A student wrote to me saying that he didn’t understand why his most recent writing test score was so low. He wanted my advice on how to improve his writing task 2 essays.
Before giving any advice, I asked the student whether he thought he had done well or badly in writing task 1. His answer surprised me: he hadn’t written anything at all for task 1; he had spent the whole hour in the test doing task 2.
Hopefully you can guess what my advice was! I think students often worry so much about task 2 that they really neglect task 1. If you’re not getting the score you need, it might be that task 1 is the problem.
Just to make it clear:
One-third of the score for writing comes from Task 1.
If the score for Task 2 is Band 9, and there is no attempt at Task 1, then the overall score for writing will be around Band 6.
If the score for Task 2 is Band 7, but for Task 1 only 6, then ((7*2)+6)/3 = 6.6667 which rounds to 6.5 for writing overall.
Posted by: Oleg | Friday, February 08, 2019 at 00:55
Yes sir,it is bitter truth.Task 2 can be easy for most students but task 1 is easy only for few students.Although task 1 is visual description however , we have no ideas which points we have to take for comparison or contrast AND we write whatever first comes in mind .Therefore , we are not writing in such a way that IElTS examiner is looking for.Hence,score goes down.This indicates a lot of practice and understanding is required for task 1.
Posted by: Pachu | Friday, February 08, 2019 at 02:46
Oleg
I am pretty sure that happened to me as I wrote a good w2 essay and well revised it. But wrote w1 after task 2 in hurry and last part was so incoherent s I didn’t hav time to think.
I wish I had practice w1 more then I wouldn’t require to do it again.
Posted by: Sadia ULFATH | Friday, February 08, 2019 at 14:12
Sadia ULFATH
I used to go along with the idea of doing Task 1 last, but now I think it is better to practice, practice, practice Task 1 until we can reel it off in less than twenty minutes, nothing too fancy, just accurate, complete, and focused. After all, the language and phrases for Task 1 are fairly predictable.
Posted by: Oleg | Friday, February 08, 2019 at 18:56
Hello. I have my exam on the 6th of april. You input will be valued, any advice??
Posted by: Cherelle | Monday, February 11, 2019 at 19:38
The student you mentioned was so ridiculous to ask you that question
Posted by: Hieu Huynh | Wednesday, February 13, 2019 at 05:46