Short answer: the computer test is the same exam with a keyboard — so the extra marks come from using the on-screen tools well: the live word counter, fast clean editing, and careful typing. Above all, your typing speed and accuracy decide whether you finish both tasks with time to check.
⌨️ Open Typehush and rehearse the computer Writing test →A counter sits under your answer box and updates as you type. Use it to confirm you've cleared 150 words (Task 1) and 250 words (Task 2) — but don't obsess over it mid-sentence. Glance at it when you finish a paragraph, not every line. The counter's real value is removing the guesswork that plagues the paper test: you never hand in an accidentally under-length answer, which is one of the most avoidable ways to lose marks.
You can cut, copy, paste, insert and delete freely. Use it: if a paragraph would flow better second, move it in seconds instead of rewriting. Draft a rough sentence and refine it in place. This is a genuine advantage over handwriting, where reorganising means messy crossings-out. But there is no autocorrect and no spell-check, so editing is on you — the software will happily leave every typo exactly where you put it.
On a keyboard you introduce a new class of error — transposed letters, doubled keys, dropped word endings — that you'd never make by hand. These count against your spelling and word formation under Lexical Resource. Slightly slower, clean typing usually beats fast-and-messy that you must go back and fix. Build the habit of typing steadily and correctly, so your final proofread is hunting the occasional slip, not repairing a minefield.
Spend the first few minutes of each task planning on the provided scratch paper or the on-screen note area — your position and two body ideas for Task 2, your overview and groupings for Task 1. Typing straight into the answer box without a plan leads to wandering paragraphs you then waste time restructuring. A minute of planning makes you type faster, because you're transcribing decisions already made rather than thinking and typing at once.
Split it 20 minutes Task 1, 40 minutes Task 2, each including planning and checking. Task 2 is worth twice as much, so protect its time. Keep an eye on the on-screen countdown, and if Task 1 runs past 22 minutes, move on. Reserve the last 3–5 minutes of each task purely for checking — on a screen it's easy to keep writing until the clock runs out and never proofread, which leaves easy marks on the table.
A useful mental model is to run each task in three phases with rough time caps: plan, write, check. For Task 2 that's about 5 minutes planning, 30 writing, and 5 checking. Watching the on-screen countdown against those phase caps — rather than just the total remaining — keeps you honest. If you're still on your first body paragraph at the 20-minute mark of Task 2, you know immediately to pick up the pace, instead of discovering the problem when there's no time left to fix it.
Every tip above assumes you can type fast enough to finish. If you can't, none of them help — an unfinished, under-length Task 2 caps your Task Response regardless of how well you used the tools. So the highest-value preparation is building typing speed and accuracy on real essay text. Practising by typing full model essays under a timer, with a visible word counter, trains the tools, the pacing, and the speed together — which is exactly what the computer Writing test rewards.
⏱ Test your typing speed — can you finish Task 2 in 40 minutes? →No. There is no spell-check or autocorrect, so you are fully responsible for your own spelling. Reserve time to proofread every answer.
Yes. You can cut, copy, paste, insert and delete freely, which makes reorganising paragraphs far quicker than on the paper test.
Glance at it when you finish a paragraph to confirm you have cleared 150 words for Task 1 and 250 for Task 2, rather than watching it constantly.
Typing fast and accurately enough to finish both tasks with time to check. Without that, the other tips cannot rescue an unfinished answer.
Typehush — practise typing high-band IELTS model essays for the computer-based Writing test. Start practising · Model-essay library · What to expect · How fast should you type?