Writing
Every Task 2 question has three parts, and missing one of them caps your band. With a practice exercise.
Every IELTS Task 2 question is built from three parts, and reading only the first two is the commonest reason a well written essay scores badly. Two minutes spent taking the question apart is the best-value time in the whole hour.
Examiners see accurate, fluent essays that answer a slightly different question from the one on the paper. That is a Task Response problem, and no amount of good grammar repairs it.
The three parts
Take any question apart and you find the same three pieces.
The broad subject: education, transport, technology, crime. This is what candidates read, and it is the least useful part.
The narrower angle within the topic. Not education, but whether arts subjects should be dropped. Writing about the topic instead of the focus is the classic error.
What you must do: agree or disagree, discuss both views, suggest solutions. This decides the structure of the whole essay.
Many questions ask two things. Answer both in separate paragraphs, or your Task Response band is capped whatever else you do.
Some, most, all, always. An essay arguing that all technology is harmful does not answer a question about some technology.
The question presents a view. You are not obliged to agree with it, only to respond to it.
Method
Six steps, two minutes.
Once quickly, once slowly. Candidates who read once almost always miss the second instruction when there is one.
Physically mark it. On the computer test, type it at the top of your answer and delete it later.
Not the topic. If the question is about arts subjects, the essay is about arts subjects, not about education generally.
One instruction or two? An and or a second question mark usually means two, and both need their own paragraph.
Opinion, solutions, comparison or discussion. That sets your structure before you write a word.
Two minutes before you stop, reread the question and check your essay answers every part of it.
Practice
Read the question, then answer the five questions about it.
Some people believe that schools should stop teaching handwriting, because children now do almost all their writing on screens. Others argue that handwriting supports memory and should be kept.
Discuss both views and give your own opinion.
1What is the topic?
Education. The broad subject. Useful for background, but writing a general essay about education would miss the question entirely.
2What is the focus?
Whether schools should stop teaching handwriting. Narrow and specific. Every paragraph should relate to this, not to technology or education broadly.
3What is the instruction?
Discuss both views and give your own opinion. That means roughly equal space for each side, then your position. It is not an agree-or-disagree essay.
4How many things must the essay do?
Two. Discuss both views, and give your opinion. An essay that presents both sides without ever stating a view is incomplete.
5Which essay would score badly on Task Response?
C. It answers the topic rather than the focus, and follows no instruction. It could be well written and still score Band 5 for Task Response.
It is the single most expensive error in Task 2 and it is invisible while you are writing, because the essay feels relevant the whole way through.
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Spotting the three parts is mechanical. Whether your essay then addresses all of them is what the examiner is judging.
IELTStestONLINE keeps every score you get in one place, gives you an estimated band as you work, and assesses your writing and speaking against the four criteria so you can see where you stand before test day. See what full membership includes
The topic, the focus and the instruction. The topic is the broad subject, the focus is the specific angle, and the instruction tells you what to do.
Your Task Response band is capped, however good the English is. This is the commonest reason a fluent essay scores Band 6.
No. The statement presents a view for you to respond to. You can agree, disagree or partly agree, provided you argue it.
About two minutes. It is the best-value time in the hour, because everything else depends on getting it right.
No. Rewriting the question to suit an essay you have practised is obvious to examiners and scores badly on Task Response.
Full membership
You can check your essay against the question yourself. What you cannot check is what band the four criteria would give it.
IELTStestONLINE assesses your writing and speaking against the four IELTS criteria, instantly and as often as you like, using a system built by a former IELTS examiner and examiner trainer. It keeps every score in one place with an estimated band, and it carries no advertising.
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