Most IELTS candidates lose Writing marks not because their English is weak, but because they are optimising for the wrong things. Examiners grade against four public criteria, each worth exactly 25% of your band – and once you understand what each one rewards, your preparation changes completely.
The four criteria, in plain language
Task Achievement / Task Response asks: did you answer the actual question, completely, with developed ideas? Going off-topic, ignoring one part of a two-part question, or writing under the word limit caps this score no matter how elegant your English is. Coherence & Cohesion asks: is the essay organised into logical paragraphs that flow? One clear central idea per paragraph beats sophisticated-sounding chaos. Lexical Resource asks: is your vocabulary precise, natural and varied – not rare? “Heavily polluted rivers” scores better than a misused “pulchritudinous”. Grammatical Range & Accuracy asks: do you use a mix of structures, and are your sentences mostly error-free? A few complex sentences done correctly outweigh many done wrong.
What separates Band 6 from Band 7
Band 6 essays answer the question with relevant ideas but wobble: some underdeveloped points, mechanical linking words (“Firstly… Secondly…”), vocabulary that repeats, errors that occasionally distract. Band 7 essays feel controlled: a clear position maintained from introduction to conclusion, paragraphs that develop one idea with a concrete example, cohesion that is mostly invisible, and error-free sentences as the norm rather than the exception. The jump is rarely about learning harder words – it is about fewer, better-developed ideas and cleaner sentences.
The preparation loop that actually works
Write one essay under timed conditions. Get it assessed against the four criteria – not just “corrected”. Identify your two weakest criteria. Drill those specifically for a week (paraphrasing practice for Task Response, paragraph-planning for Coherence, collocation lists for Lexis, error-log review for Grammar). Then write the next essay. Ten essays through this loop beat fifty essays written blind.
You can run this exact loop on this site: our IELTS Writing examiner scores Task 1 and Task 2 essays on all four official criteria, corrects your sentences one by one, and shows you a model answer at your target band. Pair it with topic-based IELTS vocabulary practice to feed the Lexical Resource criterion between essays.
Three habits examiners silently reward
Plan for five minutes before writing – planned essays are visibly better organised. Leave three minutes to proofread – most candidates can remove a third of their errors on a single read-through. And answer the question you were given, not the one you prepared for: recycled essays are the fastest route to a Task Response penalty.
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