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There are a number of reasons why IELTS writing is where most people struggle.  The IELTS examiners that work with us came up with these 10 reasons.

1. People don’t write very much anymore so it is skill we are losing.
2. Teachers avoid teaching writing and set it for homework. They think they should focus on speaking in class and so writing gets neglected. This happens pretty much from school age.
3. Students don’t think they need to practice it. They are more interested in speaking and listening; they are more fun!
4. The IELTS writing criteria is incredibly rigid. If you have a problem with articles, for example (and so many people do), this means that very few of their sentences will be grammatically correct. This caps their Grammar score at Band 6.0.
5. IELTS writing is rounded down. So if you get Band 7 in all the other criteria but Band 6 in Grammar because you can’t use articles properly, you are awarded Band 6.5 (7+7+7+6 is awarded 6.5)
6. Very few people can teach IELTS writing. The only people that know about it properly/accurately are IELTS examiners who are trained and monitored and retrained and remonitored again and again.
7. If you do the Academic exam, Task 1 is very tricky and lots of people mess this up because they don’t include all the information they need to. This caps their Task achievement score at Band 4.0.
8. If you do the General exam, you may need to write in a semi-formal style (Dear Sir/Madam…..I would like to blah blah….). Many people struggle to maintain this all the way through their writing and this loses them Task Achievement marks too. And if they have a problem with articles too, well, they will struggle.
9. Certain IELTS writing correction services are fake, run by people who know nothing about the exam, give people marks that are far too high, don’t correct most of the mistakes because their English level is too low, and are not run by native or native-like users of English. I have been shown some that are truly awful and they have led people to pay to do the exam only to get far lower than they were led to believe they would get. Home – Upmyielts is where IELTS examiners work if you need real help. You can contact them here or through our Facebook page and you can join our private group if you want.
10. That is probably enough!!