How many words do you need to write for IELTS? The short answer is 250 for the essay and 150 for the task 1 report. This is essential information because you can lose a whole band score if you do not write enough words. If you are concerned or new to IELTS, I suggest you read through the following points.
Repeating the question
If you repeat the wording of the question, the examiner may not include those words in the final word count. What this means is that you should not take whole sentences and phrases from the question. You can borrow single words: they may well be the right word to use and it would be pointless looking for another word that was not exactly correct.
重复问题的字数不算!因此千万不要照抄整个题目~~ 除非原题中有一两个无法找其他词代替的，或者说是核心词，那么可以保留。
Let’s look at a question to see what you can and can’t do: ”Some people argue that the government should give every unemployed person a mobile phone and should make sure they have access to the Internet. They believe this is the best way of using public money to reduce the problem of unemployment. To what extent do you agree or disagree?”
Here you could of course repeat the words “government” “unemployed” “the internet” and “mobile phone”: these are simply the correct terms to use. But what you should avoid is writing ” I agree that the government should give every unemployed person a mobile phone and should make sure they have access to the internet”. This is simple copying.
Repeating yourself
In the same way, if you repeat large bits of your essay, the examiner may not count those words. The key point to remember is that it is really quality and not quantity that counts – do not repeat yourself, just to get to the word limit.
请各位烤鸭注意：大量重复自己的话，也不算在字数内!这是变相地评质量分~~试想看一篇文章从头到尾只是重复几句话，肯定不会是好文章~
All words are words
Sometimes people ask what is a word. Small words like “a” and “is” are still words. A contracted word like “isn’t” is probably going to be counted as one word and not two. Generally speaking, however, you are not going to use contracted words in your IELTS writing – with the exception of a less formal letter in General IELTS.
所有词都算数，但是雅思作文千万要杜绝缩写词，那样太不正式啦!一旦写了必扣分!
Do not waste time counting words – count lines
Time is your enemy in IELTS writing. Whatever you do, do not waste time counting all the words you have written, there are far more important things to check. Rather what you should do is to count the number of words you normally write in a line and then multiply that by the number of lines you have written. So if you normally write 12 words to the line, you need to write 23/5 lines in your essay.
时间就是生命!别在考场上一个字一个字地数了，按行来计算!
Do not write too many words – spend more time planning and checking
Some candidates write 300 words or more in their essay. There is no deduction for this, but it is not a good idea unless you are a very high quality candidate. There are no prizes for quantity, only quality. The time you spent writing the extra 30/40 words would be much better spent either planning your essay or checking and improving its quality.
写作并不是字数越多越好~如果你可以在规定时间内写到300个字以上，除非你的英语相当好!不然的话还是花点时间来组织全文或者检查错误吧!毕竟质量还是比数量重要~
A sensible target?
It’s quality not quantity that really counts. So my suggestion would be to aim for between 250-275 words in the essay and 150 – 170 words in the report. This means that you have some margin for error.
最佳安排：小作文 150-170字 大作文 250-275字
