IELTS Writing Task 2: The Five Question Types and How Each Is Marked

Task 2 is 250 words, 40 minutes, and two thirds of your Writing band. It is the half worth studying first.

Most candidates learn one essay structure and use it on every question. That works until the question is not the type the structure was built for, and then it produces an essay that reads well and answers something adjacent to what was asked. Task Response is the criterion that notices, and it is the criterion that moves your band the most.

There are five question types. Each one is asking for something different, and telling them apart takes about ten seconds once you know what to look for.

What Task 2 is marked on

Four criteria, each scored 0 to 9 in whole bands, then averaged.

Task Response asks whether you answered the question that was asked, covered every part of it, developed your ideas, and held one position throughout. This is where question type matters.

Coherence and Cohesion is organisation: real paragraphs, one idea each, in an order the reader can follow.

Lexical Resource is vocabulary range and precision.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy is sentence variety and error rate, punctuation included.

Notice that only the first criterion cares which type of question you were given. The other three are the same skills every time. So the type decides your structure, and your structure protects one criterion out of four. That is worth about a quarter of your Task 2 band, which is enough to matter and not enough to justify the amount of time candidates spend on essay templates.

The five types

1. Opinion

Wording to look for: to what extent do you agree or disagree, or do you think.

You are asked for your view and nothing else. One position, held from the introduction to the conclusion.

The most common failure is hedging. An essay that argues one side, then gives the other side equal space, then concludes that both have merit has not stated a position, and Task Response marks a wobbling position down. If you want to acknowledge the other side, give it a sentence inside a paragraph, not a paragraph of its own.

Structure: introduction with your position stated, two body paragraphs each giving one reason for that position, conclusion restating it in different words.

Marked answer: a tax on unhealthy food, estimated band 7.0. Longer guides: opinion essays and what "to what extent" is asking. Every opinion answer in the library is on the opinion samples page.

2. Discussion

Wording to look for: discuss both views and give your own opinion.

Two jobs, not one. Discuss both views is the first job, and give your own opinion is the second. An essay that discusses both views fairly and never says what the writer thinks has done half the task, and half a task is a low Task Response no matter how good the English is.

Structure: introduction, one body paragraph for the first view, one for the second, then your opinion. Your opinion can be its own short paragraph or it can sit in the conclusion, but it has to be somewhere and it has to be unmistakable.

Marked answers: artificial intelligence and jobs at an estimated 7.5, and social media and young people at an estimated 6.0. Reading those two next to each other is the most useful thing on this page, because the weaker one is not weak on ideas. Its Lexical Resource estimate is 5 while its Task Response estimate is 7. Longer guide: discuss both views essays. All of them: discussion samples.

3. Advantages and disadvantages

Wording to look for: what are the advantages and disadvantages, or do the advantages outweigh the disadvantages.

Read that second phrasing carefully, because it changes the task. "What are the advantages and disadvantages" asks you to describe both. "Do the advantages outweigh the disadvantages" asks you to weigh them and decide, which means you need a position as well as a description.

The failure here is answering the first version when you were given the second. Two balanced paragraphs and no verdict is a complete answer to one question and an incomplete answer to the other.

Structure: introduction, one paragraph of advantages, one of disadvantages, conclusion. Add your verdict if the question asked which side wins.

Marked answers: living abroad at an estimated 8.0, tourism at an estimated 6.5. Longer guide: advantages and disadvantages essays. All of them: advantages and disadvantages samples.

4. Problem and solution

Wording to look for: what problems does this cause and what solutions can you suggest, sometimes phrased as causes and solutions.

Two halves, and they must connect. The solutions have to solve the problems you named, in the same order, or the essay reads as two lists that happen to share a topic.

The failure is unbalanced halves: three problems developed in detail and one solution in a single sentence. Give each half a paragraph and give each half real content.

Structure: introduction, one paragraph of problems, one of solutions matched to them, conclusion.

The sample library has no marked problem and solution answer yet. Until it does, the problem and solution essay guide walks through the structure with a worked example.

5. Two part question

Wording to look for: two direct questions in the prompt, usually separated by a full stop, and often unrelated in shape. For example, why is this happening, and is it a positive development.

Both questions get answered. Both get roughly equal space. This is the easiest type to score well on and the easiest to fail on a technicality, because a candidate who is interested in the first question and bored by the second writes three quarters of the essay on the first one.

Structure: introduction, one paragraph per question, conclusion answering both.

The library has no marked two part answer yet either. The two part question guide covers the structure in the meantime.

Ten seconds to identify the type

Read the prompt twice before planning. The second reading is for the instruction verb, not the topic. Most candidates read the topic carefully and the instruction quickly, which is exactly backwards, because the topic only tells you what to write about and the instruction tells you what counts as an answer.

What the type does not fix

One caution, because essay templates promise more than they deliver.

Across the marked samples above, the estimates that separate a 6.0 from a 7.5 sit mostly in Lexical Resource and Grammatical Range, not in structure. Structure is necessary and it is not sufficient. A perfectly organised essay with a narrow vocabulary and repeated sentence patterns lands around band 6, and no amount of further template study moves it.

So learn the five types once, in an afternoon, and then spend your study time on language.

What to do today

Take five past questions, one of each type, and do nothing but identify the type and write the instruction in your own words. Five minutes total. If you get one wrong, that is the type to practise.

Then write one full answer and check it criterion by criterion. Every band on this page is an estimate from Bandly's scoring engine rather than a mark from a qualified examiner, so read them for the reasoning shown beside each answer rather than as an official result. You can run your own essay through the same engine and see where it puts your four numbers.