TIPS FOR BAND 8 ESSAY WRITING:

The secret for successful essay writing is lots of practice, guidance and patience.

The following tips will help you to get ideas and how to plan your answers. You'll find
out what to expect in the IELTS writing test. In short these tips focus on
 The style of language you should use;
 Effective ways to come up with ideas and plan your essay;
 How to make sure you have properly answered the question;
 How to structure your responses.

1. Read the task carefully, understand it and write the answer:

Read the task carefully and underline the keywords which you need to include. In essay
writing you will find the background information in the question itself. Make sure that
you answer the question. (Eg- Do you agree?). Do not write generally about the
topic, if you copy from another essay, you will lose marks.

2. Think and plan before writing:

As soon as you finish reading don’t just start writing. Think think think!
How can you answer it using your language, knowledge and experience?
Very often there will be more than 1 part to the question; sometimes even 3 or 4
parts.When you produce your answer you must answer all the different parts of
the question.
Some good study guides provide set plans, then make the process much easier, with
these guides you just have to drop your ideas into the plan. Part of the point is that you
should treat each different chapter as a mini essay.
- Borrow structures/ideas/language from essays you have written in the past, but
you make certain they apply to the question in front of you.
That means thinking: thinking not just about what to include but what not to include.
Your ideas must link together to form a whole – that requires more thought. If you
start writing and then half way through realise your essay doesn’t make sense – it’s too
late to start over. SO MAKE SURE YOU THINK BEFORE STARTING.

3. Don’t write the wrong essay or the essay which you already know:
The danger with pre-planned essays is that they don’t answer the question. You sit
down and start writing an essay which is already in your head and not one that answers
the question in front of you. Alternatively, you may get a question type that you are
unfamiliar with. In this situation, it helps to have a routine or process you can rely
on. You can still answer the question, even if it seems to be a question type you don’t
know. Learn the skill of writing an essay, learn the process of exam essay writing and
life becomes easier.
4. The Introduction:
The introduction matters for various reasons. It is the first thing the examiner reads if
you get it wrong and you have made an immediate bad impression. That’s not good.The
introduction is the link between the question and your answer. Make sure that you are
looking back to the question and writing about the right thing. It is important to focus on
these following points while writing the introduction
-An introduction helps to understand that you have identified the question
correctly.
- It makes your position clear (related to the question).
- It is a thesis that presents your point of view on your given topic.
- It is an outline sentence declaring the points you are going to use to support
your thesis.

5. Develop clear ideas and explain:

This stage of the process is slightly different and requires thinking in a very different
way. You just don’t need to answer the question, instead the answer should
becoherent.
-Make sure that your ideas are clear and write one main idea per paragraph.
-Explain those ideas and show why/how they relate to the question.
-Give your opinions and back them up with evidence and examples.
Your answer should persuade, be consistent and develop logically towards a
conclusion, which answers all parts of the question.
Make sure that you don’t make these following mistakes while writing the main
paragraph
The ideas which you have written are good but they don’t relate to the question
Don’t explain too detail on the topic and it isn’t clear what the main idea is.
The ideas aren’t supported with reasons and examples.

6. Write in an organized way:

When you've planned in advance, you'll end up with a more organized, logical piece of
writing, which will earn you higher marks. There are many ways to be organized –
linear, circular, etc. – but in the end the final product must be cohesive. You have to write a
formal academic English essay of the type that would be required for teachers or tertiary education
courses. -Formulate, organize and develop an argument and show a personal response.

7. Stay on topic:
While writing the body of your essay you should do several things:
-Examine all parts of the question.
-Remember there is often more than one question contained in the essay
question text.
-Look at all that is asked.
Always have in mind that you will be penalized if you stray off topic.
This is where the initial few minutes of planning can help you a great deal.

8. Divide your writing:

Divide your topics into paragraphs. It is confusing to be faced with a block of writing,
with no divisions. You wouldn't expect to read a magazine article or book like
this.Always divide your writing into paragraphs. You should aim to have three or
four paragraphs in your answer. This is not exact. You can write more or fewer
paragraphs, as your answer requires. The examiner will not spend very long grading
your paper. You need to create an immediate good impression and the best way to
do this in my experience is to present a well-structured piece of writing with clearly laid
out paragraphs. This way the examiner is going to be on your side. If, however, it looks
disorganised, the examiner is not going to be impressed.

9. Write Clearly and Legibly:

The task given to you is to write an essay. Therefore don’t give a list of numbered notes.
Write a proper and a clear essay with an introduction, a main body with your ideas and
evidence and a conclusion, all divided with the paragraphing techniques which you
know. IN THE EXAM DON’T EXPERIMENT WITH NEW VOCABULARY OR IDIOMS.
Use simple. Clear English to get your ideas across in a powerful way. Though marks
are not granted or taken away for poor messy writing, the examiner should also be able
to read what you have written with undue difficulty.

10. Spell correctly:

Yes, this does affect your score so avoid careless mistakes. A careless mistake is when
you have spelt the same word in various ways in the same piece of writing or when you
misspell a word which is already given in the exam topic and all you have to do is copy
it correctly. That's not okay. Watch for this when you're practising and resolve to overcome it.

11. Avoid informal language (don't use slang):

This is the time to show off the best English you know. Find the correct way to express
your thoughts and convey your ideas, without resorting to slang. Be aware that certain
expressions, such as "kids" instead of "children" and "guys" or "gals" instead of "men" or
"women", also fall into the category of slang and should be avoided.

12. Don't use contractions:

Don’t use contractions in the writing tasks. In English, contractions are used in informal
writing, and the academic tasks demand formal writing.
13. Use Rich Vocabulary:
Stay away from over-used adjectives such as "good" or "bad". Use more dramatic,
expressive words, such as excellent, wonderful, superb, or adverse, horrible, terrible,
etc. Choose the more precise word over the more general one. This will make your
language come alive, in speech or in writing, and earn you higher marks. Check your
writing for unnecessary word repetition – you are graded on the variety of your
language. You should note that this does not mean you need to use long, complex
words, rather it means you should use precise words.
14. Extending paragraphs (EASY COPY / PASTE Technique).
Pick up some points by using this conditional sentence to extend your arguments in the
body paragraphs.
IF __________did happen / were introduced / were implemented, there WOULD be at
least two / three major consequences. Firstly.... Secondly....
EXAMPLES:
If governments increased spending on education, students would see the following
benefits: Firstly.... Secondly....
If equality legislation were introduced globally, the effects would most likely be felt in the
following ways. Firstly....Secondly....
Universal sentence to use:
If __________did happen / were introduced / were implemented, there would be at least
two / three major consequences. Firstly.... Secondly....
the main two consequences would be:

15. Learn about your country.

Not only will this help you in the speaking part, but it will give you massive help in the
writing. Most of the IELTS task 2 question require examples and opinions. If you can
mention information about your country in the examples your argument becomes
believable, authoritative, specific and interesting. You can use these examples to
introduce your country:
Recent studies in ENGLAND have shown that a public education system has
benefitted over 55% of the population...
Take JAPAN for example, it is widely known that the JAPANESE are …

16. Take wise decision:

Task 2 is worth TWICE task 1. One idea is to do task 2 before task 1, just to ensure you
finish the essay.

17. Summarise the ideas in your conclusion:

The writing is slightly different here, you need to review what you have written in
previous paragraphs then mention the most important parts in the conclusion. Be crystal
clear, direct, and relate the last two sentences to the original question.

18. Try to write faster:

Actually practise writing essays with no time limit, then gradually aim for 40 minutes.
Take a few hours to get everything in order, perfect the process, separate the reading,
the thinking, the planning and the writing. Speed should be the final skill to perfect.

19. Revise again what you wrote:

The reality of exam essays is that you only have one chance to get it right. You don’t
have time to write it once and then improve it – as you would with a piece of real
academic writing. So it is important to check what you write. When you check, look for
YOUR PERSONAL MISTAKES i.e., mistakes you have made in previous essays. The
most common are:
- Articles (the / a) -this is the number one pain point for students.
- Third person singular (S).
- Plural singular agreement (is / are).

20. Don't write more or less words than you need to.
Writing too many words takes too much time, increases the possibility of making
mistakes. Writing too few will cause you to lose marks. The ideal is to aim for between
260 – 280 words in the essay and 160-180 words in Task 1.

21. Don’t repeat the Question:

In the essay, don't repeat major chunks of the question in your answer. Underline the
keywords from the essay task, think of the synonyms of the keywords. Use new words
in the introduction of essays. Also, learn lots of synonyms, for example students we can
say: young learner, learner, pupil, alumni, university education goer, etc.

22. Manage your time:

Ideally before the exam you will have your essay writing down to under 40 minutes. You
should have a solid procedure to follow, so as to maximise your time. After you have
worked on improving your writing, aim for speed. Do various timed practice exams to
get this skill, this should be the last part of your preparation. Also, remember in the
exam to check what time you start and expect to finish.

23. Practice doing lots of homework:

Do practise sample IELTS essays a home. It helps improve your writing. Another thing
that eats away at your time is counting words too frequently. Again, there are things
you can do at home to help reduce this. Count the number of words in 5 lines of your
writing. Divide this number by 5 and that will give you the average number of words you
write on a line (assuming that your handwriting is always of a similar size).
Concentrate on each phase of the process – ask yourself the question “what I am trying
to do now?”
An IELTS Answer page is just an average A4-sized piece of paper. A full page has
about 20 lines; so if your average number of words per line is usually 10, you would
write about 200 words on a full page.
24. Use collocations

“the habitual juxtaposition of a particular word with another word or words with a
frequency greater than chance”.

Collocations are your best friend because:

- They make your writing sound natural.

- They are good chunks to memorise (2 words for the price of 1).

Here are some examples:

become widespread

brief discussion

educational opportunity

educational provision

effective implementation

environmental changes

make progress

a major cause

market forces

information society

social issues

provides information
cultural diversity

Check out a full academic list here:

http://pearsonpte.com/research/Documents/AcademicCollocationList.pdf

25. Grammatical Range – Here is an easy structure to incorporate today.

To score a high a wide grammatical range is necessary, if you memorise this structure
and employ it correctly you will pick up points.

IT + MODAL + BE + Past form = Points!!!

It should be INTRODUCED

It should be FORGOT

It must be NEGLECTED