How to Hit the Word Limit for IELTS Writing Task 1 and IELTS Writing Task 2
This is important because if you do this, you will score higher.
Because you have more time to do some of the fundamental things that I'm going to teach
you in this video.
Hi there!
My name is Ben Worthington.
You know me from ieltspodcast.com (in my new crazy, shiny, T-shirt).
Anyway, in this video we're going to look at reaching the word limit for the exam.
Now, some students, they have problems actually reaching it and others have problems writing
250 words, or writing 150 words.
They usually always go over the word limit.
Now, this isn't the end of the wold.
Okay?
Because you can't write and think it's 250 + or - 10%.
So you can write 225 words or 275 words.
Now, you don't want to write 225 or you don't want to write less, because you've given the
examiner less opportunity to give you points.
And you don't really want to go 250 because you've fulfilled the requirement and that
extra time that you're using writing more than necessary,
you could be using that time alternatively, you could be using that time in another way.
For example, creating an amazing essay plan that's going to blow the examiner's head off,
or checking the exam for mistakes (checking your writing for mistakes).
Now, I'll just tell you a quick story...
I had a student (I was teaching online), she's from Russia
and she used to get really angry with me in her emails.
'Cause what she would do is she'd dend me an IELTS Task 2 essay, 390 words.
And I just immediately look at it, send it back and say, "Edit down to 250 words, okay?
Or 275 is the absolute maximum."
And she would reply back immediately saying, "Look, just show me my mistakes.
I don't care how many words I've written."
I'm like, "No, this is a problem.
It's a serious problem because (like I just said) you're not gonna have time to check
it for mistakes, you're gonna be writing more, and also if you've written about 390 words
the examiner will stop at 275.
So it doesn't matter if you have written the best conclusion the world has ever seen, because
the examiner will stop and say 'Okay there's no conclusion here, it doesn't have coherence,
lost point.'
so you're going to lose points there."
Now, there's two methods to get control of the amount of words you're writing.
The first one is you could just write down an essay (normal essay), count how many words
on average you have in each line.
For example, if you're writing on average 8 words per line, then all you have to do
is do 250 divided by 8, comes to around 30.
So you know in the exam that you've got to write 30 lines.
That's quite a basic way.
Another way, if you're a bit more advanced with your writing skills is to just roughly
follow this plan.
This is just a brief plan (in The Sentence Guide they're into more detail) but generally,
I found that you can spend about 2 or 3 sentences on your introduction, 4 or 5 sentences on
your body paragraph 1, 4 or 5 sentences on your body paragraph 2, and then a couple of
sentences (1 or 2, maybe 3) on your conclusion/summary, depending.
I know that's just the Task 2.
But the first technique, you can use for Task 1.
Now, that technique that I just told you there, that's good.
But you need to know (roughly) how many words you're writing per sentence.
And you need to be also aware that those sentences are going to get you the points for the Task
Response and for the lexical resourse and all the other 4 disciplines.
Now that you know how many words to write (now that you're know that you're hitting
the limit) what you should do with that time that you've found is use it to check your
exam for mistakes.
Okay?
Go through your writing, check for mistakes that you've made in previous essays, look
for those specific ones and go through, correct it (self-correct your essays) and this will
boost your score by about 10 or 15% (if you do it well, of course) or even more.
Now, if you want more tips like that, more advice, more tutorial help, or if you want
to get your exam corrected, go to
ieltspodcast.com
sign up
and you could get your essay checked for quite a decent price.
Click the link below, and yeah...
All the best in your exam.
Jump from Band 6 to 7 or it's free.
The Sentence Guide is the answer if you need to pass IELTS fast.
Why?
Because together we cover the 2 essential skills you need to pass the IELTS exam.
Your IELTS exam skills and your English language skills.
You get easy to follow instructions which eliminate confusion, frustration, and it makes
organizing your thoughts really easy.
And to improve your English language skills, you send in your essays to me and my team
and we give you feedback showing you how to improve your lexical resource, showing you
the errors you might have made, and this practically guarantees that you improve and pass the IELTS
exam.
Click below to listen to the other students, so what they said, and then join me together
and we we can pass IELTS.
Okay, speak simply.
Hi there!
IELTS Writing Task 2 is a little bit tricky...
I lost that again.
The IELTS...
IELTS Writing Task...
That was horrible, wasn't it?
One more time...
How to Hit the Word Limit for IELTS Writing Task 1 and IELTS Writing Task 2.
Now this is important...