IELTS - Writing - For Band 7 or Above.

[Jimmy_McGill]

As always, a bunch of thanks. I really appreciate the time and effort you put to help us. God bless you!

Ok so I think this topic is a little bit difficult. I didn't get many thoughts when I read it.



Very decent opening paragraph. Avoidable grammatical errors. But they are not major. I like the last line a lot. Gives a clear structure of the essay to follow. I think the wildlife argument is a bit of stretch. The other two make sense to me.

I used " NUMBERLESS" as adjective, thinking that it was a synonyms of "countless, innumerable, countless number of.."

Ok honestly as I said I found the topic tough. Based on that this is a pretty decent attempt but you could have made it a lot better by taking care of few things. Idea is really good but the progression of the idea is not really great.

Me too. I found in a book of IELTS preparation: Cambrigde.



It is fine. I find the argument to be stretch but besides a few grammatical errors it is largely fine.

Ok so I think this topic is a little bit difficult. I didn't get many thoughts when I read it.



Very decent opening paragraph. Avoidable grammatical errors. But they are not major. I like the last line a lot. Gives a clear structure of the essay to follow. I think the wildlife argument is a bit of stretch. The other two make sense to me.

As Spanish is my mother tongue, I'd like to know what exactly mean your ever comment "very decent paragraph" is it good or bad? In Spanish, we have the same word, same spelling, but I'm not quite sure about the meaning. In short, in my language it is something not good, in fact, more bad than good. Is the same in English?

Ok honestly as I said I found the topic tough. Based on that this is a pretty decent attempt but you could have made it a lot better by taking care of few things. Idea is really good but the progression of the idea is not really great.




It is fine. I find the argument to be stretch but besides a few grammatical errors it is largely fine.



OKay



Okay I get it ... your argument was if children have not spent time in nature they may not be good enough to save wildlife. But does that make them a threat once they become adults? Wow!! Where have you gone in your conclusion?

OKay



Okay I get it ... your argument was if children have not spent time in nature they may not be good enough to save wildlife. But does that make them a threat once they become adults? Wow!! Where have you gone in your conclusion?

Yes, you are right is a little unreasonable conclusion. I dare to admit that at the time of composing the essay, few ideas came to my mind. Well, this situation is always happens so it is a huge hindrance on my way to succeed..

 

[cansha]

As always, a bunch of thanks. I really appreciate the time and effort you put to help us. God bless you!





Yes, you are right is a little unreasonable conclusion. I dare to admit that at the time of composing the essay, few ideas came to my mind. Well, this situation is always happens so it is a huge hindrance on my way to succeed..

Decent means good in English! Thanks for letting me know it means something bad in Spanish. It is a good thing you know what is your hindrance. And I think it is possible to overcome it.

Try following things ...

1. For a few essays do not time yourself. Forget that you need to write essay in 40 minutes.
2. If you have a lot of ideas just list all your ideas. Then spend sometime and think if you had all these ideas how would you arrange them for an essay.
3. Write the essay.
4. Read your essay and review and see if you have done justice to your ideas. Try changing a few things.
5. Read the essay again.

One of the keys to writing a good essay is understanding what is a good essay. Reading your own work will help you in that. For example read an essay you had written say a week back. And see if you like it. Think what you could have done better.

I promise you once you do this with 3/4 essays you will notice you're writing a good essay sub-consciously. Also writing a 250 word essay won't take you full 40 minutes. You will easily have 10-12 minutes to review your essay on exam day as well.

All the best!

 

[cansha]

[QUOTE="

Small grammatical correction on your not only .... but also construct. Bring the has before not only. That way you don't have to state it twice.

So This has helped not only in getting ........ but also in increasing understanding..

!

Hi Cansha,

Can u please comment on below sentence using. not only. But also
Is it correct grammatically?

“When the children are working in a safe office environment, they not only learn better time managment but it also makes them more independent and confident”[/QUOTE]
It is fine .. but if you include "it" between but and also it is not the not only ... but also construct. So you may have to rewrite the sentence. For example as below.

When the children are working in a safe office environment, they not only learn better time management but also become more independent and confident.
Key is to match the verb form after "not only" and "but also". In your original sentence learn and makes are not equivalent verb forms.

Let's remove not only and but also and see second half of sentence in action.

When children are working in a safe office environment they become more confident. --- Subject is Children

Working in a safe office environment makes the children more confident. - Subject is office environment and object is Children.

Other way is

When children are working in a safe office environment, it makes them more confident. - Subject is office environment and object is Children.

Remember Not only and but also just join two sentence fragments. One way of checking whether they make sense is remove them from sentence and read the sentence independently with both halves. It should make sense.

Also, please note that I'm not an English Teacher. But, I think I was good in English grammar in school and most of the time I don't remember the name of the grammar rules. Many a times, when I read a sentence, I just go by what "sounds" correct or "incorrect".

 

[cansha]

Please, if you have time, check my new Essay and let me identify my weak points.

Prompt:

In some school systems, children start learning at least one foreign language in primary school. In other school systems, foreign language education begins in secondary school.

In your opinion, should children learn foreign languages in schools, and if so, at what age should they begin?

Essay:

Early foreign language education is promoted by certain educational systems, while others advocate the idea of initiating it once children reach high school. I firmly believe that they should begin this learning path at a very early age. Young children are at an ideal stage of development to learn new languages, they are curious and keen to explore new things with all their senses.

Good introduction!!

Childhood, as proven recently by the Neuroscience Institute of Spain, is the best and optimum life stage to learn foreign languages. Children’s brain between three and six years old, is in the highest point of developing and expanding, which guarantees that any input information would be processed, categorized and stored successfully by the brain. It is for this reason that nowadays there is a strong and fierce campaign, in Europe, to teach foreign languages among pre-school students.

Good!

Curiosity and the desire to explore are main behavioral traits of children. At the pre-school stage, children’s intellectual curiosity can be boosted not only by learning numbers, or drawing pictures, but also by learning, apart from their own tongue, foreign languages. Moreover, children unstoppable desire of discovering new things, undoubtedly help them to retain and absorb new information and material easily, while they are having fun with games and creativity activities.

Very good!

To conclude, although learning foreign languages can be done at any age, there is no better time to do so that during the first stage of child’s education, since their wild desire to discover and explore their new world enable the learning process.

This is your best essay! It was easy to read and understand. It flowed nicely. I didn't have to re-read to understand anything. Well done you have learnt how to write a good essay!

 

[cansha]

Please evaluate this essay and suggest how can I get band 7 in writing.

Some people believe that kids should not be given homework everyday, while others believe they should be given homework everyday in order to be successful.
Discuss both the views and give your opinion

There is a difference of opinion in among some people on whether or not students should be given homework daily. While some peope argue that making children do homework everyday will help them to score good grades, others, however, believe that this is not required. In my opinion, children should not be asked to do homework daily as it will leave them with no time to take part in other important activities.

Good intro para!

On the one hand, some people think that giving daily assignments will help children get good marks. Total waste of line. You already said this in the intro para isn't it? Why again? Introduce your idea / thought / statement
As with these assignments, children will get to revise the lessons they have learnt in the school. Okay I see where you were going with this. But still the first line is almost a repeat of the line in the intro. Combine this line with the first line and write a good complex sentence.
This will ensure that they are not over burden during their final exams.
In addition, when children are not given homework, most of them spend them time playing video games or doing unproductive work. New idea introduced without expansion and support.

Therefore, school must give them homework which will keep them occupied and not waste time.

On the other hand, we cannot deny the fact that children are already burdened enough in school. I personally don't like sentences like these in formal essay writing. We can agree or deny anything we want. Make a statement or argument. Not sure what others think but my suggestion would be to avoid sentences like we cannot deny, people think, they argue that etc, etc. It's YOU who is writing the essay.

They spend most of their day in school working on their assignments. Giving them daily homework would mean there will be no time left with them for playing or taking up hobby classes such as painting, drawing or gymastic. Taking part in such activities leads to the holistic development of the children as it increases their confidence and also adds to their social characterstics. Moreover, this would give them the needed break and they will be more focused in the school next day.

Okay so idea is good. But if you look at your sentences, most of the sentences are simple sentences. You need to write more complex sentences to get higher band. Plus make the idea flow a bit better. Now if you want to know what I mean by that please go back a few pages and read my previous reviews / posts.

To conclude, academic success is important for children and homework can help in achieving that; however, benefits of extra curricular activities cannot be sidelined as they help in the overall personality development of the child. And with daily homework children will not get enough time to participate in these activities.

Fair.

 

[jas9988]

Guys,
I would like to share my experience with you all in the hope it helps someone.

I took my IELTS on 16th December 2017 for the first time ever and my scores were a decent LRWS 8, 8, 7.5, 7. When I came out of the exam hall, I knew Speaking test didn't go well and I was mentally prepared to take a retest after checking my results. I remember telling myself that I'm a better speaker than my scores and I'll do better in my next attempt. Imagine my relief in getting to CLB9 in my first attempt! That said, I'll put in a few tips that might be helpful as regards to Writing.

1. Firstly, practice. Not for knowing WHAT to write (at first), but HOW much to write. Trust me, you'll have little to no time to count during the exam to check if you've met the word limit or not, so get a hang of the number of words Vis a Vis length of your essay/letter. You lose 0.5 band for not keeping to the word limit, so don't lose it there!

2. Secondly, plan your answer. Take 5 minutes max before you start your essay/letter and just think and roughly jot down 3-4 points. Pick two best ones and simply follow this format between your introduction and conclusion paragraphs. The basic idea is to let your key points flow smoothly:

Para 1, Line 1 - Firstly,...(your idea here)...
Para 1, Line 2 - (explain you think it's good/relevant)
Para 1, Line 3 - Therefore/Hence... (Repeat your idea, but rephrase it slightly differently )


Para 2, Line 1 - Also/Moreover/Secondly,...(your idea here)...
Para 2, Line 2 - (explain you think it's good/relevant)
Para 2, Line 3 - Therefore/Hence... (Repeat your idea, but rephrase it slightly differently )

3. It's a Complete Myth that you need to weave complicated sentences with high level vocabulary to get a good writing score. Simple sentences, showing good use of sentence joining structures such as because, although, moreover, while, however is more than sufficient to score Band 7. So practice writing such sentences together. One example would be:

Instead of writing this:

I arrived at the school very early on Monday morning. The school gates were closed on the account of a holiday that i was not informed about.

You could write:

I arrived at the school very early on Monday morning, but/however, the school gates were closed on the account of a holiday that I was not informed about.

Hope you get the idea now.

4. Spellings: i cannot stress enough about the importance of spelling. Do not use words that are too long or complicated to remember. It's completely okay to write another less complicated but equally effective word. Do not use high level words to impress examiners if you do not know how to use them. ROOKIE MISTAKE . It's perfectly ok to write: One of the repercussions (penalties) of not following safety guidelines is a personal safety audit.

I've tried to outline points that you may not find in the guides. Sorry for the extremely long post. Do reach out to me if you have any questions.

when you talk about word limit, can anyone tell me what is the MAXIMUM word limit for Task 1 and 2.

 

[cansha]

when you talk about word limit, can anyone tell me what is the MAXIMUM word limit for Task 1 and 2.

There is minimum word limit and not maximum. But as a thumb rule don't write more than 30-50 words above the prescribed minimum word limit.

 

[jas9988]

There is minimum word limit and not maximum. But as a thumb rule don't write more than 30-50 words above the prescribed minimum word limit.

i have tried many ways to attempt both tasks and i cannot score more than 7. can you give some special tips.

 

[cansha]

i have tried many ways to attempt both tasks and i cannot score more than 7. can you give some special tips.

Difficult to give any tips without knowing where you are lacking. You can read this thread and you can see many tips and many essays reviewed and compare it to your own writing and that should help.

 

[Moeedkh]

Hi,

Can anybody advise me, how many dependent and independent clauses can come together in a sentence ? I have read that two independent and one dependent clause can make a complex sentence, but can we couple more of them together ? or is this a limitation ?

Rg,
Moeed

 

[cansha]

Hi,

Can anybody advise me, how many dependent and independent clauses can come together in a sentence ? I have read that two independent and one dependent clause can make a complex sentence, but can we couple more of them together ? or is this a limitation ?

Rg,
Moeed

A complex sentence had atleast one independent and one dependent clause. there is no limitation as such. Writing a complex sentence is not very "complex". Read this link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentence_clause_structure

 

[Moeedkh]

Furthermore,

Can you anybody suggest me a good and active forum of IELTS listening ? Where I can get tips and tricks to score high in listening sections.

Also, can I get any link/source/material/exercise to improve my spellings ?

Rg,
Moeed

 

[Jimmy_McGill]

I'll be more than happy if someone with enough time is willing to spend it on my essay. Thanks in advance.

Prompt:
The large number of private cars on the roads in many parts of the world had led to serious problems of pollution and may contributes to global warming. Some people think that governments should spend money for the development of public transportation systems in order to help solve this problem. Others think it is better to spend money for the development of electric and other types of cars that may cause less pollution.

Discuss both these views and give your own opinion. Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge and experience.

Essay:

Due to the high number of private cars in circulation across the world, the air contamination and the global warming have significantly worsened. It's believed by some that governments must allocate more budget to enhance public transportation system, while others bet for more innovating transportation alternatives as a solution. I firmly believe that governments should invest more funds in developing eco-friendly vehicles to tackle this issue.

There is no denying that having a well-connected, safe and reliable public transportation system might have a deterrent effect on citizen to reduce the use of private cars, and therefore, the pollution would decrease considerably. However, even in this scenario, most people will always prefer driving their own cars, because of the freedom of movement and choice a vehicle provided. So the real benefits would be few.

On the other hand, environmentally friendly automobiles are the smarter solution to curb the air pollution. Hybrids vehicles or all electric vehicles consume in average 35% less petrol and emit less dangerous emissions into the atmosphere. Moreover, these cars are cheaper than conventional ones. It is for all these reasons that the Spanish government, over the last five year, has encouraged and supported financially to the automotive industry to produce more less pollutant cars.

To sum up, although it is true that a high quality public transportation could reduce the use of particular cars, and, to some extent, keep at bay the contamination, but it also true that eco-friendly vehicles would definitively have a far reaching impact on reducing the emissions of pollutant gases, and therefore the environment would be less polluted and the climate warming controlled.

Word count: 265

 

[cansha]

Furthermore,

Can you anybody suggest me a good and active forum of IELTS listening ? Where I can get tips and tricks to score high in listening sections.

Also, can I get any link/source/material/exercise to improve my spellings ?

Rg,
Moeed

I don't know of any forum for listening but listening is a matter of practice and identifying your problem areas. For example, figure out why you get questions wrong ... Did you just not listen the recording carefully and missed the answer completely or you listened but were confused between two close answers. Is there a particular kind of question set that troubles you? For example, I found the map based questions most difficult. Once you identify your issues you need to practice accordingly.

On spellings ... there is no quick fix. My suggestion would be don't worry about spellings and there is no need for specific preparation. Whenever you write a word during your practice and you're unsure about the spelling, make a note of it and try to remember it for the next time. It would be more than enough.

 

[Jimmy_McGill]

Good introduction!!


Good!



Very good!



This is your best essay! It was easy to read and understand. It flowed nicely. I didn't have to re-read to understand anything. Well done you have learnt how to write a good essay!

OMG.. Your comments literally made my day WONDERFUL.. I was a little depressed all the day long up to now. Apart from my real and unreal daily problems and challenges, IELTS test put me down most of the time. But I just came across with your motivating message and I now think not all is lost, I have great chance to do it.. Thanks a lot.. you are an angel.. you lift my mood exponentially..