The IELTS writing criteria and what you need to know
This is a good question from an IELTS teacher in India who is in our private Facebook group (feel free to join). I am an IELTS teacher from India at an academy in Mumbai. What is the most important part of IELTS writing criteria? What should I help my students work on? One of the upmyielts IELTS examiners answered it. Without doubt, Task Achievement. Let’s look at why. Your English level is basically marked by your Coherence, Lexical and Grammar score but Task Achievement...
Advanced IELTS vocabulary for your writing and speaking
This blog post comes from a question we received in our private Facebook group IELTS speaking and writing support. Feel free to join. The question was "Can you give me some advanced vocabulary for IELTS writing?" One of the examiners had this to say. No. Stop. Learning from word lists is the worst way to learn a language, especially for IELTS. Why? Because English is very very highly collocated. You cannot just interchange words for others in English as it will more than likely...
How do I get a higher score in IELTS writing?
We received this question from a member of our private Facebook group. Feel free to join - You can ask any questions you have about IELTS there. To answer the question, you get a good IELTS writing score by practising. IELTS writing is marked to a very strict criteria and you need to tick the boxes to get to a certain level of writing. Most people seem to need Band 7.0 and to get Band 7.0 in IELTS writing, the majority of...
Is IELTS easier in different countries?
This is a controversial topic so please put your comments/thoughts below. There is always a lot of talk about IELTS and whether you will get higher marks if you do your exam in your country or in an English-speaking country. Just to make this clear, this is not the case with IELTS writing. Your writing is probably not marked in the country where you do the exam and it is scanned and sent to examiners in other countries so it makes...
How to write an IELTS Task 1 – Process
Writing a process in Task 1 generally has the lowest word count so don’t worry if you only hit 150 words. There isn't really very much to say about them usually. So, to start with, you need to introduce what the process is about; usually it is making something, like how to make cut diamonds/electricity/cement etc. So, you need to state what the process is showing and then you need some kind of overview. The overview may be that the process takes...
What should you avoid doing in the IELTS speaking test?
An IELTS speaking examiner explains. There are a few things that you need to avoid in the IELTS speaking test. Understand that it isn’t a 2-way conversation. The examiner has a script to follow. They can’t deviate from this script until Part 3 so don’t ask them any questions. The exam is strictly timed so control your speakingso you don’t go off on a monologue. The examiner has a number of questions they have to get through and they will stop you...
IELTS EOR and jagged profiles explained
We were recently contacted by someone who had got L 8.5, S 7.5, R 7.5 and W 6 and they were asking about going for EOR (Enquiry of Results). What is EOR? This is where you think your score is too low and you can have your writing or speaking checked again. They were asking about getting their writing checked as they thought they had done much better than Band 6.0, and were asking for our advice. In this case, we recommended going...
Why do people do IELTS more than once?
So, we got this question from a member of our private Facebook group IELTS writing and speaking support (Feel free to join. You can talk to IELTS examiners there). Why is my IELTS Score the same as previous attempt after SO MUCH HARDWORK? First attempt overall 6.0, W-5.5, R-5.5, S-6.0, L-6.0. While my 2nd attempt overall 6.0, W-6.0, R-6.0, S-5.5 L-7.0. All the attempts were self study. We see so many repeat IELTS takers. Some have done the exam 4 or 5...