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Safeguard your writing score dont squander marks As an IELTS examiner and trainer I have marked thousands of Writing Tests; both in the real test environment and in New Oriental School courses. When students receive their results they often ask me how they can improve their writing score, or how they should modify their answer to achieve a higher score. What many students fail to realise is that improving a writing score is not simply a matter of writing a better answer; one common reason for a low writing score is that the answer was penalised for failing to meet certain important criteria within the marking system. An examiner will penalise an answer for a number of problems which, for the sake of this article I shall describe as Writing Crimes. Once you have identified these crimes and eradicated them from your answer, a higher score will be easier to achieve, more importantly you are not simply throwing marks away unnecessarily. Task One General Training The Letter There is one sure-fire way to lose marks on this simple writing task, an answer which does not cover all the points listed in the question will instantly be penalised, regardless of the quality of the letter itself. All letter questions present the candidate with an outline of the situation followed by three or four bullet points of required content. An answer which fails to present just one of these will automatically be penalised. | 
