Writing essay in IELTS and TOEFL can be a very tricky job and a challenge for many students. Understanding the question is more important. You need to understand the basics of good writing, more than that what the examiner expects form you in the essay. Understanding the question before you need to write a good introduction and a strong conclusion. Also you need to understand that paragraphing is the most important skills. Staying within the word limit is the essence of the game.
Your introduction must be 3-5 sentences and must contain a broad topic sentence, a thesis statement and your opinion with reason. Each paragraph must introduce to the reader what you intend to discuss in the para, put forth your arguments a in a coherent and cogent way. You must give examples or reasons to support your view points in each paragraph. Do not mix up things.
Writing a good paragraph is an important skills. I find many students lack on this skill. Also you need to use good resource of vocabulary. Writing a conclusion is important for getting good scores.
Remember your essays are scored based on these criteria:
- Task Achievement
- Coherence and Cogency
- Grammatical structure- error free sentence.
- Lexical Resource.