Hi there! It's Asiya. IELTS Writing is a special part of IELTS because just
having good English skills is not enough; you really need to know certain things
in order to score well. By the end of this video you will know what IELTS
Writing is about and what you need to do in order to get a band 7 score. Okay,
let's get started!
IELTS writing lasts for 60 minutes and includes two tasks task 1 and task 2 in
IELTS academic task 1 is a report when you need to describe a chart and map a
diagram or a table and task 2 is always an essay on a given topic task 1 is
shorter you need to write minimum 150 words and
it weighs 1/3 of your total mark and task 2 is longer 250 words and weighs two
thirds of your IELTS writing mark each task is assessed by a different examiner
and they give each of your essays four scores so they use for assessment
criteria let's talk about each of them and you will see what you really need to
do in order to achieve advanced 7 score and the first criterion is called task
achievement in task 1 and task response in task 2 and that's why a new examiner
will check if you've done everything that was required in this task for
example I've already mentioned that you need to write more than 150 words in
task 1 and more than 250 words in task 2 so they will check for that there will
also check if you've answered the question in full
it means if you've covered everything that you were supposed to cover in USA
and that is actually more difficult than it may sound and I will show you what it
means for each task but first let's have a look at other assessment criteria next
is coherence and cohesion so fucking hearings examiner's check if your essay
is logically organized and for cohesion if your sentences are linked together
well so to make your essay coherent you should have a career as a structure and
you need to split it into paragraphs so logically I'm gonna show you an essay
structure for each type of tasks but basically it's really
important that you have one idea per paragraph when you start writing about
the next idea you should start at the next paragraph and that means that you
need to think through your essay before you start writing it otherwise it's not
going to be coherent and in order to make your essay cohesive your sentences
should flow from one from another so you need to develop your thoughts not jump
from one thing to another and what's specific for IELTS you need to use
linking words formal linking words to link your sentences these are further
more however although in spite of and so on I have a separate video about those
linking words and it may happen that you need to learn them specifically because
naturally we don't use enough of them so all the videos I mentioned in this video
are gonna be linked in the description box below lexical resource that's your
vocabulary and IELTS examiner's check two things the first one is how wide
your vocabulary is how many words you know and they check if you use more
complex words or only very simple ones and if you know enough words to express
your thoughts your ideas so choose ideas which you can talk about in English
don't choose ideas which are too complex and of course how accurately you use
your vocabulary if you spell words correctly and if you choose correct
words in correct situations so if you're not sure how to spell a certain word try
to replace it with a different word and if you're not sure if two words go
together try to write it in a different way
basically avoid making mistakes as much as you can to other things important
here of the first one is I academic writing is a formal exam so you
need to use formal language and that means don't use contractions
instead of writing don't write do not instead of can't cannot and so on so no
contractions no idioms I know many people are surprised but idioms are
informal so use them in I are speaking and not in IELTS writing and of course
informal words such as kids box cops lots and so on I have a separate video
about it and try to avoid repeating the same word or the same phrase over and
over in USA use synonyms what's with a similar meaning for
example if once you say to increase events say to grow to rise or you can
use different words if you've already written an unemployment rate well you
can say how many people don't have a job do not have a job yet grammatical range
and accuracy is all about your grammar and as an answers to things matter here
the range of your grammar if you use different verb tenses if you use simple
and complex sentences if you use the passive voice basically if you use
different types of sentences that's very important but your accuracy is equally
important if you use correct verb tenses are correct prepositions and if in
general how many grammatical mistakes you make and I would say concentrate on
accuracy basically your score for both vocabulary and grammar is the lower
between complexity and accuracy so if your complexity is a band 8 and your
accuracy is about 6 you're going to get a band 6 so less complex and correct
much better than very complex and completely wrong in the past I talked in
depth about how to get highest course in those criteria and now let's have a look
at each task let's talk about task 1 that's where you're given some data and
you need to write a report so you may get a chart or several charts a table or
maybe a chart in the table two or three Maps usually - or a diagram so charts
and tables are much more common today than diagrams and maps but some people
still get those so you should be prepared and when you are writing your
report it's really tempting to start describing everything you see but that
would be a major mistake instead you should summarize the
information you should give an overview of information so you should find trends
and you should find key features these are the highest and lowest numbers the
biggest changes so talk about them talk about the most significant things you
see in your data and you should describe each group of data you see a chart with
all kinds of sports that people play today and in the past so you should talk
about all four kinds of sports in your report and you should group similar data
together let's say today people play tennis and golf more often than in the
past but they play hockey and basketball less often so you should talk about
tennis and golf together and hockey and basketball together in a separate body
paragraph and of course once you've found a trend and sorry about the noise
and you've described it in your report you should use some numbers some figures
to support your description as we discussed before an essay structure is
really important and examiner's will check if USA's logically
organized and if information is split into paragraphs logically so I'll show
you a typical structure for task 1 you start with an introduction
that's one sentence where you present the topic usually you just paraphrase
the task then you write an overview two or three sentences where you describe
the main trends you you say what is the most important thing you've learned from
your data and then your right to body paragraphs describing data your overview
may be right after your introduction or at the end of the essay it doesn't
matter just make sure you have one and this essay doesn't require a conclusion
one more thing I want to mention about task 1 is that describing data is not
something we typically do in English so you may be lacking vocabulary and
learning some words and phrases for this task will really help you boost your
score I have such vocabulary and I'm gonna
leave the free preview of it in the description box below now let's have a
look at task two in this task you need to write an essay answering a specific
question and there are several types of it an essay where you need to describe
advantages and disadvantages of something to describe two views and give
your opinion to say if you agree or disagree to find causes of a certain
problem and solutions or to answer two questions that would usually be the mix
of other types weight for example you talk about some advantages and then say
if you agree or disagree so two types of essays are merged into one and the
important thing here is that most task 2 essays have two sides advantages and
disadvantages causes of a problem and salut
view one and view too and you should really talk about each view each side of
the argument in your essay the only essay where you may not talk about the
second side is an essay way you choose to agree or disagree and if you say that
you're completely agree then you will only talk about reasons why you agree
and not reasons why you disagree but in all other says you should talk about two
sides of the argument some tasks ask for your opinion they either say and give
your opinion or they ask do you agree or to what extent do you agree in this case
you need to clearly state your opinion by saying I think I believe in all the
situations avoid using I we you to make your essay more formal and remember that
your body paragraphs are the most important part of your task 2 essay so
your introduction should be short but in your body paragraphs you need to develop
ideas so you have one central topic one idea per paragraph and then you should
develop this idea by explaining why is it so by giving examples by giving some
supporting points so such as they would get a high score and remember that each
idea each sentence in your essay should be relevant they should help you answer
the essay question if they don't they shouldn't be there because task two is
not just about writing a longer essay and showing off your English it's really
about answering the question like a school essay but the quality of your
ideas doesn't matter if your ideas are very smart or very simple there doesn't
matter if we're talking about the essay structure in task 2 you will have four
or five paragraph an introduction two or three body
paragraphs depending on how many ideas you have and a conclusion never miss a
conclusion if you're running out of time shorten one of your body paragraphs but
write at least a short conclusion summarizing the main arguments and
giving your opinion if your task asks for it in general when you're preparing
for IELTS writing seen examples of essays is helpful because then you know
what you are aiming for unless you're one of those rare people who don't mind
writing essays at school writing to in English in 60 minutes is quite a
challenge so you should practice at home then you will know how much time it
takes you to write each essay and how long your assets should be the general
guidance is 20 minutes for task 1 40 minutes for task 2 but ideally you
should aim to write your essays more quickly and have more time to check them
at the end if you take a paper-based exam download the official answer sheet
and practice using it then soon you will know how long your essays should be
without counting words during the exam to help you in your preparation I've
made a free IELTS writing task 2 workbook in the PDF format with more
information on each type of task and some questions from recent exams which
you can use to practice at home feel free to download it and thank you for
watching me today good luck with your preparation and your exam bye