Hi
I often get asked by IELTS candidates about whether they need to use complex sentences in their IELTS writing, and so I thought I’d use this post to explain what complex sentences are and why it is important to use them.
Complex sentences are sentences which have two or more parts called ‘clauses’ joined by words such as ‘if’, ‘when’ or ‘so that’.
To show you what I mean, here are two examples from an essay written by an IELTS candidate who used our IELTS tutoring service and got 6.5 for her writing.
- “When people immigrate to another country, they are looking for a better life…”
- “People should adopt the new culture and traditions of the country they are immigrating to so that it will be easier for them to integrate into the local community”
To see why it’s important to use complex sentences in IELTS writing, have a look below at what it says in the public version of the official IELTS descriptors for writing tasks 1 and 2:
- IELTS band score 7.0: “[Candidate] uses a variety of complex structures.”
- IELTS band score 6.0: “[Candidate] uses a mix of simple and complex sentence forms.”
As you can see, using some complex sentences in your writing can help you get an IELTS score of 6.0 or above.
To see if you use any in your writing, you could have a look back at an IELTS writing task that you’ve recently done and look for sentences like the examples above.
Have a good weekend,
Pete
See our IELTS tutoring options to find out more about how we can help you improve your English for the IELTS test.
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