Welcome to this post on IELTS writing: 3 reasons you are underperforming. Lots of people struggle with the writing part of the test. They may do really well in speaking, and get a shock when they find that they scored a band lower in their writing. This is especially common for people whose English is already good. This is because they are less likely to take the time to prepare for their test properly! In this post, a former examiner explains common problems people have in their writing, and why they may not do as well as they hoped.
1. Task achievement is really important
Lots of people who do the IELTS test don’t actually understand how it is scored. There are 4 scores: task achievement; coherence and cohesion; lexical resource; and grammatical range and accuracy. Even if your grammar and vocabulary (lexical resource) are good, you need to understand how to answer the question.
The most common issue here is bad question analysis. People often don’t really read the question properly and don’t cover everything they need to mention. This is because they read the question quickly, make assumptions about the topic and then start writing. Before you write anything, you should:
- Read the question – identify important words and think about what it is asking you to do.
- READ THE QUESTION AGAIN – Do the thoughts about the question match the words on the paper?
- Plan your essay and think about how to develop your ideas
- READ THE QUESTION AGAIN – Does your essay plan cover the entire question?
- Now, you’re ready to start writing!
2. People get bad training
The next of our 3 reasons you are underperforming in IELTS writing is to do with how you decide to learn. There are plenty of people out there keen to teach you their perfect, one-size-fits-all method. This sounds great, and often, it’s really cheap too!
- Cheap IELTS classes? Wonderful!
- Simple, quick, high-level vocabulary for EVERY essay? Even better!
- A template that solves all your problems!? It must be magic!
If this sounds too good to be true, that’s because it is. Thousands and thousands of students learn writing like this. You have probably noticed that most of them don’t get above band 6.
Specifically-worded templates for introductions give a terrible first impression to the examiner. Then, all the transition signals that you use in the same order and the repetitive paragraph structure makes your writing ‘mechanical’. This limits your score to band 6.
As for all that great vocabulary you were promised that matches any question? I’m afraid that ‘with the development of’ various ‘hot topics’ isn’t going to be the vocabulary miracle you thought it was. In the best-case scenario, these idioms will score in the band 6 range because they’re not relevant and they don’t match the band 7 requirement for flexible and precise use of vocabulary! In the worst case, they will limit your task achievement to band 5 for irrelevant detail. You need to be topic specific and show flexibility and precision in your use of vocabulary.
DO NOT waste your time with introduction templates, paragraph templates, or anything that guarantees that you can write an essay without thinking about it at all. These techniques train you to limit some of your scores to band 6, and they won’t be any use in university or your working life abroad.
3. Differences with speaking
Aside from the task achievement and coherence and cohesion scores, there are some key differences between grammar and vocabulary in the writing and speaking tests.
Firstly, writing considers spelling and punctuation. If you know your spelling is bad, you need to fix it. It can seriously limit your score for lexical resource. Similarly, if you have a problem with punctuation (. , : ; etc.), you need to fix it. People from some cultures don’t use capital letters at the start of sentences. Unfortunately, this will absolutely kill your grammar score. Lots of people also have problems with commas and putting them in the right places.
Another important difference is formality. Your writing vocabulary needs to be a lot more formal than your speaking vocabulary. We talk a bit more about writing styles in another post, found here.
Finally, your grammar actually needs to be better. In speaking, good pronunciation, vocabulary and fluency can slightly ‘blind’ the examiner to small errors in grammar. This is partly because their brains are too busy processing other information to notice (interpreting meanings, keeping track of questions, rating vocabulary).
When this happens, their brains can start to fill in and correct minor errors for you. If your grammar happens to be perfect when they’re listening for grammar and slips a bit when they’re thinking about vocabulary or coherence, you might get away with it. This is especially true if you are a very strong band 7, and it could tip your grammar a bit higher than it should be. In writing, they have a lot more time to think about it and the mistakes jump off the page at them!
So, that is the end of our post on IELTS writing: 3 reasons you are underperforming. Have you noticed that you got a lower writing score than you thought you should? Do any of these issues sound familiar to you? Leave a comment and let us know! If you found this post useful, please don’t forget to share it with other people preparing for their tests. Why not have a look at this post on a great way to learn vocabulary and improve your spelling?
Take care, and we hope to see you again soon!
