IELTS Writing Task 2: The Essay Structure That Gets You to Band 7

Task 2 is worth twice as much as Task 1 and is where most candidates lose the half-band that matters. Usually not because their English is weak — because the essay doesn’t answer the question asked, or runs out of time, or buries a good argument in a paragraph with no shape.

Forty minutes, at least 250 words, four marking criteria of equal weight. Band descriptors are published by the test owners and worth reading once in full, but this is what they mean in practice.

Read the question properly — this is the whole game

Task Response is a quarter of your mark, and it is the easiest to fail outright. The prompts come in recognisable types, and each demands something different:

• Opinion (to what extent do you agree?) — take a position and hold it to the end. Sitting on the fence caps you.
• Discussion (discuss both views and give your opinion) — both sides, properly, and your own view. Candidates routinely do the first part and forget the second.
• Problem and solution — give both, in proportion, and make the solutions match the problems you named.
• Advantages and disadvantages — note whether it also asks whether the benefits outweigh the drawbacks. If it does, answer that.

Underline the instruction words before you write a syllable.

The five-minute plan

Spending five of your forty minutes planning feels wasteful and is the single best investment available. In those five minutes, write: your position in one sentence, two main ideas supporting it, one example for each.

Two developed ideas beat four shallow ones at every band. Depth is what Coherence rewards.

The structure

Four paragraphs, roughly 270 to 290 words. Longer is not better; it just creates more places to make errors.

• Introduction (40 words). Paraphrase the question in one sentence, state your position in a second. Do not define terms, do not open with since the dawn of time, do not announce what the essay will do.
• Body 1 (100 words). Topic sentence with your first idea, two or three sentences explaining why, one concrete example, one sentence linking back to the question.
• Body 2 (100 words). Same shape, second idea.
• Conclusion (40 words). Restate your position in different words and add nothing new.

The pattern inside each body paragraph is the thing to internalise: point, explain, example, link. Most mid-band essays have the point and the example but skip the explanation, which is precisely the part that demonstrates thinking.

What quietly caps your score

Memorised linking phrases. Examiners see in a nutshell and last but not least thousands of times, and they read as padding. Ordinary connectors used correctly — however, as a result, while, in contrast — score better than exotic ones used clumsily.

Invented statistics. Studies show that 73% of people… fools nobody and gains nothing. You are not marked on facts. Use plausible, general examples instead.

Vocabulary you don’t control. Lexical Resource rewards range used accurately, not thesaurus substitutions. One wrong collocation costs more than the long word earns.

No complex sentences at all. Grammatical Range needs some subordination and conditionals. A whole essay of short simple sentences is accurate and capped.

Running out of time. Do Task 2 first if you are a slow writer — it carries the heavier weighting, and finishing it is worth more than polishing Task 1.

The last two minutes

Reserve them for checking four things only: articles (a, the, or nothing), subject-verb agreement, plurals, and whether every paragraph has a topic sentence. These are the highest-frequency errors and the quickest to repair.

Where to go next

Write one essay a week under strict timing, by hand if you are sitting the paper test. Volume without timing teaches you the wrong habits, and timing without feedback cements them.

Feedback is the part you cannot self-serve — you cannot see your own article mistakes, which is exactly why they survive. A tutor who knows the band descriptors can tell you in one read which criterion is holding you at 6.5: book a single English lesson on Parlazo, pay per lesson, no subscription.