Effective techniques of brainstorming for IELTS Writing Task 2

During the process of writing the IELTS exam, many candidates often struggle with generating ideas for their essays. Therefore, many test takers wonder what the most effective techniques of brainstorming for IELTS Writing Task 2 scores are. In this article, PREP will guide you on the ways of effectively brainstorming for IELTS Writing Task 2, helping you improve your IELTS band score easily. This article is shared by the academic team at PREP, so you can trust and apply these methods to impress the strict panel of examiners!

I. Overview of effective brainstorming for IELTS Writing Task 2

Regardless of how complex the specific question of IELTS Writing Task 2 may be, it does not "stump" the writer when it comes to the general topic. You may find some topics more familiar and appealing to you (such as Education, Cities and Countryside), while others may seem unfamiliar (such as Crime, Politics).

However, all the topics used in Writing Task 2 are highly relevant to today's society. So, if you truly have no knowledge about a particular topic, the best way of brainstorming for IELTS Writing Task 2 is to read, research, and expand your knowledge.

Once you have a general understanding of all the social issues that can appear in IELTS Writing Task 2, you will never have to worry about not having any ideas to write about in an unfamiliar topic.

II. How to improve brainstorming ideas for IELTS Writing?

The key words in the writing prompt are what you need to focus on when brainstorming for IELTS Writing Task 2. Make sure you have identified the correct and essential key words to avoid going off-topic or providing inaccurate or insufficient assumptions to answer the prompt.

After identifying the key words, take them out of the context of the prompt and come up with as many ideas related to each individual word as possible. Then, select 2-3 most relevant ideas that align with the essay prompt to develop as your main arguments.

When you have identified the main points, you need to develop them further by asking yourself the simplest questions: How? (How does this lead to that?), What? (What is the thing being discussed, for example...), Why? (Why is this correct?), So? (What does this lead to, what is the solution?).

When you no longer have any doubts when reading back the paragraph you just wrote, then you have fully developed your ideas. Of course, all of these sentences must serve to answer the question of the task, but if you have accurately identified the main points in the previous step, this is almost certainly correct.

III. How to write without going off-topic?

Here, keywords play a very important role. Throughout the process of brainstorming for IELTS Writing Task 2, always ask yourself whether the idea serves to answer the question of the task, whether it is related to the topics that the key words belong to, and whether you are making assumptions or unnecessarily complicating things.

Any idea that you think is straying too far from the topic, you need to quickly discard it or provide additional information to link it back to the task, without assuming that the examiner will find that connection on their own.

When you complete brainstorming for IELTS Writing Task 2 in terms of the ideas you need to write, you just need to focus on finding the appropriate words and expressions without worrying about going off-topic anymore.

IV. What to do if you don't understand the task?

1. Sample IELTS Writing Task 2 prompt

IELTS Writing Task 2 Exam (11/12/2016): Some children do not have the ability for learning languages. Therefore, schools should not make children do that. Do you agree or disagree?

2. Approach to IELTS Writing Task 2

This is considered a relatively easy IELTS Writing task, but it can be tricky. The reason is that if you carefully read the prompt, you will not find the words "foreign languages" in it. So if you focus solely on writing and neglect exploring the aspect of "children" not having to learn “foreign languages”, you might fall into the trap of going off-topic.

However, if you don't assume that the prompt requires you to write about foreign languages, then this is considered one of the most difficult IELTS Writing tasks of the century. Therefore, to support candidates who do not fully understand the task, it is advisable to write in a way that fills in the gaps while still being correct. Please refer to the following article!

Approach to brainstorming for IELTS Writing Task 2:

• With such a difficult IELTS Writing task, you can actually refute statement 01: In fact, it is not true that children lack the ability to learn foreign languages.
• Then, you will answer statement 02: I think schools should force students to learn languages.
• In the essay, you can interweave and bridge the gap between learning languages in general and learning foreign languages specifically. Read the model answer carefully to understand this approach.

The above are some tips that PREP provides to help you improve your brainstorming for IELTS Writing Task 2 when looking at the writing prompt. PREP hopes that this article will be truly useful to you. Good luck in achieving a high IELTS band score!