Five tips to improve your IELTS writing task 2

Improve your academic vocabulary

Your IELTS writing needs to be formal (with the exception of some general training task 1s) and should show off an academic writing style. Using the passive voice and avoiding language which is informal (e.g. talking about ‘kids’, ‘bosses’ or ‘other stuff like that’) are great places to start, but to really hit the right note with your writing style requires you to use words and phrases which make you sound like an expert.

Not sure what I mean? This post has been written in quite an informal, chatty style, and the vocabulary isn’t particularly academic, because my goal is to make the article easier to read and understand, and also to make it more engaging. Let’s write a paragraph in a more academic style:

Once the author begins to employ more formal vocabulary, along with a significant alteration in the type of grammar used to compose the article, a more serious and academic writing style emerges. This change in writing style increases formality of the text and makes it seem more authoritative to the reader, particularly in an academic context. While such a writing style is not usually appropriate in the real world, it is the preferred approach for academic writing or very formal letters or emails.

Wow! As you can see, a few long, formal words and different grammatical structures can completely transform the tone of your writing and starts to improve your IELTS writing scores across the board! Click here for a PDF copy of the academic word list and start working towards a more academic vocabulary today!

Don’t just expand your vocabulary, apply it!

Lots of test takers work hard to expand their vocabulary, but many people often don’t know how to do this effectively. The key to improving your vocabulary score is not just to ‘learn’ words so that you can recognise them in a sentence and know what they mean, but rather to practice and apply your vocabulary. How is this done?

One fairly common approach is to try to memorise large numbers of words. Be very careful with this approach, because while it can help you improve your reading and listening, it can actually be detrimental to your fluency when speaking and often does not help your writing. The problem is that these memorised words become passive vocabulary. This means that is locked away deep in your memory, like a book on a shelf in a large library. As such, it is not instantly ready for use, so as you are speaking, you stop to recall the word, reducing fluency. When you are writing, large passive vocabularies can slow you down, or more often you do not use the word at all.

Improve your general knowledge

Some people argue about whether IELTS is a test of knowledge and culture as well as a test of language. The IELTS test developers would happily tell you that you do not need any subject-specific knowledge to score well on an IELTS test (and if it becomes clear that you are an expert on a topic in part 1, the examiner is supposed to avoid giving you part 2s on that topic). On the other hand, some IELTS teachers (and if you know any, examiners) believe that to do well on the IELTS test, you need to know about and think about a wide variety of subjects.

The fact is that IELTS writing task 2 is hard, even for many native speakers. This is often because the task 2 essay questions can be genuinely difficult to answer, as they may cover topics that are unfamiliar to you. Take the following question as an example:

Nuclear power provides cheap and clean energy and so the benefits of nuclear power far outweigh the disadvantages.

To what extent do you agree or disagree with this statement?

Now, it is possible to write an answer without really knowing anything about nuclear power or electricity generation, but that answer is probably not going to be very well supported. Most people (probably including the person who originally wrote this question) don’t know about the safety record of nuclear power stations, the costs of building different types of power plant, or the so-called wicked problem of long-term radioactive waste disposal.

How can you coherently and intelligently discuss the benefits and disadvantages of nuclear power in a non-native language if you know absolutely nothing about nuclear power and have never really thought about it before? The answer is: with very great difficulty.

With that in mind, the solution is clear, although it is neither quick nor easy. You need to know about all of the things that they might ask you for task 2. One way to do this is by reading a lot in English. Every time you read an article, for IELTS or for interest, critically assess how useful it is likely to be for your IELTS test. An article on the history of hats in medieval Europe? Probably not too useful (although arguably you could use it to discuss changing fashions!?) An article on factors that affect work performance and job satisfaction? Get your pen out and start making notes, because that sounds very IELTS-y!

Know what you need to improve

There are some great materials online (and loads of terrible ones!) about how to structure and write IELTS task 2 essays. The question is: are these enough for you to prepare for your IELTS test?

The fact of the matter is that you can practice your reading and listening independently and monitor your progress fairly accurately, but for your speaking and writing, it is a different matter. The best way to know the level of your IELTS task 2 essay and what problems you have in your writing is to get detailed writing feedback. It is usually very difficult to proofread your own work for grammatical accuracy or vocabulary usage: if you knew it was wrong, you wouldn’t have written it in the first place.

A good writing corrections service will give you detailed feedback on your essays, including all four of the scoring criteria and corrections that show you what mistakes you are making and how to fix them. We offer a full writing corrections and feedback service, and we guarantee that your feedback is supplied only by experienced former examiners who have corrected and rated thousands of IELTS task 2s. We are also developing a full writing course, which will include a large number of writing corrections, so be sure to check back regularly for its release.

Good feedback is a great investment, as you will know what you should do for task achievement, coherence and cohesion, grammar and vocabulary to achieve the score you need in your IELTS test. It is also far cheaper than taking a full IELTS test every time you want to know whether your writing is up to standard or not!

Make sure you answer the question properly!

 It is really important to make sure you are answering the question fully and properly. If you fail to address a part of the question, you are automatically limited to band 5 for task achievement, while if you discuss all parts of the question but do not deal with one part sufficiently, you will automatically be limited to band 6.

When you are doing your task 2, the first thing to do is carefully read and analyse the question. How many parts are there to the question? What are you being asked to do? Are there any important words which limit the scope of the question, or are there absolute terms (always, never, every, none etc.) which you will need to clearly mention in your conclusion?

Take the following question as an example:

Modern cities are becoming increasingly similar and losing their individual characteristics due to globalisation.

To what extent do you agree or disagree with this statement?

Lots of test takers do badly on this question because they don’t analyse and interpret it properly. A common error is when a student essentially reads the question as ‘Are modern cities becoming more similar?’ and then they write an essay talking about high rise buildings. This question has 3 distinct parts that we need to discuss and agree or disagree with:

1. Are modern cities becoming more similar?
2. Are they losing their individuality?
3. Is it due to globalisation, or is it because of other factors?

The scope of this question is limited by two points. If you start talking about people commuting to work or the impact of office jobs on obesity, you are off topic as the question is specifically asking about children. Another phrase that limits the scope of the essay is ‘over the past 10 years’ – in this case, make sure you are not using examples or making references to times that were longer than a decade ago (e.g. Since the turn of the Century = off topic!).

With a little bit of patience and careful analysis of the question, you can make your writing score a lot more consistent. How you read the question and plan your essay is essential, as most people who fail to answer a part of the question or go off topic do so before they have even started writing their essay!