Guides / Exam technique
IELTS Writing Practice That Actually Improves Your Band
Most candidates practise by writing more essays. They write twenty, they feel more fluent, and they sit the test and get the same band they would have got after two. The writing was real practice. The problem is that nothing in the process told them what was wrong.
Practice only moves your band when something comes back. An answer you write, close and never look at again teaches you the habits you already have. This page sets out what marked practice looks like, a weekly routine you can run in about three hours, and how to check an answer when no teacher is available.
Why volume alone does not work
IELTS Writing is marked on four criteria, each worth the same amount:
- Task Response (called Task Achievement in Task 1): did you answer the whole question, with developed ideas?
- Coherence and Cohesion: is the answer organised, with clear paragraphs and linking that fits?
- Lexical Resource: is the vocabulary accurate and appropriate, not just varied?
- Grammatical Range and Accuracy: is there a range of structures, and how often do errors appear?
Each of those four is a separate skill. A candidate stuck at band 6 is usually not weak in all four. They are strong in two and weak in one, and the weak one is holding the average down.
Unmarked practice cannot find that one. You repeat what feels comfortable, including the mistake. If you have been writing "In nowadays" for a year, the twentieth essay contains it too, because nothing ever flagged it.
This is the core idea: practice is useful in proportion to the feedback attached to it. Five marked answers beat twenty unmarked ones.
Find your weak criterion first
Before you build a routine, find out which criterion is costing you. Write one full Task 2 answer under exam conditions, 40 minutes, at least 250 words, no dictionary. Then assess it against the four criteria separately.
Score each one out of 9 on its own. Do not average as you go. The point is the gap between them.
| Criterion | What a band 6 answer looks like | What a band 7 answer looks like |
|---|---|---|
| Task Response | Position is there but some ideas are undeveloped or repeated | Position is clear throughout, every main idea is extended and supported |
| Coherence and Cohesion | Paragraphs exist, linking words are sometimes mechanical or overused | Logical progression, linking feels natural, each paragraph has one central topic |
| Lexical Resource | Enough vocabulary for the task, with noticeable errors in word choice or form | Some less common vocabulary used accurately, errors do not block meaning |
| Grammatical Range | A mix of simple and complex sentences, frequent errors | A variety of structures, most sentences error free |
If three criteria sit at 6.5 and one sits at 5.5, you have found your target. Spend the next month on that one.
A weekly routine that fits around a job
This is three hours a week, split into four sessions. It assumes you already know the task formats.
Session 1: one full answer under timed conditions (40 minutes). Pick a Task 2 question. Plan for five minutes, write for thirty, check for five. Use a timer. Writing without a clock is a different skill from the one being tested.
Session 2: mark that answer (30 minutes). Leave at least a day between writing and marking. You cannot see your own errors while the sentences are still in your head. Read the answer four times, once for each criterion, and write one sentence of judgement per criterion.
Session 3: rewrite the weakest two paragraphs (30 minutes). Do not rewrite the whole essay. Take the two paragraphs that scored worst and write them again, fixing the specific problem you named in session 2. This is where improvement actually happens.
Session 4: one Task 1 answer (25 minutes) plus a short drill (20 minutes). Task 1 is a third of your writing score and most candidates under practise it. Follow it with a focused drill: rewrite ten simple sentences as complex ones, or correct a list of article errors.
Four sessions. One new answer a week, not five. The extra time goes into looking at what you wrote.
How to mark your own answer
Self marking is harder than it sounds, because the same brain that wrote the sentence approves of it. Three techniques make it more honest.
Read it aloud, slowly. Your ear catches missing articles and wrong verb forms that your eye skips over. This alone finds a large share of band 6 grammar slips.
Count, do not judge. Judgement is vague. Counting is not. Count the number of sentences. Count how many are complex, meaning they contain a subordinate clause starting with words such as although, because, which, while or if. Count how many times you repeat your key nouns. Count the linking words. If you have fourteen sentences and two are complex, Grammatical Range is your problem and now you know it as a number.
Check the question, not the essay. Reread the question, then ask of each paragraph: does this answer part of what was asked? An essay about the benefits of technology is not an answer to a question about whether the benefits outweigh the drawbacks. Task Response failures are usually failures to reread the prompt.
A worked example of one fix
Here is a real pattern from a band 6 answer, and the version after one targeted rewrite.
Before: Nowadays, technology is very important in our life. Many people use technology every day. Technology helps us to communicate. It also helps us to work faster.
Four sentences, all simple, the noun "technology" repeated three times, and no idea developed beyond naming it.
After: Digital tools now shape daily routines in ways that were unimaginable a generation ago. Because messaging apps allow a conversation to continue across time zones, families separated by migration can maintain relationships that distance would once have ended. The same tools compress the working day, since a task that required a posted document can be completed in minutes.
Three sentences instead of four, two of them complex, the repeated noun replaced by precise alternatives, and each claim extended with a reason. That single paragraph moves on three of the four criteria at once.
Notice what did not happen. No rare words were inserted for display. The improvement came from developing ideas and varying structure, which is what the descriptors reward.
What to do this week
- Write one Task 2 answer in 40 minutes today.
- Wait a day, then score it on the four criteria separately.
- Name the lowest one in a single sentence, for example "my paragraphs each contain three unrelated ideas".
- Rewrite the two weakest paragraphs to fix only that.
- Repeat next week with a new question.
The routine is small on purpose. A plan you can keep for eight weeks beats an ambitious plan you drop after four days.
If you want a second opinion between sessions, you can paste an answer into Bandly and get a band estimate broken down by criterion, with the sentences that drove each one, so you can see whether your own marking and the engine agree.
Find out what this essay would score
Paste your own answer and Bandly returns an estimated band for each of the four criteria, with the sentences that pulled the score down. Under a cent an essay, about six seconds.
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