HOW TO FAIL IN IELTS WRITING EXAM

Some rules How to miss 7 bands in writing.

I know a lot out there believing IELTS is all about grammar and some idiomatic phrases or concise vocabulary but the secret is it is not. Task response is the key to get a high score. By the way, 80-90% students fail in this exam in the first couple of takings. Even native speakers would stumble upon TASK RESPONSE and COHERENCE. Ok, In this section, I will show you how to fail in the exam (means get a less score such as 6 or 6.5 or 7.5 –borderline).

Some candidates think that IELTS admininstration do not want to give us a score and so on but this is not true. The way how they keep you under 7 band (or your target) score is playing up with the TASK RESPONSE. (.... but HOW?)

Read this last exam question (Academic and general. I am not 100% sure about the exact wording of the question but it is kind of like this).

1, Some people think that the money the government spent on artists such as painters, singers and poets should be spent on more important things. How far do you agree or disagree ( Academic -26/May).

2, Some people think cooking food at home is a waste of time and they prefer to eat from outside. How far do you agree or disagree ( General-26/May).

Most students (academic) would go like this:

To begin with, while talented individuals bring pride to the country these people have minimal contribution to alleviate social issues. For example, the Filipino singer Lea Salonga won the role of Miss Saigon. This award made her to be recognised globally and leaving the Philippines drowned to poverty.  Unless this artist patronizes his country, it will only benefit himself. Hence, it is advisable that government funds should be spent on more significant programs. 

First of all, this is not even a RELAVANT example for the given question because example doesn't show that goverment helped this artist or not and it doesn't clearly represent the TOPIC. See, how it ends up a generalization --> "Hence, it is advisable that government funds should  be spent on more significant programs". Even if the artist reciprocate his country, the paragraph doesn't answer the question WHY IT IS/MAY BE NECESSARY TO FOCUS ON THE OTHER SECTORS. This response doesn't even address the other part of the question ( Why should govt spend money on other sectors than creative industry). The ideal  response to this question is adressing the both sides and contrast. However, if you just wrote  a background of ' govt should not spend money for artists', it will not answer ' why goverment should spend money on other sector'. Ok, for instance, imagine, I don't want to spend money for a cup of coffee. Does it mean I want to spend or better spend it for a cup of tea or beer? Nope! This way of responding gets students below than 7. You may think I am just making this stuff up. Let' s see what IELTS.ORG says:

" BAND-6 addresses all parts of the task although  some parts may be more fully covered than  others  presents a relevant  position although the  conclusions may become unclear or repetitive  presents relevant main ideas but some may  be inadequately developed/unclear " 

"BAND-5 addresses the task only partially; the format  may be inappropriate in places expresses a position but the development  is not always clear and there may be no conclusions drawn presents some main ideas but these are limited and not sufficiently developed; there  may be irrelevant detail .  (http://www.ielts.org/pdf/UOBDs_WritingT2.pdf)

The above mentioned paragraph or those kind of responses will come under BAND 5 response.

Now I will show you what 9 band TASK RESPONSE is  and I am using the same example but I tweaked it a bit. Remember, in the IELTS test one can lie or fabricate any ideas but it should be logically arranged and convincing. 

Here we go:

"To begin with, while talented individuals bring pride to the country these people have no contribution to alleviate social issues. For example, the  Filipino government sponsored a singer Lea Salonga ,and she won the role of Miss Saigon. This award made her to be recognised globally and she left the Philippines.Not only she got the honour but also she did not contribute anything to the country. Unless  artists patronizes their country, it would only benefit themselves. On the other hand, while Australian/Filipino government aided many schools in the local or remote areas, children started to learn or gain some professional skills. Consequently, that area of the country started to develop so fast as these young graduates started to work and pay taxes. Moreover, more development occurred in such places in many facets of life. Hence, it is advisable that government expenditure be spent on more significant programs such as education".

Don't worry about its grammar errors or slips and vocabulary choices as we are just focusing on TASK RESPONSE of the question. You will see this response is a fully developed position.

9 band :

"fully addresses all parts of the task  presents a fully developed position in answer to the question with relevant, fully 

extended and well supported ideas". (http://www.ielts.org/pdf/UOBDs_WritingT2.pdf)

What would happen if you don't respond relevantly ? Any side effects? YES!

Coherence and topic specific vocabulary will not be there so examiners can not score you at a 9 band level. When the ideas are missing, it becomes generalised as you have seen in the first response. To maintain coherence, ideas should be flowing logically before reaching at a position.Otherwise, coherence score will be less. 

BAND -5 COHERENCE:

"Presents information and ideas but these  are not arranged coherently and there is no clear progression in the response". 

This is what the first response deserves. You may think of IELTS is only a English test but why do you need to prepare in this way apart from grammar and vocabulary. This is because anyone can memorise essays and write it. So in order to test a testee, it needs this type of scrutiny. IELTS only wants to pass a student who literally understand the question fully and respond to it. Many topics are online and students can memorise phrases and sometimes the whole essay. So the first filter is TASK RESPONSE. If you are not sure, ask any IELTS examiners such as Dominic coles and Simon ( from the UK). They have a public forum so students can ask questions. They normally respond if it is for general understanding. 

The first response,therefore, scored 6.5 . It seems candidates capacity is 7/8 in grammar and vocabulary and 5 or 6. Unfortunately I do not have the full essay as this candidate wrote it afterwards the exam.By assuming the rough score of Paragraph 1 , it can even hit band 8 in grammar and vocabulary and others, in that case, would be 5 bands ( 8+8+5+5= 26/4= 6.5).If the other paragraph or the overall essay is not that good as the first paragraph and addressed the question somewhat, it would be 7+7+6+6 = 26/4=6.5 again). However, this is only a rough evaluation. In the test, you will not score in GRAMMAR and Vacbulary sections but you will only get penalties. The total mistakes will be cut of from the 9 band accordingly. Many students think IELTS examiners will score each vocabulary and grammar structure and give a score. Unfortunately, it seems that is incorrect. Please research further if you really want to know how IELTS essays are being scored. 

This purpose of this article is to enlighten many students about the reality of IELTS.I did not proofread this one so it may contain a few errors. My aim is to tell you why you get such a bad score. 

Your grammar or vocabulary scores will not change that much. You will have roughly the same number of grammar and vocabulary mistakes in any essays that you wrote. To get this, you need to proof read it ( yourself or with a tutors' help). Count the mistakes in each essays and you will see pretty much same or close to it. Put it in this way:  few/ a few/some/more/many/a lot mistakes. This is what they key to understand where you are standing at in those sections. It takes normally 1-2 months to reduce the number of mistakes you write in 250 words or so. 

Students, therfore, need to learn how to respond to the questions and its formats first as it is crucial. I am not ignoring the need of idiomatic language and comlex structure but TASK RESPONSE will rule out these all. Learn how to write relevant examples. I have seen many students write irrelavant examples. These all are non sequitur. Please google it for further details. [Non sequitur (Latin for "it does not follow"), in formal logic, is an argument in which its conclusion does not follow from its premises.[1] In a non sequitur, the conclusion could be either true or false, but the argument is fallacious because there is a disconnection between the premise and the conclusion. All invalid arguments are special cases of non sequitur ] .This is why in Coherence criteria, it says ' logical flow' .Please refer the criteria –band descriptors.

IS there any tip to increase the writing score? YES!

1, don't try to impress the examiners by using heavy frequency words as you may make more mistakes than normally do. Use the words that you know.Avoid converting ideas from your mother tongue to English as it will not work out. Don't use the memorised phrases as you will only earn penalties. Examiners can see how some phrases and chunks used but when they look at the othersides of the essays, they will see silly errors. They look how your essay look in overall and not some phrases or chunks.So avoid fitting those in the essays and you will see a big improvement in the vocabulary section.However, if you are sure of the usages, you may do so. By and large, practice within your own capacity.

2, Use complex sentences and learn sentence diagramming and synthesis. More importantly, write error free sentences as this is the key to get 7 in the grammar section. Error free means : no preposition, pronouns, articles,subject verb agreement (etc) mistakes. Please find a tutor for this as you may not be the right person to evaluate your essays. 

3, Never write anything off topic to the question. Avoid  ' punch dialogues'  such as hot button topic, sizzling debate, or due to globalization phrases (most of them are memorised, not natural). Why? If the question has nothing to do with those, it is not going to impress your examiners but just OFF_TOPIC! . This you will see at the bottom of your exam writing paper. You may remember as it goes like this " examiner's use only --> off topic, memorised, illegible, total number of words ...etc... [ http://www.ielts.org/PDF/114184_IELTS_Writing_Answer_Sheet.pdf ]

I wish you goodluck and want to tell you IELTS exam is not just a basic ENGLISH test but more or less that of an ENGLISH aptitude test which needs accuracy.