Make your sentences as clear as possible

In a bid to impress the examiner, students often write ‘complex’ sentences. Unfortunately, the clarity gets lost in this attempt. This is a huge mistake and will attract penalty.

Read the sentence given below. It was written by a student.

A specific allotted time for each schedule is often fixed in order to fetch its all beneficiaries on time, for example, a union conference at 10.00 in the morning would mean that every member on the panel should arrive on time.

As you can see, the student uses very complex sentence patterns here. Unfortunately, he does not get them right.

The first sentence, for example, can be rewritten as:

A specific time is often allotted / fixed for each event so that all attendees can be on time. OR When a specific time is fixed for an event, it means that all attendees have to be on time. For example, if a union conference is scheduled for 10 am, every member on the panel is expected to be there by that time.

Now the sentences are simpler and clearer.

These sorts of errors occur because students are often advised by their instructors to write complex sentences. But this can be counter-productive. Remember that the actual IELTS test is not the right platform to experiment with unfamiliar sentence patterns. In an important test like this, use only those patterns that you are familiar with.