I'll tell you something, regarding the speaking section, I started earlier than the others, maybe that was a positive thing to reduce the amount of distraction for a while, but to be honest with you, I am so bad in talking about familiar topic and maybe that's why I got fair in the first two questions, but in the 4th question, I was completely devastated because I couldn't complete reading the topic and I lost all the notes I wrote down because when it was time to listen to the academic lecture which explained part of the topic, I couldn't understand my own handwriting, can you believe that?, so I was confused and didn't know what to do, and kept going uhhh, ummm, and I received a good score on part 3 and 4. That was pretty funny and ironic. Part 5 and 6 were very good and I used connected ideas without hesitation. Finally, I ended up with 1 fair and 2 goods.
The writing section was never a probelm for me 'cause everytime I scored above the required score, and here is how I used to do it.
For the first essay, it's always about making a comparison between what the lecturer is going to say to oppose the ideas illustrated in the topic, and that's the key, just try to put the points one by one and compare it with what the lecturer said about it. No ideas or creativity.
Regarding the second essay, try to choose one of the choices and use two examples. The one I had was regarding if technology decreased the creativity among children, so my choice was; I disagree and I used computers and television as two examples to support that technology may improve children's creativity. Simplicity is the key, at least for my case.
Good luck
