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Cover of Behind the Red Pen
Writing Task 2 · Digital book

Behind the Red Pen

50 Real IELTS Essays Graded, Diagnosed, and Rewritten

HS

Hardev Singh IELTS teacher since 2012

  • Writing Task 2
  • 447 pages
  • 50 essays
  • New release

₹299$9.99CAD 13.99AUD 14.99£7.99NZD 16.99€8.99AED 39SGD 12.99 One payment, lifetime access

Read the free preview

About this book

Real student essays taken apart stage by stage, then rebuilt — so you see exactly what costs marks.

  • 50 full-length real student essays, diagnosed
  • 7-stage breakdown for every band-score tier
  • Active-recall clinic drills and sentence rewrites
  • 6-page interactive coaching spreads

Written by Hardev Singh, who has taught IELTS since 2012. About the author

Who it is for

  • You write Task 2 essays and want to see which habits cost marks, with the examiner’s feedback next to the original text.
  • You are aiming for Band 7.5 or higher in Writing.
  • You learn best from worked examples: each of the 50 essays is rewritten sentence by sentence.

What is inside

50 essays in 5 parts, 447 pages in the 6 × 9 inch print layout. The first 3 essays are free to read in the preview.

Part 1 Task Response (TR) Traps 10 essays
  1. 01 The Vanishing Thesis Free
  2. 02 The Unbalanced Scales Free
  3. 03 The Half-Answered Prompt Free
  4. 04 The Tangential Slide
  5. 05 The Sweeping Dogmatic Assertion
  6. 06 The Personal Anecdote Trap
  7. 07 The Circular Premise Loop
  8. 08 The Under-Developed Premise
  9. 09 The Symmetrical Outweigh Trap
  10. 10 The Clichéd / Abstract Solution
Part 2 Coherence & Cohesion (CC) Traps 10 essays
  1. 11 The Mechanical Linker Overdose
  2. 12 The Truncated Lead-In Breakdown
  3. 13 The Bizarre Logical Jump
  4. 14 The Obscured Abstract Reference
  5. 15 The Repetitive Sentence Frame
  6. 16 The Formulaic Internet Cliché
  7. 17 The Runaway Clause Aggregation
  8. 18 The Punctuation & Boundary Breakdown
  9. 19 The Illogical Symmetrical Balance
  10. 20 The Incongruous Concluding Summary
Part 3 Lexical Resource (LR) Traps 10 essays
  1. 21 The Forced Academic Thesaurus
  2. 22 The Pretentious Register Overreach
  3. 23 The Part-of-Speech Confusion
  4. 24 The Spoken Conversational Register Slip
  5. 25 The Invented Adverbial Cliché
  6. 26 The Categorical Confusion (Causes vs Effects)
  7. 27 The Prepositional Semantic Warp
  8. 28 The Number Slip in Reporting Frames
  9. 29 The Mangled Colloquial Idiom
  10. 30 The Incongruous Formal Phrasal Leakage
Part 4 Grammatical Range & Accuracy (GRA) Traps 10 essays
  1. 31 The Fragmented Subordinate Clause
  2. 32 The Missing Adverbial Complement
  3. 33 The Missing Main Clause Fragment
  4. 34 The Modal + Inflection Slip
  5. 35 The 77-Word Run-On Sprawl
  6. 36 The Detached Punctuation & Agreement Slip
  7. 37 The Tangled Relative Clause Heap
  8. 38 The Clause-Fused Prepositional Subject
  9. 39 The Omitted Copula & Defective Noun Phrase
  10. 40 The Broken Relative Pronoun Predicate
Part 5 Compound / Multi-Criterion Failure Modes 10 essays
  1. 41 The Unfinished Submission (Missing Paragraph)
  2. 42 The Underlength / Informal Idiom Collision
  3. 43 The Unbroken Wall of Text
  4. 44 The Severe Word Deficit & Punctuation Void
  5. 45 The Prompt Question Swap
  6. 46 The Extreme Phonetic Spelling Collapse
  7. 47 The Truncated Conclusion & Inversion Collapse
  8. 48 The Canned Template Cliché Collision
  9. 49 The Fractured Syntax & Inverted Compounds
  10. 50 The Four-Criterion Floor (Total Breakdown)

Also in the book: Master 50-Trap Diagnostic Matrix; Official Public IELTS Band Descriptors (Writing Task 2); High-Yield Topic Collocation Glossary.

A look inside Essay 01

The free preview opens with “The Vanishing Thesis”. Its sections, in order:

  1. 01 Prompt & Examiner Expectations
  2. 02 Original Candidate Submission (Band 6.0)
  3. 03 Official 4-Criteria Examiner Audit
  4. 04 Line-by-Line Breakdown & Clear Fixes
  5. 05 Complete Exemplar Rework (Band 8.5)
  6. 06 Examiner Golden Rule
  7. 07 Active-Recall Drill & Clinic Practice

A short sample

Taken from the free preview.

Welcome to Behind the Red Pen. This book is designed to show you exactly how IELTS examiners grade Writing Task 2 essays—and what you need to do to reach Band 7.5 and above.

Instead of giving you abstract grammar theory or fake memorized templates, this book analyzes 50 real student essays written under exam conditions. You will see the original student text, read the examiner’s direct feedback, see why marks were lost, and learn how to rewrite each sentence into clear, natural, high-scoring English.

From “The Examiner Briefing: Lean Quick-Start Guide”

Get this book

₹299$9.99CAD 13.99AUD 14.99£7.99NZD 16.99€8.99AED 39SGD 12.99 One payment, lifetime access

Read the free preview
  • Digital edition only. You read it online in our reader and can print it yourself. No physical copy is shipped.
  • Every book includes ₹500 off a seat in Hardev Sir’s live batch.

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