Review your essay
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If you have taken the time to prepare and organise your thoughts clearly, the review step should be very quick. You should allocate 2 to 3 minutes to review your essay in each task.
Most students use this time to proofread their essay, and to check that their grammar, spelling and punctuation are flawless. You may even add a sentence here or there to make your points even more clear or convincing.
The primary purpose of review is to re-read your essay and check that you have written what you meant to say. This means checking that:
- Your argument flows logically.
- Your examples support your points effectively.
- Your conclusion follows naturally from what you’ve written.
It also means checking for any obvious language errors. These small errors can distract your reader and undermine the clarity of your argument, so make sure to catch them during the review stage.
During review, you might identify places where you can strengthen your essay with minor additions. Perhaps you can add a clarifying phrase, or an additional sentence that makes a connection more explicit.
However, be judicious about additions. Don’t try to introduce entirely new ideas at this stage — you won’t have time to develop them properly. Focus on polishing and clarifying what you’ve already written.
Use the review time to ensure that you’ve met the basic requirements of the task. Ask yourself the following questions:
- Have you discussed at least two comments in detail?
- Have you explored both sides of the issue?
- Have you stated a clear opinion in your conclusion?
If the answer to any of these questions is ‘no’, see if you can make quick adjustments.
However, if your planning was thorough, you shouldn’t find any serious mistakes, like fundamentally misunderstanding the core theme. Your planning will have helped you address all of these elements in your writing, and the review should simply confirm that everything is in place.
In the very unlikely event that you do find a serious error, try adding a final, coherent sentence to summarise your points and relate them in some way to the core theme. This could boost your score by a few crucial marks.
If you find you’ve approached Task A completely wrong, you definitely shouldn’t use your remaining time to rewrite your response. You need to be diligent in using your timing appropriately so that you have enough time to tackle both Task A and Task B. Focus on developing a strong essay structure and using better examples in Task B.
Walkthrough
Reviewing responses
This activity will go through common things to look out for when reviewing.