IELTS Writing: What to Check in the Last Four Minutes

Every piece of advice about IELTS Writing says to leave a few minutes at the end to check your work. Almost none of it says what to check. So candidates reread from the first word, run out of time around the middle of the essay, and change nothing that was going to affect the band.

Four minutes is not enough to reread everything with attention. It is enough to run three or four specific passes. This post gives those passes in order, from the error that costs most to the error that costs least, so that if the invigilator calls time after ninety seconds you have already fixed the expensive thing.

The principle: repair cost, not reading order

A proofreading pass should be ordered by two things together. How much the error costs you in the marking, and how long the repair takes.

A missing part of the question costs you in Task Response, which is a quarter of your writing band, and the repair is one sentence. That is the best trade on the paper. A clumsy phrase costs almost nothing and the repair takes a minute of rewriting. That is the worst trade.

The last two rows are where most checking time actually goes. Resisting them is most of the skill.

Where the four minutes come from

The writing test is 60 minutes for both tasks. The usual plan is 20 minutes for Task 1 and 40 for Task 2, because Task 2 carries twice the weight. Checking time is not extra time; it is the last two minutes of each of those blocks.

So the plan is two minutes at the end of Task 1, and two at the end of Task 2. Two separate short passes beat one long pass at the very end, because you check Task 1 while you still remember what the chart showed. If you are already behind, see the notes on writing time management rather than borrowing the checking time, which is the first thing most candidates sacrifice and the cheapest thing on the paper.

Pass 1: go back to the question, not to your answer

Read the prompt again. Not your essay. The prompt.

Count the things it asks for. A two part question asks for two. An opinion question asks what you think. A Task 1 prompt asks you to summarise the information and, in Academic Task 1, to select and report the main features and make comparisons.

Then ask one question per requirement: where in my answer is this? Point at the sentence.

If you cannot point at a sentence, add one. Do not restructure. One clear sentence that answers the missing part, placed in the paragraph where it belongs, moves you from an answer that addresses the task partially to one that addresses all parts. That is the distance between two whole bands on one criterion in the public descriptors.

This pass also catches the worst outcome in the test, which is an answer about a slightly different question. More on that in the post on off topic essays.

Pass 2: find your position, or your overview

In Task 2, if the question asks for your opinion, your view must be findable in one sentence. Underline it mentally. If you cannot find it, write it in the conclusion. Eight words is enough.

In Task 1, find the sentence that says what the whole chart does overall, without numbers. If there isn't one, add it after the first sentence. The band 7 descriptor for Academic Task 1 asks for a clear overview of main trends, differences or stages, and a report with no overview is capped well below that no matter how accurate the detail is.

Both repairs are a single sentence. Both are worth more than any amount of vocabulary polishing.

Pass 3: the mechanical scan

Now, and only now, look at the language. Do not read for meaning. Scan for shapes. This is quick because you are looking for four specific things and ignoring everything else.

1. Commas joining two complete sentences. Cover the half before the comma and read the half after. If both halves are complete sentences, change the comma to a full stop.
2. Verbs after he, she, it and a singular noun. The government spend becomes the government spends. This is the most common slip in otherwise strong answers, because it survives rereading for meaning.
3. Plurals and articles on your repeated nouns. Pick the two nouns your answer uses most. Check each appearance. Children not childrens, research not researches, the environment not environment.
4. However, therefore, moreover. Each needs a full stop before it, not a comma.

More on the sentence level errors in the posts on punctuation and grammar errors at band 6.

Pass 4: the spelling of words you used many times

Spelling errors are counted under Lexical Resource. One misspelling is a slip. A topic word misspelled eleven times reads as a pattern.

So do not scan for all spelling. Scan for the four or five words your answer repeats: the topic noun, the key verb, the country or group you discuss. Goverment, enviroment, bussiness, advertisment, seperate are the frequent ones. Fixing one of those fixes it everywhere it appears.

On the paper test, change a letter cleanly and move on. Do not cross out and rewrite the whole word unless it is illegible, because legibility is also your problem on paper. On the computer test this pass is faster, so use the time saved on pass 1.

What not to do with four minutes

• Do not add a new idea. A new idea needs explaining, and an unexplained idea reads as undeveloped, which is exactly what the Task Response descriptors penalise.
• Do not insert memorised phrases. They stand out against your own writing. See memorised phrases.
• Do not count words unless you have a real reason to think you are short. Counting burns a minute. If you know your handwriting, you know your word count by how much space you filled.
• Do not rewrite a paragraph you dislike. You will not finish, and half a rewritten paragraph is worse than a whole clumsy one.
• Do not change a correct form to one that sounds more impressive. Late changes made under pressure are often wrong, and an error you introduce in the last minute costs the same as one you made in the first.

A worked ninety seconds

Here is a conclusion as written in a real timed answer.

In conclusion, there are many advantages and disadvantages of this trend, the government should take action and more research is needed, young peoples attitude also play a role.

Pass 1 asks what the question wanted. It asked whether the trend is positive or negative. This conclusion does not say. Pass 2 says write the position. Pass 3 finds a comma splice, a missing apostrophe, and a verb agreement error.

The ninety second edit:

In conclusion, although this trend has clear drawbacks, I believe it is a positive development overall. Governments should regulate it, and young people's attitudes play a part in how it is managed.

Nothing was rewritten from scratch. One position was stated, one splice became a full stop, one apostrophe was added, one verb agreed with its subject. Four changes, two criteria touched, under two minutes.

What to do today

• Write one practice answer under time, then set a timer for four minutes and run the four passes in order. Write down what you changed. Most candidates find the pass 1 problem on their first try, which is the point.
• Learn your own three most frequent slips by name. Checking for three named things is fast; checking for everything is not checking.
• Practise adding one sentence rather than fixing a paragraph. It is a separate skill and it is the one the clock rewards.

The errors you miss when checking are the ones you cannot see in your own writing, because you read what you intended to write. Pasting a finished answer into Bandly returns an estimated band for each of the four criteria and the sentences behind each estimate, which is a reasonable way to find out which of your own slips you are blind to before the next timed attempt. The bands are estimates from a scoring engine and have never been compared with the marks of a qualified examiner, so treat them as a pointer to sentences, not as a prediction of your result.