Writing is where most IELTS candidates score lowest. The cause is usually not weak English — it is not knowing what the exam asks for. Thirty days, used correctly, is enough to close that gap.
The plan below assumes about an hour a day and gives each task its own space.
First: how is it marked?
Studying without knowing this is firing blind. Writing is marked on four criteria and each is a quarter of the score:
Task Achievement / Task Response — did you actually answer the question, and every part of it.
Coherence and Cohesion — are the ideas in a logical order, are paragraphs clean, are linkers used correctly.
Lexical Resource — range and accuracy of vocabulary.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy — variety of structures and grammatical correctness.
The critical consequence: fancy vocabulary affects only a quarter of your score. An essay in flawless English that does not fully answer the question cannot go above a 6. Most candidates study the wrong quarter.
The second critical fact: Task 2 is worth twice Task 1. You get 20 minutes for Task 1 and 40 for Task 2. Most of your time — and most of your preparation — belongs to Task 2.
Week 1 — learn the structure, do not write yet
Do not spend the first week staring at a blank page. Learn the skeleton first.
Days 1–2: Learn to tell Task 2 question types apart. There are five: opinion (do you agree?), discussion (discuss both views), advantages and disadvantages, problem and solution, and mixed. Each has a different structure, and choosing the wrong structure directly lowers Task Response.
Days 3–4: Memorise the five-paragraph skeleton: introduction (paraphrase the question + thesis), two body paragraphs (one idea each, plus explanation and example), conclusion. That is all. The exam does not reward creativity; it rewards clarity.
Days 5–6: Learn the four Task 1 types: chart or table, process, map, and (in General Training) letter. Academic Task 1 has one rule: describe, do not interpret. You are not asked why it happened, only what happened.
Day 7: The only writing this week — produce a plan for one Task 2 question, not a full essay. Ten minutes, two ideas, one example each. If you cannot produce the plan, the problem is at the thinking stage, not the writing stage.
Week 2 — write in pieces
Days 8–10: Write introductions only, three a day, five minutes each. An introduction does two things: it restates the question without copying it, and it states your position in one sentence. Candidates who copy the prompt lose both word count and marks.
Days 11–13: Write body paragraphs only. One pattern: topic sentence → explanation → concrete example. The most common failure is having no example, or opening with “for example, in my country…” and then saying something generic. The example has to be specific.
Day 14: Write your first complete Task 2 — but without timing it. The goal is still structure, not speed.
Week 3 — write against the clock
This week moves to real exam conditions.
Days 15–18: One full Task 2 a day, 40 minutes, timed. Aim for 250 words. Afterwards read your own essay and answer three questions: did I answer every part, does each paragraph carry one idea, are my examples concrete?
Days 19–21: One Task 1 a day, 20 minutes. Aim for 150 words. In charts the real skill is not reading data but deciding which data matters: the highest, the lowest, the biggest change, the striking exception. Candidates who list every number run out of time and score badly.
Week 4 — narrow your errors
Days 22–25: Keep writing, but now maintain your own error list. Most candidates repeat the same handful: articles (a/an/the), subject-verb agreement, singular versus plural, comma splices, and overusing one linker (“moreover” five times).
Days 26–28: Work on sentence variety. Every paragraph should contain at least one complex sentence (although…, while…, which…). Do not overdo it: a correct simple sentence scores higher than a broken complex one.
Day 29: A full Writing session: two tasks in 60 minutes with no break. You need to know what that fatigue feels like before exam day.
Day 30: Do not write. Read the error list you have kept for thirty days and turn it into a checklist. That is what you read on the morning of the exam.
Five mistakes that cost the most
1. Answering only part of the question. A candidate who does not give their own opinion when asked to “discuss both views and give your opinion” hits a ceiling no matter how well they write.
2. Writing under the word count. 150 words for Task 1 and 250 for Task 2 are minimums, and going under is penalised directly.
3. Stacking memorised phrases. Openings like “In this modern era of globalisation…” are recognised by examiners and lower Lexical Resource.
4. Writing without paragraphs. 250 words in one block pulls Coherence down immediately.
5. Spending time on Task 1. It looks easier, so candidates linger there and leave 25 minutes for the task that is worth double.
Where to start
Before starting the plan you need to know your current level. Measure your general English with the free level test; the result is on the CEFR scale, which maps roughly onto IELTS bands as B2 ≈ 5.5–6.5 and C1 ≈ 7–8.
The IELTS preparation pages describe what each band expects of each skill. For fees, dates and registration go straight to the official test provider — that information changes often and theirs is the only correct source.