Ielts writing Task 2: ways to prepare

Here's a paragraph I wrote about this topic:

Parents play a huge ______ in their children’s lives, and shoulder more of the ______ for their upbringing than school teachers do. Before starting school, infants spend the first four or five years of their lives with their mothers and fathers. During those ______ years, parents teach their children vital skills and habits, such as the ability to speak, eat and behave. Parents are the major role ______ for young people, who copy the behaviour that they see on a daily ______ at home, and it would be wrong to expect schools to ______ a greater influence than the family.

Task:
Can you guess what words I used in the spaces?

IELTS Writing Task 2: are you stuck?

Students often tell me that they are stuck on the same writing score. For example, they keep getting 6.5 in every test they take. If you are stuck in a rut like this, perhaps the most effective way to get out of it is to give more importance to your essay plan.

I tell my students to spend around 3 minutes making notes for each main body paragraph. So, for the housing topic we've been looking at recently, we would spend 3 minutes thinking about why we shouldn't build more houses in cities, and 3 more minutes thinking about the benefits of developing new towns.

The act of planning helps you to separate the task of idea generation from the task of writing. It's extremely difficult to do both of these things at the same time.

IELTS Writing Task 2: introduction technique

As I've said before, task 2 introductions should be short and direct. You only need to write two sentences in order to do two things:

1. 
   Introduce the topic.
   
2. 
   Respond to the question, making your position clear.