Introduction to IELTS Writing

Academic Task 1:

Task 1 : You will have to look at a table, a diagram, or a graph and then represent the information in your own words. The information is presented in the form of a report. In a few special cases, the graphic information will come in one of five forms – a line graph, bar graph, pie chart, table or diagram illustrating a process. It is necessary to describe the information in a report of 150 words. This task should be finished in 20 minutes.

General Training Task 1:

You will have to write a letter in response to a given situation. You will be given topic for the letter that can be formal, semi-formal or informal. There will be three bullet points given after the question prompt. You are requried to address and explain all those points. You must write atleast 150 words and you must not spend more than 20 minutes on this task.

Academic Task 2:

Task 2 : It is an essay, based on a topic mentioned on the question paper. Alike task one, it is also a time-bound task, and therefore make sure to write at least 250 words in 40 minutes. It is important that you keep within the advised time limit as Task Two carries more weightage in the final band score than Task One does. Keep in mind that illegible handwriting reduces your final score.

For GT IELTS, task 2 is same as Academic (only the topics are more general)

Marking Criteria

There are FOUR main criteria, which are demanded by the examiners to award bands according to the performance:

 Task Achievement (Task 1)/Task Response (Task 2)

 Cohesion and Coherence

 Grammatical Range and Accuracy

 Lexical Resource

Task Achievement (Academic Task 1) :

 You will have to summarize the whole information such as all significant trends/features.

 You will have to describe your task by providing sufficient details. The description should not be over explained or less explained but all the given statistics must be covered.

 There should be a clear overview and accuracy in your task.

 In GT IELTS, you will have to explain the reason behind your writing

 In GT Task 1, you will have to include and explain all the given bullet points in your letter.

 You will have to be consistent with an appropriate tone.

Task Response (Task 2) :

 You will have to respond to all parts of the question.

 You will have to support your ideas with relevant examples.

 You must provide a clear opinion.

Coherence and Cohesion :

 You will have to make effective paragraphs by using a logical arrangement of your ideas, meaning thereby, each idea must have an explanation to justify coherence in your task.

 There must be a proper interconnection of two different sentences, or, in other words, both the sentences must complement each other to represent cohesion in the task.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy :

 You will have to use a wide range of sentences with appropriate punctuation and tenses.

 You will have to produce frequent error-free sentences under accuracy.

Lexical Resource :

 Use appropriate words or phrases in appropriate positions and a wide range of vocabulary correctly.

 Use synonyms in order to avoid repetition.

 Use perfect collocations, which means adequate