IELTS Advice: advice vs rules

If a teacher, website, book or friend tells you that you must do a particular thing in the writing test, you can check the band descriptors to see whether it's true.

For example, I often receive questions like this:

My teacher told me that I must add a second sentence, containing a recommendation or prediction, to my task 2 conclusions? Is this true?

Here's my answer:

No, this is not true. There's nothing in the band descriptors about conclusions needing a recommendation or prediction. I think it's fine for teachers to say "this is how I think we should write a good conclusion", but they should make it clear that they are giving advice rather than stating a rule. If it's not in the band descriptors, it's not a rule.

Download Writing Band Descriptors Task 1

Download Writing Band Descriptors Task 2

Comments

[kLwT]

Thank you. I guess Philippine Examiners are not following the descriptors. So sad, nurses here always got a score of 6.5 in writing.

[Monika]

I had given my Ielts general exam on 3rd August 2017.
My first writting task wa
You had a vacation with your friend. You clicked some photographs. some how you missied on your photograph.
write a letter to you frind
* what happen to your photograph
* which photograph you nee
* why that photograph is important to you

My task 2 is

Garbage (rubbish), we find it on the corner of our house, on the road or country side.
Discuss the Problem or Cause.
also suggest some solution

[Simon]

kLwT,

Yes, it's sad and frustrating if that is happening. I would hope that all examiners simply follow their training and use the band descriptors, rather than bringing their own preferences to the job.

[Jon]

Hi kLwT and Simon

I think the problem is that asking nurses to score 7 in each paper is pretty unrealistic. Do you really need to write in this style and to this level to be a nurse ?
7 overall would be fairer.

I imagine most UK native speaker nurses would score around 6.5 in the writing paper ! It's not a bad level of written English.

As for IELTS examiners in the Philippines applying their own criteria. I think this is unlikely. It would be picked up pretty quickly.