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What Is The Task?

You will be given a topic, in the form of a few statements or questions. Your task is to write an essay of about 250 words. You are advised to spend about 40 minutes on this task.

The purpose of the task is to test your ability to comprehend a topic, structure and communicate the information through writing, with grading based on task response, coherence and cohesion, lexical resource/vocabulary, and grammar. If still not sure what the task is, you can opt for IELTS Online Training from Hurray

How To Do The Task?

With IELTS, time management is a must, in order to complete the entire exam successfully. The writing tasks tend to take a lot of time – so pay close attention to our recommended time for each part of the task.

1. The first step in this task is to read the question carefully. What is the topic? What are the specific things the reader wants to know about the topic? What area of information is the topic related to – perhaps the environment, education, or travel? 

2. You must also pay attention to what type of essay is required – accordingly, you will have to develop your essay. These are the possible types of essays:  

• Descriptive – you will have to describe something like an object or a personal experience.

• Explanatory – you will explain something about a phenomenon, such as causes/consequences, advantages/disadvantages, etc.

• Argumentative – you will have to agree or disagree with the given statement, and give reasons for your position.

3. This part of the task should not take more than 2-3 minutes.

4. Think about the topic, and simultaneously make a plan for what you will write, on a rough sheet – structure the ideas you want to cover in a particular order. This will make it easier for you to write in a smooth flow on your main sheet.

5. A good structure to follow would be as follows:

• The main topic

• Your main argument

• 3-5 ideas and examples related to your argument 

  • Only use ideas and examples that are absolutely essential for your argument. Avoid anything that might be seen as unnecessary – not only would this bore your reader, but you do not have the time or the space for too much!

  • The ideas and examples should also be put into an order. There should be a logical reason why you have selected this order – e.g. you might write all the advantages first, followed by the disadvantages with reference to the topic.

6. Write the above in single words or phrases which you can pick up and expand in the main sheet. You can also connect ideas that you want to write about together.

7. Spend about 5-7 minutes on this part of the task.

8. Next, it’s time to write up what you’ve planned – take up each word or phrase and expand on it into full sentences. Each paragraph should be around 5-6 lines long.

9. One of the most important things about essay-writing is maintaining a proper structure throughout – so that all your ideas are logically connected, and your argument thus becomes convincing to your reader. The following is a good structure that you can work with:

• The first paragraph i.e. the introduction will contain the topic and your main argument. You should briefly introduce what you will be talking about in the essay – for this, you can use phrases such as – “in this essay, I will be discussing the causes and effects of...” or “in order to demonstrate this argument, I will be using a few examples.”

• The next few paragraphs comprise the ‘body’ of the essay, where you will now develop your argument using the ideas or examples you had thought about. At the beginning of each paragraph, briefly introduce the idea that you will discuss and how it is related to the previous paragraph. You can make use of phrases such as “in addition to”, “in contrast” etc. There should be around 3-4 paragraphs. 

• The last paragraph must be a conclusion, in which you very briefly summarize all the ideas, and use them to confirm the main topic/argument of the essay. You can use words/phrases such as “in conclusion”, “thus”, “it is evident that” etc.

10. You should spend about 25 minutes on this part of the task.

11. The last 5 minutes is your time for revision – during the process of writing, it is very common to make a few small mistakes, especially with regard to spelling or grammar. You can save a few points by taking the time to carefully reread what you wrote.

What To Watch Out For?

The main components of the grading process are coherence and cohesion, vocabulary, and grammar – and each of them requires some work to develop. We’ve already covered a list of tips for this in our blog post on “Grading the writing test” – so go check that out!

Final Tips

• If you’ve read a couple of our blog posts you’d know that the advice we give to tackle IELTS is to read as much as you can. Once you see how people write – in no time you’ll be writing well like them!

• Besides time-limit, word-limit is also very important – the prescribed word limit is 250 words. The purpose of the word limit is to make sure that you write enough to make your reader understand your argument clearly – but not so much that you give unnecessary or repetitive information. You need not try to make it exactly 250 words – but try not to write less than 240 words, or more than 260. 

• But, you must not try to count every word you’ve written – you will waste precious time! Instead, learn how many words you are able to write on one line, and thus how many lines you’d be writing for 250 words. For instance, if you write about 9-10 words a line, you probably will have written enough in 25 lines (a full page or page-and-a-half).

Finally, the old saying “practice makes perfect” is most relevant when it comes to IELTS writing – and practice under professional guidance, is arguably even more useful. This is where we at Hurray come in! To learn to ace your essay, get in touch with us for IELTS Online Training via email: info@hurrayedutech.com or phone: 8971357938.