Hi, I'm Jan. I'm a former IELTS examiner for IDP in Toronto and I help students crack the code on Band 7+ writing.
This IELTS Writing Task 2 guide was developed by myself and other former IELTS examiners to eliminate the confusion that students face. It will teach you the SIMPLEST possible way to write an essay for the IELTS academic or general exam. We'll go over the marking criteria, best structure, powerful writing tips, and several model answers.
What are the requirements for IELTS Writing Task 2 essay?
Your IELTS essay will be marked according to four marking criteria:
You can access this official rubric here: https://takeielts.britishcouncil.org/sites/default/files/ielts_task_2_writing_band_descriptors.pdf
Task Response criteria tell us what CONTENT we must include:
1. "Addresses all parts of the prompt":
2. "Presents a well-developed response to the question with relevant, extended, and supported ideas":
3. “Presents a clear position throughout the response”:
Coherence and Cohesion criteria tell us that our content must be clearly organized and use abundant cohesive devices (transitions) to clearly show the reader how ideas are related to each other.
1. “Skilfully manages paragraphing”:
2. “Sequences information and ideas logically”:
3. “Uses a range of cohesive devices appropriately”:
Lexical Resource criteria tell us that we need to use a wide range of vocabulary, including low-frequency words and expressions.
1. “Uses a wide range of vocabulary fluently and flexibly to convey precise meanings”:
2. “Skillfully uses uncommon lexical items”:
The examiner does not have a list of vocabulary that they are looking for. They are looking for vocabulary that is appropriate and precise. It is a TERRIBLE STRATEGY to use big words where small words can be used. Your main goal as a writer is to clearly convey your ideas to the reader. IT SHOULD NOT BE YOUR GOAL to impress the reader/examiner with your vocabulary.
Your goal is to avoid any chance of misunderstanding, and complex language guarantees misunderstanding. You should pretend you are writing for an intelligent 12-year-old, which will prevent you from using long, wordy explanations. If you wouldn't use that kind of language with a 12-year-old, don't use it with an adult either - it will confuse them too.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy criteria tell us that we need to use a wide variety of grammatical structures and that a high percentage of our sentences need to be completely error-free if we want Band 7 or above.
1. “Produces frequent error-free sentences”:
2. “Uses a wide range of structures”:
You do NOT need to use all of these structures in your essay! However, if you want to get to Band 7 level, you MUST know them all well as they are the most appropriate, natural structures in a wide variety of situations on IELTS (and in life!).
These grammar structures are described in more detail below.
Most people don't know this but IELTS calculates your overall score and your writing score differently.
Your overall IELTS score is rounded the same way that we are taught to round in math class. If you get Band 7 on reading, Band 7 on listening, Band 7 on speaking, and Band 6 on writing, you will end up with Band 7 overall.
Overall Band Score: (7+7+7+6)/4 = 6.75 > Rounded UP to 7
However, your writing and speaking score are calculated differently. For writing and speaking, IELTS ROUNDS DOWN! On writing, if you get Band 7 on Task Achievement, Band 7 on Coherence and Cohesion, Band 7 on Lexical Resource, and Band 6 on Grammatical Range and Accuracy, you will end up with Band 6.5 overall.
Writing/Speaking Band Score: (7+7+7+6)/4 = 6.75 > Rounded DOWN to 6.5
You can write EVERY one of the seven essay types in 4 paragraphs. You NEVER need to write a 5-paragraph essay.
The key to getting Band 7 or higher is thorough development of your body paragraphs. Using T.R.E.E.S. paragraph structure for the body paragraphs ensures you include every element needed for a high Task Achievement score.
NOTE: The full course includes templates for each of the 7 writing task #2 prompt types. These templates include sentence skeletons for every sentence.
Use the ABCDE writing process for all writing tasks:
You will need to invent the details in your IELTS essay. The evidence in the sample essays below was 100% invented, although it was inspired by real life events. The full course includes over 60 essays written by native speaker current and former IELTS examiners. They are written according to the system used in this course, and they are the best source of inspiration and training.
The prompt type determines the approach you need to take. It's VERY IMPORTANT to read the prompt carefully as this affects the requirements of the task.
IELTS is NOT looking for a list of reasons to support your opinion. They are looking for ONE main reason per body paragraph (paragraphs have ONE controlling idea). Each reason needs to include an explanation and an example (this can be a research study, a personal example/one that you heard about in the news, or both).
Example prompt: More and more people today get their news on the Internet. Nevertheless, newspapers will continue to be an important source of news and information for most people. To what extent do you agree or disagree with this opinion? Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience. Write at least 250 words.
Many people believe that newspapers will continue to be a significant news and information source despite the popularity of the Internet. However, I disagree that newspapers will remain relevant for the majority of people since they are redundant and most people expect news to be free.
In the old days, most people would get the local newspaper, which was their one comprehensive source of news and information. Today, people no longer bother because they are on their smartphones all the time and get constant updates from their favourite news websites. According to research published in The New York Times in 2019, newspaper circulation in the U.S. has dropped from over 60 million subscribers in the 1980s to about 30 million subscribers these days. I myself gave up my newspaper subscription years ago. I failed to see the point of maintaining my subscription when I never learned anything new from reading the paper; I’d already seen all the stories in my news feeds. For that reason, newspapers are unlikely to remain relevant for most people.
Furthermore, because so much news and information is available for free online, most people now fail to see why they should pay for the news, and this is killing newspapers. According to Pew research published in 2018, a large percentage of seniors still pay for a newspaper, but only 2% of the 18-29 demographic do so. This has coincided with the rise of smartphones and a massive rise in advertising revenue for social media giants like Facebook and Google, which publish news free of charge for their users, who now favour reading on their phones. Advertisers have thus shifted their ad budgets online from newspapers. This is the new reality and newspapers cannot survive in such an environment.
Therefore, as reading habits have changed and people now get most of their information and news online, newspapers have lost most of their readers and their revenue, and will not remain relevant for most people.
Example prompt: Some people think that children should be encouraged to be competitive. Others believe that children should be taught to be cooperative. Discuss both these views and give your own opinion. Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience. Write at least 250 words.
There is much debate about the skills that children need to be taught as they grow. Some argue that learning to be competitive will benefit children in many ways, while others argue that encouraging children to be cooperative is far more advantageous, and I agree with the latter position.
Clearly, being competitive is a key part of success in the world today. Children that are brought up in competitive atmospheres tend to strive more to do their best, whether the pressure comes from their parents, siblings, teachers, or peers. Therefore, when they lose, they learn what they need to do in order to try and win the next time and this is a key skill. The New York Times published an article recently showing that six out of the ten CEOs of the largest companies in the US had gone to high achieving, competitive schools as well as all stating that competition with their siblings was a huge factor in their childhood. This shows that being encouraged to be competitive does lead to professional success for some.
On the other hand, learning to be cooperative is a life skill that benefits children far more throughout their lives. Cooperative children have far more positive social interactions and are able to make and, more importantly, keep their friends. When I was at primary school, there was a boy called Costa that wanted to win everything at all costs. He wouldn’t work with anyone and thought he was better than everyone else. This lack of cooperation and over-competitiveness meant that he had no friends throughout primary school. When I met him in the street by chance 30 years later, he commented that he had found primary school very difficult due to not having any friends. If he had been taught to be cooperative, then maybe he would have had a happier time at school.
To conclude, although both skills are important in life, learning to cooperate will benefit children far more and lead to a much happier school life.
There are 3 versions of advantages/disadvantages prompts:
Example prompt: Many people spend long hours at work but this leaves little time for leisure activities. Does this situation have more advantages or more disadvantages? Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience. Write at least 250 words.
Nowadays, working hours are getting longer and longer and this has meant that people have less time to engage in leisure activities, which, in my opinion, has a number of disadvantages.
Firstly, as people are working longer and spending more time in front of a screen, they are spending less time moving around, going for a walk, or doing sports. This has led to more and more people putting on weight as they live a more sedentary lifestyle. My cousin is a prime example of this. He works in IT and often works 10 hours a day and on weekends too. Before entering the IT market, he was a keen squash player and would often meet friends to play two or three times a week. However, as he now works such long hours sitting at a computer, he doesn’t have time to play anymore. This has led to him putting on an unhealthy amount of weight and losing contact with some of his friends.
Furthermore, leisure activities are a great way for people to release stress that builds up due to the pressures of work, and without them, we tend to pursue more unhealthy habits. The Guardian newspaper in the UK recently published an article showing how stress at work due to working longer hours was a key government concern in terms of public health. As more and more people were not able to do what they enjoyed, whether it was painting, yoga, or tennis, they found that, for the first time in over 10 years, the number of people taking up smoking and binge drinking was on the rise. As people had no time to do a hobby or something with friends, people were looking for more destructive ways to release the stress of longer hours at work.
Although it feels like we have more options in terms of activities we can do these days, working long hours has taken away many people’s chances of taking up or continuing an activity, and the drawbacks of this far outweigh the benefits.
Included with full course access.
Included with full course access.
Where to get access to our full collection of 40 Task #1 and 60 Task #2 model responses written by ex-IELTS examiners:
Models like these are one of the best ways to prepare for IELTS. 40 Writing Task #1 General and over 60 Writing Task #2 models, all written by native speaker ex-examiners, are now included in the IELTS course.
Research shows that grammar is largely auditory. Your ears play a very important role! It’s just like listening to an instrument that you don’t know how to play: if the musician hits the wrong note, it just SOUNDS awkward even though you may not know why. In the same way, when you read your work out loud, if ANYTHING sounds awkward, change it to a simpler construction that SOUNDS good. Trust your ears!
If any grammatical construction sounds awkward, use a simpler verb tense.
If any vocabulary sounds awkward, describe your idea using simple words.
The brain is not good at finding problems unless you give it specific instructions. This is why doctors, even though they are super smart, have checklists to make sure they didn't forget any tools inside the patient after surgery. There are just too many things to think about so sometimes we need a small checklist to remind us what to look for.
For that reason, for example, if you often have punctuation issues, you need to go through your writing specifically looking for punctuation problems. As mentioned previously, read your work out loud and where you find yourself pausing (to take a breath between ideas), you need punctuation.
Once you’ve gone through your writing looking for that first problem, go through your writing again looking for the next problem. Then read it out loud for a third time looking for a 3rd issue your writing typically has.
This process is slow initially, but once you start looking for these specific problems on a regular basis, you’re training your brain to automatically look for those problems. Your brain will get faster and more accurate at identifying those problems, and pretty soon you're not going to have them. Then you can move on to the next problem.
Take it step-by-step and look for a couple things at a time rather than looking for 10 different problems at once, which is overwhelming and doesn’t work.
A Band 7 on Grammatical Range and Accuracy requires "a variety of complex sentences." A Band 8 on Grammatical Range and Accuracy requires "a wide range of structures."
There are 10 grammar structures you MUST know to get a Band 7+ on IELTS Writing Task 1 General. Examiners are on the lookout for these. These structures are COMMONLY used in English and are often appropriate for all written and oral parts of the IELTS exam. Band 7 means your English is at an advanced level. At this level, these structures are necessary to express yourself precisely and fluently:
Many students write very long sentences because they believe this will impress the examiner. This certainly will impress the examiner, but ONLY if your long sentences are grammatically flawless. However, the Band 7 criteria very clearly state “produces frequent error-free sentences.” Even a SINGLE MISTAKE in a long sentence means that the entire sentence is no longer error-free.
For example, one student recently wrote Task #1 Academic in four sentences (his sentences had 45 words on average)! He was very lucky as 2 sentences were flawless; therefore, half his sentences were error-free so he received a Band 7 rating on grammar.
However, even among professional writers, this is not a normal way to write. While two of these monster sentences were technically flawless, they had so many clauses in them that I had to reread his work several times to make sure I understood it correctly. In other words, these long sentences were not at all reader friendly. Don’t take chances like this! I strongly recommend limiting sentences to three clauses. You don’t need anything longer for Band 7 performance.
In short, your #1 goal as a writer is to be clear, and long sentences do not help with clarity. In general, you can limit sentence length to 3 clauses.
As another example, Dr. Bruno had taken IELTS repeatedly and failed to get at least Band 7 on writing, which he needed to work as a doctor in Canada. After training with Toronto IELTS Prep, Dr. Bruno simplified his approach to writing and finally got the Band 7 he needed:
I appreciate all your corrections and tips. It made a huge difference to notice that [not enough] “error-free” sentences were pushing my score down. I tried to control those errors during my last test, and it seems everything went well!”
“I just wrote the texts in a simple way instead of using complex structures to give a good impression. I also paid more attention to subject/verb and tenses, avoiding those basic single/plural errors. I didn’t have time to read and correct my texts at the end (like always), but I believe that I controlled my errors during the writing process.
Dr. Bruno E.
Passive voice is useful when the subject is too obvious:
Baby English: The bakers bake the bread at 5 AM daily.
Better: The bread is baked at 5 AM daily.
Unreal conditional is commonly used to give advice:
Using a subordinate clause is the most common way to make a complex sentence.
If the subordinate clause comes BEFORE the independent clause, ALWAYS place a comma AFTER the subordinate clause.
If the subordinate clause comes AFTER a short independent clause, do not use a comma. If the subordinate clause comes after a long independent clause, it’s your choice whether or not to use a comma between them. Use your ears to make this decision: read the sentence out loud and if you find that you need to pause between the two clauses, then you should probably use a comma.
Subordinate clause 1st: Because it’s nice outside, we went to the park.
Subordinate clause 2nd: We went to the park because it’s nice outside.
It's easy to add a subordinate clause at the beginning or end of a sentence:
It's less common to use a subordinate clause in the middle of a sentence. This is considered ADVANCED usage:
The second most common way to make a complex sentence is to use a relative clause.
Relative clauses are also called adjective clauses because they describe a noun/noun phrase (person, place, thing, or idea). They provide details just like adjectives do, but they come after the noun instead of before it. Relative clauses generally begin with who, that, or which.
Relative clauses also provide important information about the entire preceding clause:
1. Use commas around the relative clause if it’s an extra detail:
These are called "non-defining relative clauses" because the audience knows who you’re talking about ("Jim") or what you're talking about ("the X501") without the relative clause, so the information about where Jim lives or when the part was ordered is an extra detail. If we remove the relative clause from the sentence, we still know who/what you’re talking about:
You can hear these commas! When you read your work out loud, you will find yourself pausing naturally on both sides of these kinds of relative clauses. Use your ears to help with grammar!
2. Don’t use commas if we need the relative clause to understand what the noun refers to:
These are called "defining relative clauses" because you need the information in the relative clause to understand which noun the speaker is referring to. The audience doesn’t know who you're talking about ("my friend") or what you're talking about ("the part") without this information in the relative clause. It’s NOT just an extra detail like in the previous example about Jim.
In these examples, when you read your work out loud, you will NOT pause on both sides of the relative clause. Use your ears to help with grammar!
In a defining relative clause, you can use either “which” or “that”:
In a non-defining relative clause, DO NOT use "that":
Another way to join simple sentences is to use a semi-colon + conjunctive adverb combination. Just remember that both sides of the semi-colon MUST be independent clauses (i.e., stand-alone sentences).
Participial phrases are a common construction that you can think of as a compressed version of a subordinate or relative clause.
Subordinate clause > participial phrase:
Relative clause > participial phrase:
Typical uses:
Participial phrases also come in passive voice:
Use a colon for lists or instructions:
In many cases, it's not necessary to use a relative clause for important details, in particular when the detail is another name for that noun. Instead, use an appositive:
In these cases, the appositive is another name for the noun:
For orders and suggestions, English grammar gets a bit weird. You have to use noun clauses in subjunctive mood in these cases:
NOTE: In noun clauses in subjunctive mood, DO NOT add "S" to 3rd person singular verbs as you normally do. In fact, DO NOT conjugate the verb in the noun clause at all. ONLY the verb following the main subject is conjugated.
Normal situation:
Subjunctive mood for suggestions - note the verb in the noun clause IS NOT CONJUGATED regardless of the time information in the first part of the sentence:
Subjunctive mood in passive voice:
Yes, but "high level vocabulary" doesn't mean what you think it means. "High level vocabulary" refers to less frequently used vocabulary - it is not related to how big a word is.
In general, trying to use big words is a terrible strategy on IELTS and in real life. Your #1 goal as a writer is clarity; your goal should NOT be to impress the reader with your vocabulary knowledge. Professional writers will always tell you to use the simplest, most direct words to communicate an idea.
IELTS assesses your vocabulary on whether it is accurate and precise. The examiner does not have a list of words they are looking for.
Formal
In my humble opinion, the best IELTS writing program is the Toronto IELTS Prep online writing program. It starts with a diagnostic assessment and 1 hour consultation & training session to make sure you understand why you're not getting Band 7+, and EXACTLY what you need to do to get Band 7+ on writing.
For many people, this one-hour consultation is enough to help them get the Band score they need. This often happens because they simply misunderstand what IELTS wants to see. The consultation clarifies exactly what IELTS is looking for.
This is not a writing correction service! WRITING CORRECTION SERVICES DO NOT WORK for the same reason that a swimming coach simply showing you how she swims is not going to help you learn how to swim. If a swimming coach shows you how to improve your swimming technique, she is then supposed to check whether YOU know how to apply the new technique.
In the same way, when you practice writing with Toronto IELTS Prep, your work is checked twice:
The only program with 2-stage detailed feedback
1. Write: Complete your writing after reviewing lessons and Band 9 models.
2. Feedback #1: Receive a Band score, detailed feedback, and links to follow-up lessons.
3. Revise: Revise your writing based on feedback. Without this step, neither you nor the teacher knows whether you understand how to fix your problems.
4. Feedback #2 and Corrections: Receive a 2nd round of feedback and corrections.
TIP Online IELTS Writing Course
Dr. Ghazaleh P. from Iran now has the Band 7+ she needs to practice medicine in Canada. Congratulations, Dr. Ghazaleh!
“You’re really different from my previous IELTS teacher. He was ok, but the advice was too general – it didn’t help me improve. You give very specific advice on what I should do to fix my writing. It’s really helpful! As well, the way that you explain the scoring process for each writing task is very helpful. Nobody before explained it as clearly as you explain it. “
After ONE training session, Lev K. from Ukraine now has the Band 8.5 he needs for PR (permanent residency). Congratulations, Lev!
"Just got my results. They are what I was hoping for!"
Q. What helped you the most from our one session together?
A. "From our session, the most useful part was to hear you explain the format, and to compare it to all the different types of essays. It was also extremely useful to have you go over my essays scoring them according to the score guide. This gave some key points to focus on."
After ONE training session, Mohit G. from India raised his writing score from 6.5 to 7.5, which he needs for immigration to Canada. Congratulations, Mohit!
"I am writing to express my gratitude for your help in reaching my desired goal in writing.
I scored 7.5 in writing this time, which is quite amazing compared to my previous score of 6.5. I followed the TREES pattern you suggested and wrote in the simplest manner I could. Also, I believe the one on one feedback session was very helpful in clearing all my queries. I would suggest to never abandon this approach.
Thank you again for all your input."
After 5 weeks of training, Roman Z. from Ukraine now has the Band 7+ he needs for permanent residency (PR). Congratulations, Roman!
"I asked Jan for help with my IELTS exam preparation because high score was extremely important for my immigration process. Jan’s approach is very different from what I’ve seen before. Jan pays a lot of attention to details and accurately identifies the systematic mistakes. For each of them Jan has a respective course with both theoretical part and practical assignments. With Jan’s course I boosted my Writing from 6.0 to 7.0 in 5 weeks! I strongly recommend you take Jan’s course to prepare for IELTS exam properly and to get the highest score!"
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