EnglishClub

Introduction

Are you preparing to take the IELTS test? Are you worried about writing your Task 2 essay? You’re not alone! For most students, IELTS Writing Task 2 is the hardest part of the test, so in this article I will give you some tips to help you prepare for it.

1. Understand The Assessment Criteria

The first thing you should do is find out how IELTS examiners assess Writing Task 2. You can download the public version of the assessment criteria from the IELTS website.

In this document, you will see 4 assessment areas: Task Response (TR), Coherence and Cohesion (CC), Lexical Resource (LR), and Grammatical Range and Accuracy(GRA). TR and CC mainly assess your academic writing skills; LR and GRA assess your English language skills. So getting a high band score in Task 2 is not only about your language skills, it’s also about your academic writing skills. This means your ability to develop and support your ideas in a logical way. This is difficult for many students so…

2. Read IELTS Model Essays…and IELTS Reading Texts

One way to help you develop your academic writing skills is to read academic texts. One very good source of these are model IELTS essays. You can find these online, but be careful…many websites containing “Band 9 model essays” are often not even close to a Band 9…or even a Band 7!

Another source of academic reading material are the texts used in the Academic IELTS Reading Test. These texts are written in an academic style, so reading these will show you how to write in an academic style yourself.

3. Build your vocabulary

If you want a high band score for Lexical Resource, you need to use vocabulary that conveys your ideas in a clear, precise way. This means using topic-specific vocabulary. So you should try to learn vocabulary that is related to topics that  often come up in the IELTS writing test, such as the environment, education and jobs.

One way to do this is to read model essays and IELTS reading texts. Look at the vocabulary used in these texts. How are the words and phrases used? What words are often used together?

4. Practise Using Authentic Essays

It is very important to practise writing IELTS essays, but be careful when looking for essay questions to answer. Some essay questions which you can find online are very badly written: they can be badly worded, and on topics that are almost impossible to write about.

Instead, try to use authentic IELTS essay questions: the best source of these are questions found in the Cambridge English Authentic Papers series. I have included some of these IELTS sample essay questions on my website. I’ve also included suggestions on how to answer each question.

5. Practice Planning Essays

Don’t just practise writing essays, practise planning essays.

To get a high band score, you need to write a well-structured essay with well-developed and supported ideas. To help you do this, you should plan your essay carefully before you write anything.

So find an essay question and spend 10 minutes planning it. Then look at another question, and plan that. You don’t need to actually write these essays – simply practise planning them. If you practise planning essays, your planning skills will improve…and so will your essays.

6. Use the official answer writing sheet

You should write at least 250 words in your Task 2 essay. But don’t waste time in the exam counting your words. Instead, you need to know roughly where on the answer sheet you will reach 250 words.

How do you find this out?

Count your words – where, on the answer sheet, do you reach 250 words? Maybe you need to write 25 lines, maybe 30. You will probably find that you hit the 250 word point at around the same with each essay.

This means that in the exam, you won’t need to count your words – you will know where on the sheet you should write to. This will save you time – time which you can spend planning, writing or checking your essay!

7. Get Feedback On Your Writing

You should try to get feedback on your essays, ideally by a teacher who has a good understanding of the IELTS writing assessment criteria. Getting feedback is the most effective way to improve your band score, because you will find out what you are doing wrong, and how you improve.

If you enrol in an IELTS class, ask the teacher for feedback on your essays. Alternatively, find a teacher online who offers IELTS tutoring or an IELTS writing correction service. These services can be quite expensive, but they are cheaper than having to re-sit the IELTS exam.

There are also free options. The best one is to join an IELTS group on Facebook, where you may be able to post essays and get feedback from teachers in the group. However, these groups usually have lots of students, and very few teachers, so you may not be able to get feedback immediately, so….

8. Read The Feedback Given To Other Test Takers

In these Facebook groups, read the essays that other students post, and look at the feedback they get from teachers. Many students will have the same problems as you, and they will make the same mistakes as you, so the feedback given to one student may also be useful for you.

Conclusion

So use these 8 tips to help you prepare for Task 2 of the IELTS Writing Test. I hope they help. Tell me what you think of these tips in the comments below, and please add any of your own preparation tips. Best of luck in the IELTS exam!

I will analyze the strategies I generally use to assess and evaluate students considering a specific group. I will also outline which strategies are not feasible in my teaching context as well as those which require adaptations. I teach a group of eight-year old students who attend classes at a private school. They have English classes four days a week. The group is made up of twenty six students: sixteen girls and ten boys. The school is located in the city centre.

When assessing and evaluating students, I use a wide range of techniques. One of them includes the use of checklists. At the beginning of the academic year, I talk with students about what is essential for learning successfully and we agree on a set of criteria that we will use to assess behavior and performance on a daily basis. In order to do this, I have devised a sheet taking into account students’ expected and non- expected behavior. Students individually have to place the pictures which illustrate different kinds of behavior under the corresponding column (This makes me feel happy or sad). Then, we agree on a classroom chart with these same pictures placed under the corresponding column to be displayed on the classroom walls. Whenever a student breaks up something stated there, I simply point to the broken behavior code and students are expected to reflect on that. I have also designed a checklist which takes into account students’ participation, responsibility in bringing class materials, and behavior. It is really useful since it allows me to keep a record of students’ attitudes towards language learning and it encourages students to become responsible for their learning process. Doing this does not constitute an element of competition among learners because students are not given room to compare with other classmates. It is simply a tool to remind them about what matters most concerning attitudes, responsibility and discipline. This kind of formative evaluation has proved to be effective as it consists of a process of ongoing feedback on their everyday actions, responsibility and class work.

Another technique which I started implementing this year is the use of anecdotal records. I have sheets designated for each student where I record anecdotal notes, comments and the circumstances in which the learning experiences take place. When I started using this kind of assessment tool, I found it difficult because the group was a large one so I decided to focus on writing anecdotal records of five students per class. However, if something occurred concerning another student, I also documented that as well. The advantages of using this tool far outweighs its disadvantages. Although it might be time consuming to write anecdotal records of students, it has helped me get a more accurate picture of my learners’; not only in terms of their performance but also as regards significant daily events and comments which can shed light on their learning processes.

With this class, I mostly work with projects, with hands-on activities and tasks. Each student has his/her own portfolio. At the beginning of the year, we set up the guidelines for the content of portfolios and we establish criteria for the samples students decide to include in them. I generally tell students that they have to choose three reasons for which to include samples in their portfolios. I brainstorm ideas on the board and then we vote on the most interesting criteria. We also include “can do statements” sheets for students to go through their portfolio and assess their performance in terms of the skills they have mastered. This is done in English with very simple language and each can do statement is illustrated with a picture so as to aid comprehension.

I also administer tests to students. The tests are integrative assignments covering the linguistic exponents and language practices which students are expected to have mastered over a given period of time. Most of them are based on the stories we read and work with on in class. For example, last term, we worked with “Little Red Riding Hood” and students were asked to write the dialogue going on between the Wolf and Little Red Riding Hood when the wolf pretends to be granny. By doing this, students integrated their knowledge of body parts and adjectives in a creative and engaging way.

In my teaching context, I have realized that carrying out private interviews with students is not feasible because the rest of the class starts getting distracted and making noise. I generally talk to students in private concerning issues of utmost importance; for example, when their attitudes in class are not the expected ones, I try to figure out what is happening to that student by talking to him/her privately. I also carry out interviews with parents before and after class time to talk about their children’s behaviour, progress, attitudes towards learning and to point out areas that need improvement.

As a conclusion, it is advisable to consider a wide range of assessment and evaluation strategies since this helps us teachers identify more in detail areas that need improvement. It is important to encourage students’ self-assessment as this promotes autonomous learning and helps them assume more responsibility for their own learning. Although not all the strategies seem easy to implement, it is worth trying most of them and adapting them to suit our particular teaching contexts.