It’s the IELTS Writing Test, and you’ve just finished writing 270 words for your task 2 answer. Your vocabulary seems good; you used a range of topic specific words. Your grammar seems good too. You used a good mix of simple, compound and complex sentences. So, you think, this time I must have reached band 7. But, results day arrives, and you get band 6.5 again!
A lot of students come to me with this problem. They need 7 in IELTS Writing task 2 and they are always ½ a band below.
I ask them to write a task 2 answer for me. When I read their answers I see that the vocabulary and range of grammar is quite advanced, and good enough to reach band 7. However, their score for task achievement is only 5 or 6, because they haven’t fully or directly answered the question. Either they’ve missed a key part of the question, or they’ve chosen complicated and indirect ways to answer it.
The good news is, if this is you, it’s much easier to raise your score by half a band than if you had a vocabulary or grammar problem. You just need to choose the right kind of idea while planning your essay. Hopefully, after reading this article, you’ll know what to do. This is a simple and fast way to improve your IELTS writing score.
Answer the Whole Question
How many IELTS candidates don’t answer the whole question they are given in IELTS Writing Task 2? Based on my experience with hundreds of candidates preparing for IELTS, a lot of them! Are you doing this too?
You absolutely must read the question carefully and pay attention to all keywords.
If the question asks you to talk about the benefits of something to children, talking about the benefits to people in general is not answering the whole question.
Likewise, if the question asks you about the advantages of funding parks in cities, and you talk about funding nature reserves, while never mentioning cities, you are not answering the whole question!
I could go on and on about this, because I see this so often! So please, pay attention to all the keywords and make sure you answer the whole question. If you only partly answer the question, you’ll never reach band 7 for task achievement and this will bring down your overall score by at least 0.5.
Choose Ideas That Directly Answer The Question
The next serious problem is choosing ideas for the essay that don’t directly answer the question.
The keyword here is directly.
What’s the difference between an idea that directly answers the question and an idea that indirectly answers the question?
An idea that directly answers the question only has one step. The reason the idea is relevant is immediately clear. Indirect main ideas require several steps before they answer the question.
Let’s look an example of a direct and indirect idea for an answer to an IELTS Writing Task 2 question:
The direct idea is that the health benefits of outdoor activities are beneficial for children’s development. It’s immediately clear why health benefits are a good thing. Good health is obviously beneficial. An indirect idea is that outdoor activities teach children to live in a sustainable way. But, it is not immediately clear why living sustainably is beneficial for children's development. This needs more explanation, so, you have to explain a long line of reasoning to make sure it's clear. This is where students often have a problem!
What’s wrong with indirect answers?
Why are main ideas that directly answer the question much better? Because they are safer! The IELTS examiners are looking for essays with clear and relevant ideas. If you look at the IELTS band descriptors (the rules for grading IELTS) you can see that the answer must be clear and relevant. They must clearly and directly answer the question.
If there are several steps between your idea and the reason why it is relevant to the question, there’s a much higher chance of your idea being unclear to the examiner.
Additionally, if your main ideas are too indirect, you can easily get lost as you’re writing! Without realising it, your ideas become incoherent.
Conclusion:
Ideas for IELTS essays don’t need to be clever, complicated or reflect your real opinion. You don’t get a higher score for having more interesting ideas. By choosing simple ideas that directly answer the whole question, you’re more likely to get a high band for task achievement. This could easily raise your overall band by a ½ band, so that you can finally reach the band you need!
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