How to better manage your IELTS Writing Task 2 in Five Steps?

Every formal essay writing should be properly planned, written and revised in order to get a higher score. IELTS Essay is no exception. You should never start writing immediately you read the question. Rather spent some time on understanding the essay and be sure what the question is asking you to write. Then brain storm and note down the points you are doing to present in your essay. Finally write your essay in a coherent manner and revise it before the time ends.

Follow the 5 steps process to write a nice essay that would ensure a better score in your IELTS exam. Take the following sample essay topic as a model and learn the process of writing a nice answer to this essay topic in 5 steps:

IELTS Essay Topic:

Being patriotic to one’s country helps us identify who we are. All countries should celebrate a “National Day” such as Australia Day as a public holiday.

To what extent do you agree or disagree?

Step 1: Analyzing the Essay Topic/ Question: 

In this step you should spend about one and half minute and think about the following three aspects of the essay:

  • What the topic is about?
  • What type of essay it is?
  • What it is asking me to answer?

Topic:
This essay is about celebrating National Day of a country as a public holiday.

Essay Type:
The word ‘agree or disagree’ gives us a clue that this is an argument type question and we need to choose one side of the argument and present supporting ideas.

Main Question of the Essay:
Whether all countries should celebrate their National Day as a public holiday or not.

Step 2:  Brain storming & Idea Generation:

You should spend approximately three minutes to be confirmed where you would agree or disagree and supporting reasons why you agree and disagree and why it is important to do so.

Ideas:
Quickly list down the points in agreement and disagreement of the topic. If you are agreeing, you should have 4-6 reasons in favour of it and 2-3 reasons against it. If you are disagreeing, you should have 4-6 points ready as reasons for disagreeing and 2-3 reasons in favour of agreement.

Let’s say you are agreeing, your idea list should look like the following one:

Why all countries should celebrate a National Day such as a public holiday:

  1. It demonstrates pride in their heritage.
  2. New generation learn and remember their history and pride.
  3. A good way to show patriotism to the country.
  4. Celebrating a public holiday encourages national pride and feelings of companionship towards friends, neighbors, and co-workers.
  5. A great way show respect to the leaders and martyrs of the country.
  6. Can contribute to a country’s quota of public holidays.

Why all countries should NOT celebrate a National Day as a public holiday: 

  1. This might lead to political agenda and chaos.
  2. Working is the best way to show the patriotism rather than having a holiday.

Step 3: Planning:

You should spend approximately two minutes to plan how you are going to construct your essay. Divide the main ideas into paragraphs so that one paragraph has one center topic of main idea.

5 paragraphs are ideal in such an essay:

  • Introduction
  • Body paragraph 1 (main idea 1)
  • Body paragraph 2 (main idea 2)
  • Body paragraph 2 (main idea 3=balance and refutation )
  • Conclusion

Body paragraph 1 and 2 should support your side of the argument. Body paragraph 3 should recognize the alternative point(s) and opposite ideas. i.e. people who disagree with you would have written.

Step 4: Writing:

As you have already analyzed the essay, generated the ideas and have done your planning, you are good to go for the writing. You should spend about 30 minutes to finish your writing.

Step 5: Checking:

After you are done with your writing, allocate 3-4 minutes for checking and making corrections to your essay. Check for grammar, spelling mistakes etc. in this part and correct if necessary.