Hi everyone Let's talk about formality and complexity of la | IELTS Essays Band 9 | IELTS Writing 9.0

Hi everyone

Let's talk about formality and complexity of language in IELTS essays.

Many students have the wrong approach and mindset toward the style they choose to use in their writing. I think I know why this might be the case.

In university, particularly the education and humanities fields, people have to read a lot of peer-reviewed articles and complex textbooks on subjects like psychology and general theory. The students then take the language they read from these places and consider it a model of appropriate language for their IELTS essays.
However, the fact is that the language in these articles is not normal. It is a kind of academic jargon that is designed to show off to other intellectuals. I want to give you an example of this kind of writing. Below is a quote from the opening chapter of a textbook I had to read when I did my masters degree. See if you can understand it.

"In view of the omnipresence and indispensability of the pragmatic perspective in linguistic analysis, the purpose of the present chapter, consonant with the overall goal of this book, is to argue for the necessity of complementing the semantic reading of the analyzed language material with a context-dependent pragmatic interpretation, or Gricean meaning."

My question to you is, would this kind of language be impressive for IELTS and lead to you getting a 7.
The answer is most definitely no. This is the language of academia, not the language of normal humans. Your job is to be a normal human and write in a way that a middle school student could fully understand.

I want you to think about language on a scale.
1. Informal language
- Examples: (raining cats and dogs, stuff, things, get, you, your)
2. Normal language
- Examples: (be associated with, green energy, nuclear power, language learning – natural collocations)
3. Rare language
- Examples: (ubiquitous, pragmatic, recidivism, incapacitation - words not many non-native speakers know)
4. Academia language
- Examples: To recapitulate, Ergo, consonant with - other words that many native speakers may not know)

What kind of language should you use in your essays?

The answer is 98% normal language and 2% rare. This is not an exaggeration. To get a 9, nobody would expect more than 4 or 5 rarely used words to be used naturally.
To get 7, it's absolutely fine to use only normal language. Normal language naturally includes some less common stuff because you will need topic-specifically vocabulary for the topic of your question.
If your English is very advanced, it is nice to drop in a couple of expressions that most other students don't know. These have to be used in the perfect context though, so don't take risks with this vocabulary unless you are sure of what you are doing.

Lastly, avoid all 'academia language'. It basically shows that you are trying to show off without any awareness of what standard English is.

My fear is that many students think they should be writing 'rare' level language for about 30% of their essay if they want a good score. They also think 'academia' language will impress. If this is you, please change your thinking to the formula I described.

P.s: Remember... 98% normal, 2% rare (for 8 plus).
or... 100% normal (for 7).

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