Sample Essay with Tips | Writing for Academic IELTS PDF Download

Q.1. Doing an enjoyable activity with a child can develop better skills and more creativity than reading. To what extent do you agree? Use reasons and specific examples to explain your answer.

Sample Answer:

• Parents throughout the world place spend time reading with their offspring to prepare them for a school where their literacy skills are further developed; however, recent research suggests that focusing on reading at an early age can be detrimental, and participating in fun activities would be far more beneficial. I am a strong advocate of this approach, and its benefits of it will be covered in this essay.
• A fundamental reason for this is that there is no biological age for reading, and pushing infants to acquire this skill before they are ready could have repercussions. For example, in the UK, many boys are reluctant readers, possibly because of being forced to read, and this turned them off reading. By focusing on other activities and developing other skills such as creativity and imagination, when they are ready to read, they usually acquire this skill rapidly.
• In addition, the importance of encouraging creativity and developing a child's imagination must be acknowledged. Through play, youngsters develop social and cognitive skills, for example, they are more likely to learn vocabulary through context rather than learning it from a book.
• Furthermore, play allows youngsters to mature emotionally, and gain self-confidence. There is no scientific research which suggests reading at a young age is essential for a child's development, moreover, evidence suggests the reverse is true. In Finland, early years' education focuses on playing.
• Reading is only encouraged if a child shows an interest in developing this skill. This self-directed approach certainly does not result in Finnish school leavers falling behind their foreign counterparts. In fact, Finland was ranked the sixth-best in the world in terms of reading.
• Despite being a supporter of this non-reading approach, I strongly recommend incorporating bedtime stories into a child's daily routine. However, reading as a regular daytime activity should be swapped for something which allows the child to develop other skills.

Why is this essay a band 9?

Task achievement

• According to the IELTS Writing Band Descriptors, an essay is Band 9 for Task Achievement if it:
  • 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.
• In order to score well on Task Achievement, the most important thing is to make sure you respond to what is being asked of you. Is the prompt asking for an opinion, a discussion of a problem, a solution to a problem, or some combination of these? If you provide an opinion and not a solution when you're being asked for a solution, you're not going to score well in this area. Read the question carefully! The prompt for this essay asks: “To what extent do you agree [with the previous statement]? Use reasons and specific examples to explain your answer.” It wants an opinion – with support!
• This essay addresses all parts of this task. The opinion is included in the introduction to make the writer's position clear, and then the following paragraphs support the writer's position with examples and justifications. Overall, the response is full and relevant and each of the points is detailed and connected to the thesis.

Coherence and cohesion

• Think of this as “How well does the essay flow? Is it easy to follow and does it all tie together?” 
• The exact characteristics of a Band 9 C&C score are that an essay:
  • Uses cohesion in such a way that it attracts no attention
  • Skilfully manages to paragraph
• Note the specific wording “it attracts no attention.” The goal here is for things to sound natural and not forced. How do you connect your ideas (ensure cohesion) without it sounding forced? I think there are 2 possible ways:
  • Explain your ideas in a logical order so that you don't need many linking words. This is probably what you do when writing in your own language.
  • Use easy linking words like and, but, also, firstly, secondly, and finally, for example. These are so common that they attract almost no attention.
• This IELTS Sample essay does a good job of this – you'll notice that each paragraph naturally (logically) follows the one prior, providing additional support for the original opinion, and some simple linking words – in addition, furthermore (both paragraph 2) and moreover (paragraph 3) – are used throughout. These are all good discourse markers that show what is coming next add to the argument and are slightly more sophisticated than firstly, secondly, and thirdly but don't come across as being forced.
• The other aspect to scoring high in C&C is ensuring an essay is well-structured. What do I mean by that? A well-structured essay has a good introduction, body paragraphs that are easy to follow and connect with one another, and a good conclusion. Each body paragraph should also have its own topic sentence and support and then smoothly transition to the next paragraph.
• Our sample IELTS essay has a “simple but good” introduction in which it shows that the examinee has knowledge of the topic and clearly states the writer's position to set up the rest of the essay. The paragraphs all have topic sentences, which are then supported by examples, and are easy to follow. The main body and conclusion relate back to the thesis in the introduction.
• A note on conclusions… there are two schools of thought when it comes to how to conclude an IELTS essay. One is to conclude with one simple sentence so that you spend more time perfecting your main body paragraphs. The other is to wrap up with two sentences, once which includes a small prediction (ie, how you think things might turn out) as a way to show the examiner that you know how to correctly use another tense (which will help boost your GR&A score – more on that in a minute). Either is fine, just don't forget your conclusion!
• Taking time to plan out and organise your response before you start writing is an extremely important step in scoring well in Coherence and Cohesion for your IELTS essay – make sure you do so to ensure your essay is well structured and reads cohesively when you're done!

Lexical resource

• Scoring well in the Lexical Resource dimension is all about (correctly) showing off your vocabulary. The description for a Band 9 here is:
  • Uses a wide range of vocabulary with very natural and sophisticated control of lexical features, rare minor errors occur only as ‘slips'
• Collocations, topic-specific vocabulary and phrasal verbs are the name of the game here. To score well, an examinee needs to show that they have a wide-ranging vocabulary and they know how to use it.
• Our sample essay does a solid job of showing off a range of vocabulary – you'll notice that while the essay frequently refers to children, the writer employs different vocabulary (infants, youngsters, offspring, counterparts) to do so.
• Note: it is highly likely that you will need to refer to people/children in your IELTS Writing task 2, so make sure that you have lots of different words to use to refer to them.
• IELTS examiners do not like to see the words “people,” “children” over and over again! The same goes for the word “important” – make sure you have plenty of alternative phrases (essential and vital are both used in our sample essay).
• Other examples of a wide-ranging vocabulary in our essay include using rapidly in place of quickly, mature instead of develop, repercussions to indicate a negative result, and acquire in place of learn.
• Our sample essay also does a good job of using collocations – some examples include “fundamental reason,” “reluctant readers” “social and cognitive skills,” “learn vocabulary through context,” and “strongly recommend.”
• The correct use of phrasal verbs also demonstrates one's grasp of English – because of the semantics involved, they are sometimes one of the most difficult things for English language learners to master. Our essay writer correctly uses a few of these including “turned them off” and “falling behind.”
• One note here: students preparing for the IELTS  often ask if they should use idioms (like “you're barking up the wrong tree”) in their essays to further demonstrate their grasp of the language. In my opinion, no, you shouldn't. Idioms are informal by nature and not appropriate for a written essay of this type. Stick with demonstrating your range of vocabulary and your ability to use phrasal verbs correctly!

Grammatical range and accuracy

• The final scoring dimension is related to grammar and grammatical structures – do you know them and can you correctly use them?
• The Band 9 description for grammatical range and accuracy :
  • Uses a wide range of structures with full flexibility and accuracy; rare minor errors occur only as slips
• Note that there is nothing in the scoring criteria about including specific tenses or sentence constructions. Your main objective should be to reduce the number of mistakes that you make. An essay that contains no mistakes is likely to get a 9 for grammar, regardless of the types of sentences that it may or may not contain.
• If there is a nice mix of long and short sentences in your IELTS essays, you'll meet the grammar requirements. Remember, as soon as you write a “long” sentence you are naturally going to use connectives (linking words), which will make the sentence ‘compound' or ‘complex'. So, don't think too much about the grammar – just aim to reduce the number of mistakes that you make, and try to include a few longer sentences.
• Some examples from the sample essay that illustrate the writer's grammatical range and help it easily score as a band 9 include:
  • appropriate uses of modal verbs in the passive voice: “are further developed,” “will be covered,” “must be acknowledged,” “should be swapped.”
  • “to focus on” is correctly followed by an -ing form
  • However is used correctly with a semicolon before it and a comma after
  • “because of,” “rather than,” and are correctly followed by -ing verbs

Tips for an IELTS writing task 2 band 9 essay

Answer what is being asked!

• Make sure you read the prompt carefully and answer the essay questions you’re being asked. I can’t emphasize this enough. In order to score well on Task Achievement, you need to appropriately and fully address the task.

Plan your work, work your plan.

• Plan out your essay before you start writing. What are your main points? What order are you going to make them in? How do they link together? Having a well organised essay is key scoring high marks for Coherence and Cohesion. Many IELTS test-takers will spend up to 10 minutes planning out their essay before they start writing. A few points to keep in mind:
  • Your essay should have 4-5 paragraphs in total and at least 250 words
  • Plan your supporting points so that they don’t go off-topic

Write, review, re-write

• Write your essay, review it and then “rewrite” it. Don’t focus on getting things perfect upfront – you don’t want to waste 15 minutes trying to come up with the perfect synonym for something and then not have enough time to finish your full essay! Write your essay first (an unwritten essay won’t score well at all!) and then go back through it to see how you can improve it. Some essay questions to ask yourself at this stage:
  • Are there places where you can swap out stronger words for weaker ones in order to improve your Lexical Resource score?
  • Are there places where you can phrase things differently in order to illustrate your Grammatical Range?

Where are you falling?

• To pass with a Band 9 the reality is you need two sets of skills:
  • Exam skills
  • Language skills
• What are exam skills?
• Can you plan an effective essay? Quickly? Ideally between 3-5 minutes.
• Can you think of enough ideas and examples to put in the essay plan?
• Firstly you need to discover which of these skills you need. To do this you write a lot of essays and then find out which part of the essay writing process is costing you the most amount of time, points or stress.

Better language skills?

• A lot of students fail the IELTS exam or end up with a band in their IELTS writing test that does not meet their requirements. Also, a significant number of students look to Google to search for “IELTS Writing tips” or “Task two tips”. These tips might be helpful but sometimes the real problem might just be in their general language or writing skills.
• Writing error-free perfect sentences is probably much more challenging than students think, especially under exam conditions i.e in 40 minutes with immense pressure to pass. These can result in often mixed outcomes with both positive or negative development occurring at one and the same time.
• One of the most important ways to improve language skills is to receive feedback. This can be by asking someone to review written work and will expose the positive or negative development mentioned earlier. This is very common and not something that is a negative issue overall.
• Have a look at our essay correction service that will review your essays for you and help you improve and pass the IELTS test.
• Here is a checklist of what is needed for reaching Band 9, it includes what the examiner wants to see, and what to do to write at a Band 9 level.