Improve your Writing for IELTS Test: a brief description.

This article aims to provide some hints and information about the writing tasks of the IELTS test. You will have one hour to complete two tasks in the IELTS Academic Writing test. For task 1 you are given 20 minutes and 40 minutes for task 2. When you understand your strengths and weaknesses, what exactly you need to write, and writing as a process, you will be fully prepared for the big day! Here are three pieces of advice to help you study and prepare for the test. Improve your own writing by asking yourself questions like:

• Have I answered the question fully?
• Is everything I have written relevant?
• Is it easy to follow my writing?
• Did I use a good range of vocabulary, and grammar?
• Did I use discourse markers?

You can also use online free tools to submit your written work. For instance, Write & Improve will mark piece of writing and give you feedback on spelling, vocabulary, grammar and style in seconds. Before you start writing, make sure you understand exactly what you will need to do. Be aware of the academic style, that is what IELTS writing should be like. We show you the ropes, so to start it off here is what you need to do:

• Think of ideas and decide what you are going to write
• Plan and organize your writing
• Write it down
• Check your writing and improve it, if needed.

In the test, make sure you plan your writing before you begin. That means you must organize what will be in each paragraph. Make sure you consider the time for checking and improving your writing at the end. Ask a teacher to assign some writing for homework. For example, you may consider how you can improve previous writing assignments, then try to make your writing better. With some help, you will be more successful if you can take charge of your writing process and be aware of your own learning.

We recommend our students to use online tools like Write & Improve. This is a free resource where you can submit your written work. It will mark your piece of writing and give you feedback on spelling, vocabulary, grammar and style in seconds. You can amend your work and resubmit it to improve your writing. In addition, it is always a good idea to check some responses that other people wrote. Then you can consider the following question: “How could this other test takers’ writing be improved?”. Check what they did well and the mistakes they have made. Among other ways, this is a great way to improve your writing skills for the big day and be fully prepared for the IELTS writing tasks.

Academic language has some technical terms and long words, but many little words are used in this writing style as well. So, but, thus are little words. Words like “however” or “therefore” are not that little. They are words named discourse markers simply because they help to arrange ideas and show the relationships between what we express. Learn to use discourse markers well, if you want to improve your writing. Spend some time working on these terms, big and little words, discourse markers such as “on the other hand”, “in my opinion”, “all in all” etc.

A researcher named Milton found out that English learners use discourse markers too often compared to textbooks and scientific articles. Some other discourse markers such as “In this case”, “It can be seen that”, “An example of this is”, “This is not to say that” are examples of discourse markers that not all learners use. According to Milton, these discourse markers appear in scientific articles, but are never used by English learners. Based on this information, we can tell that some formal language is not something we learn every day in daily conversation.

Just so you know, in academic environments, there are many discourse markers and reasons why they show up in academic writing. They each do something different. The phrase “on the other hand” is a discourse marker used to tell the reader that next will be the opposite of what was previously said.  For example, for its part, is not used to contradict but to provide support to a point you have made. This is not to say that is good for clarifying what you mean and don’t mean.

In summary, our job here aims to provide relevant pieces of advice to help you study and prepare for the writing tasks of IELTS test. We hope you liked each hint we wrote down here. Now that you have read this article, pick out as many discourse markers as possible and try to use them in your next piece of writing. You will see huge differences in your future essays when you start using the new discourse markers you have learned.

References:

Milton, J (1999) Lexical thickets and electronic gateways: Making text accessible by novice writers. In Candlin CN & Hyland K (Eds.), Writing: Texts, Processes and Practices (pp. 221–243). London: Longman.

IELTS website: https://www.ielts.org/

British Council website: https://takeielts.britishcouncil.org/
IELTS Liz: ielts-writing-task-1-lessons-and-tips/