How long should you spend planning an IELTS? There is of course no correct answer to this question, but in this post I am going to make a suggestion that you should consider spending up to 10 minutes on the planning process. Really? Yes, 10 minutes is not too long, let me try and explain why.
Overlong essays
Just recently I have seen a number of essays that are well over 500 words. Some of them are “model” essays from websites and books and some are student produced essays. All I am going to say is that 500 words is significantly too long: too much time is being spent writing and not enough time is being spent thinking. No matter who you are, in 40 minutes you are going to be able to produce better quality English in 300 words than 500 words. The moral is plan more, write less.
It’s an exam – no drafts required
Another point to consider is the exam context: for many candidates one problem is timing, you only have 40 minutes to write an essay. What you cannot afford to do is the academic thing and draft and redraft: you have to get it right first time. If you have to go back and rewrite, that’s when you really run into problems with time. Indeed, having to stop and start again is one leading cause of the failed IELTS essay. How can you avoid this? Planning and planning correctly.
Timing
You may still not be convinced by 10 minutes: it seems a long time doesn’t it? I have three main arguments to put to you:
- Try looking at it this way: the longer you spend planning, the better and the more quickly you will write. To me, it is a given that you will write better once you have thought about your ideas and the language you want to use.
- More than that, if you spend 10 minutes on the plan, that still leaves you 25/30 minutes to write 250-275 words. Do the sums: that’s approximately 9/10 words a minute, or put another way a sentence every 2 minutes. No matter your level, that should be achievable.
- Try timing yourself and how you use your 40 minutes. I’m next to certain that if you start writing before 10 minutes is up, you will find that in the writing process you spend minutes at a time doing little – you don’t know what to say next or how to express it. That’s wasted time. If you have read Aesop: the tortoise beats the hare.
What to plan? Ideas, reasons and examples
If I’ve convinced you to spend more time planning, the next step is to think about how to use that time well. It’s no good spending 10 minutes, if there’s no end product. And I suspect that one reason why candidates don’t spend too much time planning is that when they try it, they don’t get any end product. That maybe because they are planning the wrong thing.
Don’t worry too much about ideas. From classroom practice I find that if I ask students to come up with ideas – nothing much happens. It’s a difficult process under pressure. More than that, I would suggest that in the “for and against” essay you only need 2 ideas and they are the same each time: namely, “I agree” and “I disagree”. That’s easy enough.
Think about reasons and examples instead. For me, in practice, this is much easier to do. If I ask my students “Why do you agree? or “Can you give me an example of that?”, I get an almost immediate response. Try it for yourself, see if it works.
What to plan? Vocabulary
The next point is to ask yourself what slows you down when you are writing. Is it because you can’t find the words? Quite possibly. So to me the answer is fairly clear: try planning the vocabulary so that you know what words you are going to use before you start writing so you will write more quickly.
There are another two related points here. The first is that if you plan vocabulary, ideas follow: once the words are in your head, you know what to say. The other point is that vocabulary makes up 25% of your mark, so it seems rather misguided not to spend time thinking about it. For more on this, take a look at IELTS essays – the planning process
Experiment – see what works for you
The final point I am going to make is this: everyone is different and no one solution can fit you all. Accordingly, I suggest that you should try different solutions and see what works for you personally – give my 10 minute plan a go. It can work.
This is a great plan. I think you are right in spending more time in planning. As soon as you have thought of what to write, you'll scribble faster. I will apply this in my exam. Thanks!
i still get a bit confused with this actually..may i ask some questions Sir?
how about task 1? is it also 10 minutes to prepare? (which totally can lead to 20 minutes to set up a plan; 10 min for task 1 & 10 min for task 2)
or, 10 minutes both for task 1 and task 2 instead?
thx
First of all, I only make suggestions here. You need to find out what works for you. It is not a case of right or wrong, but what works and doesn’t work. Go to other teachers and see what they say and choose the advice that is best for you. I really mean this. I don’t know you so I can’t tell you what is best for you.
Regarding part 1 I would say this. 150 words can be written in 10/12 minutes if you know what you want to write. I’d suggest a good 5 minutes thinking/planning time before you start and a good 2/3 minutes revision time.
But just to repeat myself you need to work out what works for YOU. I’d also add that I wouldn’t worry too much about time at all until about a month before the exam. If you learn the skills well, you can then do it quickly and well. If you never learn the skills, you may do it quickly, you’ll never do it well.