IELTS Writing Task 2 : Tips and Strategies

Many students face difficulties in IELTS writing task 2 and their study abroad dreams shatter when they get a low overall score. It is an essential part of the writing module which helps in marking productive skills of students. The writing module consists of two tasks i.e. task 1 & 2 and it lasts for 60 minutes. With this in mind, it is recommended that students complete the task 2 within 40 minutes as it has more value in terms of the band score. Furthermore, in this task, students have to write an essay on a specific topic and that too has a minimum 250-word threshold. In other words, it is necessary to write a minimum of 250 words to avoid penalty. The writing task 2 mainly assess a student in task achievement, coherence and cohesion, lexical resource, and grammatical range and accuracy. Moreover, all these points have equal weightage. Let us discuss these points one by one and know how to maximise the writing band score.

Task response

Before attempting IELTS writing task 2, students must thoroughly read and understand the topic. It is very important to address all parts of the task. Otherwise, there will be cut in bands. Furthermore, students must develop their ideas in the proper context and back them with evidence. Of course, they can also support them with examples but they must avoid overgeneralization.

Coherence and cohesion

Students must organise all the information in such a way that ideas flow logically and in sequence so that they are easy to understand and follow. To achieve this goal, they can divide their essay into paragraphs to show different ideas separately. This will create a structure of their essay. In addition to this, they must connect ideas, paragraphs, and sentences in such a way that they show a clear relationship between them. For this matter, they can use connecting words.

Lexical resource

Vocabulary is very important to express ideas precisely and economically. A correct choice of words has more impact and better reception of ideas. To improve vocabulary, students must learn new words along with their synonyms. Another equally important lexical aspect is word collocations i.e. word combinations. For example, instead of writing “to show my dissatisfaction” they should write “to express my dissatisfaction”. Moreover, correct spellings are important. As a matter of fact, students must leave some time to check their vocabulary in their writing task.

Grammatical range and accuracy

Although students can clearly communicate their ideas using simple or compound sentences, they will not get good bands if they fail to show their grammatical range and accuracy. To impress examiner, students can use variety of tenses, comparatives, conditionals, modal verbs and passive tenses. Writing complex sentences has more weightage than simple sentences. Furthermore, students must use tense accurately as it has a substantial impact on the meaning that they want to convey. To make life easier and to clear IELTS test without worries, Pyramid IELTS has been serving the IELTS aspirants for more than a decade and a half. Thousands of students have already cleared the IELTS test using our expert training and strategies. If you too want to clear your IELTS test without hassle, do not forget to visit our IELTS centre.