The Influence of Single-Clause Sentences on IELTS Writing Task 2 Band Score

This research aims to investigate the frequencies of single-clause sentences (SS) and multi-clause sentences (MS) used by IELTS test-takers in writing task 2 and the relationship between their use of single-clause sentences and band score in this section. The researcher used the descriptive comparative research design and the quantitative method design with convenient sampling with fifty (50) sample essays mainly sourced from the set of Cambridge English IELTS Academic books. After collecting the data, the researchers analyzed the data using statistical and descriptive analysis. The result shows that the percentages of single-clause and multi-clause sentences in the range between 0 and 6.0 bands are relatively equal. On the other hand, these percentages in the range of 6.5-9.0 have a significant difference. Additionally, the results of Pearson Correlation Analysis show that the frequency of single-clause sentences has an insignificant negative relationship with the IELTS writing task 2 band score. Therefore, IELTS writing task 2 compositions with more single-clause sentences are potentially graded with a lower band score.


Introduction
The evolution and distribution of any high-quality test necessitate suitable systems for producing the test as well as administering and evaluating it continuously. In response to this belief, the revision of the International English Language Testing System (IELTS) includes four determinants: theoretical foundation, administrative issues, practical perspectives, and technological breakthroughs. Experiencing a number of years, IELTS has witnessed an uninterrupted increase in the number of candidates worldwide. According to IELTS (2019), it was recorded that around 3.5 million individuals were taking this test. This test result potentially aligns with demonstrating numerous of candidates' language-related spheres, including English knowledge, necessary skills for achieving higher education, professional situations, real-life contexts. Specifically, James Shipton, Head IELTS, British Council, states that this test offers a gateway for its candidates to accomplish their aspirations such as pursuing their target tertiary institutions, kickstart their profession, or migrating to their dream country (IELTS, 2019). Unquestionably, not only students but adults also consider IELTS as a compelling opportunity related to their target. Therefore, candidates tend to attempt to achieve a high band score in each skill.
The writing section is generally regarded as the most difficult ones in the IELTS test because of its complicated requirements. Writing has been proven to be a complicated skill (Tran and Nguyen, 2021). To be more specific, students' writing in English as a foreign language may have difficulties in grammar, structures of arguments due to the fact that different language seems to have different ways of organizing ideas and arguments (Hyland, 2013, as cited in Ndoricimpa & Barad (2021). According to Tran and Nguyen (2021), writing requires students to think critically about the process of writing, including task responses, coherence and cohesion, lexical resources, and grammar range and accuracy acquired via language exposure.
As a result, producing an essay including an indicated style is never an easy feat for any candidate. Indeed, they have to think about spelling mistakes, genres, grammar, and etc. In this respect, grammar seems to be the most important dimension that test-takers need to understand because it possibly reflects the meaning of their writing. Veit (1986) mentions that grammar includes principles or rules forming an unlimited number of sentences out of a constrained number of words. Quirk (1985) assumes that a sentence is "the highest-ranking unit of grammar." Besides, the types of sentences that test-takers employ in their writing are also important to analyze their ability to construct sentences.
Apparently, sentence types align with grammatical requirements in both academic writings. Concerning IELTS, Tran (2016) reports that candidates often find it challenging to construct sentences and paragraphs, which are indispensable components in Task 2. As a result, sentence types may affect their band score in this task.
There are currently plenty of articles addressing learners' use of types of sentences in academic essays. However, research on the types of sentences used by candidates in IELTS writing task 2 is scant. Since this problem can be identified in a detailed manner, this study is of relevance to this standardized test. Henceforth, this paper is expected to investigate the frequencies of single-clause sentences and multi-clause sentences used by IELTS test-takers in writing task 2 and indicate whether sentence types related to grammar requirements in IELTS writing task 2 affect the test takers' band score. Thanks to that, the test takers can receive useful suggestions on this aspect in their performance, and the IELTS trainers can adopt practical suggestions to ameliorate their learners' composition.

Overview of IELTS
IELTS was first released in 1976 and introduced in 1980 by the British Council. In 1989, it was regarded as a course requirement in English-speaking countries. This test is reliable to evaluate test takers' English proficiency with a 0-9 band scale (IELTS, n.d.).
IELTS offers two test modules for candidates to choose from general training and academic. All test takers join the same Listening and Speaking Modules but have different Reading and Writing Modules choices. The Academic Reading and Writing Modules assess whether a test taker is appropriate for studying with the medium of English at the tertiary level. The General Training Reading and Writing Modules emphasize communication skills in social and educational contexts.
Despite being administered mainly by the University of Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate (UCLES), IELTS can be supervised by the approved centers to administrate the test and guarantee the provision of well-trained examiners. The examination is co-owned by the British Council, IDP, and Cambridge Assessment English (IELTS, n.d.) and is taken place in 120 countries across the world. Therefore, Uysal (2009) states that IELTS is one of the most prevailing tests.

IELTS Writing Task 2
There are two distinct tasks in the IELTS academic writing test. The overall band score, which is more heavily weighted towards task 2, evaluates the test takers' ability to produce a discursive composition to respond to an open-ended prompt with eligible style, register, structure, and content. An IELTS academic writing test includes two tasks. Moore and Morton (2005) elaborate that the overall band score is more heavily weighted towards Writing Task 2, which assesses a candidate's ability to write a discursive composition in response to an open-ended prompt, using appropriate content, style, register, and organization. Specifically, Cullen (2017) explains that IELTS writing task 2 provides candidates a topic and a question to require them to express relevant perspectives on the matter formally. As aforementioned from Uysal's view (2009), learning writing is complex and difficult. Accordingly, this task is believed to be a challenging one for candidates. It necessitates their background knowledge about social issues to accomplish flying colors (Wilson, 2010). Moreover, the time constraint, unpredictable topics, or idiosyncratic affective factors impede their performance.

Four writing criteria
With regards to assessment, candidates' writing production is marked in compliance with the band descriptors by well-trained examiners. There are four criteria for assessing: task achievement, coherence and cohesion, lexical resource, and grammatical range and accuracy (UCLES, 2004). In this case, each criterion is described on a 0-9 scale that can denote specific abilities of the test takers. As can be seen from the writing band score description, a candidate's essay is graded based on four criteria: task response, coherence and cohesion, lexical resource, 26 and grammatical range and accuracy.
To be explained, task achievement pertains to how the candidates construct and state their position to respond to the given topic by releasing relevant perspectives and examples; however, they are required to ensure the essay length (Bagheri & Riasati, 2016). According to IELTS Consulting (n,d), 25% of the score is because of task response in the writing test. This refers to completing the given task, including all the minute details specified in the question prompt. In order to score well for task response, the candidate should first understand the given question properly to decide the main idea behind the question and the main theme of the essay. Second, candidates have to use relevant examples. Every question should be supported with relevant examples and supporting evidence in order to score well for task response. Finally, another important aspect of the response is letting the reader know about candidates' opinions in the essay. Some of the essay types require an opinion directly, but they are not required to give their own opinions for the other essays.
Next, coherence and cohesion criteria generally refer to how examinees establish their essays (UCLES, 2004). Specifically, coherence assesses how the ideas are linked inextricably while cohesion aligns with test takers' ability to use cohesive devices (e.g., in conclusion, however, moreover). According to E2 Test Prep (n,d), coherence simply means "structure" -paragraph and essay structure, so to get a high score in Coherence and Cohesion, candidates' essays should follow a certain structure. On the other hand, cohesion means "flow", which means how well the ideas follow from one to the next with the seamless and logical transition. Another way to connect ideas is to use linking words. However, it is not advised to include more than two of these kinds of words in a paragraph. Overusing linking words will bring the coherence and cohesion band score down. Cullen (2017) summarizes that these criteria, including task achievement, coherence, and cohesion, necessitate the candidates to write a formal 250-word essay with supporting arguments, logical organization of paragraphs, rational explanations, and clear examples.
According to Magoosh Blog (n,d), the third criterion is Lexical resource, which means candidates' ability to use a wide range of vocabulary without errors and appropriately in the proper context. This criterion aims to check whether candidates have good enough vocabulary to paraphrase the information in their written text properly. The examiners usually look at the candidate's range and accuracy of vocabulary and see how well words are used to express the thought and ideas as well.
Apart from these criteria, sentence types belong to the fourth one, grammatical range and accuracy, which requires test takers to diversify their sentence structures without grammar and punctuation mistakes. This criterion takes 25% of the overall writing mark. This means that not only does the grammar used correctly, it also has to be varied.
Although types of sentences are a small part of the criteria for assessing an IELTS writing essay, it matters that most IELTS takers have a concern about what types of sentences are advised for them to use and with what frequency is considered to be good. Thus, this paper concerning the types of sentences used in IELTS task 2 is expected to examine the impact of this criterion on candidates' band scores.

Definition of Sentence
A sentence pertains to a sequence of words communicating the writer's one or more ideas. Winter (1999) states that clauses in each sentence can express these ideas. Fleming (2006) supplements that a sentence consists of at least one clause with at least one subject and one finite verb. In this respect, independent clauses and dependent clauses are two remarkable ones in sentences. Independent clause, which includes the main subject and verb, can stand alone as a complete grammatical item, like a single-clause sentence. On the other hand, an extra element changes the independent clause into a dependent one; therefore, the dependent clause has to be linked with the independent one, like a multi-clause sentence. In short, a sentence turns out to be a basic unit of thought in English grammar that contains at least a subject and verb.

Sentence Components
In each sentence, subject and predicate appear as two main components which are necessary for the present researchers to take into account. First, the subject, which refers to the person, place, or thing performing the action of the sentence, is the representative of what or whom in the sentence. A subject can be a noun or pronoun along with modifying words, even phrases or clauses. Second, a predicate relates to a word or a group of words that normally follows the subject. The predicate, which shows the action or being within the sentence, contains the verb and modifying words, phrases, or even clauses.

Types of English Sentences
There are four types of sentences, including simple, compound, complex, and compoundcomplex sentences (Oshima & Hogue, 2007).
A simple sentence includes subjects, verbs, and other optional elements such as objects, adverbs, etc. A simple sentence has some remarkable patterns, such as subject-verb-verb and subject-subject-verb-verb. For instance, the sentence "Customers often search for the best deals and make purchases on Web-based shops" relates to the first pattern. The sentence "Tom and Marry usually search for the best deals and make purchases on Web-based shops" relates to the second pattern. Apparently, a simple sentence can include a compound subject and predicate as long as these belong to an independent clause.
A compound sentence is constituted by two or more independent clauses that are joined by other elements, namely, coordinators, conjunctive adverbs, and semicolons (;). Therefore, this type of sentence contains at least two full predications as independent clauses. There are some noticeable coordinators such as for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so and several common conjunctive adverbs such as furthermore (addition), accordingly (result), however (concession). For example, the sentence "Most of the customers prefer to making purchases online; the rest is in favor of traditional purchasing model" includes the semicolon. The sentence "Youngsters are into making purchases online, so they are often considered as big spenders" includes a coordinator.
A complex sentence is composed of one independent clause and at least one dependent clause. These clauses are in relation thanks to subordinators (e.g., after, although, because, unless, when) and relative pronouns (e.g., who, which, that). In this case, dependent clauses play roles as a noun, adjectives, or adverbs. This sentence, "Soon after her favorite online store opened, Marry made a purchase on a pair of trendy shoes," exemplifies a complex sentence with subordinators. Obviously, while the main clause or independent possesses a complete meaning, the subordinate or dependent clause has an incomplete one. However, both need to be connected together in order to convey the sentence's meaning.
A compound-complex sentence includes at least three clauses, at least two of which are independent ones. Needless to say, this sentence type is combined by both compound and complex sentences by the connection of coordinators, subordinators, and comma. For example, "Numerous citizens make purchases online on a daily basis, but countryside habitats prefer going to traditional grocery stores because they are able to directly observe what they buy". There is a coordinator "but" shows contrast, and it is also followed by coordinator "because" shows the reason in this sentence; besides, a comma is used before "but" to segment the long sentence.

Types of Sentences in This Study
As aforementioned, this study aims to discover the relationship between the single-clause sentences and the IELTS writing task 2 band score. Therefore, there are two main types of sentences: single-clause sentence (SS) and multi-clause sentence (MS). Specifically, singleclause sentences refer to a sentence including only one independent clause, and multi-clause sentences pertain to a sentence with the combination of at least one independent clause and one dependent clause.

Review of Related Findings
A number of existing studies have investigated the types of sentences in students' composition; consequently, they have also yielded valuable insights into this paper's purposes. In a comparative study, Demirezen (2013) discovers the ability of 35 English-majored freshmen at low intermediate levels to discriminate the four main types of sentences. The participants take a pre-test of 20 multiple-choice questions as an initial measurement, then they receive an intense two-week-six hours of treatment teaching, and finally implement a post-test. In the result section, the study presents that the mean score of the pre-test is 23% and that of the post-test comes up to be 56 %. Accordingly, he concludes that redial teaching treatment promotes the students' performance to identify simple, compound, complex sentences, and compoundcomplex sentences. Above all, the researcher indicates that lower-intermediate students usually struggle with recognizing types of sentences, which is at the expense of their inappropriate or misunderstandable ideas.
Likewise, Handayani (2019) also shares this school of thought in his descriptive qualitative study exploring the sentence structure in academic articles of 60 students. There are four noticeable results shown. First, half of the participants are not able to produce clear sentences. Next, two-thirds of them do not make a clear connection between the main clause and the subordinate one. Third, most of them seem to struggle with varying their use of sentences. Finally, the same number of participants are hindered from structuring their academic paragraphs. Therefore, the researcher states that the most remarkable difficulty of the students in academic writing pertains to their reiterated use of sentence types.
Regarding the compound-complex sentence, Rahma et al. (2021) conduct descriptive research to examine whether the students are able to formulate this type. The researchers use the cluster sampling technique to recruit 30 English-majored sophomores as their participants and their essays to identify the number of compound-complex sentences. Besides, they also grade the quality of the students' production with a 4-level scale from poor to excellent. The results show that most students are relatively adept at constructing compound-complex sentences. However, there are several remarkable difficulties they encounter. First, they tend to not merely remove the comma before coordinators (e.g., and, but) but also the subject after these connectors to structure the second sentence. The researchers conclude that the students are occasionally unaware of the structural properties of compound-complex sentences, which harm their correct production of this sentence type. Therefore, they suggest that students had better receive deeper discussion on types of sentences to apply these in their essay as well as more tasks for them to practice on their own.
Additionally, in a quantitative study conducted by Sukandi and Merina (2017), the researchers examine the frequencies of four sentence types in 71 paragraphs belonging to five writing genres: process, argumentative, descriptive, cause-effect, and comparison-contrast. The finding presents that simple sentences turn out to attract the students' interest in utilizing most. Besides, they figure out that the EFL students encounter constructing their sentences and making prominent mistakes due to their deficiency of practicing. Similarly, Saragih et al. (2020) investigate the frequencies of four sentence types used by female and male writers in their abstracts of the journal articles. The researchers collected 20 abstracts from 20 writers of both genders and compared the number of four sentence types. The results show that both genders prioritize employing simple sentences in their writing production; however, they seem not to express their interest in compound-complex sentences. Besides, the researchers discern that there is no noticeable relationship between gender and frequencies of sentence types. Nonetheless, women seem to simplify their writing which is characterized by debilitation with expressions of gratitude, whereas men tend to seek position, powerfulness, supremacy, and their style is linked with strong and constant assertations.
Although there has been a substantial source of studies investigating the types of sentences in students' composition in academic context, it lacks works regarding types of sentences in IELTS test takers' compositions in writing task 2. Accordingly, this paper is carried out to contribute to this gap.

Research Questions
The purposes of this study are to investigate the frequencies of single-clause sentences and multi-clause sentences used by IELTS test-takers in writing task 2 and the relationship between their use of single-clause sentences and band score in this section. In order to accomplish these aims, this paper is expected to answer two research questions: 1/ What are the frequencies of single-clause sentences and multi-clause sentences in IELTS writing task 2 written by the candidates? 2/ Is there a relationship between the use of single-clause sentences and IELTS writing task 2 band score?

Pedagogical Setting & Participants
The object of this research is 50 IELTS writing task 2 compositions written by candidates. They are graded and added in Cambridge English IELTS Academic books as writing samples. The Cambridge English IELTS Academic books are a series of books published by Cambridge University Press at regular intervals. They contain IELTS sample tests which are a good practice for IELTS learners to use as a reliable source for practicing. The researchers collected these graded samples from the set of Cambridge English IELTS Academic books from version 1 to the newest oneversion 16. The compositions were graded, ranging from band 3.5 to 8.0. The details of these compositions are listed in the chart 1 below:

Design of the Study
The study is conducted to find out (1) the difference in the frequencies of using single-clause sentences (SS) and multi-clause sentences (MS) by IELTS candidates according to the writing band score; (2) discover whether there is any relationship between the number of single-clause sentences and the writing band score.
The design applied in this research is descriptive comparative and quantitative analysis methods. To address research question 1, the researchers used descriptive comparative to describe how different IELTS candidates use single-clause sentences and multi-clause sentences in their compositions according to the writing band score and make a comparison between the two usages to see the difference in the way of using single-clause sentences and multi-clause sentences of candidates. Besides, to find the answer to research question 2, the researchers decided to use the quantitative method design with the help of SPSS software to find the correlation between the two variables. As mentioned in Creswell (2005), correlative is used to determine whether the relationship between 2 variables is positive, negative, or neutral. That is, if 2 variables, say X, and Y are directly proportional, inversely proportional, or are not related to each other.

Data collection & analysis
Describing the procedure of the study, tools, and methods of analysis to respond to the research questions. This research used a checklist as the instrument. To collect the data, the researchers used the documentation method. The researchers read the sample first. Then, the researchers divided 50 compositions into 2 categories in which one is smaller or equal to band 6.0 (including 25 compositions), and the other is above band 6.0 (including 25 compositions). Next, researchers began to identify and count the number of single-clause sentences and multi-clause sentences used in compositions by candidates. The data were then put on a table with a column for each type of sentence. Finally, all data were put on the checklist tables to calculate the total number of each type of sentence and the total number of sentences in the composition as well. After collecting the data, the researchers analyzed the data by using statistical and descriptive analysis. First, the data was put into the percentage by the formula formed by the researchers for each category: In which, PSS: the percentage of single-clause sentences PMS: the percentage of multi-clause sentences NSS: total number of single-clause sentences 32 NMS: total number of multi-clause sentences NS: total number of sentences Next, the researcher compared the PSS and PMS calculated in the previous stage to figure out the frequencies of using single-clause sentences and multi-clause sentences of IELTS candidates. Moreover, the researchers also found out the difference in using two types of sentences in two writing band score categories by making a comparison between the percentage of single-clause sentences and multi-clause sentences used in compositions divided by band score.
Furthermore, to see if there is any significant relationship between the number of single-clause sentences and the writing band score, the researchers applied the software SPSS to run the bivariate Pearson Correlation. The researchers began to interpret the findings from the output by examining the correlation coefficient r and the p-value. Finally, the researchers came to a conclusion about the relationship between the number of single-clause sentences and the writing band score.

Results/Findings and discussion
This section aims to present the findings of this research as scientific results. The collected data were calculated by the formula and analyzed by SPSS.21. According to data analysis, the general findings in line with the research questions are presented below: 1. What are the frequencies of different types of sentences in IELTS writing task 2 written by candidates? The table above displays the information of numbers and percentages of the two types of sentences which are single-clause sentences and multi-clause sentences, used in 25 IELTS writing task 2 compositions written by candidates. All these 25 compositions are graded by IELTS judges with the range from 0 to 6.0 band. As one can understand from the table, there are 171 single-clause sentences and 219 multi-clause sentences in 390 total sentences. The table also provides data of the percentages of single-clause sentences and multi-clause sentences after making calculations, showing that the percentages of single-clause sentences are 43.8% and 56.2%. The table above demonstrates the numbers and percentages of the single-clause and multiclause sentences used in 25 IELTS writing task 2 compositions written by candidates. All these 25 compositions are graded by IELTS judges and categorized in the range from 6.5 to 9.0 band by the researchers. There are 99 single-clause sentences and 284 multi-clause sentences in 383 total sentences from the table. The table also shows that the number of single-clause sentences accounts for 25.8% and that of multi-clause sentences contributes a big proportion of 74.2%.
As can be seen from the two tables, after making calculations by using the formula mentioned above, the researchers had the results of the frequencies of the two types of sentences in the two categories divided beforehand. The percentages of single-clause and multi-clause sentences in the range between 0 and 6.0 bands are relatively equal with 43.8% and 56.2%, respectively. On the other hand, these percentages in the range of 6.5-9.0 have a significant difference. While there are 284 multi-clause sentences out of 383 sentences in total, which accounts for up to 74.2%, this percentage of single-clause sentences is just 25.8%, with 99 single-clause sentences out of the total number of sentences. Moreover, the two tables also show that with the same number of 25 compositions in both two categories, the number of total sentences of two categories is rather the same, which has 390 sentences in the range of 0 to 6.0 band and 383 sentences in the range of 6.5 to 9.0 band. Nevertheless, in spite of having nearly the same number of total sentences, there is a remarkable division in the use of single-clause sentences and multi-clause sentences between the two categories, which can be clearly recognized from the number of each type of sentence or from their percentage number as well.

Is there a relationship between the use of single-clause sentences (SS) and IELTS writing task 2 band score?
In terms of the second research question, the researchers began to conduct data analysis with the main support of the software SPSS.21. The use of single-clause sentences and multi-clause sentences in the data set of 50 IELTS writing task 2 compositions are presented in Table 3. According to the findings, the entire data set has a sum of 774 sentences with a mean sentence value of 15.48 per composition and a standard deviation of 5.23. The table also shows that the longest composition has 40 sentences, and the shortest composition has 11 sentences. Multi-clause sentences appear to be the most frequently used sentence type, with a sum of 504 and a mean of 10.06 (SD= 2.85). The fewest number of multi-clause sentences in a composition is 4, and the greatest number of multi-clause sentences in a composition is 18. Single-clause sentences produce a sum of 270, a mean of 5.4, 34 and a standard deviation value of 4.71. Similarly, the fewest number of single-clause sentences in a composition is 0, and the highest number of single-clause sentences in a composition is 28. Table 4. Distribution of IELTS writing task 2 band score within the data set (N=50) Score The score distributions for the IELTS writing task 2 compositions in the data set are displayed in Table 4. The table shows that the data set has a mean score of 5.75 with a standard deviation of 1.44. When frequencies and percentages are broken down according to scores, it is seen that the score of 7.0 has the highest percentage (22%) with a frequency of 11. The band score of 5.5, 6.0, and 7.5 are the second-highest percentage (14%) with a frequency of 7. The scores with lowest frequencies are 3.5 (with % = 2, f = 1) and 4.5 (with % = 2, f = 1) according to the findings. The relationship between the frequency of single-clause sentences used in the set of data and the IELTS writing task 2 band score is shown in these two following tables, which are the results of bivariate Pearson Correlation conducted via the software SPSS.21.  Table 5 shows that the mean score of single-clause sentences is 5.40, and the standard deviation is 4.716. In terms of the band score, the mean score is 6.21, and the standard deviation is 1.191. Table 6. Correlation findings of IELTS writing task 2 band score and the frequency of singleclause sentences. The results of Pearson Correlation Analysis show that the correlation between single-clause sentences and band score is -.397. The significance level to three decimal places is .004. This means that the significance level is less than 0.05. It can be concluded that the frequency of single-clause sentences has an insignificant negative relationship with the IELTS writing task 2 band score (r = -.397, p <0.05). In other words, IELTS writing task 2 compositions with more single-clause sentences are likely to have a lower band score.

Discussion
First, to investigate the frequencies of single-clause sentences and multi-clause sentences used by IELTS test-takers in writing task 2. Hence, the first research question -What are the frequencies of single-clause sentences and multi-clause sentences in IELTS writing task 2 written by the candidates?was formulated. Using the formula to figure the percentage of each sentence type shows that multi-clause sentences account for a remarkable amount in the collected IELTS compositions with the range from 0 to 6.0 band and from 6.5 to 9.0, especially the latter range include around three-fourths of this sentence type. However, this result seems not to share the conclusions with Saragih et al. (2020) and Sukandi and Merina (2017). They indicate that composers evince their interest in the simple sentence, single clause sentence in academic writing.
Second, to indicate whether sentence types related to grammar requirements in IELTS writing task 2 affect the test takers' band score. The second research question -Is there a relationship between the use of single-clause sentences and IELTS writing task 2 band score? -was posted. By analyzing Pearson Correlation, the correlation between single-clause sentences and band score is -.397, and the significance level is less than 0.05. These results indicate that IELTS writing task 2 compositions with more single-clause sentences are likely to have a lower band score. Likewise, these compositions are not diversified with sentence types. Similarly, Demirezen (2013) concludes that lower-intermediate students usually struggle with recognizing types of sentences. They tend to produce single-clause sentences despite their desire for multiclause ones. Handayani (2019) supports this disposition that most writers seem to struggle with varying their use of sentences.
Based on the rubric, there is one criterion related to types of sentences which IELTS test-takers are suggested to use a variety of grammar structures. From that, it is clear that type of sentences is one of the grammatical criteria that IELTS examiners take into account to mark IELTS compositions Upon the result of the study, it is suggested that IELTS test-takers still should pay attention to choosing types of sentences in their compositions and try to use a mix of various types of sentences instead of using only one type.
Apparently, instead of heavily relying on types of sentences, IELTS trainers had better notice their learners' fundamental mistakes such as misplaced modifiers, lack of subjects, disagreement between subject and verbs, etc. Consequently, IELTS learners can produce highquality compositions with free-error sentences. Besides, IELTS trainers should execute suitably level-oriented lessons in order not to overwhelm their learners in terms of using lots of multiclause sentences.

Conclusion
This study aims to discover the difference in using two types of sentences (single-clause sentences and multi-clause sentences) in two categories of IELTS writing band score (one from 0 to 6.0 and the other one -6.5 to 9.0). Moreover, the researchers also examine whether there is any relationship between the frequency of single-clause sentences and the IELTS writing task 2 band score. The results of the study show that there is a significant difference in using single-clause sentences and multi-clause sentences in the two categories of band score by candidates. To be more specific, in the range of 0 to 6.0 band score, the percentages of single-clause sentences and multi-clause sentences used by candidates are nearly the same with 43.8% and 56.2%, respectively. On the other hand, in the range of 6.5 to 9.0, candidates tend to use fewer singleclause sentences in their writing with the percentage of 25.8% compared to 74.2% of multiclause sentences. In terms of the relationship between the frequency of single-clause sentences and the IELTS writing task 2 band score, the findings indicate that there is a negative relationship between the two variables, but this relationship is not significant (r = -.397). Therefore, it can be concluded that IELTS writing task 2 compositions with more single-clause sentences tend to be graded with lower band scores. The study's findings reveal a link between sentence type and IELTS composition band score, implying that the more single sentences in a composition, the lower the band score. According to the rubric, there is one criterion linked to sorts of sentences in which IELTS test takers are advised to apply a variety of grammar structures. The majority of single-sentence compositions are found in low-band compositions, as evidenced by the data. As a result, it's apparent that one of the grammatical factors that IELTS examiners use while grading IELTS writings is the type of sentences. As a result of the study's findings, IELTS test takers should continue to pay attention to the sorts of sentences they use in their compositions and strive to utilize a mix of different types of sentences rather than just one type. According to the findings, multi-clauses do not significantly improve candidates' band scores or their success in IELTS writing task 2. As a result, IELTS applicants should avoid utilizing this type of statement excessively. In terms of instructors, according to Tran et al. (2021), teacher-driven roles have been considered to be one of the most basic roles in helping students acquire the language. The first fundamental role is their instruction method, including the way they conduct the lessons. Instead of depending largely on sentence types, it appears that IELTS instructors should pay more attention to their students' fundamental errors, such as misplaced modifiers, a lack of subjects, a dispute between the subject and the verbs, and so on. As a result, IELTS students may write high-quality papers that are devoid of errors. Furthermore, IELTS instructors should deliver level-appropriate courses to avoid overwhelming their students with a large number of multi-clause phrases. Additionally, it should also be noted that the study is not without its limitations. First and foremost, the set of data is limited with the number of 50 compositions, which makes it hard to generalize the conclusion of this study. Moreover, the study's findings are also limited to the IELTS writing task 2 compositions. Therefore, similar analyses may produce different results with a bigger data set in other contexts. Last but not least, the variables in this study are limited to two types: single-clause sentences and multi-clause sentences, which makes a limitation in the lack of variety in types of sentences for the study. Therefore, other authors should make use of this gap to conduct their research with a clearer picture of sentence type variety in students' written essays.