IELTS Writing Tips and Tricks, Tested Against the Band Descriptors

Every list of IELTS writing tips contains the same ten items, and some of them are wrong. Not wrong in the sense of being unhelpful. Wrong in the sense that the public band descriptors describe the behaviour they recommend at a lower band than the one you are aiming for.

A tip is only worth following if you can name the criterion it moves. This post sorts the common advice into three groups: the tips that are really exam rules, the four that the descriptors contradict, and the one step that no tips list includes.

What is being marked, so you know what a tip can move

Both tasks are marked on four criteria of equal weight. For Task 2 they are Task Response, Coherence and Cohesion, Lexical Resource, and Grammatical Range and Accuracy. For Task 1 the first one is Task Achievement instead, and it asks whether you selected and summarised the right information.

Each criterion gets a whole band, the four are averaged, and the result is rounded. Task 2 carries roughly two thirds of your writing band and Task 1 roughly one third. How the paper works and how it is marked has the whole structure, and the band score table shows where a given set of four numbers lands.

This matters for reading tips, because it tells you that there are only four places a tip can land. Advice that lands nowhere is decoration.

The tips that are really rules

These are not tactics. They are the mechanics of the paper, and the ranking pages are right about all of them.

• 60 minutes, both tasks, about 20 minutes on Task 1 and 40 on Task 2. Nobody announces the split in the room. Time management in IELTS writing has the minute by minute plan.
• At least 150 words for Task 1 and 250 for Task 2. Under the minimum is a penalty you can avoid by counting. Know how many words you fit in a line of your own handwriting before exam day.
• Answer every part of the question. A two part question with one part answered caps Task Response regardless of the language. Underline the parts of the prompt before planning.
• Paragraph properly. One main idea per paragraph, with a visible break between them. Paragraphing sits inside Coherence and Cohesion, and how many paragraphs a Task 2 essay needs is a settled question.
• Keep the register formal in Task 2 and in Academic Task 1. No slang, no contractions, no text message spellings.
• Leave five minutes to proofread. Not to rewrite, to catch the article and verb ending errors that are cheap to fix.

If you only do the six things above, you are doing more than most candidates in the room.

Four tips the descriptors contradict

Here is where the usual lists go wrong. Each of these four is repeated on page after page, and in each case the published wording puts the recommended behaviour at band 5 or 6.

"Use advanced vocabulary"

The Lexical Resource descriptors do not reward rare words. They reward range used precisely. The band 6 line describes an attempt at less common vocabulary with some inaccuracy, which is exactly what the word list method produces, and it stays band 6 however many more rare words you add. Band 7 asks for less common vocabulary used with some awareness of style and collocation, and the word doing the work in that sentence is collocation.

A common word in the right combination beats a rare word in the wrong one, every time. Collocation beats vocabulary lists has the paired examples, and precision beats length covers the vocabulary half of the exam more generally.

"Use a range of linking words"

The cohesive device bullet at band 5 reads "makes inadequate, inaccurate or over-use of cohesive devices". Over-use sits in the same bullet as inadequate. Too many is marked the same way as too few.

At band 6 the word is "mechanical". At band 9 the wording is that cohesion "attracts no attention". So the top of the scale is not a visible range of connectors; it is cohesion the reader does not notice. A candidate who memorises forty linkers and starts every sentence with one has moved from one half of the band 5 bullet to the other half. Linking words in Task 2 has the count across our own samples: the lower scoring answers use more linkers per 100 words, not fewer.

"Write as much as you can"

There is a minimum and there is no reward above it. A longer essay is a longer list of chances to make an error in Grammatical Range and Accuracy, and the extra minutes come out of Task 1, which is a third of your band.

Length also tends to arrive as repetition, and repetition is visible in Task Response: the same idea restated in new words is not a developed idea. A tight 280 word Task 2 answer beats a loose 400. How long a Task 2 essay should be has the arithmetic, and what to cut when your essay runs long covers the fix.

"Learn a template and fill it in"

A template gets you a structure, which is worth something, and it gets you memorised sentences, which are not. Language that does not fit the question in front of you is visible to a marker and cannot count towards your own Lexical Resource. Worse, a template pulls your answer towards the question you practised rather than the one on the paper, and that is a Task Response cost.

Keep a shape in your head: position, two developed reasons, a conclusion. Do not keep sentences. Memorised phrases in IELTS writing lists the openings that appear most often.

One tip that is half right: write Task 2 first

The reasoning given for this is sound. Task 2 is worth roughly twice Task 1, so a candidate who runs out of time should run out of it on the cheaper task.

The risk is the other half of the trade. Task 2 is the task that expands to fill whatever time it is given. If you start with it and do not hold yourself to 40 minutes, you arrive at Task 1 with 15 minutes and write an answer with no overview, which caps Task Achievement on its own.

So the order is a personal decision and it depends on one thing: whether you can stop writing when the timer says 40 minutes. Test both orders on practice papers and keep the one where Task 1 still comes out complete.

A tip is only useful if you can name the criterion

Here is the sorting, in one table.

The Task 1 version of this exercise, applied to graph advice specifically, is in graph tips tested against the descriptors.

The step that no tips list includes

Every list ends with "practise". None of them says what to do with the answer you just wrote, and that is the step that actually moves a band.

Mark one of your own answers in four separate passes, one criterion at a time, writing a whole band down for each before you look at the next. Four passes sounds slow and is the only way to see anything. Reading an essay once and feeling that it is "about a 6" produces nothing you can act on; four numbers produce a decision, because you work on the lowest one.

How to mark your own IELTS essay has the questions to ask at each pass. Then compare your four numbers with a scored answer at a similar level: the band 6 samples show what band 6 looks like across every task type, with the sentences behind each criterion marked, and what IELTS writing practice should look like covers the weekly rhythm.

Do this today

Take the last answer you wrote and give it four whole band marks, one criterion at a time. Then look at your lowest number and pick one tip from the table above that moves that criterion. One tip, one criterion, this week.

If you want a second opinion on those four numbers, you can paste the answer into Bandly and get a band estimate per criterion with the sentences that drove each one. The estimates come from an automated engine that has never been checked against a qualified examiner, so use them to find your weakest criterion rather than as a result.