IELTS • Writing Band 6-7 2026-05-19

IELTS Writing Grammar Accuracy Under Time Pressure

Apply a five-point accuracy checklist to catch the errors that consistently hold scores below Band 7.

What this lesson covers

Grammatical Range and Accuracy (GRA) is worth 25% of your IELTS writing score. Under exam conditions, most errors are not caused by not knowing a rule — they are caused by writing faster than your editing can keep up. The fix is not to slow down overall, but to build a five-point accuracy checklist you apply automatically to every paragraph before moving on.

Examples

Weak

Many people they use social media every day and this is affect their mental health. Government need to make law to control the social medias.

Stronger

Many people use social media daily, and this habit has measurable effects on mental wellbeing. Governments should introduce regulatory frameworks to manage the sector more responsibly.

The weak version has five errors: double subject (“people they”), wrong verb form (“is affect”), missing article (“the mental health” should be “mental health”), subject-verb agreement (“Government need”), and incorrect plural (“the social medias”). All five are fixable with a checklist scan that takes 30 seconds.

How It Works

Core patterns

Pattern	Meaning / Use	Example
Subject-verb check	One subject. No repeated pronoun. Verb agrees in number.	Correct: "The number of applicants has increased." Error caught: "The number of applicants have increased."
Article check	"The" for specific/known nouns; no article for general plurals and uncountable nouns	"Education is important." (not "The education") / "The education system needs reform." (specific)
Verb form check	After auxiliary verbs (has, does, will, should), use base form or past participle — not gerund	"This affects..." not "is affect." "Should introduce..." not "should introducing."
Countable/uncountable check	Uncountable nouns have no plural: information, advice, evidence, research, equipment	"The research shows..." not "The researches show." "No advice is..." not "No advices are."
Sentence boundary check	Every sentence has one subject and one main verb. No fused sentences.	"The policy failed. It did not account for regional variation." (two clean sentences)

Use this when

At the end of each paragraph — scan once before moving to the next.
In the final two minutes — one full-essay scan for the five points above.
When you notice you have written a long sentence — check it has only one main clause.

Common Mistakes

Avoid	Prefer	Why
”The informations are not enough to make a decisions."	"The information is insufficient to support a definitive conclusion."	"Information” and “decision” are uncountable and countable respectively. “Information” has no plural; “a decision” needs no “s” after “a”.
”Many peoples think that the government should do something."	"Many people believe the government should intervene."	"People” is already plural — no “s”. Also: “do something” is too vague; name the action.
”This is very importance issue."	"This is a critically important issue."	"Importance” is a noun; “important” is the adjective. “Very” with an adjective needs “very important,” not “very importance.”

Practice Lab

Self-mark each task. Retry until every answer is correct.

Score: 0/3

1. Quick pick

Which sentence is grammatically correct?

2. Build it

Put the sentence in the correct order.

Tap a chunk to move it between the bank and answer area.

3. Sort it

Sort each sentence: grammatically correct or contains an error?

The evidence suggests that investment in early education produces long-term economic benefits.

Many peoples they think that the government they should make more laws.

Access to affordable healthcare remains a challenge in rural communities.

The informations are very important for the researches we are doing.

Why It Matters

GRA accounts for 25% of your Task 2 score and is equally weighted in Task 1. The five-point checklist in this lesson targets the errors that appear most often in Band 5-6 scripts. Eliminating these does not require advanced grammar knowledge — it requires 30 seconds of focused editing after each paragraph. Most test-takers skip this step entirely.

Get targeted corrections and a practical improvement plan.

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