Introduction to IELTS GENERAL WRITING MODULE

General Writing Test of the IELTS exam has two tasks. Task one and Task two. You are given a total of 60 minutes for both tasks.

In Task one you are asked write a letter. The letter could be formal, informal or semi-formal in style. You should take 20 minutes for this task and write not less than 150 words.

The word limit refers to the minimum word limit, which means you should always write above this. Writing between 160 and 180 words is usually sufficient enough. You will not be penalized for writing more. But writing more may lead to over-consumption of time and language slips in the content. Remember, you should use only 20 minutes for this task. Exceeding this limit may kill the time of task two.

In Task two you are given a topic to write a discursive essay. A discursive essay is an essay where you discuss, argue or give a solution to a problem. The topics are generally based on current issues related to politics, society, environment, technology etc. you can take more or less 40 minutes for this task and you should write minimum 250 words. That means your essay should be within the word limit of 260-280.

Why should I write more than the required word limit?

Writing more is always beneficial and why is that? In case you copied long phrases or sentences from the question itself the marking examiner would not count those words. So, there is a high probability that you might lose marks under one of the marking criteria.

So how are scores given?

For Task one marks are given under four criteria:

• Task achievement 25%
• Coherence and cohesion 25%
• Grammatical range and accuracy 25%
• Lexical resources 25%

For Task two marks are given under a similar criteria:

• Task response 25%
• Coherence and cohesion 25%
• Grammatical range and accuracy 25%
• Lexical resources 25%

These raw marks for each task will be added together and divided in order to scale your band sore out of 9. Thus you get the sub score for this particular component of the IELTS exam.

Any personal query regarding this part of the exam can be discussed in the Discussion Room.