Free IELTS study resources
300+ short, practical vocabulary, grammar, and strategy guides for Reading, Listening, Writing, and Speaking — not another question bank.
Common Mistakes: Writing Task 1
A consolidated checklist of over a dozen procedural, avoidable Task 1 mistakes across both Academic and General Training, each with a concrete example and fix.
6 min readWritingCommon Mistakes: Writing Task 2
A consolidated checklist of over a dozen procedural, avoidable Task 2 mistakes, independent of raw vocabulary or grammar ability, each with a concrete example and fix.
6 min readWritingCohesion vs. Coherence, Explained Simply
Two words that sound nearly identical and are often confused — here's the genuine, practical difference between them, with worked examples of each going wrong.
6 min readWritingHow Paragraphing Affects Your Score
A structural, mechanical choice that genuinely affects Coherence & Cohesion — here's why paragraph breaks matter more than they might seem to, with a before-and-after example.
6 min readWritingUsing Synonyms Without Changing Meaning
Vocabulary variation is rewarded, but only when the substituted word means the same thing — here's how to vary vocabulary safely, with examples of synonym swaps that quietly change a claim.
6 min readWritingTask 2 Thesis Statement Writing
A focused, deeper look at the single sentence that sets up your entire essay's argument — here's how to write one that genuinely guides the reader, and how to check it against your body paragraphs.
6 min readWritingBuilding Topic Sentences That Preview the Paragraph
Most weak topic sentences aren't grammatically wrong — they simply fail to preview anything. Here's what a genuinely predictive topic sentence looks like, and why the difference matters more than it seems.
6 min readWritingUsing This App's Writing Feedback Effectively
Written feedback is easy to read passively, nod along with, and forget by the next essay — the actual value comes from tying each comment to the exact sentence it refers to, and tracking what recurs across submissions.
6 min readWritingCommon Question Words in Task 2 Prompts, and What They Actually Ask
Task 2 prompts draw from a fairly small set of recurring question patterns, but candidates frequently write a generic advantages-and-disadvantages-style essay regardless of which one actually appeared — a mismatch that damages Task Response even when the writing itself is strong.
6 min readWritingTask 2 Essay Types: Two-Part Question Essays
A distinct Task 2 essay type built around two genuinely separate questions rather than one — the structural demand it creates is different from opinion, discussion, or advantages-disadvantages essays, and treating it the same way costs marks.
7 min read