Have a look at the video to have a better understanding on how to deal with IELTS Writing Task 2
This is the first thing that needs to be done and how you start with any writing. You need to read the instructions carefully. Many students just start reading the first part, and then without really reading the rest start writing. Then they wonder why they perform so badly on the writing test. Very simple you didn’t read the question carefully and wrote something different. This will get your Task Achievement grade down, which in turn will bring your overall score down. So, just read the question carefully, like in writing task 1, underline the key words and think of some synonyms.
You should spend about 40 minutes on this task.
Write about the following topic:
Some people believe that unpaid community service should be a compulsory part of high school programs (for example working for a charity, improving the neighborhood or teaching sports to younger children). To what extent do you agree or disagree?
Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own experience or knowledge.
Write at least 250 words.
You should spend about 40 minutes on this task. (This is always written for the task, you could spend less time on it, but you do need the 40 minutes to score well on task 2)
Write about the following topic:
Some people believe that unpaid community service should be a compulsory part of high school programs (for example working for a charity, improving the neighborhood or teaching sports to younger children). To what extent do you agree or disagree?
Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own experience or knowledge. (This questions asks you to provide examples, from your own experience or knowledge, so it’s paramount that you provide these examples in your writing)
Write at least 250 words. (You always need to write at least 250 words, if you write less your Task Achievement score will go down)
The underlined words here are the key words and if you follow the links you will see some possible synonyms for some of the key words. Just remember you cannot always replace one word by another, there is context to think of, formality, collocations,…)
When analysing the question it is crucial to also understand which of the 5 question types you are dealing with. This is question type 1 agree/ disagree question (to what extent do you agree or disagree). Knowing which question type you are dealing with will save you time, as you now also know the structure of the essay.
The synonyms will be handy when you start writing the essay, so you do not always repeat the same key words, this will make you score better on your lexical resources. You also need the synonyms when you are paraphrasing the question in your introduction.
If you have issues with reading the task, the best thing you can do is turn it into a question.
For this example a possible question could be:
Do you agree that unpaid community service should be a compulsory part of high school programs?
The answer to the question is what you write about:
I think that unpaid community service should/ or should not be part of high school programs.
Next, you just have to brainstorm ideas why they should or should not have these programmes.
You have read the question and understand what needs to be done, so now you need to start brainstorming ideas. Still, before you do this, in this question you need to say if you agree or disagree. So, first pick a side, either you agree, or you disagree, this will make brainstorming easier.
These are just 4 possible ideas, you could have many more, in the end you just need 2 good ideas, 1 for each body paragraph.
Again 4 possible issues, I’m sure you could find more, but you only need 2 to discuss in your essay. 1 issue per paragraph.
As you can see with the brainstorming, there were some possible examples included. This is once more a crucial part of the task, as the question asked you to discuss and use some examples from your own experience or knowledge. So, do not wait to think of examples when you are writing, they need to be thought of during the brainstorming.
You now have brainstormed a few ideas, next is picking the 2 ideas you like the most, or the 2 ideas you think you can write about the most. All the other ideas you can forget.
After you have brainstormed some ideas you need to formulate an essay plan. This is just extending your brainstorming and writing a rough sketch of your essay. As said before, you only need 2 ideas to write in your essay, so when you have selected the 2 best ideas of your brainstorming you can develop them. You can also do the brainstorming and developing at the same time, it doesn’t really matter, whatever works for you, but both parts are vital to be successful!
Children spend a lot of time at school. When not at school they have a lot of homework. For example kids waking up early, going to extra classes, coming home late and no time to play. Adding extra hours to this will only overload them even more. They need to first focus on school and have more time to play.
This is a rough sketch of the already overloaded idea and shows how you will develop your paragraph. Next, you do the same for the other paragraph. When done with your plan or outline you should start writing.
As you have 40 minutes to write 250 words. You can use upto 10 minutes to read the question, brainstorm, and formulate an essay plan. The more you practice the shorter this time will become and with a lot of practice you could bring it down to a little over 5 minutes.
The rough sketch is essential as it will provide you with the skeleton of your writing and while you are writing you will only need to focus on finding some good language to develop your arguments. Now you can start writing your final version.
The IELTS task 2 essay is structured like any other essay, you just need to make it shorter and more compact, youonly have 250 words. The easiest is that you just write 4 paragraphs. If you focus on 5 paragraphs, you might not fully develop your arguments, which will bring your Task Achievement down. So here is the proper structure:
Knowing the structure will again free up time that you can use to focus on your vocabulary. As said before the 5 different question types will determine the content of your paragraphs.
For the same example the structure will be:
So when you agree, just 2 paragraphs to support your agree point of view. When disagreeing, just 2 paragraphs each supporting your disagree point of view. You could be in the middle and use 1 paragraph for agreeing and 1 for disagreeing, but this is a lot more difficult and for that you need to be a good writer. It is easier if you stick to 1 side, even when you personally think otherwise.
Next we will have a look at the different parts, while using the above provided volunteering essay question as an example.
You should keep your introduction for the IELTS essay short and to the point. Remember you only have 40 minutes to write the essay, and some crucial time must be spent planning. Therefore, you need to be able to write your introduction fairly quickly, so you can start focusing on the important parts of your essay, the body paragraphs.
You always have to include 2 to 3 parts:
It is extremely important that your introduction is clear that people can understand what you are writing about without having ever having seen the question. Therefore, when you reread your introduction you should make sure that all these essentials are covered.
Some people believe that unpaid community service should be a compulsory part of high school programmes (for example working for a charity, improving the neighborhood or teaching sports to younger children).
Here is a possible example introduction for the above essay question about volunteering:
Children’s education has always been a highly debated issue, not only by the parents but also as a society in general. Every few years new ideas emerge and people want them to be included in the curriculum. One of these recent suggestions is to oblige young adolescents to perform voluntary community work such as working on social projects in their city. Personally, I think that forcing teenagers to commit to extra tasks would be counterproductive for the following reasons. (79 words)
Let’s have a look at the individual sentence of the introduction.
Children’s education has always been a highly debated issue, not only by the parents but also as a society in general.
This is a general sentence to slowly introduce the topic of education before moving on to the real question. This is sometimes important as it sets the scene of the discussion, rather than being to the point.
Every few years new ideas emerge and people want them to be included in the curriculum.
Once more a more general sentence before moving onto the actual question. This is not always needed, but with this introduction it helps as a transition to go from the general point to the point question that will be discussed.
One of these recent suggestions is to oblige young adolescents to perform voluntary community work such as working on social projects in their city.
Here we are finally at the core of the question, which includes all the necessary elements of the task. Here the synonyms really start to be useful.
The example above paints a very clear picture of how you can use synonyms or rephrasing to paraphrase.
Personally, I think that forcing teenagers to commit to extra tasks would be counterproductive for the following reasons.
Here you are clearly stating that you disagree: counterproductive. You also mention that you will discuss why you think it is counterproductive: for the following reasons.
As you can see, when you include all essential parts of the introduction you are already well above your minimum word count (20-30 words) for the introduction. Next you need to develop your essay plan into 2 body paragraphs.
As mentioned before, for an IELTS task 2 essay, you should have 2 body paragraphs. Only If you are very good at writing in English and you really know what to write you could add a 3rd paragraph. Still, for 95% of the students just write 2 body paragraphs and only 2!
For your body, each paragraph should contain one main idea. You should start your paragraph with a linker, followed by a topic sentence. Next you should write about 2 sentences to support your central idea. Followed by about 2 sentences including your example defending your idea. Finally you would have 1 sentence to conclude your idea. You have to make sure that you write at least 100 words for each body paragraph.
As this essay is about agreeing or disagreeing you just focus on 1 of those either agree or disagree:
Now let’s develop your essay plan into a proper first body paragraph:
Children spend a lot of time at school. When not at school they have a lot of homework. For example kids waking up early, going to extra classes, coming home late and no time to play. Adding extra hours to this will only overload them even more. They need to first focus on school and have more time to play.
Firstly, children are already overloaded with too much work. Currently, children spend a lot of time at school, on top of that they have a lot of homework. Additionally, schools are becoming more and more demanding and children have less and less time to play and be children. For example, there are children that I know who wake up before 6 to go to school and come back after 5 in the evening. Then their parents send them to other classes, such as dance, music, or even extra Math or English classes. Only to come home around 8, after which they still need to finish their homework, eat, and go to bed. Therefore, adding another few extra hours of voluntary work will not be helping them, it will only make them feel worse. (133 words)
The topic sentence: Firstly, children are already overloaded with too much work. clearly states what the paragraph will be about, children have already too much to do and adding to it will only make it worse. The next sentence adds some support to that children have less time and schools are more demanding. The following 3 sentences are an extensive example to backup the main claim. Normally it is good to keep it down to 2 sentences, but here there it is no problem to extend it with 1 more sentence. The final sentence draws to a conclusion which clearly states why it is not a good idea do have children do extra volunteering. Finally, the whole paragraph is held together by some well chosen linkers (First, additionally, for example, therefore). Once more a clear picture of a paragraph which includes all the necessary elements and is well above the minimum word count of 100 words for the paragraph.
Second, volunteering should be done of one’s own free will and making it mandatory defeats its purpose. Moreover, this is especially true when dealing with teenagers, which are notorious for hating anything that has to be done. For instance, when telling a teen that he or she will have to go clean up the neighbourhood because it will make the place better as well as make him or her feel better, the resentment will only grow. Therefore, it is paramount that volunteering should not be forced upon them, but rather give them some sort of choice. Providing options has more chance of fostering some responsibility, rather than being counterproductive. (109 words)
The topic sentence again clearly states the content of the whole paragraph that mandatory and voluntary are 2 completely different things. The following sentence talks more specifically about teens, which is then followed by a clear 1 sentence example. Finally 2 sentences are used to draw to the conclusion that maybe it is a better idea to give them options, rather than forcing them. The following linkers (second, moreover, for instance, therefore) hold the whole paragraph together. It’s just over the suggested word count of 100, but with the long introduction and the meaty first paragraph this shouldn’t be a problem.
Next we need to have a look at the conclusion.
The conclusion only needs to be one or two sentences, and you can do the following:
In conclusion (paragraph linker), obliging children to volunteer outside school as part of their curriculum is an unhealthy idea (restatement). However, I personally believe that volunteering could be part of a schooling program if it were offered on a free basis. Additionally, it should replace certain classes, instead of added to the already overtaxed time of the children. (personal opinion + advice for the future). (54 words)
When you are done with your writing you should always, and we mean always reread your answer and check for mistakes and repeating words you can upgrade with better synonyms. Therefore it is important that you do your writing in pencil, this makes it a lot easier to correct. The correction is essential as this will eliminate small stupid mistakes, which will improve your grammatical accuracy and spelling. The upgrading will improve your lexical resources. So if you take 2 to maybe 3 minutes to do this your overall score will dramatically improve and this is what you really want in the end, a better score.
Now we are finished and can have a look at the whole essay put together.
You should spend about 40 minutes on this task.
Write about the following topic:
Some people believe that unpaid community service should be a compulsory part of high school programs (for example working for a charity, improving the neighborhood or teaching sports to younger children). To what extent do you agree or disagree?
Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own experience or knowledge.
Write at least 250 words.
Children’s education has always been a highly debated issue, not only by the parents but also as a society in general. Every few years new ideas emerge and people want them to be included in the curriculum. One of these recent suggestions is to oblige young adolescents to perform voluntary community work such as working on social projects in their city. Personally, I think that forcing teenagers to commit to extra tasks would be counterproductive for the following reasons.
Firstly, children are already overloaded with too much work. Currently, children spend a lot of time at school, on top of that they have a lot of homework. Additionally, schools are becoming more and more demanding and children have less and less time to play and be children. For example, there are children that I know who wake up before 6 to go to school and come back after 5 in the evening. Then their parents send them to other classes, such as dance, music, or even extra Math or English classes. Only to come home around 8, after which they still need to finish their homework, eat, and go to bed. Therefore, adding another few extra hours of voluntary work will not be helping them, it will only make them feel worse
Second, volunteering should be done of one’s own free will and making it mandatory defeats its purpose. Moreover, this is especially true when dealing with teenagers, which are notorious for hating anything that has to be done. For instance, when telling a teen that he or she will have to go clean up the neighbourhood because it will make the place better as well as make him or her feel better, the resentment will only grow. Therefore, it is paramount that volunteering should not be forced upon them, but rather give them some sort of choice. Providing options has more chance of fostering some responsibility, rather than being counterproductive.
In conclusion, obliging children to volunteer outside school as part of their curriculum is an unhealthy idea. However, I personally believe that volunteering could be part of a schooling program if it were offered on a free basis. Additionally, it should replace certain classes, instead of added to the already overtaxed time of the children.
(376 words)
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