Understanding A Writing Question
Question analysis is a fundamental skill you should learn prior to taking the test. What does this mean?
Hello! Welcome to the page.
Here we will discuss why you MUST understand what a question is asking you, if you want to achieve a band 7+ score.
Why is analysing a question important?
Well, examiners mark your answer based upon certain criteria. These are called ‘band descriptors’.
First, remind yourself of the writing band descriptors by clicking here!
Whenever you get asked a question, examiners will be looking for very specific things, as found on the band descriptor sheet. This is how they will score you and these will contribute to your overall band score.
There are also two main mistakes people make when reading the QUESTION (before they start writing their answer).
These are:
1. They do not read the question properly.
2. They plan the wrong answer – they don’t focus on what the examiner wants to hear.
So, how can you avoid these two mistakes?
It all starts with UNDERSTANDING THE QUESTION.
If you fail to understand the question, everything else will fail too. Think of it as a ‘snowball effect‘. This is where a small mistake at the start leads to a BIG mistake at the end (in this case a poor score).
The Snowball Effect:
UNDERSTANDING THE QUESTION
To successfully understand a writing question, there are 2 essential things to identify. These are:
1. The KEY information
2. Examiner’s request
1. Key information
Every question will have key information. It is up to you to identify the KEY POINTS. One of the best ways to choose the key words is to pick out uncommon words in a sentence.
Look at this Task 2 question for example:
In many cities, the cost of living is increasing at a higher rate than employee wages. However, there is a greater number of young people who are starting their own business or becoming self employed.
Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of being self employed and give your own opinion.
Write at least 250 words.
How would you pick out the key information?
You would highlight any uncommon words (words which you do not see in most sentences), because the chance is they are important. See below for an example:
In many cities, the cost of living is increasing at a higher rate than employee wages. However, there is a greater number of young people who are starting their own business or becoming self employed.
If you take all of these words out of the sentence, you can still understand what is being said. That is how you decide what to write about:
‘many cities cost living increasing higher rate employee wages. However, greater number young people starting own business becoming self employed’
Obviously you need to also understand the context of the sentence, but by highlighting the uncommon words you know what your answer is going to be about. In this example, you know to write about CITIES (not COUNTRIES), YOUNG PEOPLE (not OLD PEOPLE) etc.
2. Examiner’s request
The second part of understanding a question is deciding what the examiner is requesting. These are the INSTRUCTIONS. These are clearly written after the context part of the question. It is vitally important that you answer them specifically. Don’t start writing about anything else.
For the example above, the instructions would be:
Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of being self employed and give your own opinion.
Write at least 250 words.
There will usually be more than one instruction. In this example the instructions are:
1. Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of being self employed
2. Give your own opinion
3. Write at least 250 words
Remember, you need to complete all of these instructions in order to give the examiner what he/she wants and get the best score.
This is a brief and basic overview to understand a writing question. However, if you would like to learn the most effective & successful techniques, check out our Academic Writing Task 1 & Task 2 Ebooks. They reveal the BEST methods of analysing ANY IELTS writing question and are used by the most successful students.
Click the button below if you want to learn the best way to analyse ANY writing question and impress the examiner, just like a band 9 student.
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All the best!
Sam 🙂