Hopefully you know that during your IELTS writing exam, you should be writing formally. Today we are looking at one way to do this by not using pronouns too often.
What are pronouns?
These are the pronouns that are not considered academic.
Personal pronouns: I / you / we
In a formal, academic style, you need to find other ways to use these words.
It is very common to see IELTS writing, where the introduction looks something like this.
“There are strong arguments to be made in support of the [topic], as I will now explain.”
This can be changed to remove the phrase ‘I will now explain.’ You just need to use the passive
“There are strong arguments to be made in support of the [topic], as will now be explained.”
When expressing a point of view you want to use a personal pronoun, but you should try not to.
“I think that the government should support taking care of old people instead of leaving it to individual families.”
“To a large extent, I am in favour of the statement that smoking should be banned.”
Although you are grammatically correct if you use these sentences, it is more academic to give your opinions with a detached perspective.
“It would perhaps be more effective if [Opinion].”
“To a large extent, there is a strong argument to be made supporting the [Opinion].”
You should definitely be supporting your points with examples, but you still need to avoid personal pronouns even if they are personal examples.
“My friend is a teacher, he thinks the summer holiday is the best part of the job. It helps reduce his stress and unwind after a long school year.”
As a rule, if you are using a pronoun to give an example, then rephrase it to a general subject. In the example above, the writer could have been more general instead of writing about a friend.
“By not having a summer holiday and having year round school, teachers will become overtired without the opportunity to recharge.”
In the conclusion
Here you are often summarising what you have written, and probably making a recommendation.
You need to take care with using personal pronouns though.
“As we can see the issue of attending school every month of the year is not a simple one. To conclude, we should conduct research into whether it will be beneficial for our future generations.”
Again, it would be a lot better to make these points using the passive.
“As can be seen the issue of attending school every month of the year is not a simple one. To conclude, research should be conducted into whether it will be beneficial for future generations.”
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