A Good Teacher’s Guide to IELTS Planning.

Any good teacher will tell you that to be effective in Task 1 you need to understand the task quickly and plan an answer quickly too.

You can do this like so:

Get an overall visual understanding of the image

1. Paraphrase the question
2. Consider an overview
3. Divide the question into parts
4. Include time to proofread your writing

Check your Essay

Ideally, you need to allow 3 to 4 minutes at the end of the test to check and improve your writing.

Often students don’t do this because they spend 2o minutes writing, but it is far better to write for about 15 minutes and allow 5 minutes to check and improve your writing.

From my experience the points you should check for are:

• Are there any obvious spelling or punctuation errors?
• Are the verbs the correct tense

Ask questions.

Additionally, you should consider these questions, but if you followed my planning advice you should be ok.

• Do the verbs agree with the subject?
• Does the process or description make sense?
• Does it follow the visual?
• Is there repetition in vocabulary?
• Could this be improved with synonyms?
• Have I written over 150 words?
• Have I organised the text into at least 3 paragraphs?
• Have I noticed only the obvious features from the diagram?
• Have I included the prominent features in the overview?
• Have I NOT included my personal opinion?

Finally

Once you have done this, be proud of the final product!

You can find my tips and advice on this website, or join my Facebook group to meet like-minded individuals.

Jonathan

I’m Jonathan

I’ve taught IELTS and University English in more than a dozen universities and schools around the world.

I’m a parent, traveller and passionate about language teaching and helping students achieve their dreams.

Whilst living in Austria or working in Asia, I run IELTS courses to help students get to where they want to be.

If you are serious about IELTS, connect with me to see how I can help you.

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