Contractions and abbreviations in academic writing.

Many test takers use contractions and abbreviations in academic writing however, though some raters will let them pass, it is important to note that using them in an academic writing can cause issues and thus may not be suitable.

One of the main reasons why contractions are not acceptable is that they make the writing less formal. Contractions are an informal way of writing, an academic writeup is a formal writing.

As for abbreviations, apart from being informal, they make the reading pretty hard most times and boring, especially when sundry are used. Look at the following sentences:

Sentence Clauses and Phrases.

Understanding sentence clauses and phrases.

IELTS writing band descriptors require the test taker to write complex sentences if they are to score higher for their grammatical range.  You need to write them grammatically correct to avoid being under-marked for cohesion and accuracy!

Clauses act as building blocks of sentences. In IELTS, a band 4 makes only "rare use of subordinate clauses" according to the public band descriptors. Thus a test taker have good use of subordinating clauses to get a higher score, so you need to understand what sentence clauses are.

What Are Articles of English?

Many test takers fail to use the articles of English well. They usually fail to understand when to use the definite article or indefinite articles. 

Articles define a noun as specific or unspecific. Look at the following examples:

The book he stole was not particularly useful.

By using the article the, we’ve shown that it was one specific book that was not particularly useful.

Omitting needless words (Verbiage)

Academic and administrative texts are often characterized by verbiage—the use of more words than are needed to express an idea.

Verbiage is usually caused by the use of needless words and the unnecessary repetition of (parts of the) meaning..

To write well, you need help in understanding and avoiding the four types of mistakes: spelling, punctuation, grammar and usage.

There are many types of writing mistakes as you will find out in this chapter.