Last year, I wrote an article aboutwhy people always score so poorly for IELTS writing compared to the other partsof the IELTS exam. It was a popular article because it's a very commonquestion. Everyone wants to know why their writing is graded so poorly.
To put it as simply as possible, writing is just harder than other parts of language. It requires agreat degree of accuracy and there are many things that you can get wrong:spelling, punctuation, structure, and so on. These aren't really important atall in speaking or listening.
Common Mistakes At Ielts Intermediate
So when it comes to IELTS writing, you need to watch out forthe above problems and many other issues that can negatively affect your grade.In today's article, I'm going to explain how you can do better at IELTS writingby avoiding some common mistakes.
برچسب ها: Common Mistakes at IELTS Intermediate, آموزش گرامر آیلتس, اشتباه رایج گرامری آیلتس, اشتباهات گرامری آیلتس, دانلود منابع آیلتس, گرامر آزمون آیلتس. Common mistakes at IELTS intermediate -and how to avoid them by Cullen, Pauline. Publication date 2007 Topics English language, International English Language. Common Mistakes at IELTS Intermediate: And How to Avoid Them Pauline Cullen download Z-Library. Download books for free. If, however, you are looking for Band 8 or 9 then you must bring your grammar mistakes down to zero. List of Common Grammar Mistakes: Years of marking IELTS answer scripts revealed a trend in grammar errors. We have put down together 9 such grammar mistakes that are found frequently in IELTS. File Type PDF Common Mistakes At Ielts Intermediate And How To Avoid Themfor IELTS learners who want to achieve band 7.0 or higher in the IELTS test. This book contains the most common.
First, though, I will recommend that you use my writing correctionservice so that you can actually know what your IELTS writing score islikely to be and what mistakes you regularly make. This is really importantbecause most people don't know what their most common errors are without anexpert to tell them. Once they know, they can easily begin to fix the mistakesand watch their score increase.
What are the Most Common IELTS Writing Mistakes?
There are so many mistakes that you could make in IELTSwriting, and it's hard to say which are the most common. However, this year Ihave marked about 1,000 essays and I have a pretty good idea of the mistakes Imost frequently see.
They are:
- Subject-verb disagreement
- Comma use
- Semi-colon use
- Incorrect pronouns
- Spelling
- Structural issues
There are more, of course, but those are probably the mostcommon. I could have put 'semi-colon use' and 'comma use' together as'punctuation,' but actually I feel that they are quite distinct and I wouldlike to discuss them separately.
Before we get started, why don't you take a look at this video about all the things you should check in your IELTS essay:
Subject-Verb Disagreement
One of the biggest and most common errors that I see inIELTS writing today is that of subject-verb disagreement. This basically meanswhen the subject and verb of a sentence don't match.
Pdanet windows 10 download free. Look at the following example:
- The government advise people to buy electriccars in order to save the environment.
What is the subject of this sentence? Government.
What is the verb of this sentence? Advise.
The problem is that the subject is in singular form and theverb is in plural form. In other words, they don't match. We can fix this bymaking them both singular or both plural:
- The governmentadvises people to buy electric cars in order to save the environment.
- Governmentsadvise people to buy electric cars in order to save the environment.
This is often a problem when using the present simple tenseas in the above examples, but it can also be an issue when dealing with tensesthat involve auxiliary verbs such as 'have.' Let's look at another example:
- People has been protesting againstfracking due to its devastating environmental effects.
- The internet have revolutionized ourworld by making communication so much easier.
They are:
- Subject-verb disagreement
- Comma use
- Semi-colon use
- Incorrect pronouns
- Spelling
- Structural issues
There are more, of course, but those are probably the mostcommon. I could have put 'semi-colon use' and 'comma use' together as'punctuation,' but actually I feel that they are quite distinct and I wouldlike to discuss them separately.
Before we get started, why don't you take a look at this video about all the things you should check in your IELTS essay:
Subject-Verb Disagreement
One of the biggest and most common errors that I see inIELTS writing today is that of subject-verb disagreement. This basically meanswhen the subject and verb of a sentence don't match.
Pdanet windows 10 download free. Look at the following example:
- The government advise people to buy electriccars in order to save the environment.
What is the subject of this sentence? Government.
What is the verb of this sentence? Advise.
The problem is that the subject is in singular form and theverb is in plural form. In other words, they don't match. We can fix this bymaking them both singular or both plural:
- The governmentadvises people to buy electric cars in order to save the environment.
- Governmentsadvise people to buy electric cars in order to save the environment.
This is often a problem when using the present simple tenseas in the above examples, but it can also be an issue when dealing with tensesthat involve auxiliary verbs such as 'have.' Let's look at another example:
- People has been protesting againstfracking due to its devastating environmental effects.
- The internet have revolutionized ourworld by making communication so much easier.
Here you can see two instances of subject-verb disagreementin these excerpts from IELTS essays. In the first, we have a plural subject(people) with a singular auxiliary verb (has) and in the second we have asingular subject (internet) and a plural auxiliary verb (have). We can easilyfix them:
- People have been protesting against fracking due to its devastating environmental effects.
- The internet has revolutionized our world by making communication so much easier.
If this seems very easy to you, then consider that in mostcases the problem occurs when the subject and verb are quite far away from eachother like this:
- On the contrary, books can be used nearlyforever and requires much less money.
The mistake occurred because the IELTS candidate forgot that'require' matches with 'books' as the words are separated by six other words.It could be very simply fixed:
Contactbharsar students school. Students Families Employees Alumnae/i About Academics Admission Campus Life Athletics Arts Sustainability News Contact. Send to (required) Your name. Confirm your email. Message (required) submit. Go to top of page. Social Media Directory.
- On the contrary, books can be used nearly forever and require much less money.
Commas
Using a comma is a really hard part of English. It is so hard, in fact, that even most native speakers don't really know the correct way to do it. In fact, as an editor I often see essays and books by professional writers who don't understand commas. 😆
You don't need to be able to use commas perfectly in order to get a higher score in IELTS writing, but you do need to avoid the basic mistakes that can occur, and to master the most basic of the comma rules.
The biggest mistake that students make with commas is thecomma splice. That basically means putting two independent clauses togetherwith just a comma between them. This is wrong, and you should avoid it ifpossible. Thisarticle talks about comma splices in detail and shows you how to avoid themand fix them.
You also need to remember that commas should be used after introductory and transitional phrases. Think of comma words like 'therefore' and 'for example' and 'in conclusion.' These should all be followed by commas. We also put them after introductory phrases, which includes setting the scene and placing the event in time. For example:
- Sixyears ago, I met a man called Paul…
- Inmy first year at university, I was very shy…
- Onthe left, there is a handle….
- Inmy opinion, environmental degradation is…
Rather than repeat all the possible comma rules and mistakes here, I will advise you to check out this article on comma use.
Semi-Colons
Related to the problems with commas are semi-colons. Theserare pieces of punctuation actually do provide a good addition to academicwriting, although they are uncommon in regular, daily English. Most people justknow them from emojis nowadays. 😉
The reason why I have included semi-colons here is primarily that they are not used where they are in fact needed. It is uncommon to see someone using one incorrectly, whereas they tend to omit them where they should be, using a comma instead.
Let me explain:
The semi-colon is a piece of punctuation that does not havemany uses, but it does have a few that can be helpful in IELTS writing. It istypically used in a compound sentence (2x independent clauses). The first wayis to use it to split two very closely related clauses:
- The days were beginning to get shorter; itseemed the night got earlier and earlier.
- There was a big traffic jam; cars were barelymoving around town.
Again, in a compound sentence, if the second clause begins with a conjunctive adverb or transitional phrase, use a semi-colon. The structure looks like this:
INDEPENDENT CLAUSE+ SEMI-COLON + CONJUNCTIVE ADVERB + COMMA +INDEPENDENT CLAUSE
For example:
- The two countries had been at war for theprevious decade; as a result, brokering peace would not be easy.
- Theprice of homes has been rising for several decades; therefore, young peoplecannot get on the property ladder.
- The dog and cat lived together all their lives;however, they were certainly not friends.
If individual items in a list are separated by commas, usesemi-colons to break it up more clearly.
- Important European capitals include Paris,France; Rome, Italy; and London, England.
If you are really struggling with punctuation, check out this video I made recently. It's part of a long series of videos aimed at helping you with grammar for IELTS writing:
Incorrect Pronouns
Lately, I have seen many essays featuring incorrect pronounuse. This basically occurs when someone attempts to use a pronoun to avoidrepeating a noun, but the pronoun is not in the right form. Similar to themistake with subject-verb disagreement, this is usually a matter of plural vssingular.
Common Mistakes At Ielts Download Torrent Full
Let's take an example:
- Shopping centers nowadays provide a lot ofoptions for its customers.
So, what is the problem with this sentence?
Common Mistakes At Ielts Download Torrent Free
The problem is that we have a noun (shopping centers) and apronoun (its) that refers to the noun. The noun is in plural form, while thepronoun is in singular form. We need to change the latter to match the former:
- Shopping centers nowadays provide a lot of options for their customers.
This is a very easy mistake to fix once you have spotted it,but it's also an easy mistake to make because the pronoun often comes in alater sentence, and you may forget the form of the original noun. You can getsome feedback with my writing correctionservice to help you solve this problem.
Spelling
This next mistake is a real problem for some people, but notso much for others. Even native speakers tend to fall into those twocategories. Spelling can be hard and there are just so many words in English.Many of them of just not intuitive, and some seem to follow completelydifferent rules from the rest of the language.
Unfortunately, spelling is quite important for IELTS. It's ok to make one or two small errors, but you can't make many and you really shouldn't get common words wrong. If you are struggling with spelling, you need to find the words that you often get wrong, and then practice them over and over until you get them right.
Thiswebsite will show you some ideas about improving your spelling. (It's notrelated to me or my company.)
One related issue is mixing Britishand English spellings, which is actually considered an error by IELTSexaminers, even though they are both correct.
Structural Issues
Finally, let's talk about essay structure. Actually, I oftentalk about essay structure on this website. I do it because it's probably theeasiest part of the essay to fix. While it takes years to master grammar, youcan master structure in just a few days.
Basically, an essay should have 4 or 5 paragraphs and should look like this:
- Introduction
- Body paragraph 1
- Body paragraph 2
- Conclusion
Those body paragraphs will vary depending on the questiontype, but you might have one dedicated to each side of an argument, or bothwill support your view, or maybe one looks at advantages while the other looksare disadvantages… There are many possibilities.
The important thing is that your essay is logically arranged. That refers both to internal and external paragraph structure. Internal paragraph structure means how your sentences flow together from one idea to the next. This is really important or else it will be difficult for the examiner to follow your ideas, and he or she might give you a reduced score for Coherence and Cohesion.
Basically, an IELTS essay needs to have a reasonable structure.You can find a list of structures here.Learn them and apply them to your writing during all of your practice sessions.It will really help you.
One Last Thing
I hope that this article has really helped you. There areobviously many issues that could occur with an IELTS essay and you will need towork hard to get your writing to a high enough standard to avoid them all. Itis nearly impossible to write a perfect essay, but if you can reduce yourerrors to a minimum, you will stand a good chance of achieving a band 7 orhigher.
Please e-mail me or leave a comment if you have anyquestions about IELTS writing. I also reply and I am happy to help you.
