8 Points to Improve Your TOEFL / IELTS / PTE Essays
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Most of us, have now realized the power of internet and the impact that it has on our education and career choices. We make a lot of our personal decisions based on the experiences shared and broadcasted on various social media platforms and forums. But, all of this comes with a risk. If you search for tips and strategies on TOEFL / IELTS / PTE test preparation, you may get to see a lot of ‘clickbait’ content, which is utterly trivial and uninformative. Such viral videos and articles are just made for the creator’s benefit, not for the audience. Therefore, I have made sure that this article gives you a comprehensive and productive guideline regarding Essay Writing in these tests.
1. Analyse the task prompt carefully
The essay tasks in these tests aim to assess your ability to understand and engage with the question given to you. Therefore, you must spend time ANALYSING and UNDERSTANDING the question before you even try to answer it. Doing so will give you the confidence you need to create a clear and strong argument throughout your essay.
2. Generate RELEVANT ideas
When you’re thinking of ideas for your essay, it is recommended that you avoid extensive brainstorming. Instead, just note down one or two ideas that are relevant to your essay. This will help you to generate more effective ideas that better answer the question, save precious time in the exam and keep your argument focused.
3. STRUCTURE your essay
It is vital that your essay is structured if you wish to present a clear and coherent answer that will boost your score. Nearly all of the essay types follow this general structure:
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INTRODUCTION |
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MAIN BODY PARAGRAPH 1 |
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MAIN BODY PARAGRAPH 2 |
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CONCLUSION |
The sentences you include in each paragraph should vary depending on the question type you get.
4. Use GRAMMAR & VOCABULARY to your advantage
The marking scheme of these tests reveal that more than most of your marks in the writing exam come from using appropriate vocabulary and grammar structures that are error-free. You should aim to have more than half of your sentences completely error-free. If you struggle with weak grammar, you need to figure out your exact weaknesses. You just need to figure out which rules you have been breaking. Learn the correct way of implementing them and practice until they become second nature to you.
5. PLAN effectively
Having an effective plan is vital for any essay, as it allows you to know exactly what to write about and where to place it within your essay. On the day of your exam, a coherent plan is like a map that will guide you towards the treasure of success.
Create a plan by following the four steps given below:
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Step 1: Analyse the question |
Step 2: Generate relevant ideas |
Step 3: Place your ideas into your essay structure |
Step 4: List synonyms of the keywords in your question |
6. Master the BASICS of writing
It shouldn’t come as a surprise to you that you should learn the fundamentals of writing if you wish to get a high score. The basics of writing are quite simple when you break them down. All essays consist of the same core elements: introduction, main body paragraphs and conclusion. It’s up to you to find out what these are, what purpose they serve and how to recreate them effectively under timed conditions. If these fundamentals sound completely new to you, don’t panic. I doesn’t take long to learn what they are; if you follow the correct strategies, you will find that they are formulaic and simple to produce.
7. Act like YOU are the examiner
When you are practicing essay writing, try to review your work as though you are an examiner. This means knowing the number of words in your essay, using the official marking criteria of the tests and remaining completely impartial.
When evaluating your work, you must ask yourself:
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Does my essay answer the key elements of the question? Are my arguments fully developed and well supported? Is my essay coherent? Do I use paragraphs well? Do I use range of vocabulary with minor spelling errors? Do I use range of grammatical structures accurately? |
Remember: The goal isn’t to write an essay that will impress or entertain the examiner. The goal is to tick all of the boxes in the examiner’s checklist and produce clear and well-structured piece of writing.
8. Seek FEEDBACK
The reason why I highly recommend seeking feedback about your work from a professional tutor is simple:
You must know what you are doing wrong before you can fix it!
If you want your work to be corrected by an experienced teacher, you will always be required to pay for their time. Yes, this is an unfortunate expense in top of an already-expensive exam. But truthfully, the price of failing to get your desired score is much higher than the cost of getting your work checked.
Mr. Hiren Panjwani
Faculty, IELTS/TOEFL/PTE
