The two tasks
You have 60 minutes for both tasks, and you manage the time yourself.
Task 1 (at least 150 words, about 20 minutes)
- Academic: describe a chart, table, process or map. You report and compare the main features; you do not give opinions or reasons.
- General Training: write a letter, which may be formal, semi-formal or informal, responding to a situation with three bullet points to cover.
Task 2 (at least 250 words, about 40 minutes) An essay giving your view, discussing two views, explaining causes and solutions, or weighing advantages and disadvantages. Task 2 counts for more than Task 1, so never let Task 1 eat into its time.
The four criteria examiners use
- Task Achievement (Task 1) / Task Response (Task 2): did you answer every part of the question, with a clear position and developed ideas?
- Coherence and Cohesion: are your paragraphs logical, and do linking words help rather than clutter?
- Lexical Resource: do you use a range of accurate, natural vocabulary?
- Grammatical Range and Accuracy: do you use varied sentence structures with few errors?
Each is worth a quarter of your Writing band. A strong vocabulary will not rescue an essay that only answers half the question.
Habits Indian students often need to unlearn
These are habits, not failings. Most come from school exams and office English that reward different things.
- Memorised openings. Lines like "In this era of modernisation, this is a burning question" are easy for examiners to recognise and add nothing. Paraphrase the question in one sentence and give your view.
- Over-long introductions. A five-line introduction leaves less time for the body, where the marks are.
- Indian-English usage. Phrases like "revert back", "discuss about", "return back", "cope up with" and "kindly do the needful" are common in Indian offices but are errors in IELTS. Write "reply", "discuss", "return" and "cope with".
- Overusing big words. "Plethora", "myriad" and "furthermore" in every paragraph sound forced. Precision beats decoration.
- Opinions in Academic Task 1. Describe what the data shows. Do not explain why.
- No overview in Task 1. Without a clear summary of the main trends, it is hard to score above 6 for Task Achievement.
Writing in Ranchi offices and campuses
Many people preparing for IELTS General Training in Ranchi work in mining, steel, engineering consultancy or other public-sector roles, where daily writing means official notes, circulars and reports. That style has its own conventions: long passive sentences, formulaic phrases and stacked nouns. It works in a file noting, but it can sound stiff and unclear in an IELTS letter, especially an informal one to a friend.
Students at Ranchi University, St. Xavier's College or the Central University of Jharkhand often write long-answer exam papers where length earns marks. In IELTS, a focused 280-word essay usually beats a 400-word one that repeats itself.
If your first language is Hindi, Nagpuri, Kurukh, Bengali or another of Jharkhand's languages, watch for direct translation of sentence patterns: articles ("a", "the") left out or added, and "since" used with the wrong tense ("I am working here since 2019" instead of "I have been working here since 2019").
How AI feedback and teacher sessions help
For IELTS Writing practice on IELTS Learning, you can choose from 104 prompts across Academic charts, tables, processes and maps, General Training letters and every Task 2 essay type.
When you submit, you get an AI-estimated band for each of the four criteria with written feedback. That tells you whether your weakness is ideas, organisation, vocabulary or grammar, so your next essay targets the right thing.
AI feedback is fast and lets you write often. A human teacher adds judgement: explaining why an argument feels thin, or rewriting a paragraph with you. With Book a Teacher you get about 20 minutes one-to-one online, from ₹299. A good pattern is to write three or four essays with AI feedback, then bring your best and worst to a teacher.
A weekly Writing routine
- Two Task 2 essays, timed at 40 minutes each.
- One Task 1 (chart or letter, by your track), timed at 20 minutes.
- Rewrite one essay using the feedback, focusing on your lowest criterion.
- Read the Study Notes chapter for the essay type you find hardest.
Full Access, at ₹999 for 2 months, unlocks every Writing prompt and the AI feedback. Sign up free and submit your first essay as part of your IELTS Writing practice in Ranchi this week.