A 20-Minute Self-Review Routine for IELTS Writing Task 2
Most IELTS candidates practise writing the wrong way round. They write essay after essay, glance at them, and write another. The essays pile up but the band score does not move. Improvement comes from reviewing, not from volume. A focused twenty-minute review after each practice essay is worth more than three extra essays written without feedback.
Here is the routine I recommend. It follows the four official criteria: Task Response, Coherence and Cohesion, Lexical Resource, and Grammatical Range and Accuracy.
Minutes 0–5: Task Response
Reread the question, slowly. Underline every part of it. Many Task 2 prompts have two parts, such as "discuss both views and give your opinion" or "what are the causes and what solutions can you suggest". Then check your essay against each underlined part.
- Is your position clear in the introduction and consistent to the conclusion?
- Does every body paragraph answer the question, or did one drift into a related topic?
- Are your examples specific? "For example, in many countries" is weak. "For instance, Finland's free school meals" is strong.
Minutes 5–10: Coherence and Cohesion
Read only the first sentence of each paragraph. Together, they should outline your argument. If they do not, your paragraphs probably lack clear topic sentences.
Next, circle every linking word: moreover, however, in addition, on the other hand. Examiners notice mechanical overuse. If you have "moreover" three times, replace two with more natural connections, or let the logic of the sentence do the work.
Minutes 10–15: Lexical Resource
Find any word you repeated more than three times, apart from words like "the" and key topic terms. Can you vary it naturally? Do not reach for obscure synonyms; a wrong "fancy" word costs more than a correct simple one.
Look for collocations too. "Make a decision" is natural. "Do a decision" is not. Keep a running list of collocations you got wrong; it becomes your most valuable revision sheet.
Minutes 15–20: Grammar
Check for your personal error patterns. Everyone has two or three: article mistakes, subject-verb agreement, missing plurals, run-on sentences. Scan for those specifically instead of rereading everything. Then make sure you used at least a few complex structures correctly, such as a conditional or a relative clause, because range matters as well as accuracy.
Getting a second opinion
Self-review has a blind spot: you cannot easily spot mistakes you do not know are mistakes. This is where feedback tools help. I suggest pasting your essay into My Writing Checker's Task 2 checker after you finish your own review, not before. It gives an AI practice estimate across the four criteria along with comments on specific sentences.
Treat the number as an AI practice estimate, not an official band score. It is useful for spotting trends, such as Lexical Resource consistently trailing the other criteria, and for catching errors your own review missed. Compare its comments with your notes. Where you both flagged the same issue, that is a high-priority fix.
Keep a simple log
After each essay, write one line in a notebook: the date, the question type, your estimated weak criterion and one specific fix for next time. After ten essays, patterns jump out. You might find that opinion essays go well but problem-solution essays always lose marks on Task Response. That tells you exactly what to practise next.
How often to do this
Two or three reviewed essays per week is plenty for most learners. Quality of review beats quantity of writing. In the final week before the test, switch to timed essays with the same quick review, so the routine becomes automatic under pressure.
Twenty minutes is not long. Done consistently, it is the difference between writing a lot and actually getting better.