IELTSNetwork.com

Hello Mr David.
I really desire to know that is it good for ielts candidates to use idioms in their academic writing task? As i have heard they will increase the score? Is it true?
Thank you

Yes, it's a good idea to use idioms IF you use them correctly and not too often. Idioms are often informal and not suitable for IELTS writing. Be VERY careful about using them just to try to get a higher score. This often backfires!
D

Hi Doni and dear sir,

My personal opinion is to avoid using idioms for your writing task. It will make your essay look casual. You are encouraged to use idioms in your speaking task however, but your grammar must be good enough to back it up, else the trick to impress the examiner may backfire. Also, it must sound as if the idiom is naturally a part of your sentence progression and you didn't take a lot of effort to speak. This requires training and a good amount of practice but also has a good amount of risk attached to it

Alternatively, I think that if you are able to add a suitable proverb in the introduction or in the conclusion of your writing task which matches with the theme of the task 2 question, you can impress the examiner. But you must however use it as a quote.

Would just like to add to that advice that there are formal and informal idioms. The latter are more or less slang, but the formal idioms are part of normal speech, in fact, in both writing and speaking you need to use them to get band 7 or above. Idioms are specifically mentioned in the examiner band descriptors. I mean such expressions as "think on your feet" "think outside the square" "put your back into it". Without such expressions, only professors would get above 7.