IELTS General Training Task 2: How It Differs From Academic

General Training candidates are told two contradictory things about Task 2. The first is that it is easier than the Academic version. The second is that they should prepare with Academic materials, because there are more of them. Both pieces of advice cost marks.

Task 2 is the same task in both modules. Same 40 minutes, same 250 word minimum, same share of the writing band, and the same four public criteria. What changes is the prompt, and the prompt changes what a good answer looks like. This page puts one question in both forms and marks the difference.

What is identical

Start here, because most of the exam is the same and candidates waste preparation time looking for differences that do not exist.

There is no separate General Training band scale for Task 2. A band 7 answer in one module is a band 7 answer in the other. The descriptors do not know which paper you sat.

The real module difference sits in Task 1, where Academic candidates describe a chart and General Training candidates write a letter. That is a genuinely different task, and it is covered in General Training Task 1.

What actually differs

The topic comes closer to you. Academic prompts ask about societies, institutions and trends. General Training prompts ask about work, family, neighbours, money, health and daily life. The subject matter is something you have opinions about already.

The prompt often addresses you. General Training questions are more likely to use you and to ask what people should do, rather than whether a development is positive.

Personal experience is usable. This is the change most candidates miss in the wrong direction. Because the topic is everyday, an example from your own life is relevant support in a General Training answer, where in an Academic answer it usually needs generalising first. That does not make the answer casual. It makes the evidence closer to hand.

Nothing else relaxes. The register is still written English. The organisation is still four or five paragraphs with a clear position. The grammar is marked on the same scale. Easier topic does not mean easier marking, and the belief that it does is why General Training candidates plateau at 6.5 with ideas they could defend fluently in conversation.

One question, written both ways

Here is the same underlying issue, working hours, in each module's voice.

Academic form

Some economists argue that reducing the standard working week would increase overall productivity, while others believe it would damage economic output. Discuss both views and give your own opinion.

General Training form

Some people believe that working fewer hours each week would make employees happier and more productive. Others think it would create problems for businesses and for workers themselves. Discuss both views and give your own opinion.

The structure of the question is identical. The Academic version puts the argument in the mouths of economists and measures the outcome in overall productivity and economic output. The General Training version puts it in the mouths of people, and measures it in happier, more productive and problems for workers.

That difference tells you which evidence will count.

The same paragraph, both ways

Take the view that shorter hours help. Here is a body paragraph for the Academic prompt.

The productivity case rests on a distinction between hours worked and output produced. Several national trials have found that compressed schedules leave total output broadly unchanged, which implies that a measurable share of a standard week is absorbed by low value activity rather than by production. Where that holds, reducing contracted hours is not a cost to the employer but a reallocation of the same output across a shorter period.

Now the same view for the General Training prompt.

Shorter weeks work because tired people work slowly. Anyone who has finished a long shift knows that the last two hours produce less than the first two, and that the errors made in them have to be corrected the next morning. In my own workplace, the team moved to a four day week last year and the volume of work completed did not fall. What changed was that fewer tasks came back for a second attempt.

Both are band 7 or better. Neither is casual. The second is not a weaker piece of writing; it is the same argument built from evidence the reader can check against their own week.

Reading the two paragraphs against the criteria

Task Response. Both state a position and develop it. The General Training version uses a personal example, which the prompt invites by asking about employees rather than about economic output. In the Academic version that same example would need turning into a general mechanism first.

Coherence and Cohesion. Neither uses firstly, moreover or in addition. Each sentence connects to the one before it through its content. That is what the descriptors mean by cohesion that does not draw attention to itself, and it is available in both registers.

Lexical Resource. Reallocation of the same output and came back for a second attempt are both precise. One uses abstract nouns and the other uses a concrete verb phrase. Precision is the test, not rarity, and the General Training version does not score lower for using ordinary words accurately.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy. Both mix sentence lengths and both control what they attempt. Neither reaches for a structure it cannot finish.

The four mistakes that cost General Training candidates the most

1. Writing as if it were a letter. Task 1 in this module is a letter, and the register bleeds across. Task 2 is an essay. No greeting, no sign off, no I hope you can help me with this matter.
2. Treating the everyday topic as permission to write casually. Contractions, stuff, a lot of things, and rhetorical questions in every paragraph all pull Lexical Resource down. Plain is good. Casual is not.
3. Using only personal experience. One example from your life is support. Four paragraphs of it is a story, and Task Response asks for a developed argument, not an account.
4. Preparing only with Academic sample answers. They are useful for structure and useless for register. Read them for how the paragraphs are organised, then write your own in the language the General Training prompt is using.

What to do today

Find any Academic Task 2 question you have already practised. Rewrite the question itself in General Training form: swap the institutions for people, and swap the abstract outcome for something a person would notice. Then answer your own rewritten version in 40 minutes.

Doing this once teaches the difference faster than reading about it, because you have to decide, sentence by sentence, which evidence the new prompt is asking for. If you want more question types to work through, Task 2 questions by type sorts them into the five shapes.

When you have written one, paste it into Bandly for an estimate on each of the four criteria with the sentences behind it. Bandly does not ask which module you sat, because Task 2 is not marked differently, and seeing that in your own result is usually the point at which the module question stops mattering.