To live up to its reputation of being the best IELTS training Centre in Kerala, B-GHUD Academy keeps striving to provide its IELTS students with whatever guidelines are necessary. Here are the IELTS writing strategies IELTS students should be equipped with to enable them to do commendably well in the IELTS tests.
1. IELTS writing is for 60 minutes. Task 2 (Essay) is longer than Task 1 (Graph/Letter) and it also fetches double the marks. It is, therefore, important that students wisely divide the time for each task. Spend 20 minutes on Task 1 so that they can take 40 minutes to attempt the essay comfortably.
2. IELTS students should essentially read and understand the topic thoroughly well. It is because an IELTS essay should address the different parts of the topic relevantly. Otherwise, the task would not be achieved and the IELTS student will lose marks.
3. While writing the introduction, every IELTS student should make sure that they use their own words. Copying the topic as it is to write the introduction will be penalised – copied material will not be counted and your total word count would come down. Make sure that you rephrase the topic for your introduction.
4. After having thoroughly understood the different aspects of the topic – that is, after ensuring exactly what points in the essay are to be dealt with – make a plan mentally on how to approach the essay, what to write and how. You may use rough paper to jot down the points.
5. Divide the main body of your essay into paragraphs. You may write two or three body paragraphs depending on the topic. It is in these paragraphs that you present your main ideas. You should write these ideas clearly and support them with examples. If your ideas are clear and well-supported, you will get more marks.
6. While writing the main paragraphs, ensure that they are linked together using “coherence.” Your writing becomes exceptionally impressive if you use apt words or phrases for coherence. An example of good coherence is given below.
a. Body paragraph 1 begins: “On the one hand….”
b. Body paragraph 2 begins: “On the other hand….”
The coherence used above clearly shows that your ideas are contrasting. All essays in B-GHUD books, “IELTS & TOEFL Made Easy” and “IELTS Writing Made Easy” (there are nearly 500 of them!) use an extensive range of coherence for the IELTS students to master prompt use of them.
7. You should write your essay in a discursive style. It means that the sentences you write in a paragraph should be linked together using connective words. It is known as “cohesion.” Cohesion ensures attractive writing. An example of cohesion is given below.
“Space research is of great benefit to a nation. However, it is extremely expensive.”
This sentence means that “although space research is beneficial, it is very expensive.” See how well the word, ‘however,’ connects the two sentences!
Similar to coherence, our books, “IELTS & TOEFL Made Easy” and “IELTS Writing Made Easy” use countless examples of cohesion in their essays for the IELTS students to have a good grasp of them.
8. Lexical resources are another important factor in writing good IELTS essays. The test taker should try to use his own words. Remember, also, to use topic-related words. Topic-related words are those words that are closely related to the topic in question and are usually used frequently while writing or speaking about the subject. For example, if the topic is “pollution,” the related words are waste disposal, waste management, pollution control, effluent treatment, carbon emission, carbon footprint, global warming, environmental problems, greenhouse effect, climate change, deforestation, afforestation and so on. All IELTS essays in our books, “IELTS & TOEFL Made Easy” and “IELTS Writing made Easy” invariably use topic-related words, phrases and terms to benefit IELTS trainees. B-GHUD maintains its position as the top IELTS Coaching Centre in Kerala by ensuring that its students are provided with the best guidance.
9. GRA (Grammatical Range and Accuracy) is one of the main criteria for the evaluation of IELTS essays. Grammatical range means that the IELTS test takers should write a variety of sentence structures in their IELTS essays. B-GHUD book, “IELTS & TOEFL Made Easy,” caters to an extensive range of attractive structures (see pages 108, 109, 187, 239, 240, 300) for IELTS students to imbibe, so that they can write the impressive language. Grammatical accuracy generally means that the IELTS test takers should use the correct tenses in their IELTS essays. There are any number of interesting and intelligent exercises in our book, “IELTS & TOEFL Made Easy,” for the IELTS students to get adept at the use of the right tenses (“Syntax”) in their IELTS writing.
10. Writing the concluding paragraph is yet another important area where that IELTS students should be careful about. Since the conclusion is the last part of your essay, it creates a lasting impression on the evaluator. IELTS students should, therefore, try to make it striking. Your conclusion should not only be logical, but it also should not vary from the thesis sentence you have already written in the introduction. Consistency of your view is what the examiner looks for.
11. Last but not least, your word count should be sufficient (not less than 250 words.) Keep check of your word count from time to time while writing, so that your essay is neither short of the requisite word count nor too long. Whereas short answers will be penalised, you get no extra marks for long essays. Check your essay for grammar, spelling and punctuation errors before turning in your answer paper.
We at B-GHUD Academy make it customary to train our IELTS students in line with these strategies. It is thus that we consistently achieve a high success rate and keep being the No.1 IELTS coaching centre in Kerala.