I realized I was repeating the same IELTS writing task 2 common mistakes every single essay when my teacher circled the exact same problems three weeks in a row. I kept thinking I needed better ideas, but honestly my score improved more when I fixed the basic errors that were dragging everything down.
The biggest ones for me:
- Not answering the question fully. If the prompt asks for opinion and both views, do all parts. I used to write a decent essay that still missed one part of the task.
- Memorized-sounding intro/conclusion. I thought fancy phrases would help, but they usually sounded unnatural. Simple and clear worked better.
- Bad paragraph control. One main idea per paragraph helped my coherence a lot. Before that, I was mixing causes, examples, and opinions all in one messy block.
- Examples that are too vague. I started giving short, specific examples instead of generic lines like “this affects society in many ways.”
- Grammar risks. I was trying to force complex sentences and making obvious mistakes. Better to write one clear complex sentence than five broken ones.
A small trick that helped: before writing, I spent 3 minutes doing this:
- Underline the exact task
- Choose my position
- Write 2 main ideas only
- Add 1 example for each body paragraph
Also, when checking for IELTS writing task 2 common mistakes, I read only for these 4 things at the end: task response, paragraph unity, verb tense, and article errors. That made proofreading way less random.
If anyone is stuck around band 5.5-6.5 in writing, fixing repeated mistakes is honestly more useful than chasing “advanced vocabulary” all the time.