Academic writing

General Introduction

The IELTS essay is the second part of the writing section of the IELTS test. lt requires you to write an academic essay with the minimum word count of 250, within a period of 40 minutes. There is no limit to the maximum word count. This part takes up 2/3'd of the overall score of the writing section. Each essay is marked with 4 different criteria, which share equal proportion of the overall band score.

L. Task Response (TR)

Answer the question given with relevant ideas and examples. Do not digress. For example, if your essay asks you to write the problems faced by cities because of rapid urbanization, and you write the causes of urbanization, you will be off track and lose out on task response .

2. Cohesion and Coherence (CC)

Coherence means that your essay is easy to read and understand which goes with handwriting and language used in the essay. Cohesion means your essay stays on-topic and does not provide any irrelevant and redundant details. Cohesive devices or transition signals like 'however/, 'despite this' and 'ln conclusion' should be used more in academic writing. However, this does not mean that you should try to insert as many of these words in to your writing as possible. This is a common mistake in IELTS writing. Using too many of them, or using them inappropriately, can be detrimental. They are important, but must only be used at the appropriate time.

3. Lexical Resource (LR)

This criterion assesses how effectively and accurately you can use your vocabulary to develop your ideas. Big words and phrases might lead to your essay becoming forced and unnatural.

4. Grammatical Range and Accuracy (GRA)

This means, you can use simple, complex and compound sentences, along with proper punctuation correctly .

Common Essay Questions

1. Opinion essays

opinion 1 - Agree/Disagree.

. Opinion 2 - ls this a positive or negative development.

. opinion 3 -Are the advantages more than the disadvantages.

2. Discuss essays

3. Advantage and disadvantage essays

4. Problem and solution essays

5. Direct question essays (some might be two part questions)

Some important things to note.

1. Contractions are not allowed (he's, she's, can't, won't).

2. Don't use informal language. However, you are writing for an educated non-specialist audience. Therefore, your language does not need to be as formal as that of university essays.

3. Always paraphrase or use synonyms when possible. Never copy the topic while writing the introd uction.

4. Avoid using templates or memorized items for intro. Such templates can take a person from 4 to 5 or 5.5, but if your aim is 6 or above, these templates cannot help you. A simple but original introduction befitting the question asked will be better.

5. No click 6s. For example, instead of writing 'every coin has two sides', it is better to write 'every argument has two sides'.

6. lt is good to write complex sentences, but if the examiner has to read your sentence again to see what you mean, then it goes against you. So, write complex but clearly understood sentences. Avoid too long sentences.

7. in most cases you are expected to give your opinion. You may also have to include your life experience and relevant examples to support your opinion.

8. The topics of the IELTS writing questions are supposed to be of general interest, and they claim that no specialist knowledge is required. But it would be worthwhile to go through points of topics like telecommuting, gap year, genetically modified foods, globalization, rote learning, and many more. I believe that if you don't have ideas, even the best of language skills will not help you achieve your desired score. ideas for some 1OO such topics have been included in the speaking book, which is recommended along with this book for IELTS preparation.

9. Do not copy whole sentences or long phrases from the question. The examiner will recognize them, and they will not count towards your minimum number of words you must write.

10. The introduction should be approximately 35-50 words long. lt is unnecessary for you to write a long introduction because it is the body that you need to focus on.

Academic writing samples essay