What you've learned

On the first day, I told you that that two of the IELTS writing criteria are related to structure. Let’s take look at what you need to achieve a band eight:

Task response:

sufficiently addresses all parts of the task

presents a well-developed response to the question with relevant, extended and supported ideas

Coherence and cohesion:

sequences information and ideas logically

manages all aspects of cohesion well

uses paragraphing sufficiently and appropriately

The good news is that having completed this course, you know how to do all of these things. Now that we have looked at what you need to display in the exam, let's have a look at how the skills you have learned meet these criteria.

Why a good IELTS essay is like a table

One metaphor I often use is to compare an IELTS essay to a table. If you imagine a table, it needs to have a lot of legs to be strong. Similarly, an IELTS essay is strong if your thesis statement has lots of support. If a table has table has one leg, it won't be is strong. If you don’t give enough support in your essays, your essays will also be weak. This might happen because you don't go into enough details in your body paragraphs. Another way a table might be weak is that the legs aren't well connected to the top. In an essay, you might have supporting sentences that aren't well connected to the topic sentence or topic sentences that aren't well connected to the thesis statement. The task response section of your grading looks at how well you build up your essay. Your thesis statement is the most important sentence of your essay that gives your answer to the question. Your thesis statement is supported by your topic sentences. These topic sentences are then supported by their supporting sentences. In this way, your whole essay works to support the thesis statement. Almost every sentence of your essay is like a table leg giving its support.

How can the essay structure from this course lead to strong essays?

If you want your essays to be strong like a good table, what you've learned on this course can help. By following what you've learned, you will have strong coherence and cohesion. First, We've looked at how long each paragraph needs to be. Second, the grading criteria ask for you to organise your ideas logically. By offering specific topic sentences which are well backed up by supporting sentences, you can meet this requirement. You also need to have strong cohesion between paragraphs. This means that your paragraphs have strong links to each other. What this means practically is that:

Your introduction:

Tells the reader what your answer is and what your body sentences will be.

Your body paragraphs:

Are linked to the introduction by the outline and also because they support your answer.

Your conclusion:

Is linked to the introduction because it has the same information and is linked to the body paragraphs because it recaps those points and they inform your answer.

Putting it into practice

You now know everything you need to know to get a 7, 8 or 9 for your IELTS writing structure. However, knowing something doesn’t mean you’ll be able to reliably put it into practice. That’s why we have some bonus materials:

• The thirteen sentence essay: a script you can follow to practice and help you remember what you’ve learned.
• Essay breakdowns: videos where I go through high band essays and help understand what makes them work.
• Sample essays book: A book of sample essays for you to study with however you wish. My advice is to use the questions to write your own essays and then compare your structure to mine.
• Private Facebook group: a place to ask questions.

By using these bonus materials, you can cement this knowledge and put yourself in the best place possible for your exam.

Exercise

Your essay is already complete, but you have posted it in a few different places. What I'd like to do today is:

• Gather together all the sentences you've written and post them into a single document.
• Have a look over the structure of what you have written.
• If you notice anything you'd like to change, change it.
• Post your work as a comment below.