Penalty for an underlength essay

[pudpep04]

Below is the copy of my question that I asked Ryan via email:

QUESTION:
Hi Ryan ,
I have been following your IELTS tips and bought one of your books and I thank you so much as they have helped improve my IELTS score. I am writing to you today to ask a question about an underlength essay. I have taken an IELTS test last weekend and on the writing test, Task 2, I only managed to write 240 words. The reason I didn't count the words because they already looked sufficient so I just quickly moved on to start writing on the Task 1. I only counted the words in the last 2 minutes. My question is, considering the the questions of both Task 1 and Task 2 were answered appropriately (accurate grammar, wide lexical range and proper paragraphing), how much penalty do you think it is likely going to cost me? Do you think it is going to only affect the subscores under the Task Response or is it going to affect the overall writing band score by 1 or even more?

Thank you very much for your time and I am looking forward to hearing back from you.

Kind Regards,

Fezz.

ANSWER:
Hi Fezz,

An examiner once told me that the penalty for length is actually quite mild. He said no more than 0.25 of the band for that task (not for the overall task). So this means if only one of your tasks was under the required length, you're looking at losing 0.125.

Would you mind sharing your questions to ieltsnetwork.com? Other candidates would appreciate reading them.

Good luck,
Ryan

[durai]

Hi,

I guess you may not penalize for writing a little bit less than required amount, say if write around 240 or 245, because examiners count by sentences and if that show them less , then they count each words.

Even this is only for the task response, and in that there are other criteria as well, such as covers requirement of task, appropriate tone, like you should write essay in academic style, or you need to write in informal if you write a letter to a friend, and you clearly present your ideas, then they count word length.

So I guess, the person who penalize for word length would be around 230 words.

At last, it is much better to write 260 words , so you no need to worry about this.

hope this one helps ...