7 Techniques and Tricks to Boost Your IELTS Writing Score to Band 7 and Higher

After talking about the minimum requirements that you need to get a score of 7, the following techniques will also ensure that you reach that goal with greater ease and more certainty. Let me remind you that I usually get writing 8.5, and on several occasions, I took the IELTS and made mistakes and did experiments on purpose to reach the following conclusions that I am presenting to you for free.

1. Plan your Arguments: An argument is the reason behind why you agree or disagree with the topic. You need to stop and think for several minutes about what your arguments will be. Do not try to be impressive. Try to be as simple, direct and straightforward as possible. Make sure every paragraph, apart from the introduction and conclusion, embodies only one argument, no more, no less. 2. Make your Arguments Simple and On Topic: The second trick is to make sure that your arguments are simple, but that your choice of words is complex. I repeat; simple ideas, complex vocab. If your ideas are complex, even if they are amazing if the reader takes the time, they will be dismissed as off-topic, as your examiner does not have the luxury of time to analyze your amazing, deep, profound ideas. No. Simple ideas, complex vocab. e.g. Adults have less time to exercise than children. Do you agree or disagree? Test taker 1 prepared the following arguments: 1- Adults have less time than children 2- Adults have more responsibilities than children 3- Adults have less energy than children Test taker 2 on the other hand prepared: 1- There may not be enough sporting clubs or fields 2- Poverty means that people have to work longer 3- Most adults in any society are middle class who spend too much time at work, and do not have the peace of mind it takes to exercise Which test-taker do you think has better arguments? For the sake of IELTS, test taker 1 beyond a doubt is a lot more on topic with his simple, straight-forward ideas. Test taker 2 on the other hand, although he managed to create far more interesting, compelling, thought-provoking ideas that challenge the reader, is off topic, especially that he did not mention children anywhere. He considered the topic to be "why so many adults hardly exercise" while ignoring children completely. 3- Revise! Revise! REVISE!! Any writer in the world, whether writing in his native or learned language, will always make mistakes. It is only human. Sometimes you forget an S or a The somewhere. Sometimes you forget a comma. Sometimes you misspell a word and you do not notice. This is especially true in the IELTS because you are writing in such a hurry. Do not think it is an option to revise. In fact, without revision, you might as well skip the rest of the test and go home. This test is HOPELESS with revising.

A revision should take about 10% of the time for the task. That means about 2 minutes for the 20 minute task 1, and 4 minutes for task 2. You should pretend that you have changed the test, and that this is simply a grammar test that asks you: FIND AND CORRECT ALL THE MISTAKES IN THE FOLLOWING ESSAY. Seriously, just pretend you did not write any of what you are reading, and take the last few minutes to criticize every single letter you wrote. 4- If you forget the correct spelling, change the word. You should not under and circumstance risk incorrect spelling. If you are not 100% sure of the spelling of any word, it is wise to choose a different word completely. Let's say you want to use the word "albeit", but you are not sure whether it was bite, byte, biet...etc. In that case, it is safer to simply fit "although" in that sentence. 5- Avoid grammatical traps. The easiest trap that will over-complicate grammar beyond your ability is writing sentences that are too long. No, you should make sure that your sentences are average, about a line and a half or 10 words each or so. If you make a sentence that takes an entire paragraph, it will be harder to follow, and you will double or triple the grammatical difficulty to pull-off such a difficult sentence.

Too many words in a sentence are like too many cars in a street. Avoid.

6- Paragraphing: What is a paragraph? A group of at least 3 sentences and 4 or more lines that serves a specific function in your writing, such as an introduction, argument, or conclusion. Your paragraphs should be clearly divided from each other by means of an empty line or an indentation. I personally like doing both. What is an indentation you say? It is the little empty space you leave at the beginning of a paragraph. Take care, you need to do this for EVERY paragraph, and not just the first one like some schools preach.

7- Complicate and Formalize your Words: Sometimes, your words are far too simple and childish to reflect good lexical resources on your behalf. For example, look at the following words and what better replacements there are that you could have used:

Note: the exception to this rule is some tasks in IELTS General Training Task 1 (not academic) that requires you to write a letter to a friend (and not to a manager for example). If you are writing to a friend, you are actually encouraged to use friendly, informal words such as the ones on the left. Need more like these? You can check out this comprehensive list, but remember, this is just a sample, and what you actually need to know is more than that, and could be achieved by practice. One good source of formal vs informal words is to watch politicians speak in different settings (TV talk show vs. formal speech). This can be easily noticed if you examine the way someone like ex-U.S. president Obama speaks when he tries to be friendly or funny, vs when he aims to be serious. I hope you enjoyed this article. May the tips and techniques presented here prove useful to you, and if you have any questions, write them below, and I will respond, or perhaps, write an entire article to answer your question. 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.