IELTS Writing tips and tricks

The format at a glance

Time

60 minutes for both tasks

Task 1

At least 150 words, about 20 minutes

Task 2

At least 250 words, about 40 minutes

Weighting

Task 2 counts twice as much as Task 1

Task 1 criteria

Task Achievement, Coherence and Cohesion, Lexical Resource, Grammatical Range and Accuracy

Task 2 criteria

Task Response, Coherence and Cohesion, Lexical Resource, Grammatical Range and Accuracy

Spend the first minutes planning

• Do Task 2 first if you tend to run out of time, because it carries twice the marks. Then give Task 1 the remaining twenty minutes.
• Plan Task 2 for about five minutes: your position, two body paragraph ideas, and one concrete example each. Unplanned essays drift and lose Task Response marks.
• Underline every part of the question. A two-part prompt such as 'discuss both views and give your own opinion' has three obligations, and missing one caps Task Response.
• Decide your position before you write, not while writing. Changing sides halfway is the single clearest coherence failure.
• Leave three minutes at the end to check tenses, articles, plurals and subject-verb agreement. Those four checks recover more marks than any extra sentence.
• Read around the recurring Task 2 themes before test day — education, technology, work, environment, health, crime, globalisation, urbanisation. Strong English cannot rescue an essay with nothing to say.

Task 1 Academic: describe, do not explain

You are reporting what the visual shows. Causes, opinions and recommendations are not asked for and do not earn marks.

• Write an overview paragraph naming the main trend or the biggest contrast. Without an overview, Task Achievement is capped regardless of how detailed the rest is.
• Paraphrase the prompt in your first sentence rather than copying it. Copied prompt wording is excluded from your word count.
• Group the data into two body paragraphs by pattern, for example rising categories versus falling ones, rather than listing every figure in order.
• Select the figures that support the pattern: the highest, the lowest, the crossover point, the biggest change. Quoting every number wastes words and blurs the message.
• Vary the language of change: rose sharply, climbed steadily, levelled off, fluctuated, plummeted, more than doubled, remained flat.
• For a process diagram, use the passive voice and sequencing language: the pulp is then transferred, after which it is dried.
• For a map, use directions and change verbs: a car park was built to the north, the woodland was replaced by housing.

Two sentence patterns that carry a whole Task 1

Almost every sentence describing change is one of two shapes. Learn both, alternate them, and the paragraph varies itself without you inventing anything.

• Verb plus adverb: 'Between 2001 and 2004, membership rose sharply.' The movement is the verb, the size is the adverb.
• There was a, plus adjective plus noun: 'Between 2001 and 2004, there was a sharp rise in membership.' The same fact, the opposite word class.
• Build your own pairs so both forms are ready: rose / a rise, fell / a fall, fluctuated / a fluctuation, levelled off / a levelling off, stabilised / a period of stability.
• Size vocabulary comes in three bands: slight, minimal and gradual for small movements; moderate and modest for middling ones; sharp, dramatic, significant, considerable and substantial for large ones.
• Fold the figures in rather than listing them. Use brackets, 'which is', 'which accounts for', 'which makes up' or 'which constitutes': 'Rail travel, which accounts for 42%, is twice as popular as the bus.'
• Group the data before you write. Two paragraphs organised by pattern always read better than one paragraph per chart.

Task 1 General Training: get the register right

• Fix the tone before you write: formal for an organisation or a stranger, semi-formal for a neighbour or colleague, informal for a close friend. Then hold it consistently.
• Give each of the three bullet points its own paragraph so the examiner can see all three are covered.
• Match the opening and closing: 'Dear Sir or Madam' pairs with 'Yours faithfully', 'Dear Mr Patel' with 'Yours sincerely', a first name with 'Best wishes'.
• Invent whatever details you need. Nothing is fact-checked; you are marked on coverage and language.
• State your purpose in the first line. A formal letter that takes three sentences to reach the point loses clarity marks.

Task 2: structure that carries the marks

• Use four or five paragraphs: introduction, two developed body paragraphs, and a conclusion. Two strong body paragraphs beat three thin ones.
• Introduce with a paraphrase of the topic and a clear thesis stating your position or outlining the essay.
• Give each body paragraph one controlling idea, then explain the mechanism, then illustrate it. Explanation is what separates band 6 from band 7.
• Use specific, plausible examples. A named, concrete illustration is stronger than 'studies have shown', and you should not invent statistics or fake sources.
• Conclude by restating your position and answering the question directly. Never introduce a new argument in the conclusion.
• Address the whole question. In an advantages-and-disadvantages essay that also asks whether the benefits outweigh the drawbacks, the judgement is a separate obligation.
• Keep the introduction short, roughly 40 to 50 words. The body is what earns the marks, and a long introduction eats time you cannot get back.
• Recognise the five question families and answer the one you were given: opinion (agree or disagree, positive or negative development, do the advantages outweigh the disadvantages), discussion of two views, advantages and disadvantages, problem and solution, and direct or two-part questions.
• For an opinion essay, decide between a one-sided answer (two or three reasons for your view) and a balanced one (two reasons for your view, then the opposing view with your rebuttal). Both reach the top bands; drifting between them does not.
• Do not use contractions. Write 'cannot' and 'it is', not 'can’t' and 'it’s'.
• Avoid memorised templates and set opening formulas. They can lift a weak script to around band 5, but examiners recognise them and they block the higher bands.
• Avoid clichés and proverbs. 'Every coin has two sides' reads as memorised; 'there are two defensible positions here' does not.

Write to the four criteria

• Coherence and Cohesion is about logical progression and paragraphing, not about how many linking words you insert. Mechanical or overused connectors are explicitly penalised.
• Lexical Resource rewards precise, natural collocation. Thesaurus substitutions that no native speaker would use lower the score rather than raise it.
• Grammatical Range and Accuracy rewards a mix of simple and complex structures with a high proportion of error-free sentences. Long sentences that collapse are worse than short accurate ones.
• Referencing counts as cohesion: 'this trend', 'such measures', 'these figures' link paragraphs without a single connector.
• Aim for roughly 170 to 200 words in Task 1 and 270 to 310 in Task 2. Under-length is penalised; padding to 400 words costs accuracy and time.

The final check

• Check subject-verb agreement in every sentence that starts with a long noun phrase.
• Check articles in front of every singular countable noun.
• Check the tense system, particularly past simple for completed data and present simple for general truths.
• Check that plural nouns are plural and that uncountable nouns such as information, research and advice are singular.
• Check paragraph breaks are visible. A wall of text loses coherence marks even when the ideas are ordered.

Common mistakes and how to fix them

• Writing Task 1 without an overview paragraph.

  Fix: Add one sentence, clearly signalled, naming the dominant trend or contrast.

• Copying the prompt into the introduction.

  Fix: Paraphrase it. Copied wording does not count towards the minimum length.

• Speculating about why the data behaves as it does in Task 1 Academic.

  Fix: Report only what the visual shows. Explanations belong in Task 2.

• Opening every sentence with Firstly, Secondly, Moreover, In conclusion.

  Fix: Use referencing and topic sentences instead. Overused connectors are penalised under Coherence and Cohesion.

• Running under 150 or 250 words.

  Fix: Learn what your own handwriting or typing produces at those lengths and check the on-screen counter before you finish.

• Spending 30 minutes on Task 1 and rushing Task 2.

  Fix: Task 2 is worth double. Protect its 40 minutes even if Task 1 ends up shorter than you would like.

• Answering only half of a two-part question.

  Fix: Underline every obligation in the prompt and tick each one off before you submit.

Question type by question type

Each guide covers what the task looks like on screen, how it is marked, four strategies and the two traps specific to it.

• Task 1 — AcademicDescribe charts, graphs, tables, or diagrams. 150 words min.Read the guide
• Task 1 — General TrainingWrite a letter addressing three bullet points. 150 words min.Read the guide
• Task 2 — EssayWrite an essay in response to a point of view. 250 words min.Read the guide

Common questions