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Dear friends,
I gave my UKVI academic ielts in May this year, achieving the following scores:
L:8.5
R:7
W: 6.5
S: 7
Overall: 7.5
I applied for a remark immediately in writing as I needed a minimum of 7 and was only short by 0.5. After 6 weeks I got a response from IDP that my score remains unchanged! I am very puzzled as to where I may have gone wrong in the writing section. I tried my best to work according to the marking grid that the examiners use to assess our papers, though still fell short by 0.5. Reading from many of the experiences on this blog, I understand that people have had to appear for this exam several times before achieving their required scores. I have no option but to reappear but this time I have to get minimum of 7 in each section and 7.5 overall. I request those who have been successful in achieving such scores to please guide me, especially in WRITING section. Any books or online tutoring websites etc... Any help you provide would be very precious for me. IELTS is a pre requisite for me to sit further entrance exams in my field and failure to achieve the required marks next time would mean wastage of an entire year to enter my postgraduate course and would have a great impact on my career. Please guys urgent help needed from all!!!!

Hi Ruchu,
Sorry to hear that you didn't achieve your desired score. Let me give you a few tips.
To achieve 7 in each criteria, try the following
1. Task Response - Make sure that you develop your answer by providing solid arguments, reasons and a few examples. Do not let the examples take over your essay! Make sure that you have read the question carefully and are answering the QUESTION not the topic!!
2. Coherence - Easy! Use a wide variety off connectives and markers. I recommend putting the topic sentence at the beginning of each paragraph - it guides both you and the examiner!
3. Vocabulary - Make sure that you include some good academic vocab. Use the academic word list (Google search it). Then add a few pieces of specialised vocab where you can.
4. Grammar - Tough one! Watch out for those pesky little errors! Examiners see them and it prevents them giving you a higher score. Sometimes it's better to cut down those long sentences to make short, correct ones.
Let me know if you need any other help. I've written some books on IELTS writing, but they might be too long to use in your short time frame.
All the best,
David

ruchu wrote:Dear friends,
I gave my UKVI academic ielts in May this year, achieving the following scores:
L:8.5
R:7
W: 6.5
S: 7
Overall: 7.5
I applied for a remark immediately in writing as I needed a minimum of 7 and was only short by 0.5. After 6 weeks I got a response from IDP that my score remains unchanged! I am very puzzled as to where I may have gone wrong in the writing section. I tried my best to work according to the marking grid that the examiners use to assess our papers, though still fell short by 0.5. Reading from many of the experiences on this blog, I understand that people have had to appear for this exam several times before achieving their required scores. I have no option but to reappear but this time I have to get minimum of 7 in each section and 7.5 overall. I request those who have been successful in achieving such scores to please guide me, especially in WRITING section. Any books or online tutoring websites etc... Any help you provide would be very precious for me. IELTS is a pre requisite for me to sit further entrance exams in my field and failure to achieve the required marks next time would mean wastage of an entire year to enter my postgraduate course and would have a great impact on my career.

Is your handwriting clear? Also, do you check sufficiently?