difficult part of the ielts exam
and what you should do to achieve the score you need we'll also have a look
at some sample answers so you know what the standard is okay let's get started
let's get straight into it i think that ielts writing is the most difficult part
of the ielts exam because most people achieve their lowest score in ielts writing so we can
see ielts statistics and these are results for academic students and as you can see the lower
scores are in ielts writing for general training the speaking scores are a bit higher and reading
scores are a bit lower but writing is again the lowest i'm telling you this not to scare you
i just want you to know what to expect so you could prepare so why are writing scores so low
well that's because in order to get a high score particularly band 7 and up you need to fulfill
very specific criteria and just knowing english well is not enough of course your score depends on
your vocabulary and grammar and those matter a lot and there is no way around it but knowing english
very well doesn't guarantee a high score in ielts writing let me give you a couple of examples
in task 2 you need to write an essay and every essay should end with a conclusion
but let's say you run out of time and you don't write a conclusion it may happen
you'll be penalized a lot for that and you may think well my other paragraphs show my ability to
write in english quite as well as my conclusion but that's not how your task will be assessed
no conclusion means that you haven't fulfilled the condition of the task so your score will go down
even if your vocabulary and grammar are excellent or another example the question is
what are the reasons and you give one reason again you haven't fulfilled the condition of the task so
your score will go down basically to score high in ielts writing you need to have good english skills
but you also need to have certain writing skills and you need to know what those requirements are
what you're expected to do and how to fulfill each requirement we're going to talk about all these
requirements a little bit later in the video but first let me show you sample answers for each task
so you know what you are expected to do and what you should aim for ielts writing consists of two
tasks task one and task two task 1 is different depending on whether you take an academic or a
general training exam we have a look at both so academic students need to write a formal report
describing charts tables maps or diagrams here is an example task so this one has three pie charts
describing every detail you can see would be a big mistake instead you need to figure out what
the main trends the main patterns are and what are the key or the most important features and present
those in your report here is the sample answer please pause the video to read it i also have
separate videos about each sample answer where i explained how it was written and what you need to
do and i will link them in the video description okay this sample consists of four paragraphs
an introduction where i presented the information two body paragraphs and not a conclusion but an
overview where you give this broad picture the most important thing you've learned i know that a
lot of people are very surprised to hear that they don't need a conclusion in task 1 but that's true
if you take a general training exam the first task is a letter so here is an example task
here we need to write a letter to a friend first of all we have a situation you're going abroad
a friend will stay in your house and then you have the task three bullet points explain describe
say so that's what you need to do and this letter is to a friend so it's informal
you may need to write a semi-formal letter let's say to a colleague at work
or a formal letter to a business if you'd like to read the task please pause the video now
and let me show you the sample answer so that's the letter i've written
and you need to be very careful and make sure that you cover each bullet point and you provide enough
information about each of them but you don't include any irrelevant information and you need to
adapt the tone of your letter if it's informal the tone should be more informal but if you write a
letter to a business then the tone should be much more formal so you need to choose the correct tone
task 2 is always an essay and indeed the requirements and types of tasks are exactly
the same for both academic and general training students the only difference you may notice is in
topics some of the academic topics are a little bit more academic while others are more about
everyday life and in general training you always get a question about everyday life so that's
the only difference you get a statement so people don't recycle enough don't recycle waste material
and then the question that you need to answer in your essay in this case we need to say what
the causes are and what the solutions are so we call this type of essay a problem solutions essay
here is a sample answer and it has a classic structure an introduction two body paragraphs
which are very very important it's important to have long body paragraphs where you develop your
ideas and a conclusion perhaps you've noticed that task 2 is longer than task 1. indeed you
need to write more than 250 words in task 2 and more than 150 words in task 1. so task 2 is more
important and indeed it weighs two-thirds of your writing score and task 1 weighs only one-third
but to be honest it's pretty hard to achieve a certain score if you don't get both tasks
right the only thing is i think it's really worth spending more time on the second task 40 minutes
as recommended and sometimes i even start with the second task to make sure that i have enough time
and then i finish with the first task you can absolutely do that so check if it works
for you now let's talk about the ielts writing requirements and how you can fulfill them we know
what the requirements are because we have access to the public version of ielts bank descriptors
so these are documents that list all the requirements and you can see the four criteria
at the top and each band score on the left hand side and you see all the requirements there
task 1 and task 2 are assessed separately and examiners use four criteria to assess each task
here they are task achievement for the first task or task response for the second task basically it
means how well you fulfill each condition of your task have you done what you were required to do
then coherence and cohesion perhaps you don't know those words but don't worry your essay is coherent
if it has a clear structure if your ideas follow one from another if it's
easy to read and understand your answer and it's coherent if the sentences inside your answers are
connected to each other if one smoothly follows from the previous one so that's coherence and
cohesion the next one is lexical resource or your vocabulary an examiner success how many
words you know and how many mistakes you make and grammatical arranging accuracy or your grammar
again assessed based on how many grammatical structures you know and how many mistakes you make
so some requirements are simply written and easy to understand but summer kinda
implied so let me show you a few examples one of the requirements is to fully answer the task
and you may think what's the problem it's obvious but you won't believe it how many
people have problems with meeting this requirement remember the example i gave you earlier about
reasons what are the reasons if you give just one reason well you haven't fully answered the task or
the task may say what should be done by the governments and the individuals
and if you only say what the government should do again you haven't fully answered the task
so your score will go down another requirement is to develop your ideas
and that means that you should take one idea explain why it matters show how it affects the
situation give an example and then smoothly arrive to the next idea and so on let's say you have an
essay about the advantages and the disadvantages of something and if you just name those advantages
saying firstly this is an advantage and that is an advantage and also this and that are
also advantages you will get a very low score you need to explain why each advantage matters
and here we can talk about the next requirement paragraphing is appropriate
it's very important to have a clear structure in your answer and to split it into paragraphs
but what's more you need to have one idea per paragraph you need to talk about one thing and
then when you start talking about the next thing you should start the next paragraph and you also
need to have a topic sentence in each paragraph the first sentence should say what the whole
paragraph is about and you really need to plan your essay in order to be able to do that these
are not all the requirements it's just a taster you need to find out what those requirements
are and how to meet each of them you should also learn how to answer each type of task so let's
quickly have a look at them in task 1 academic you may get charts tables maps and diagrams
there are different types of charts but it doesn't matter which type you get what matters is if your
charts have a timeline have dates or don't have them because the structure of your essay
and what you write about of your report will depend on that but let's say you have two maps
then you know that you need to describe the first map and then you need to describe the
changes that happened or propose changes and you need to mention each element of the map
without forgetting or omitting anything if you know that you'll be able to write your report
more quickly task 1 general training you need to write a letter informal semi-formal or formal
so you should be able to quickly determine what type of letter you have and you need to know what
tone you should use in this particular type of letter task two we have five types of questions
and if you know them you'll be able to quickly determine what type of essay you need to write
and how you should structure this particular type of essay it will save you time during
your exam and you know you'll be so short of time in ielts writing that if something
can save you time you should absolutely do that you should also learn how to manage your time
you need to learn how to finish both tasks in 60 minutes if you don't write a conclusion in task
2 or don't write an overview in task 1 that will be a costly mistake so to have the best
chance of passing your exam you need to finish both tasks ideally you need to finish even
earlier and have some time to proofread your answers because i can guarantee you that you
will find quite a few mistakes yourself and then your score may be a little bit higher because
if you correct them yourself you will have fewer mistakes okay so you should practice writing your
essays i think cambridge practice tests are great they are the closest to the real exams number 16
is the latest book but you can use books number 14 or 15 it's not a problem you can also download
recent questions from rio exams on our telegram channel will be linked in the description and
if you take a paper based exam you should write some of your practice answers on the official
answer sheet using a pencil then you won't need to count words during your exam you will
know how long your answers should be and you also need to make sure that your task 2 can fit on a
single sheet of paper because if you need to ask for the second sheet during the exam you will lose
some time on that i know it sounds like a lot but actually a lot of time is spent on searching for
information and i think that my courses can really help you prepare in less time and achieve a higher
score you will find everything you need in one place and you follow the lessons step by step with
lots of examples you learn how to meet each band 7 plus requirement and how to answer each type of
task i have courses for writing and speaking and for listening and reading you find a detailed pdf
guide that's because i believe that for those two sections all you need is my free youtube videos
and official practice tests and that pdf guide will take you through the preparation step by step
okay i will link them in the description if you are interested please check them out and to kick
off your preparation you can download my ielts writing task to workbook it's a pdf guide with
different types of tasks topics requirements and the official answer sheet and you can download it
right now thank you so much for watching me today good luck with your preparation and your exam bye