Timing – how long does it take to write 250 words
- 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.
Plan more and write less as well as better. Don’t spend all your time writing
What happens if you don’t plan enough: too short essays
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. What happens is that the essay ends up only half-finished. How can you avoid this? Planning and planning correctly.
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. 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
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.
I hope you could find time to answer my question sir. In writing reports about graphs, are the numbers like 20% counted as words? What if I write it down as 20 percent, will that do any good? Thank you very much for your help.
Can you also post an example of a good way to write a report about graphs?
The best advice is to use the word and not the symbol and in that case it is of course a word. On your second question, I will be posting about graphs shortly.
Thank you!!! your plan is very useful…I will try to use it !!!
god is alive..! he does miracles
Is a a certain knowledge about specific topic is necessarily needed?
I’m asking because i’ve noticed that I don’t know much about questions,so lets say even take all the steps of planning, how can you plan and come with ideas or even examples when you don’t know anything about the question in general?
Also to plan all the essay ahead including vocabulary, what do you mean by that?
How can i see what words i will use in 250 words essay?
Sorry for all the questions, I’m having an exam in about a month from now and unfortunatly Writing is the only thing I can’t do…
Not really. IELTS is a very international exam and taken by all sorts of people so the knowledge required is “intelligent general knowledge” – the sort of thing an educated person should be able to talk about. That said, in the reading you may get less familiar topics. The task there is whether you can understand the general meaning, not the specialised language. My point about vocab is that you should try and think of the words before you write. That way you will write better.