Quizzes, exams, and flashcards about Academic Writing: Academic Writing 5 — two maps and a two-part question, Academic Writing 3 — a process and a…← IELTS® preparation: Academic and General TrainingFull Writing papers — Task 1 and Task 2 — printed, answered by hand, photographed and checked task by task against the criteria an examiner uses.

What the paper asksTwo tasks in 60 minutes, and they are not worth the same.

Task 1 — at least 150 words, about 20 minutes. You are given a graph, chart, table or diagram — data, a process, an object or an event — and asked to describe it: what it shows, the main patterns, the comparisons that matter. You are not asked why it happened, and inventing reasons costs marks rather than earning them.

Task 2 — at least 250 words, about 40 minutes. An essay responding to an opinion, an argument or a problem, with your own position and examples to support it.

Task 2 counts for twice as much as Task 1. The most expensive mistake in the whole paper is polishing Task 1 for half an hour and then writing 180 rushed words on the thing worth double. Do Task 2 first if that is what it takes.Notes and bullet points are penalised — both tasks must be continuous prose. Writing about something other than what you were asked is penalised however well it is written.What you are marked onFour criteria, equally weighted:

Task achievement (Task 1) or task response (Task 2) — did you do what was asked, completely, with support?

Coherence and cohesion — does it hold together, paragraph by paragraph, with links that a reader does not have to reconstruct?

Lexical resource — range and precision of vocabulary, including the language of trend and comparison.

Grammatical range and accuracy — a variety of structures, and errors that do not obstruct the reader.

The check you get back here is built on those four, with one more in front of them: length. An answer under the minimum may not give the examiner enough evidence to award the higher bands, and it is the easiest of all five to avoid.The check names what is missing rather than issuing a band score. A band is a judgement a trained examiner makes against descriptors held to a common standard; what is genuinely useful before the test is a list of what your answer did not do, and that is what comes back.By hand, and whyYou print the paper, write on it, photograph the pages and upload them. On a paper-based test that is exactly the task. On the computer-delivered test you will type on the day — the composition is identical, and writing longhand is still the fair way to find out what 20 and 40 minutes actually feel like, and how much of a page 250 words is in your own handwriting.Task 2 needs more room than the ruled lines allow. Continue on the back of the sheet or on one plain sheet and photograph that too — the upload accepts one page more than the paper has.How to work

Time it. Both tasks, 60 minutes, in one sitting. Untimed practice teaches you to write an essay you will never have time to write.

Spend the first three minutes reading the task. Task 2 prompts often contain two things to do, and answering only one limits the task response mark whatever the English is like.

Write an overview in Task 1. One sentence naming the main pattern, before any figures. It is the single most commonly missing element.

Then read what came back, and rewrite the same task. Doing a new prompt is more fun and worth less: the check tells you what your writing habitually leaves out, and the only way to know you have fixed it is to do that task again.

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