Does the IELTS improve our academic writing?

I have a subjective feeling that it helps..

Dear Dr. Temsah ,

Heart-centered greetings

I used to be an international student & as you know that

IELTS or TOEFL are prerequisite steps to be enroll into the academic program. I got the required scores to be enrolled. However, I didn't fell confident in my academic writing skills until having a tailored academic writing course which was offered in my school! So, yes IELTS or TOEFL are helpful; however, you must work on advancing your academic writing skills through other feasible options!

Thank you,

V/r,

Sadeq AL-Fayyadh,PhD.

University of Baghdad,School of Nursing

Do you think that people who achieve better results in the IELTS Writing part do actually have a better academic writing experience? Not necessarily. Experience, from a broader point of view, matters.

Not really!

No due to just requirement for the Visa or universities

Generally speaking, the style of expression that researchers use to define and describe the intellectual boundaries of their disciplines and other specific areas of expertise is often labelled as academic writing. As a researcher and IELTS teacher , I personally believe that the underlying principles in IELTS writing cannot lead to a full blown style in academic writing.

لا شك أن الذي لديه تلك التجربة أفضل من غيره؛ لكنه ليس شرطا بالأساس لوجود أعمال ذائعة الصيت لم يخض أصحابها تلك التجربة.

Sure. They will at least know basic English academic essay structure necessary to succeed at a university where courses are in English.

IELTS is a test rather than a teaching protocol. To learn a language skill such as writing we need materials to direct us to that skill. A genre-based approach to teaching writing as an important skill can be one of the ways that enables learners to enter the realm of writing. It is in a genre-informed program that Problem-Solution, classification, description, argumentation, process writing, and cause and effect formats of writing can be dealt with. Although a test such as IELTS can have the so-called wash back effect, this by no means imply that the test itself causes learning. Rather, it is the teaching materials, practicing the aforementioned kinds of writing, familiarity with the structure of paragraphs, the drafting and editing procedures involved in academic writing that can eventually lead to learning the skill. Moreover, extensive reading is a key factor in improving one's writing skill, as reading extensively gives us good examples of persuasion, argumentation, description and most of the devices used in crafting and drafting what we need to communicate via writing.

Good Luck

Dr. Babak Majidzadeh (PhD)

Academic writing can improve ielts. So ielts is measurement of academic writing ability.

I agree with you dear @Dedy Setiawan, that it seems like a mutually beneficial experience.

Mutuality doesn't solve anything. A has an effect on B, and B has an effect on A. So what? Where are we? Do you want to teach/ learn writing as a language skill? Or do you want to test the ability to write which is supposed to have been gained prior to testing.

If you are searching for causality, IELTS doesn't cause the ability to write; but if you look for a relationship, well there can be a correlation between what we teach as writing (or what/how we try to learn on our own) how we teach writing, and the test we are to take.

If you teach to the test; that is, you teach A because it is included in the test but you do not teach F because it is not included in the test (although it is part of the textbook), you are in a system which is at the service of the test. On the other hand, if you sit for a test, it does not necessarily imply that you are learning part of that test (writing in your case) because of taking the test.

In summary, first teach it, learn it, deal with it; then sit for the test but not the other way round.

Dr. Babak Majidzadeh (PhD)

See this for yourself. There are lots of questions (as in IELTS) in front of you. Reading and dealing with the questions doesn't provide you with the answer. The answer resides somewhere else in your mind, which is necessarily prior to your confronting with the questions. That is, before the questions, you are supposed to have learned/known some things. And when a test is involved during or at the end of your studies, you know that part of that material is to be questioned (to be part of the test). Again, if you have the test (sum of questions) you don't have the answers unless you have studied a text (which can also have model questions) from which some questions are derived /constructed.

If you take mock IELTS and then you are taught what to study to be able to answer such questions, or you are taught how to study for the test, you can claim that I participated in a class that taught me how to answer questions in the writing section. Here, teaching comes prior to testing. Learning comes prior to testing.

But if you take a test, focus on this, where do the answers come from? The test itself? Never. The experience gained by taking the test again and again (with no answer)? Never. The ability to answer comes from the teaching and learning which is prior to the test. Therefore, just taking the IELTS does not improve academic writing, but learning the academic writing with an eye to what may be included in a future test is the key to success in not only IELTS, which is just one among many tests, but in real written academic production as well.

Thanks for reading.

Dr. Babak Majidzadeh (PhD in TEFL)

Practice, practice, practice.

I don't think so. Courses for preparation for IELTS are highly focused on exam-taking techniques which can help achieve better scores. In my opinion, this lasts for a shorter period and it can't be ascertained whether this score indicates a better academic writing experience. The key to gauging this is to consistently assess the academic writing samples of the particular candidates.

IELTS is a test of English language proficiency. Regarding writing tasks 1 (descrisptive of data-short-150 words) and taskt 2 (thesis-discursive essay-250 words), both are hopefully taught with the goal of students grasping basic academic English essay structure. So, IELTS does help if the students understand intro, body, conclusion and the 4 IELTS scoring criteria. But practice and feedback are also essential. Cheers.

I think it improves.

IELTS writing part helps to develop the cohesion, coherence and logical sequence of sentence structure which can be very effective for academic writing too.

Alongwith I stronly agree with David Bruner

Thanks

Thanks dear @Md. Saidur Rahaman for your enlightening comments!

Dear @Agnieszka Will geb. Gronek.

You are right that in scientific writing the content is more important.

However, in the IELTS academic writing experience, I found myself more focused in fluency and consistency in the manuscript writing process.

I agree with Babak Majidzadeh , Sannia Hussain , Aristidis Matsoukis

I hold this belief that your general writing style affects definitely your academic writing style. As an author, you need to keep the concentration of the readers and reviewers on your text. General writing equips you with this ability. Besides, general writing is a combination of rules and artistic creativities: novelties. IELTS is an excellent source to improve the regular part of writing and sometimes presents you some artistic writings as well.