IELTS Academic Task 2: What the Prompts Assume You Can Do

Most candidates prepare for Academic Task 2 by collecting topics. They memorise arguments about education, technology and the environment, and then they write those arguments in the language they speak at home. The ideas are fine and the band does not move.

The problem is register. An Academic Task 2 prompt is written in abstract, impersonal English, and it assumes you can answer in the same register. This page shows what the prompts assume, the sentence patterns that carry it, and one paragraph rewritten from spoken English into written English with every change named.

What Academic Task 2 actually is

Task 2 is the second writing question. You get 40 minutes and a minimum of 250 words, and it carries roughly two thirds of your writing band. Academic and General Training candidates both sit a Task 2, and both are marked on the same four public criteria: Task Response, Coherence and Cohesion, Lexical Resource, and Grammatical Range and Accuracy.

The difference is the prompt. General Training Task 2 asks about everyday life, and it often addresses you directly. Academic Task 2 asks about society in the abstract. If you want that comparison in full, it is set out in General Training Task 2.

Here is a typical Academic prompt.

In many countries, the proportion of older people is steadily increasing. Some believe this is a positive development, while others see it as a burden on public services. Discuss both views and give your own opinion.

Read the noun phrases. The proportion of older people, a positive development, a burden on public services. Nobody speaks like that. The question is written entirely in abstract nouns, and it never once says you.

Three things the prompt assumes

1. That you can write about groups, not people. The prompt is not asking about your grandmother. It is asking about a demographic trend. A candidate who answers with a personal story has not misunderstood the topic, but they have answered a narrower question than the one asked, and Task Response measures exactly that.

**2. That you can hold a position without saying I think eight times.** Academic writing states positions through the structure of the sentence, not through a first person tag. I think that governments should and The stronger case is for governments to carry the same claim. The second one sounds like the prompt.

3. That you can name an idea before you argue about it. Abstract prompts move fast because they package ideas as nouns. An ageing population increases healthcare demand is one clause. In spoken English it takes three: there are more old people, and so they go to the doctor more, and this means the hospitals are busy. Fitting a developed argument into 250 words in 40 minutes depends on that compression.

The patterns that carry it

These are ordinary structures. None of them is rare vocabulary, and none of them is decoration.

The right-hand column is not harder English. It is the same English with the filler removed and the subject named. Note that critics of the policy argue that does navigational work while already advancing the argument, which is what the Coherence and Cohesion descriptor means by cohesion a reader does not notice.

One paragraph, rewritten

The question is the ageing population prompt above. Here is a body paragraph written in spoken register.

I think that having more old people is not a bad thing for the country. This is because old people have a lot of experience and they can help the young people with their knowledge. Also, in my country, many grandparents look after the children when the parents are working, which is very helpful for the family. So I think the government should not see this as a problem.

Nothing here is wrong. The ideas are relevant, the grammar is mostly accurate, and a reader can follow it. It reads as a strong band 6 answer to an abstract question.

Now the same three ideas in the register the prompt uses.

A growing older population is better understood as a reallocation of capacity than as a loss of it. Older workers carry institutional knowledge that takes decades to rebuild, and in many economies they now remain in skilled employment well past the traditional retirement age. Unpaid care is the less visible contribution: grandparents providing childcare release working age parents into the labour market, a transfer that rarely appears in public spending figures because no money changes hands. Framed this way, the demographic shift transfers costs between budgets rather than simply creating them.

Same three ideas. Roughly the same length. Here is what moved.

1. The opener names a claim. I think that having more old people is not a bad thing became a reframing. Task Response rewards a position that a reader could disagree with, and the second version gives them something to disagree with.
2. The evaluation got specific. A lot of experience became institutional knowledge that takes decades to rebuild. That is Lexical Resource, and it is precision rather than rarity.
3. The personal example became a general mechanism. In my country, many grandparents became grandparents providing childcare release working age parents into the labour market. The example survives; it just now describes the pattern instead of one household.
4. The linking words disappeared. This is because, also and so are gone. The connections are carried by the content of each sentence. Cutting those four words is often the largest single change available to a band 7 writer.
5. One idea was added, not borrowed. A transfer that rarely appears in public spending figures is reasoning about the example rather than restating it. Developing an idea means saying something further about it, not saying it again with different words.

Where Academic Task 2 answers actually lose marks

Answering half the question. A discuss both views and give your own opinion prompt has three parts. Discussing both and then stopping caps Task Response no matter how good the English is. The discuss both views guide works through the structure.

Over formalising. Register is not difficulty. Utilise, plethora and aforementioned are what candidates reach for when aiming at academic. A less common word used slightly wrongly is a Lexical Resource error. A plain word used correctly is not.

Writing 400 words. Longer is not better, and forty minutes does not leave time to check 400 words. Unchecked writing is where the article and plural errors that hold an answer at 6.5 survive.

Memorised frames. In this modern era of globalisation, it is often argued that scores nothing, because the criteria measure the language you produce in response to this question. Memorised phrases covers what examiners discount and why.

What to do today

Take one body paragraph you have already written for an Academic prompt. Do not write a new one. Run three passes over it.

1. Delete every I think, in my opinion, this is because, also and so. Rewrite each sentence so the connection is carried by its meaning.
2. Find every personal example and turn it into a general mechanism. Keep the detail, drop the single household.
3. Find every very, a lot of, important and good thing, and replace each with a specific claim or cost.

Three passes over one paragraph teaches more than three new essays, because register is a habit, and habits change only when you look straight at one.

When you want to see which of the four criteria is holding an answer down, paste a full essay into Bandly. It returns a separate estimate for each criterion with the sentences behind it, so you can tell whether your next month goes on register or on development.