 I researched the most popular IELTS writing tips and tricks so you don't have to. I'm also going to tell you if these tips will lower your score or improve your score. We're going to look at what the official marking criteria says about each of these tips, and I'm also going to show you what these tips look like in real essays, and if these tips lower your score, I'm going to show you exactly what to do to improve your score for each of these areas. So without further ado, let's jump into it. So let's start off with one of the most popular tips and tricks. Use lots of high-level vocabulary, and that will improve your score. Is this tip correct? So the most popular IELTS video over the last year with 6.5 million views, so a lot of people are following this tip. This video tells you exactly that. Use lots of high-level words, and you will improve your score. Here's exactly what they say about that in the video. If you use most of the words which are C1, C2, definitely you will get higher bands. All words in the English language are divided into A1, A2, which is the simplest words, B1, B2, kind of intermediate words, and C1, C2 advanced words. So what this very, very popular video was telling you, the more C1, C2 advanced words you use, the higher your score. Is that actually correct? So if we look at the marketing criteria for vocabulary for a band 9, it says uses a wide range of vocabulary with very natural and sophisticated control of lexical features. That does not say for a band 9 uses many C1 and C2 words as possible. What it talks about there in the keyword is natural. Another way of saying this is if you were a native English speaker, what type of vocabulary would you use to discuss the topics and the questions that are asked on test day? And if we look down at band 6 in the marketing criteria, what it says is attempts to use less common vocabulary, but with some inaccuracy. So this is probably the most common band that examiners give for vocabulary because what that is saying is students attempt to use high level C1, C2 words, but they do so inaccurately. What the marketing criteria says is there is a balance between range using high level vocabulary and accuracy. So what it is saying is yes, if you can use words accurately, use them. But if you use them inaccurately, you're going to get a low score. You're probably only going to get a 6. Let's have a look at what IDP say about this. Testing is a means of communicating your thoughts to the reader. That is extremely important because what they are saying is it is not a vocabulary test. It is a writing test. It is testing your ability to clearly communicate with the reader. Therefore, make use of vocabulary that is easy to understand. Easy to understand. Do easy to understand and lots of big words go together? No. Also, only use words you can spell. In other words, only use words that you know how to spell because if you memorize lots of big words, you probably won't be able to spell them correctly. And if you spell them incorrectly, that is an indication to the examiner, we go back to band 6, that you are using these words inaccurately. If we go and analyze the thousands of band 7, 8 and 9 success stories that we have on our VIP course, not a single one of these students ever said that they got a high score because they used lots of high level words. Most of them, when we interview them, what they say is they simplified their vocabulary and their vocabulary score improved. And many, many of them, hundreds of them, talk about how they were taught this tip, this trick of memorizing lots of C1 and C2 words and that's the reason why they failed 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 times. Am I being too harsh on these YouTubers? Well, not really. If we look at two other of the most popular videos related to vocabulary tips and tricks, one of them is use these five words to score high and the other one is IELTS Reading Vocabulary 25 band 9 words and you'll hear a lot of teachers giving you this type of information. Use these words. These are high level words. Well what I did was I took the words from those popular videos and I wrote a paragraph using those popular words that these videos suggest that if you use them, you'll get a high score. So what I've done here is wrote a paragraph about how to solve the problem of global warming using electric cars. There are a plethora of reasons why the breakthrough of electric cars helps prevent the imminent global warming dilemma. To elucidate, the immense acceleration breakthrough is mesmerizing, which exacerbates the deterioration of fossil fuel powered internal combustion engines. Compare that with a student who just focuses on what IDP suggests that they should do, which is clearly communicate with the examiner. Electric cars help reduce the impact of global warming because they produce less CO2. There aren't any fancy words in this second paragraph, but they are all correct and every word in that paragraph helps the reader. That is what they are testing. Do you know how to communicate with the reader? They are not testing. Did you go on to YouTube and watch a video called Five Amazing Words to include in your essay to guarantee a bad mind? It is not a memorization test, it is a written communication test in English. So is this popular tip correct? No, it is totally wrong. So the next IELTS writing tip and trick that you'll see is use lots of linking words and you will get a high score and the more complex linking words you use, the more advanced linking words you use, the higher your score. Is this actually true? Well, what I did was I went and looked at Google. So I Googled IELTS linking words and I looked at the most popular article and this is what that article said. They need more connecting words for IELTS higher band descriptors. Very, very clear. They are talking about students. So they are saying students need more linking words, more connecting words to get one of the higher bands. Pretty clear what this teacher is suggesting. I also looked at the most popular video on YouTube teaching you about linking words and this is what they said. To get a high score in IELTS writing you must use some more formal linking words. So what this teacher is suggesting is you use more formal linking words. This teacher who has more than a million subscribers is making a very common error that a lot of teachers make and a lot of students make because their teachers pass it on to them which is confusing the word formal with advanced. What this teacher is teaching you is use lots of formal linking words which they mean advanced because they go on to explain that in the video. So again the most popular blog and the most popular video are teaching you this tip which is use lots of high level linking words. So if we look at the official marking criteria, what it says for band nine for coherence and cohesion is very, very interesting. Uses cohesion in such a way that attracts no attention. In other words, if a native English speaker was reading your writing was reading your essay, would they notice that there are too many linking words in there and would they notice that the linking words just look weird, that they are overly formal, they're overly complex and the British Council go into more detail on their website on this and what they say is don't overuse linking words. Pretty clear what the British Council think about that which is the direct opposite to what the most popular teachers are teaching you. It also says word use them inappropriately. So inappropriate is different from inaccurate. Inaccurate refers to the spelling is wrong or the meaning is wrong. Inappropriate means that you're using too many of them. You don't need to use a linking word in that scenario. So the British Council who develop the test, mark the test, they are being very, very explicit on what you should and shouldn't do. Also don't always use linking words at the beginning of sentences. Again, from the British Council, don't always use linking words at the beginning of sentences. The reason why they're telling you that is because they know that many, many teachers around the world teach you that you should start every sentence or include a linking word in every sentence. The British Council says it's wrong. On the IDP website, when they give advice on linking words, they only show the simplest linking words. Why would IDP suggest that you only use the simplest linking words? Maybe that's what they want you to do to get a higher score. And if we go back to the marketing criteria, what does it say for a band six for coherence and cohesion? This is cohesive devices effectively, but cohesion within and or between sentences may be faulty or mechanical. Faulty means you're using them inappropriately or inaccurately. Mechanical means that you're adding them in like a robot. So if you programmed a robot and told the robot, use lots of linking words and make those words really high level, that is what a robot would do. And that is what a lot of band six essays look like. It's like that programmed robot that has been told, add in lots of linking words. That's what those essays look like. Quickly to talk about our VIP students, not a single VIP student has ever said, I improved my score by including lots of linking words. So the evidence is quite clear, but let's have a look at an essay. Compare this paragraph with a student who knows what they're doing. To begin with, electric cars help reduce the impact of global warming. As a result, they produce less CO2. Consequently, less carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere. Therefore, higher levels of greenhouse gases are not present in the atmosphere. Consequently, global warming is reduced. This student is more focused on including lots of linking words than they are answering the question. In fact, the linking words are actually leading to a lot of repetition. They're basically just saying the same thing again and again. Compare that with this student. Electric cars help reduce the impact of global warming because they produce less CO2. The only linking word in that paragraph is because. Because is one of the most common words in the whole English language. Just because a word is common doesn't mean that it is a bad word. It's probably common because it is extremely useful for clear communication. This student uses cohesion in a way that you don't even notice. You probably didn't even notice. It didn't draw any attention to the fact that they used a linking word. This student, on the other hand, if you look at there, you're like, wow, that's a lot of linking words. What does it say for bad mind? This is cohesion in such a way that attracts no attention. Which one attracts no attention? Is this writing tip and trick that so many teachers are teaching you online? Are they correct? No, they are totally wrong. That brings us on to one of the most common things that we get asked. The writing tip and trick which is, is range, is grammatical range using lots of structures? Is it more important than accuracy? Using words, sentences, grammar, structures accurately. Which one is more important? Range or accuracy? If you go onto YouTube and you type in IELTS Task 2 tips, the number one video, the one right at the top, gives you advice on this. Very, very clear advice. What they say in there is variety is more important than accuracy. Very, very clear. Is this actually correct? Well the band descriptors make it very clear that both are important. It's not either or. For band 9, for grammatical range and accuracy, it says uses a wide range of structures with full flexibility and accuracy. So it's saying a band 9 student has both range and accuracy. A band 7, and this is the most important part for grammatical range and accuracy, produces frequent error-free sentences. What is an error-free sentence? An error-free sentence is a sentence without any grammatical errors in it. No punctuation errors or article errors or tense errors, nothing. It is grammatically perfect. It is an error-free sentence. What does frequently produces error-free sentences? What does that mean? What that means is it's frequent, more than 50%. In other words, more than 50% of your sentences must have zero grammatical errors in them if you hope to get a 7 or above. This is very important because if you are a teacher who is actually working with students on a day-to-day basis, what you will always notice is when you try to get students to increase their range of grammar. When you advise them to use more grammatical structures, generally, accuracy goes down. So what you are telling a student, if you are telling them, increase the range, decrease the accuracy. And if more than 50% of your sentences have errors in them, it is impossible to get more than a 6 for grammar. IDP are also very clear about this on their website. What they say about this is, uses a range of grammatical structures correctly. So they don't just say, uses a range of structures. They don't say that. The keyword there is correctly. But I think the most important evidence comes from our examiners who have worked for IELTS Advantage over the last 10 years and our success stories. What do they say? We have had probably close to 50 ex-examiners working at IELTS Advantage. Not a single one of them has ever said that they ever gave one student in their entire career a low score for grammar because of range. The only reason why any examiner I have ever worked with at IELTS Advantage and at the British Council, the only reason they have ever given a student a lower score for a grammar is because of accuracy. It is never a problem with range. It is always accuracy. And you get to know that if you are working on a day to day basis with real students and correcting their essays and correcting the grammar mistakes in those essays and counting the number of mistakes in each sentence. So should you just use really simple sentences and play it safe? No, that's not what we're saying. In fact, that very popular video does have very good advice on how to improve your range. But just telling students blindly range is more important than accuracy is not actually correct. So let's have a look at a few example paragraphs. So electric cars help reduce the impact of global warming. This is because they produce less CO2. This paragraph is made up of two simple sentences. Compare that with the second paragraph. Electric cars help reduce the impact of global warming because they produce less CO2. So this is for the purposes of IELTS marking criteria. This is a complex sentence. These are two simple sentences. This is a complex sentence. For the purposes of IELTS, a complex sentence is a sentence with more than one clause or more than one idea. What we teach our students is, yes, use a range of different structures, but only use them safely and appropriately. If you know how to use that structure and it's appropriate to do so and it's accurate, then use it. And as you can see here, it is actually quite easy to produce error-free sentences and use a range of vocabulary at the same time. Now, if you wanted to push that even further, you could use this. If electric cars hope to reduce the impact of global warming, they will have to produce less CO2. Now, this student is using a complex sentence, but they're also using conditionals and they're also using future structures. But you don't have to use this. For the purposes of the IELTS marking criteria, if the examiner was looking at the purple sentence and the red sentence, they would be happy with both of them. There are no mistakes in either of them. So is this tip and trick correct? Well, it's not as simple as the other ones. If your teacher just tells you, use as many different tenses and structures as possible and that will improve your score, that is completely wrong. Because as we've seen, it is not just about range, it's about accuracy and the more complex you make your language, the more mistakes that you're going to make. So that is completely wrong. Also, if someone just tells you range doesn't matter and make every single sentence simple and play it as safe as possible and you will get a high score, that is also quite wrong. It is about balance. Use appropriate structures, appropriate tenses, appropriate complexity to write your essay, but really focus on reducing the number of mistakes that you are making. The advice that we give our VIP students is range will take care of itself. If you focus on answering the question, you will naturally use a range of simple and complex sentences and a range of different appropriate structures. Because it is impossible to write an effective essay that answers the question without naturally using a range of structures. So just focus on answering the question and range will take care of itself, but really focus in on how many mistakes am I making. And if you have systematic errors, if you are making mistakes with articles or punctuation, for example, in every sentence, you need to address that. It doesn't matter how complex your grammar is until you address that fact, you will never get more than a six. The next IELTS writing tip and trick is don't repeat words. If you repeat a word, you will get a lower score. Is this true? So again, I put this into YouTube search and I looked at the most popular video discussing this topic. And what that video said was stop repeating vocabulary in IELTS speaking and writing, very clear what they think about this. So what does the official marking criteria say? Well, it doesn't actually talk about repetition and repeating words until you get down to band four. So for vocabulary at band four, it says uses only basic vocabulary, which may be used repetitively or which may be inappropriate for the task. Now, does that mean if you repeat a word, you will get a band four? No. If that was the case, every single one of my students and every single student in the world would get a band four because there are always going to be words, which we will show you in a minute. There will always be words that you have to repeat. What band four for lexical resources saying here is you just keep repeating the same basic, basic words. You have basically no range at all. And you just keep saying the same basic things over and over and over again. That's not what you want to do. But is the advice that these teachers are teaching you, which is if you repeat a word, you will automatically get a little score. Is that actually true? Let's look at some facts and some data. So what we did was take 100 of our VIP students essays. These are students that got either about seven, eight or nine in the real test. And we put these 100 essays into some software. What this software does is it shows you how many words are repeated, the frequency of those words. And the results are that the top 20 words, the most common words, the words that are repeated the most make up 33.5 percent around a third of all the words in those 100 essays. In other words, those basic words are repeated all the time. Now, is this just our students because we teach them this on our course? Well, what you can do is take any book in the world, any English book that is well written, put it into the same software and you'll see the same pattern. The most common words make up around a third of the English language. Why is this? Well, this is how languages work. Most of the words that you say in English and your native language are not big complicated unusual words. You are repeating the same words over and over and over again. Now, do we teach our students to just don't care about variety, don't care about range when it comes to vocabulary, don't worry about repeating words? No, what we teach them is this. When you see a word and you think that you need to repeat that word, you have three choices. Number one, repeat the word. Number two, change it to something that you're not really sure about. Or number three, change it to something you're 100 percent sure about. Now, if your teacher has taught you this tip, which is don't repeat any words, you're always going to go with option two. You're going to continually change words to things that you're not really sure about. What does the marking criteria say about that? Well, it talks about inaccuracy, talks about spelling mistakes, meaning mistakes, collocation mistakes. If you're making lots of mistakes, you get a lower vocabulary score. What we teach our students is choose option one or option three. If you can change it to something that you know is 100 percent correct, you know the spelling, collocations, meaning especially, change it. But if you don't, repeat the word. That is going to produce an essay that has a wide enough range to get a high score. But most importantly, it will be accurate. But even more importantly, the student is not going to be stressed out. Because if you teach a student that you can never repeat a word, the IELTS writing exam is going to be one of the most stressful experiences that they ever encounter. They're going to see lots and lots and lots of these words that are constantly repeated and they know that you've told them. If you repeat a word, you'll fail your test, you'll get a low score. So they're forced to change the stuff that they know is wrong. If you are stressed out and if you're wasting time, do you think that you're going to get a high score? Again, there's a huge difference between making videos on YouTube and working on a day to day basis with real students and seeing what tips and tricks, what actually works on the ground on test day. This tip is completely wrong. The next tip and trick is that you need to include a hook in your introduction. When I searched Google and YouTube for this, I found a teacher that has taken this to a whole new level. What they have done is they have given their students templates that include hooks in the introductions and thesis statements and outline statements and background statements. And what they are teaching their students is memorize these templates, insert some of your ideas in there, and you're going to wow the examiner and get a high score. And this is becoming more and more and more common among students. Real examiners are starting to see the same templates which include hooks in them every single time. And one of the things that examiners find quite funny is what is a hook? Well, a hook is designed to hook the reader in to get their attention. The only thing hooking the examiner to the only reason why they're looking at your essay is because they're being paid to do so. They would rather do anything in this world but look at your essay no matter how amazing your hook is. They're only doing it because they're doing their job. It would be like teaching someone that you need to have an interesting introduction to ordering a burger in McDonald's. The person doesn't care how you greet them in McDonald's. You're just another customer. So what does the marking criteria say about this? Well, some very interesting stuff. Band zero. How can you get a band zero? Well, number one, you could not attend. You could stay at home in your bed. If you did that, you would get a band zero. Or you can get a band zero if you go to the test center and you fall asleep and you don't write anything. You will get a band zero. Does not attempt the task in any way. Or if you write a totally memorized response. What they are telling you is memorizing these templates is the same as a student that falls asleep for the entirety of the IELTS writing test. IDP on their website says don't use any memorized language, phrases, or examples throughout your essay. They are easy for examiners to spot and don't demonstrate your ability to write fluently. Pretty clear from IDP. IDP also says don't tell the examiner what you are going to say in your essay. In other words, don't include outline thesis statements like this essay will discuss blah, blah, blah, blah. So what I've done is I've taken the most popular template online and I've answered a question with it. It has been universally accepted that the problem, so an article mistake straight away, the problem of climate change is escalating at an alarming rate. The problem is bringing a state of depression among the masses and in the economy too, they have another article mistake. So this teacher who wrote this doesn't know how to use articles or use grammarly. There are a plethora, so another grammatical mistake. I didn't make this up. This is exactly what you will find on the internet. This is the most popular template. There are plethora of reasons of the same and it's possible solutions can be suggested too, which are discussed below, outlining what you're going to say exactly what the examiners and IDPs say that you should not do. Also, just ask yourself, does this make sense? Climate change is causing a state of depression among the masses. Literally most people have a clinical mental disorder because of climate change. Are you going to write about that in your essay? And also the economy is effective. So are you going to talk about clinical depression and the effect on the economy? Because you put it in your introduction, you better discuss that in the rest of your essay. Now compare that with a student that is using no memorization. What they are doing instead is just clearly answering the question. Climate change is one of the greatest dangers humanity faces. Instead of memorizing a hook, what they're doing is they're paraphrasing the question. This is demonstrating to the examiner that you've understood the question, you know what you're doing, you know how to paraphrase, your vocabulary is good and your grammar is good. Those are five very good things. This is caused by an increase in the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. You've just answered question one straight away in your introduction. And the most viable solution is the introduction of electric cars. You've answered question two. So you're not telling the examiner what you are going to discuss, you're telling them straight away. This is the answer to these questions. And then in your main body, you can go into detail. And also if you think about it, what you are saying to the examiner if you write this is you are dumb. You are saying to the examiner, I think that you are so stupid that I'm going to use the most popular template online that tens of thousands, maybe even a hundred thousand students have used before. And I don't think that you're going to notice because you're dumb. Do you think that's creating a great impression for what you're trying to do here? So do you think this is right or wrong? This tip is absolutely wrong. The next IELTS writing tip and trick is use statistics and surveys and research in your examples. And that is going to improve the strength of your examples in your essay. So I went onto YouTube and I found the most popular video on how to use examples. And the video includes statistics. Now this video was made a very long time ago and let me make a confession. I used to do exactly the same thing with my students. We all did. It was actually standard practice five to seven years ago to tell students that if you include statistics, it's absolutely fine. And it's just an easy way to create examples. Because a lot of students were having problems and thinking of examples. So what I and a lot of other teachers taught them was look at your main idea and create a survey or a study. 47% of people did this, for example. Add that in and you'll get a high score. The problem is students use this incorrectly. So what we were teaching our students was match your main idea to your example and make sure that your example makes sense. If your example doesn't make any sense, it is not a good example and you're wasting your time. But how a lot of teachers and students interpreted that advice was just include lots of data and surveys and don't worry about whether they make sense. So IDP noticed this, noticed that a lot of students were using this technique, put out on their website recently, I think last year. And they said, don't present recent research or statistics related to the topic. So what IDP are saying is stop using this. We stopped advising students to do this by two or three years ago. Because again, we're working day to day with students and we just noticed that students would mess this up. You would get students writing statistics such as 98% of people in the UK died from smoking. Doesn't make any sense. So let's look at the example from the most popular YouTube video on how to do this. An increasing number of people are eating unhealthy food regardless of the health warnings. For example, about 70% of people working in the UK resort to buying ready-made meals for convenience rather than doing home cooking. So this is actually fine. It makes sense, it sounds correct, but now since IDP have said this, we can't do this. So what we do instead is take out the research, take out the example of the statistics and just replace 70% with something more vague like many. Many people working in the UK resort to buying ready-made meals for convenience rather than doing home cooking. So we're keeping IDP happy, we're not using statistics and this makes sense and it is a real example. Do many people in the UK buy ready-made meals? Absolutely, that's a fact. And this example is good because it's connected to the main idea and it makes sense. So instead of thinking about should I use statistics, just what is an example of the thing that I'm talking about? What is an example of the main idea of this topic? And if you do that, you'll be fine. So is this common tip and trick correct? No, don't use statistics. So the next IELTS writing tip and trick is idioms. If you use lots of idioms in your IELTS writing, will this improve your IELTS score? So if you go and type in idioms IELTS writing into YouTube, you'll find lots of videos. The most popular one is one called 40 Awesome Idioms for IELTS writing. With a title like that, this teacher is definitely suggesting that idioms are awesome and you should use them in your IELTS writing. Is this actually true? Well, what does the marking criteria say? Well, the writing criteria says nothing about idioms. It is silent on idioms, but the speaking marking criteria talks about them. What does the speaking marking criteria say? Well, the speaking marking criteria talks about idiomatic language. And this reveals to you a lot about the tips and tricks that you will see on YouTube especially. The reason why teachers are teaching you, use lots of idioms to improve your score, is number one, they have confused the speaking test with the writing test. And number two, they don't know what idiomatic language means. Idiomatic language does not mean idioms. Idiomatic language means natural language that native English speakers would use. That includes idioms, but that is just a small part of idiomatic language. If you know native English speakers, listen to them for five minutes. Count how many idioms they use, probably zero. IDP has a video on their website called where can I use idioms in my IELTS test? And they only mention speaking and task one, general training, informal letters. Why? Because speaking and task one, general training, informal letters are informal. Idioms are informal. That means that you should not use them in writing task two, or task one academic, or general training, task one, formal letters. IDP on their website also says on their guide to IELTS writing, don't use idioms, pretty clear. I've also never met a real X examiner or a real successful student who used this tactic, who tried to include lots of idioms and eventually got a high score using that tactic. Just doesn't work. So is it correct? No, it's not correct. The next tips and tricks are about word length. So for task two, you will often hear teachers teaching their students that you must write more than 250 words. This is absolutely correct. I'm not going to go into detail on this because it's very, very simple. You must, if you want a high score, you must write more than 250 words. But what is more worrying is there's lots of tips and tricks out there that teach you that the more you write, the higher your score. This is absolutely false for two reasons. Number one, if you think about it, if this were true, all you would have to do is just write lots of words and you would get a high score. That's not actually testing your ability to clearly communicate in English. Secondly, from a tactical point of view, from working with real students, what you will notice if you are a real teacher working with real students is once students start to write more than 300 words, two things happen. Number one, they generally go off topic. And number two, they don't have enough time to check their work, proofread their work, and move on and do task one and get everything done on time. So, more than 250? Absolutely, this tip is correct. But once you start going over 300, if you write 301, 305, don't worry too much about it, but if your writing is starting to get to 350, 400, 450, you probably have a major problem. If you want to see what those tips look like in a real essay, what I've done is I've taken a band six essay and transformed it into a band eight essay. And if you click here, it will show you the whole video.