IELTS Writing: How To Write A Good Conclusion For Your IELTS Essay

Being able to write a good conclusion paragraph is a skill that most IELTS candidates are unaware of and is an important skill to master. Having a good conclusion can help to prove to the examiner that your score should be more than what they initially decided it should be. However, a poor conclusion can have the quite opposite effect. In this article, we will take a look at all the aspects that need to be included in a good conclusion.

What Should A Good Conclusion Include

In order to write a good conclusion, you need to know what to include and what to avoid in order to write a high scoring essay.

A good conclusion will:

Why Is A Good Conclusion Important

It's important for both the task achievement and cohesion criteria. It serves to summarise the contents of the essay and to emphasise the main opinion of the writer.

Some Tips To Write A Good Conclusion

Here are some tips about what to include in your conclusion, in order to make it an effective one. Firstly your conclusion should refer back to your introduction paragraph. The introduction paragraph is basically just a paraphrase of the question statement, and the first sentence of your conclusion (the summary sentence) will be a paraphrase of your introduction. Therefore your introduction and conclusion are always closely linked.

Once you have done this you should summarise the main points of your essay but remember to do this in a way that does not repeat the same vocabulary of phrases that you used in your main body paragraphs. This will signal to the examiner that you have a wide enough vocabulary for the task. Your summary should only include the main ideas and not any supporting ideas or examples, as this will make your conclusion too long and/or confusing.

The last sentence of your conclusion should either be a recommendation sentence or a prediction sentence.

A prediction is a statement about what you think will happen in the future.

A recommendation is a statement about what you think should happen in the future.

Do not add any new points in your conclusion, especially those that could have been added into the main body paragraphs. Remember your conclusion is meant to round up your arguments and emphasise your main opinion. Therefore, it is definitely not the time it introduces new arguments.

Let’s look at how to put these tips into action. Below is a sample IELTS question along with a model introduction and conclusion paragraph. Notice how both the introduction and the conclusion contain phrases that paraphrase the main question statements

For Example:

Some people believe that technology has made our lives too complex and the solution is to lead a simpler life without technology. To what extent do you agree or disagree?

Introduction:

There are those who feel that technology has negatively impacted our lives by overcomplicating them and believe that we should eliminate it from our lives. This essay argues that in fact, quite the opposite is true since improved technology has actually made our lives simpler and has greatly improved our quality of life.

Conclusion:

In conclusion, I totally disagree with the opinion that we should turn away from technology because it overcomplicates our lives. We should rather learn to use technology wisely, as it has become an invaluable tool in almost every aspect of our lives.