Why Sentence Variety
Sentence Variety falls under the "Grammatical Range and Accuracy" assessment criteria of IELTS exam writing task 2.
This crteria expects following from your essay writing :
- Minimal or few errors in grammar.
- Variety or wide range of sentence structures are used accurately.
- Punctuation is well managed.
- Your errors in grammar have minimal impact on communication.
Due to our day to day communication style in writing like emails,presentations and social media like twitter/instagram, we have a habit of writing short and simple sentences. While essay writing expects you to write wide range of complex sentences.
Let's see band descriptors for Grammatical Range and Accuracy in detail. This is taken from IELTS official explanation for scoring in detail, you can download it here.
You can read more about use of a variety of complex sentence structures at IDP site here.
Different types of sentences
Following is the list of sentence types:
- Simple Sentences
- Compound Sentences
- Complex Sentences
- Passive Sentences
- Question Sentences
- Conditional Sentences
Simple Sentences
I want to go on vacation.
I need to take a leave from work.
Compound Sentence
I want to go on vacation, but I need to take a leave from work.
Complex Sentence
I did not go on vacation because I could not take leave from work.
For IELTS writing task 2, we will focus mainly on first three types in detail in next few sections.