IELTS Two-Part Questions: Answering Both Halves Properly

Some IELTS Task 2 questions ask you two separate things in one prompt. Candidates answer the first question well, run out of time or attention, and give the second one a single sentence near the end.

That is the most expensive mistake in this essay type. Task Response, the criterion that asks whether you answered the question and developed your ideas, treats a half-answered prompt as an incomplete response. The band for that criterion sits around 5 no matter how good your vocabulary is.

This post shows you how to spot a two-part question, how to plan both halves in equal weight, and what a complete answer looks like.

How to recognise a two-part question

Look for two question marks, or one question mark after two clauses joined by and. The wording is usually short and direct.

Some examples of the shape:

1. Why is this happening, and what can be done about it?
2. Is this a positive or a negative development, and how should governments respond?
3. What are the reasons for this trend, and do you think it is a good thing?
4. Why do some people find it hard to make friends as adults, and what could be done to help them?

Notice that the two halves are different kinds of question. The first usually asks for explanation. The second asks for a solution, an evaluation, or your opinion. They require different sentence patterns, which is exactly why candidates who plan only one half end up padding the other.

This is not the same as a discuss both views question, which asks about one thing from two angles. A two-part question asks about two things.

The equal weight rule

Give each half its own body paragraph. Not a paragraph and a sentence. Not three paragraphs and a clause.

The second structure is shorter to plan and scores higher. There is no reward for four body paragraphs. There is a clear penalty for leaving half the prompt unanswered.

If you only have time for one more sentence at the end of the exam, put it in the weaker half, not the stronger one.

A four-line plan that covers both halves

Before writing, put four lines on your question paper. Six minutes at most.

1. Half one, answer. One sentence stating your direct answer to the first question.
2. Half one, why. The mechanism. Not what, but how it works.
3. Half two, answer. One sentence stating your direct answer to the second question.
4. Half two, why. The mechanism again.

If you cannot write line 3, you do not have an essay yet. Stop and think about the second question before you write a word. Many candidates discover at minute 32 that they never had an answer to it, and by then the plan is gone.

The worked example

Here is a genuine two-part shape:

Many people today work longer hours than their parents did. Why is this happening, and what effects does it have on family life?

The first question asks for causes. The second asks for effects, not solutions. Answering with solutions here would lose Task Response marks, because half the essay would answer a question that was not asked. Read the second half twice.

The plan

The full answer

In many countries the working week is now longer than it was a generation ago. This is driven mainly by weaker job security and by technology that keeps work available at all hours, and the main effect falls on the time families spend together. The first cause is that many jobs are less secure than they used to be. Where a permanent contract was once normal, short contracts and performance reviews are now common, so employees work extra hours to protect a position that feels temporary. The second cause is technological. A parent who left the factory in 1985 was genuinely unreachable until the next morning. A parent with a work phone in 2026 receives messages at nine in the evening and answers them, because everyone else does. The working day has lost the boundary that used to end it. The effect on family life is not simply that there is less time, but that the remaining time no longer overlaps. If one parent finishes at seven and the other at eight, and a child sleeps at nine, the hours the family can actually share fall much faster than the hours each person loses. This is why families often report that weekday evenings have disappeared even when nobody works dramatically longer. A second effect is that domestic work concentrates on whoever has the shorter working day, which in many households creates a second unpaid shift and a new source of tension. In summary, longer hours come from insecure employment and from work that follows people home, and their clearest effect is the loss of the shared evening hours on which family life depends.

That is roughly 290 words. Both questions are answered in the introduction, both are developed in their own paragraph with a stated mechanism, and the conclusion names both halves again.

Where these essays still go wrong

1. The introduction answers only the first question. The examiner reads your position in the first four lines. Give both answers there, even briefly.
2. The second half becomes a list. Three effects with no explanation score lower than one effect explained properly. Development is a named part of the criterion; quantity is not.
3. Answering the wrong second question. Effects are not solutions. Opinions are not causes. Underline the second question before planning.
4. A conclusion that mentions one half. If your conclusion names only causes, the essay reads as though the second half was an afterthought, because it was.
5. Running out of time. Cut a sentence from the stronger paragraph, never from the weaker one.

Try this today

Take any two-part question and write only the four-line plan. Do not write the essay. Then look at line 3 and ask whether it is a real answer or a restatement of the question. Most weak two-part essays fail at line 3, and you can find that failure in six minutes instead of forty.

When you do write the full answer, you can run it through Bandly for estimated scores across all four criteria and a look at which paragraph carries the least development. The estimates come from a language model rather than a qualified examiner, so treat them as a way to find the thin half of your essay, not as a prediction of your test day band.