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The essay is the second task in the Writing section, regardless of whether you take IELTS Academic or General. It usually takes about 40 minutes to write. Remember that you will need to write at least 250 words.
Questions to be answered in the essay (keyword – answer (!)) are very diverse: from questions about education, health care, gender roles to youth, environmental protection, i.e. almost everything you can write about and discuss. What does it mean? It’s quite simple. There is no magic sentence that can be inserted into any essay, and most likely, on the day of the exam you will not “get” a question that can be used to answer it. Even if this is the case, using a few simple steps will allow you to write the piece and get a good score.
Most of those who take the exam think that the most important thing in writing an essay is to kill the examiner outright with fanciful words, so-called ‘posh words’, and incomprehensible phrases. If you think so too, we will disappoint you: this is the worst way to write an essay.
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It is important to understand what the task is. You will need to express your opinion or offer some solutions, describe the advantages and disadvantages of something, agree with some opinion or disagree with it, etc. In any case, read carefully what is required from you.
Most often, there are four types of questions and, therefore, essays:
Unless you read the question carefully, you will not be able to define its type or define it incorrectly. It is also not necessary to write in a general context. Each task has tooltips: keywords, micro-keywords, and instruction words. Keywords indicate a general topic, micro-keywords specify the subject of the essay, and instruction words define its type.
Example:
In some countries, young people are encouraged to work or travel for a year between finishing high school and starting university studies.
Discuss the advantages and disadvantages for young people who decide to do this.
Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience. You should write at least 250 words.
Words in blue indicate the general topic – young people finishing high school and starting university studies – no need to write about it (!). If you write about it, you will not answer the question.
Words highlighted in green are the subject of our essay – work or travel: young people who decide to do this. But that is not enough, we need to look at the instruction words highlighted in red: discuss the advantages and disadvantages.
Here you need to be clear about what are the advantages or disadvantages. If the benefits outweigh, write the reasons why, also write why the disadvantages are not significant. If you describe only the advantages, you will not fully answer the question.
Writing an essay without a plan is like using a cool gadget without instruction. When it breaks, it will be too late. In the case of writing an essay, even if you write a good introduction, then you simply run the risk of getting lost and will end up missing the time to finish it, or start generalizing, or the text of the essay will be incoherent or lack logical consistency, and etc., which cannot but affect your score.
Imagine that your plan is a map you will use to move around the area (the text of your essay). That is why every sentence is a step that brings you closer to your destination and it has a purpose. All sentences in your essay should be thought out and related.
Planning should include:
Some teachers and tutorials on IELTS preparation suggest that you handle the first assignment with brainstorming. Another effective way is to answer the question directly.
In the case of our essay, for example: Why are the advantages of working and travelling before starting university studies are stronger? Why are the disadvantages weak?
The advantages of working and travelling before starting university studies are stronger because it gives more opportunities to decide about the place of getting further education, to try working in different fields and to take the final decision about your future career.
The disadvantages are that you waste time while others obtain education, but this is a weak argument, because you get valuable experience demanded by most of the employers.
So we get two ideas that we will develop in our essay.
Next, we organize our ideas into a structure. This will help us further make the text of the essay coherent.
As we already know, there are several types of essays, and each will have its own structure. In general, it should look like this:
Another common problem faced by those writing the essay is the repetition of the same words, especially the words in the question, over and over again. This lowers the vocabulary rating because it indicates ignorance of synonyms.
The solution to this problem may be to identify words in a question that can be used more than once. Example:
In some countries, young people are encouraged to work or travel for a year between finishing high school and starting university studies.
Discuss the advantages and disadvantages for young people who decide to do this.
Write synonyms that can substitute these words:
young people – youth, grownups, adolescents
work – earn money, be busy with something, perform
finish school – leave school, accomplish secondary education
university studies – higher education, obtaining a degree
disadvantages – drawbacks, pitfalls, minus
advantages – benefits, pluses
The more you learn to plan during the preparation for the exam, the better and faster you will write and this will cause every sentence in your essay to have a purpose, which is exactly what the examiner wants.
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Before you begin writing the essay, remind yourself that IELTS does not check how good you are at the subject area. There is no right or wrong answer to the essay question. All tasks include open-ended questions, i.e. you need to discuss it and express your opinion.
To pass IELTS successfully, you will need good handwriting skills (if you are uncomfortable to write with a pencil, choose the computer version). Consider this when preparing for the exam, i.e. practice handwriting or typing on the keyboard (just do not use auto-correction of text, as spelling matters when evaluating your essay).
Keep in mind the minimum number of words – at least 250, the more – the better (in average 260-280). Counting words on the exam day is a waste of precious time. Therefore, we recommend preparing for the essay, using the official answer sheets. This will help you quickly estimate the number of words. During your preparation, you can count the average number of words you get per page. On the day of the exam, you will not have to spend time on it.
IELTS is about using an academic / formal writing style. Avoid using slang. Write in complete sentences, pay attention to punctuation. In the academic essay, it is necessary to:
Informal: During the interview I asked students about their experiences.
Formal: During the interview students were asked about their experiences.
Informal: It was raining cats and dogs.
Formal: It was raining very heavily.
As you can see, it will take time to prepare for writing an essay. Even so, learning how to analyze a task and plan your answer will save you time during the exam and make you feel confident. You should practice regularly and try your best, gradually creating conditions that are similar to real testing conditions, limiting yourself strictly to 40 minutes and writing your answers with a pencil or using the keyboard.
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If you are preparing or just thinking of taking IELTS, you have probably wondered what to listen to get ready it? Let’s be honest: you don’t need to listen to everything. Let’s start with what IELTS Listening is. There are 40 questions and you have 40 minutes. No matter which module you take general or academic you will hear 4 audio tracks in the following order:
Knowing what awaits you at the exam makes it much easier to prepare. Here are some good tips on how to listen.
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Listen purposefully. Imagine arriving at the airport an hour ago for a departing flight. Now, can you remember what has been said in all the announcements for the last hour? Of course, you will not be able to do this, because we only hear the information regarding our own flight. That is what purposeful listening is about: to have a purpose in terms of what information we want to receive. In preparing for the exam, each of the ten questions in each part of the IELTS Listening should be analyzed before listening.
Mini-IELTS is a good resource for practicing listening to everyday topics. It brings together videos and audios on a variety of topics, such as education, recreation and hobbies, nature, news, science and technology, health and sports with tasks to accomplish.
ESL Lab is a collection of daily dialogues with voices of adults and children on all sorts of topics. The materials are divided by levels. There are tasks and keys to them, as well as audio scripts.
TED&IELTS Listening Practice is a great mix of TED Talks with tasks to do while listening. It is suitable for those who are tired of sapless talks and boring lectures and is looking for an alternative to practice listening to monologues on academic and everyday topics. There are also answers you can check on your own.
TED Ed is an official TED resource that has many interesting lectures, tutorials and whole series of lessons in various subjects such as history, sociology, biology, geology, medicine and more. You can listen and watch lectures in Student mode and answer questions in the Think section, and discuss what you hear in the Discuss section.
Get used to various accents. Unlike TOEFL, candidates in the IELTS test can hear different accents, from regional British to North American and accents from Southern hemisphere such as the Australian and South African ones. This is due to the fact that more and more English-speaking countries are recognizing the exam for immigration purposes. Try to notice any differences in pronunciation. Vowels are especially likely to be different. Just don’t go into deep analysis – it’s a job for a professional linguist. Your goal is to get acquainted with each accent. This will allow you to be prepared and not to get puzzled when you hear them in the IELTS test.
The largest collection of dialects and accents can be found in the IDEA (International Dialects of English Archive), which was created in 1998 as the first on-line archive of primary sources of English-speaking dialects and accents heard worldwide. It has about 1500 samples from 120 countries and territories and over 170 hours of records. IDEA is currently the largest archive of its kind. IDEA records are mainly in English, by native speakers, and include both English dialects and English spoken with accents of other languages. In the Test your comprehension section, you can test how well you understand different accents with scripts.
AdeptEnglish іs a podcast section where you will find a large collection of interesting and FREE lessons and audio podcasts in full English-language transcription in PDF format.
Learn English also offers a tasks for listening by level. Before you start , you will take a test to find out which level to choose. Next, choose your level, from beginner (CEFR A1 level) to advanced (CEFR C1 level), and refine your listening skills at your own pace and convenience.
Practice correct spelling. Spelling is also important in this part of IELTS. There may be several spellings in English of for example names. In IELTS Listening Task 1, you will need to complete personal information such as first name, surname, address, and this is the most common question type for this part of the test. Revise your spelling several times, paying particular attention to the mistakes most commonly encountered in your language group. The same applies to numbers, such as the zip code or phone number you will need to write down at the exam.
Spelling Practice for IELTS Listening from IELTSLiz will help you prepare for this type of question. Here you can practice spealling city and country names, numbers and surnames.
Exam Word are online exercise for spelling words from IELTS word lists. The tool is very smart and corrects your mistakes.
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Do you know what one should do to fail IELTS Speaking? We have prepared a list of the most common mistakes candidates must be aware of and avoid on the day of the exam.
It is fine if you think for a few seconds before speaking, but being silent for longer than five seconds may not be to your advantage. Fortunately, there is a solution to this problem: while you are thinking, say, “That’s a good question …” or, “Wow, I really haven’t thought about that before …”
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If you think the best way to succeed in IELTS Speaking is to cram the answer, you will be disappointed. The memorized answers are quite obvious, and examiners are specially trained to recognize them. You will not only lose your scores, but you will also get more complex questions from the examiners, that will allow to test your English speaking skills and define your real level.
but if your answers are too short or you just say ‘yes’ or ‘no’, a low score is guaranteed! In this part of the test, it is important to give more detail! Provide the examiner with enough information to make your interaction more like a live conversation.
If you are asked, for example, “Where are you from?” the answer “Lviv” will not be enough. Better say: “Lviv, which is one of the major cities in Ukraine. It’s wonderful place, with a lot to see and do.” As a rule, 2-4 sentences are enough.
However, if you use the same word over and over again, the examiner will think that you have limited vocabulary. Here is an example:
‘It was an interesting experience because I met interesting people and we did interesting things.’
Use different words to express the same meaning. Say:
‘It was an interesting experience because I met amusing people and we did fun things.’
Don’t be a parrot! In the wild, a parrot is a bird that can mimic but it does not understand human language. In IELTS, ‘a parrot’ is a candidate who repeats the question in the form of a statement. For example:
Question: ‘What’s your favourite dish to cook?’
Answer: “My favourite dish to cook is borsch”
By all IELTS criteria, it rewards those who are able to vary the language. Paraphrasing words or question structures is the fast track to a higher score. It is better to answer, “Most of all I like cooking borsch” or “I often cook borsch because I love it most of all”.
Many candidates tend to deviate from the question in the midst of the exam. Talking more is not the same as saying right. Remember that questions are usually direct and simple and do not require more than 3-4 sentences to answer. The main thing is to answer the question, not to say much.
Some candidates, having read reviews and tips on the Internet, believe in the fact that speaking well means the examiner agrees with your opinion. Some even ask the examiners questions. There is nothing further than the truth. The examiner will politely redirect the question back to you if you try to kill the clock by saying, for example, “I don’t know. What do you think?” Examiners are not interested in your opinion; they just want you to demonstrate your speaking skills. Focus on answering the question and doing it grammatically correct.
This is not what we meant. Many candidates think that they need to show the examiners how good their grammar is to get high marks. Again, the danger is that you try to use grammar that you are not 100% sure of and then lose control of the sentence. As you prepare for the exam, familiarize yourself with expressions that help you express and contrast opinions, emphasize your ideas, etc.
You have to insert very long, complicated words in each sentence to get a high test score. Isn’t it cool? Not at all. If you listen to native speakers, it just won’t happen unless you’re at a conference of university professors. The truth is that you really should try to show the examiner that you have a range of vocabulary, but you should not try to use words that you do not quite understand. If you are trying to use complicated words that you do not quite understand, it is very likely that you will make a lot of mistakes and lose your points. If you are not 100% sure about the meaning and form of the word, do not use it.
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