IELTS Discuss Both Views Essay Sample Answer: Why Each Paragraph Scores What It Scores

Most discuss both views pages give you one of two things. Either a structure lesson with no complete answer under it, or a model answer with no reasoning attached, which you read, agree with, and cannot reproduce.

This page gives you the full answer first, then takes it apart. Every paragraph is matched to the public band descriptor bullet it is trying to satisfy, and one body paragraph is rewritten twice so you can see exactly which criterion each change moves. The bands mentioned here are estimates and opinions about writing, not official marks.

What the instruction actually asks for

Discuss both these views and give your own opinion contains two separate commands.

1. Discuss both views. Each of the two positions in the question needs real coverage, not a sentence of acknowledgement.
2. Give your own opinion. You have to say what you think, and the reader has to be able to find it.

Candidates reliably obey the first command and forget the second. The result is a fair, tidy, balanced essay that never says anything, and the criterion that notices is Task Response. The public descriptor at band 7 asks for a response that "presents a clear position throughout the response". At band 6 it says the writer "presents a relevant position although the conclusions may become unclear or repetitive". A position that appears only in the last two lines is not a position held throughout.

Task Response is one of four criteria, each carrying equal weight: Task Response, Coherence and Cohesion (how the answer is organised and connected), Lexical Resource (vocabulary), and Grammatical Range and Accuracy. If you have not read the four side by side, the band descriptors explained page is the place to start.

The question this answer responds to

Some people believe the best way to reduce traffic in cities is to improve public transport. Others think that raising the cost of driving is more effective. Discuss both views and give your own opinion.

You get 40 minutes and a 250 word minimum. The answer below is 295 words, which is a realistic target. Going much past 320 words costs you checking time and buys very little.

The full sample answer

Traffic congestion now affects almost every large city, and two remedies dominate the argument: building better public transport, or making driving more expensive. In my view both are necessary, but the transport investment has to come first, because pricing on its own penalises people who have no alternative route to work. Those who favour investment in buses and trains begin from a reasonable assumption about drivers. Most people are not attached to their cars; they are attached to arriving on time. When a city runs a metro line or a bus network that is frequent and predictable, a share of commuters move to it without any penalty being imposed on them. The reform of the Seoul bus system is often cited for this reason, because ridership rose after the routes and interchanges were redesigned. The weakness of this position is time and money. Rail takes years of construction and public funding, so congestion continues while the city waits for the alternative to open. The opposing view is that behaviour changes fastest when driving becomes expensive. Congestion charges, fuel duty and paid parking all raise the daily cost of a car journey, and the effect appears within months rather than after a decade of building. London is the usual example here. The objection to pricing is fairness. A charge is the same amount for a cleaner travelling before dawn as for a company director, so the drivers most likely to give up the car are the ones with the least choice about how else to travel. My own position is that these measures belong in a sequence rather than in competition. A city that prices driving before it has built an alternative has simply made poverty more expensive. I would therefore invest first and charge second.

Paragraph by paragraph: what each one is doing

Two details in that table are worth slowing down for.

The introduction states the position and the reason in the same sentence. That reason, that pricing penalises people with no alternative, is then what the conclusion resolves. The essay therefore has one argument running through it rather than two paragraphs of summary followed by a vote.

The two body paragraphs use the same internal shape: argument, support, weakness. Repeating a shape is not repetition in the sense the descriptors penalise. It is what produces the "clear progression" the reader is looking for, and it saves you planning time in the exam.

The same body paragraph, written three ways

Here is the second body paragraph as it appears above, and then the same content weakened in two different ways. The content does not change. Only the writing does.

Version A, as written.

The opposing view is that behaviour changes fastest when driving becomes expensive. Congestion charges, fuel duty and paid parking all raise the daily cost of a car journey, and the effect appears within months rather than after a decade of building. London is the usual example here. The objection to pricing is fairness.

Version B, the same ideas with mechanical cohesion.

Secondly, the opposing view is that behaviour changes fastest when driving becomes expensive. Moreover, congestion charges, fuel duty and paid parking all raise the daily cost of a car journey. Furthermore, the effect appears within months. In addition, London is the usual example here. However, the objection to pricing is fairness.

Nothing about the argument has changed. What has changed is that four linking words now carry work that the sentences were doing by themselves. The band 6 descriptor for Coherence and Cohesion describes exactly this: cohesive devices used "effectively, but cohesion within and/or between sentences may be faulty or mechanical". At band 7 the same criterion wants "a range of cohesive devices appropriately although there may be some under-/over-use". Version B is the over-use case, and it is the single most common self-inflicted wound in the essays candidates write after a crash course.

Version C, the same ideas with the reasoning removed.

The opposing view is that driving should be more expensive. There are many taxes and charges that governments can use. This is a very effective solution and many countries have done it. Some people do not agree with this view.

This version is shorter, which candidates often read as tighter. It is not. "Many taxes and charges" names none. "Many countries have done it" names none. "Some people do not agree" states that an objection exists without saying what it is. Task Response at band 5 describes this as presenting "some main ideas but these are limited and not sufficiently developed". The paragraph is grammatically clean, so a reader skimming for errors finds nothing, and the band still falls.

That is the useful lesson from the three versions. B loses marks for how it joins sentences. C loses marks for what the sentences say. They are different criteria, and fixing one does nothing for the other.

Where this answer is not strong

An honest sample has to say what is weak in it, or you will copy the weak parts along with the strong ones.

• "A share of commuters move to it" is vague. No figure, no source. The band 7 descriptor permits this ("there may be a tendency to over-generalise"), so it does not sink the answer, but it is the sentence an examiner would point at first.
• "London is the usual example here" is thin. One more clause saying what the London charge did would strengthen the support without costing much length.
• The conclusion is short. Two sentences is enough when they add an idea, as these do. Three would be safer. If your conclusions tend to restate rather than resolve, the conclusion paragraph post shows the difference on worked examples.

The four mistakes that cost the most

1. Only one view discussed. The question named two. Covering one means "addresses all parts of the task" cannot apply, which caps Task Response below 7 whatever the English is like.
2. No opinion anywhere. A balanced essay with no position is the most common way a strong writer lands on 6 for Task Response.
3. The question copied word for word. Copied text is not counted as your own writing, so an introduction that copies is an introduction that scores nothing for Lexical Resource.
4. A new idea in the conclusion. The conclusion resolves what you already argued. Introducing a third factor there leaves it undeveloped, and undeveloped ideas are a band 5 and 6 feature.

If you want the paragraph plans themselves rather than a finished answer, the three paragraph plans for discuss both views post sets out the legitimate layouts and the marking consequence of each. For more complete answers at different estimated levels, the discussion essay samples in our library show the same question type written several ways, each with the four criteria estimated separately.

Do this today

Take a discuss both views essay you have already written and do three things to it, in this order.

1. Find your position. Highlight every sentence that states what you think. If the only highlight is in the conclusion, move a version of it into the introduction.
2. Count your linking words. If a paragraph opens with Secondly, Moreover or Furthermore and the sentence would read correctly without it, delete it. You are looking to remove roughly half of them.
3. Read each body paragraph and ask whether it names anything. A country, a city, a cost, a group of people. If it names nothing, the paragraph is Version C above, and that is where your marks are going.

Then paste the original and the edited version into Bandly and compare the four criteria side by side. The estimates are produced by a model rather than by a qualified examiner, so treat them as a second reader rather than as a result. The thing worth watching is which of the four numbers moves when you only changed the linking words, and which moves when you added a named example.