IELTS Writing: How the Paper Works and How It Is Marked

The IELTS Writing paper is sixty minutes long and contains two tasks. You write both. There is no choice of question, no extra time, and no separate reading period.

Most guides start with tips. Start instead with the shape of the paper, because almost every avoidable mark is lost by candidates who did not know how it was structured before they sat down.

The format in one table

There are two versions of the paper. Task 2 is identical in both. Task 1 is completely different.

Three consequences follow directly from that table, and each one is worth more than any vocabulary list.

1. Task 2 is worth twice Task 1, so do Task 2 first if you are prone to running out of time. The tasks can be answered in either order. Nothing in the instructions requires Task 1 to come first. A finished Task 2 and a rushed Task 1 costs less than the reverse.
2. The word counts are minimums, not targets. Writing under them is penalised. Writing far over them costs you checking time and usually adds repetition rather than content.
3. The twenty and forty minute split is a recommendation, but it matches the weighting. Spending thirty minutes on a bar chart is spending your Task 2 time on the smaller half of the paper.

The four criteria

Each task is marked separately against four criteria, each on the nine band scale, each carrying equal weight within that task.

1. Task Response, called Task Achievement in Task 1. Did you answer what was asked, cover everything required, and develop your points rather than list them?
2. Coherence and Cohesion. Is the answer organised, paragraphed, and easy to follow, with ideas connected logically rather than with linking words sprinkled on top?
3. Lexical Resource. Range, precision and appropriacy of vocabulary, plus spelling and word formation.
4. Grammatical Range and Accuracy. Variety of sentence structures, and how many of your sentences contain errors.

Criterion scores are whole numbers. Half bands appear only after the four are averaged. Your two task bands then combine, with Task 2 counted twice, into the Writing band on your result form. The full arithmetic, including the rounding rule that surprises most people, is written out in the score calculator guide.

The descriptors these criteria come from are published by the exam boards and are freely readable. They are worth reading once in full, slowly. Most exam advice is a paraphrase of them, and the paraphrase is usually less precise than the original.

Where marks are actually lost

Across the four criteria, a small number of failures account for most of the distance between band 6 and band 7.

Answering the topic rather than the question. A Task 2 instruction that says "discuss both views and give your own opinion" contains two obligations. An essay that discusses both views expertly and never states an opinion has done half the task, and Task Response is the criterion that notices. This is the single most expensive error in the paper.

Describing every number in Task 1. Task Achievement asks for an overview and the key features, not a transcription of the data. An answer that walks through every value in a table with no summary of what the data shows is missing the part that is explicitly required.

Paragraphing by accident. Coherence and Cohesion covers paragraphing directly. A 280 word essay written as one block, or as eight two sentence fragments, loses marks that have nothing to do with the quality of the ideas inside it.

Memorised phrases. Openings like "In this contemporary era, it is an undeniable fact that" are recognised instantly and count for nothing, because they carry no meaning specific to the question. Worse, they eat words from your count and time from your clock.

Complexity attempted without control. Grammatical Range and Accuracy scores both halves. Long sentences full of clauses that do not resolve are penalised on accuracy; a page of short simple sentences is capped on range. A mix, with the complex sentences under control, is the target.

The sixty minutes, minute by minute

You do not have to use this order, but you do have to use some order, decided before the exam rather than during it. Candidates who plan the hour in advance almost never run out of time; candidates who start writing immediately frequently do.

Academic or General Training

You do not choose. The version you sit is determined by why you are taking the test: Academic for most university admission, General Training for most migration and many work applications. Check what the institution or authority you are applying to requires before you book, because the Task 1 preparation is completely different and time spent on the wrong one does not transfer.

Task 2 preparation transfers entirely. It is the same task, marked the same way, and it is two thirds of the band in both versions.

Where to go next

If you are starting from nothing, work in this order.

1. Read the four criteria above until you can name them without looking. Everything else is a detail of one of them.
2. Learn the Task 2 question types and what each instruction obliges you to produce. Start with what Task 2 asks you to do.
3. Learn your Task 1 version, and only your version. The Task 1 guide covers the Academic chart types.
4. Write full answers under time. Reading about the paper is not practice; the constraint being tested is sixty minutes.

When you have a full answer written, you can paste it into Bandly for a per criterion estimate and see which sentences drove each of the four scores. Treat the numbers as an estimate to reason about rather than a result, and use the breakdown to find which of the four criteria is your lowest. That one is where your next week of study should go.