IELTS is a skill. Like any other skill, you can prepare for IELTS in a smart way. It can be deconstructed and learnt very quickly if you only focus on the critical elements.

In this post, I am going to share with you tips and strategies that will help you get 8+ Band in IELTS Writing.

In the Writing Test, these tips help you to look at your Letter and Essay Writing Tasks as a series of small questions that you have to answer in 3-4 sentences each, rather than write a big block of text for 150 or 250 words.

I got 8/9 band in the Writing Test, and I did not use a single high vocabulary word in my Writing Tasks.

By the way, this post is from the full online video course, Ultimate Guide To Hacking IELTS, in which I share in-depth tips and strategies to prepare for IELTS. It is exclusively for Ultimate Academy subscribers.

You can access the course here:

Let’s now dive in:

Hacking IELTS Writing: Tips To Prepare For IELTS The Smart Way

Hack # 1: The Structure

If your IELTS exam is tomorrow and you are reading this section today, I want you to take only one thing out of this: Writing is all about Structure.

Your examiner is your audience. When your audience reads anything that you’ve written, it experiences one of the two states: pleasure, because of a smooth reading experience, – or headache, because of a messy reading experience.

If you read any blog post on Ultimate Academy, it’s written in a way to make it a pleasurable experience for you. Each of my blog posts is an 8+ in IELTS Writing Test.

How to create a solid structure in your Writing Test?

1) You will always have 5 paragraphs. Each paragraph will be focusing on just one thing.

A paragraph can be as short as two lines. It doesn’t have to be a big block of text.

There will always be one introduction paragraph, 3 body paragraphs, and one closing paragraph.

We will look into the detail of what goes into each of the paragraphs for each scenario in the video course.

2) You will use simple English.

This is counter-intuitive to what you are taught elsewhere. Everybody else tells you to focus on learning new words to increase your vocabulary.

There are two reasons I will not tell you to do this:

The amount of time you will waste in learning new vocabulary will not have any significant impact on your IELTS score. Instead, if you focus on learning smart hacks and techniques, you will see a disproportionate increase in your score.
Wrong use of the difficult word in your writing will get you negative marks, but the use of the simple correct word will not affect it negatively. If anything, it will add to an overall flow of writing and help you score more.

Hack # 2: The Planning

There’s a famous quote by Abraham Lincoln,

If I had 6 hours to chop down a tree, I’d spend the first 4 hours sharpening the axe.

I can completely understand that when you are already faced with the challenge of time constraint if I tell you to spend the first 3-5 minutes just planning your letter or essay, you will not agree with me.

Even if you agree now, on the test day you will already be nervous, and under the pressure situation, you will dive straight into writing to make the most use of every single minute you have.

But if I tell you that an essay that will take you 40 minutes to write, can be written in 20 minutes if you spend 5 minutes to plan first – making it a total 25 minutes task – would you?

This is exactly what the difference is between writing without planning and after having a structured chain of thoughts.

Example: Writing Task 1 – Letter

In Writing Task 1: Letter, your planning will include answering all 3 bullet points given in the topic with just 1 line.

For example,

If the topic says Write a letter to the hospital. In your letter:

explain why you would like to do unpaid work at the hospital
say what type of unpaid work you would be able to do
give details of when you would be available for work

You will first use 3-5 minutes to answer each of these questions in 1 line.

explain why you would like to do unpaid work at the hospital
1 line: I’m passionate about helping other people because it makes me feel good about myself
say what type of unpaid work you would be able to do
1 line: I can take care of wounds by providing antiseptic and bandage
give details of when you would be available for work
1 line: I can start working from next month

Once you have this planning completed, you will just expand on your 1 line answer by inventing details (numbers, dates, places, examples, etc) around it.

You will expand your 1 line into 2-3 lines by adding context to it, and you will have your 150 words crossed with a very well-structured, well-planned letter.

Here’s an example of adding details to the first bullet point’s 1 line answer:

explain why you would like to do unpaid work at the hospital
1 line: I’m passionate about helping other people because it makes me feel good about myself

Since childhood, I have been extremely passionate about helping people around me. Whenever I used to play in the streets with other kids and if someone used to get hurt, I used to be the first one to rush towards him for assistance. As I grew up, I realised that helping other people gives me the most satisfaction in life.

That’s already 59 words!

With these 2 hacks mastered, you will be able to increase your Writing Test score by 1 Band at least.

We will go into detail of constructing essays effortlessly for both writing tasks, tips, exercises, and examples when we prepare for IELTS in the video course, to make sure you get 8+ in your Writing Test.

In the complete online video course, with 66 video lectures and assignments, I share with my students hacks, tips, strategy roadmaps, examples, and live-demos of implementing techniques to score 8+ Band in IELTS.