IELTS Writing Overview
When students approach us asking about the difficulty level of the IELTS exam, the oft repeated reply is that it is both easy and tough. Tough, because there is no secret about the fact that it is an international level exam and a standard of evaluation for many of the international universities; easy, because a systematic preparation can yield desired results.
So before embarking on the discussion on useful insights into the test, you deserve to be congratulated on taking your first step towards organized preparation.
You must have by now found a lot of advice on tips to approach various tasks with each claiming to be your shortcut to success. Well, to begin with, there is no shortcut to success. It’s always best to get maximum information from the official IELTS web-sites. So before you decide on developing your style of writing, it’s worthwhile to check out the criteria of evaluation(http://www.ielts.org/_lib/pdf/UOBDs_WritingT2.pdf).
After a closer scrutiny you will discover that it’s very important to first find out in which band range your existing essay lies. It’s simple. As per the IELTS standards, if you have a basic hold of grammar and you manage to write simple but grammatically correct sentences you are at least in the band range of 5 bands. And if you manage to write a mix of simple and complex sentence structures then you can reach a level of 6 bands, and further still if you write a range of complex sentences, you reach a band higher and as the perfection increases the IELTS band scores keep rising. But just a good command over the language is not sufficient. It is necessary to write the arguments relevant to the issue. One of the questions which generally crops up in a candidates mind is, whether one should write ‘for or against’ argument on one side or both sides of the issue. Well, an essay supported with relevant arguments can be either ‘in favor’ or ‘against’ the issue. But as our general understanding tells us that there are few things in the world that are unquestionably and categorically true and if they were, they are not likely to become issues of debate. So it’s always advisable to write on both sides of the issue and to give our final opinion on the topic in the last or penultimate paragraph.
The conclusion should carry some suggestions relevant to the issue. Because you may be penalized for being repetitive in conclusion, especially so if the words chosen have already been mentioned in the preceding paragraphs.
The introduction to the essay is also quite simple. More often than not it should not exceed more than 6-7 lines. We can begin by giving a generalized statement and writing another couple of lines or more highlighting the complexity of the issue or simply rephrasing the points of debate in the issue. You should take care not to copy the lines from the question lest you should lose marks as the copied text will not be counted as a part of your essay.
And still, if writing an introduction gives you the goose bumps, leave space for the introduction and write the rest of the essay. It not only prevents your introduction from getting too long, it also warms you up sufficiently to write an impressive beginning.
For methods on preparing the points for writing an essay and on the methods and vocabulary to make it more impressive, refer to “How to prepare for IELTS writing task 2”