How to get IELTS writing band 7 and higher

Let's break down the process of how you can get a score of 7 or higher into two categories: requirements and techniques. Requirements will highlight the minimum that you need to have learned to qualify for getting 7 or more. Techniques will show you the skills you need, and some tricks that you can use, to boost your score, if you already have your requirements covered.

Requirements:

1- Your Grammar is Perfect: That means you do not make a single grammatical mistake while writing. You might think that studying grammar means that you need to go through a grammar book lesson by lesson or exercise by exercise. The truth is, answering a lot of grammar exercises just makes you good at these exercises, but not writing. While writing, the fact that you are creating entire sentences uses a combination of grammar, vocabulary, speed and logical sense, all which grammar exercises alone do not help.

To improve your grammar, you need to use the English language on daily basis with something that you love. Watching documentaries or reading books on any topic such as history, science, technology or even politics will increase your experience bit by bit everyday.

2- Your vocabulary and spelling are advanced:

It is not enough to simply be able to express the right word in English. Your writing needs to be formal. That means words like stuff, things, nice, cool, check out....etc. are all unusable in writing. You could check out this list here for an idea of what these words are, but you will need true awareness of the language to quickly think of these during speaking or writing.

(Think of how children learn their language, and apply it to yourself.)

3- You know what collocations are:

Certain words go together much like certain foods work together and others don't. A famous example is the differences between fast and quick, or tall and long. Example: We can say: quick meal

quick breakfast

quick lesson

But we cannot say:

quick food

quick car For food and car we need to say: fast food fast car But what is the difference between fast and quick. Aren't they synonyms? Synonyms in English, or any language for that matter, means the words are similar, but not entirely equal. Synonyms do not give you a free ability to replace word A with word B however you like. No, the words have to be able to work together and sound "normal" to the ears of a native speaker. Throughout his life, everybody said fast cars and quick meals. So, whether it is logical or not, quick cars and fast meals are both not 100% wrong, but they do not sound "normal", "perfect", or "correct". Collocations are the big trap that people fall into when they study vocabulary word by word out of context. In fact, they are impossible to study. Imagine if for every word in English, you receive a list of 30 words you can use with this word. That means if your vocab should consist of 2000 words, you need 2000 x 30 = 60,000 possible collocations that are acceptable. That is INSANE. Nobody can study such a list. The good news about collocations, just like grammar, is that practice is not only the faster way to learn. It is also the easier way. If you want to write well. Read a lot. Read four hours a day, every day. What should you read? Anything that you ENJOY. The more you enjoy something that you are doing, the faster and more that you will pick up from it. 4- You have good logical sense: That means you are a well-informed individual that makes good logical arguments. Arguments are the points that you make while writing that show you have an actual thought process that makes sense and is able to stay on the topic.

(You normally enjoy puzzles and mind games)

Example: Government are thinking of introducing toll stations to crowded roads in order to encourage the use of public transportation.

Do you agree or disagree? If you say that you agree, off the bat, this will never make sense, unless you provide some very good reasons why you agree to such a crazy idea. Toll stations, if anything, will make crowded streets even more crowded. So the safe choice here is to say that you disagree. Now pick two reasons from the following: - Toll stations will create more traffic congestion - Public transportation is cheaper - Toll stations will occupy large spaces in already crowded streets

- Car-pooling will reduce traffic congestion Did you pick the first and third reason? Good job. You managed to stay on the topic. Many people will ignore that the topic is exclusively about toll stations and start writing about traffic, car usage or public transportation in general. NEVER do that. A topic about toll stations needs to be about toll stations in the introduction, the argument paragraphs and the conclusion. It is not enough to simply write a paragraph or two about toll stations, then hope the examiner does not notice that the remainder of your essay you talked about buses and the subway system. 5- You have good style and taste: Good style means you know how to divide your topic into an introduction, a body and conclusion. On the other hand, good taste means that you do not mention debatable or offensive ideas, or points that seem too boring. For example, you should talk about all human societies equally. You can make distinctions like poor countries, rich countries, eastern or western countries. Do not specifically talk about your own country like India, China, Spain, Egypt...etc. Also, some people are under the impression that they can make up false information and get away with it. Anything that sounds like "a study conducted in 2004 in cambridge university" will cause an immediate deduction of marks, because there is not way you have memorized a study for every possible scenario in the writing test. Even if your information is true, in most cases by other students, they are not. You were not given internet or library access while doing your writing task. All the information must come directly from your head, from your own direct knowledge or experience. Do NOT lie. How do I make sure that I have all these requirements? The same thing I tell everyone about any problems they are facing in the language. Practice a lot. Practice means you do something that you enjoy doing in English for ALL your free time of the day. For some time, you need to isolate your native language from your English language. Do not translate back and forth.

(hobbies are an excellent opportunity to learn the language and communicate with native speakers)

Find something that you love doing in English, for example, reading the Harry Potter novels. Read them, and take notes of any difficult words you come across. Do not stop reading to check the meanings of the difficult words you find. Instead, keep on reading, then make a dictionary checking session at the end of your reading session, where you write down the definition or synonyms English-English. Do not use your native language to translate difficult words, because if you do that, you will never learn collocations, or gain the right fluency or speed when using the language.

Tomorrow's Article: Five tips and tricks to improve your IELTS writing score to band 7 or more About the author:

Amr Ayman was a regular pharmacist, until he discovered his gift for teaching IELTS. He created Speak2Me, and now teaches English and IELTS full-time. You can try his lesson for free here