Simon’s ielts writing task 2

 
Wednesday, July 05, 2017 
IELTS Writing Task 2: proverbs and idioms 
A student sent me the following question: 
Hi Simon. Can I use proverbs and idioms in IELTS writing task 2?
My quick answer would be 
no
. Proverbs are certainly not appropriate for an academic-style essay, 
and the kind of idioms that many students learn (e.g. "In a nutshell") should also be avoided. 
Click 
here
to read a lesson about proverbs and clichés, and make sure you don't use them. 

---

Compiled by Diyorbek Hayitmurodov ielts-simon.com Page 185 
On the other hand, some idioms are acceptable, and you probably use good idiomatic phrases 
without realising it (e.g. the key to solving a problem). To read a longer explanation about using 
idioms, 
click here
. Read that lesson carefully, and be very careful with the type of idioms that you use. 
Posted by 
Simon
 in 
IELTS Writing Task 2
 | 
Permalink
 | 
Comments (8)
 
Wednesday, July 12, 2017 
IELTS Writing Task 2: from band 6.5 to band 7 
Many people who need band 7 seem to get stuck at band 6.5, especially in the writing test. I've 
written about this 
here
and 
here
, but a student asked me to give a bit more advice about how to move 
from 6.5 to 7. 
As I said in the lessons linked above, band 6.5 in writing is very close to band 7, so you only need to 
make a small improvement in the quality of your essays. 
But where will this small improvement come from?
Here are some tips: 

First, if you want to make this small improvement quickly, I don't recommend that you focus on 
grammar. Improving your grammatical accuracy is probably going to be a slow and gradual process. 

So that leaves us with 3 possible areas for improvement: task response, coherence and cohesion, 
and vocabulary. 

In my experience,