Why do you score less in IELTS Writing?

To score well in the writing module, one has to be good at the sub-skills of writing about graphs and essays. It is usually observed that even well qualified test takers who speak fluently are not that good at writing. 

Many candidates get low scores in writing. Following may be some of the reasons:

1.       People start writing impulsively, without proper thinking or preparation. Spending a couple of minutes with the question is highly advisable before starting to write.

2.       They repeat the same words, same phrases and same sentence structures. Expanding your vocabulary (naturally) can help you through this.

3.       Many people are not meticulous with their spellings; they just assume that they know them. Common mistakes like ‘its’ in place of ‘it’s', or ‘their’ in place of ‘there’ is reason enough for the examiner to limit your band score.

4.       Many people just copy the phrases from the question in the introduction, instead of paraphrasing them according to one’s own understanding.

5.       Injecting a lot of ideas in a single paragraph does not ensure logical consistency. A paragraph should have one, or at the max two central ideas so that it doesn't seem like you’re blabbering on.

6.       Different lengths of paragraphs may indicate poor planning and organisation. Maintain uniformity.

7.       Many of the candidates fail to think logically in their rush to write, making their introductions and conclusions differ from each other.

8.       Most of the times the conclusions are not convincing enough, and sometimes may even be irrelevant to the main question.

9.       Students fail to realize the importance of grammatical accuracy; they put in very little efforts to correct grammar errors.

10.   Students introduce new ideas in the conclusions which instead of impressing, will put the examiner off.

11.   Students write the essays depending only on one type of sentence structures. To score well, one must use a combination of simple, complex and compound sentence structures.

12.   Eloquence and broad mindedness is absent from most essays. Be modest in writing and clearly express all sides of the topic. The reader might not share the same opinion as you do.

13.   Students treat the importance of handwriting very insincerely. Illegible handwriting not only gives a bad impression, it is also a significant criterion for cutting bands.

14.   Students just don’t understand the use of punctuation in written texts. Apart from full-stop (.) and comma (,) one may use a hyphen (-), semi-colon(;) and a colon (:) to make their intentions explicit.


Reading correct and intellectual English essay and graph samples will help you understand the organisation and the ways in which ideas should be put forward. Always remember, written English is very different than spoken English. You need to be very careful so as to not make your written work seem childish.
Why do you score less in IELTS Writing? Why do you score less in IELTS Writing? Reviewed by Devanshi on February 26, 2016 Rating: 5

1 comment:

  1. Really true and these are things that students have to keep in mind while writing essays. You are doing a great job by posting little but very essential tips for IELTS candidates.

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