The four criteria, and which ones you can move quickly
Each task is marked on four equally weighted criteria. For Task 1 they are Task Achievement, Coherence and Cohesion, Lexical Resource, and Grammatical Range and Accuracy. Task 2 is the same except the first becomes Task Response.
Lexical Resource and Grammatical Range move slowly. They reflect years of exposure to English and no four-week course changes them much. Task Response and Coherence move fast, because they are about what you put in the answer and in what order, and both can be fixed in a fortnight.
This is why a candidate whose English is clearly better than band 6 scores band 6. They wrote fluent, accurate English that did not answer the question asked, or that arrived in a shapeless order. Two of their four scores were capped before the examiner considered their vocabulary at all.
Task 1 Academic: report the data, do not explain it
You are given a chart, table, diagram or process and asked to summarise the main features and make comparisons. You are not asked why the figures moved, and speculating about causes earns nothing while costing you minutes.
The one thing that decides your Task Achievement band is whether you wrote an overview. An overview is a sentence or two identifying the biggest pattern in the data, and without one the criterion is capped at band 5 regardless of how accurate everything else is. Write it as the second paragraph, before any detail.
After the overview, group the data by behaviour rather than walking through it in the order it appears. Two countries that rose throughout and two that peaked and fell is a structure. Country by country in table order is a list, and a list holds Coherence down.
Task 2: one idea per paragraph, developed
Task 2 is a 250-word discursive essay and it carries two thirds of your Writing band, so if your preparation time is limited it belongs here. The prompt types repeat: discuss both views and give your opinion, to what extent do you agree, what are the problems and solutions, what are the advantages and disadvantages.
The most common failure is coverage without depth. Three thin reasons score below two developed ones, every time. A developed idea states the point, explains the mechanism, and gives one concrete instance. If a body paragraph is four sentences and none of them is an example, it is not developed.
Where the prompt asks for your opinion, it must be visible in the introduction, sustained through the body and still there at the end. An essay that discusses fairly for four paragraphs and reveals a view in the last line has not held a clear position throughout, which is the wording of the band 7 descriptor.
Things that lower your score even though they look sophisticated
Memorised openings are the clearest example. In this contemporary era of rapid globalisation, it is an undeniable fact that is recognisable to any examiner and marks the whole answer as rehearsed. It lowers Lexical Resource rather than raising it.
Mechanical linking is the second. Firstly, Secondly, Moreover, In addition, Last but not least, sprinkled at the top of every paragraph, reads as a template. Band 7 asks for a clear progression throughout, and cohesion that comes from the logic of the argument scores higher than cohesion pinned on with connectives.
The third is copying the prompt. Words copied from the question are excluded from your word count, so an answer that opens with thirty copied words and totals 160 is really a 130-word answer, penalised for being under length. Paraphrase the prompt, do not reproduce it.
Practise it now
This is the writing paper from Academic Practice Test 1. Everything is free and nothing needs an account.
Writing Task 1
The table below shows the number of international students enrolled in higher education in four countries in 2015, 2020 and 2025, in thousands. Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features, and make comparisons where relevant. Write at least 150 words.
International student enrolments in higher education, in thousands of students
| Country | 2015 | 2020 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Canada | 172 | 388 | 426 |
| Australia | 294 | 372 | 281 |
| Germany | 236 | 302 | 379 |
| Japan | 152 | 228 | 196 |
Figures are illustrative and were created for this practice task. They are not official enrolment statistics and should not be quoted as such.
Want a task type broken down on its own? There are dedicated pages for Writing Task 1 and Writing Task 2.
Five things that move your writing band
- 1
Spend five minutes planning Task 2
Two body paragraphs, one idea each, one example each, and your position decided before you start. Five minutes of planning saves ten minutes of rewriting and it is the difference between an essay with a shape and an essay that wanders.
- 2
Write Task 2 first if you struggle with time
It is worth twice as much. Running short on Task 1 costs you far less than running short on Task 2, and there is no rule requiring you to answer in order.
- 3
Aim for 270 to 310 words on Task 2
Under 250 is penalised. Far over it usually means repetition, which lowers Coherence, and it eats the checking time you need.
- 4
Keep two minutes at the end for articles and agreement
The errors that hold Grammatical Range at 6.5 are almost always small and repeated: a missing the, a plural verb with a singular subject. Two minutes of checking catches several of them.
- 5
Mark one of your own answers against a model
Write your answer, then read the model and the examiner notes and find the three things the model does that yours does not. That is worth more than writing three more unreviewed essays.
Mistakes that cost the most marks
- Writing Task 1 with no overview, which caps Task Achievement at band 5.
- Answering a slightly different question from the one asked, usually a more general version of it.
- Giving your opinion only in the conclusion when the prompt asked for it throughout.
- Opening with a memorised formula that examiners are trained to recognise.
- Writing 400 words of repetition instead of 280 words of development.
- Explaining the causes of the data in Task 1, which is not what the task asks for.
Common questions about IELTS Writing
- How long should my IELTS Writing answers be?
- At least 150 words for Task 1 and at least 250 for Task 2. Aim slightly above both, around 170 and 290. Words copied from the prompt do not count towards the total.
- Is Task 2 more important than Task 1?
- Yes. Task 2 carries roughly twice the weight of Task 1 in your Writing band, so it deserves both the larger share of the hour and the larger share of your preparation.
- Can I use I in an IELTS essay?
- Yes, and where the prompt asks for your opinion you should. In my view and I would argue are entirely appropriate. The register should be formal, not impersonal.
- Does handwriting matter?
- On paper, only in so far as the examiner must be able to read it. An answer that cannot be read cannot be marked. On the computer test the question does not arise, which is one reason many candidates prefer it.
- Why is my Writing score always lower than my other scores?
- This is the most common pattern in IELTS results and it usually is not a language problem. It is Task Response and Coherence, both of which are about what you wrote and in what order rather than how well you write. Those are the two criteria that improve fastest.
Reviewed 2026-07-28. Test format and scoring information is checked against ielts.org and the two providers operating in Nepal.