IELTS Opinion Essay Questions, and How to Take a Position

The opinion essay is the most common Task 2 question type, and it has one failure mode that costs more marks than any grammar problem. The candidate never decides. The essay presents one side, then the other, then closes with a sentence saying both have merit, and Task Response is capped no matter how clean the language is.

The public band descriptors are explicit about this. At band 6 a position is described as relevant but unclear or with conclusions that become repetitive. At band 7 the position is clear throughout. The difference is not vocabulary. It is whether a reader can state your view after one read.

Which questions are opinion questions

Four instructions ask for a position. They are worded differently and they are not interchangeable.

Discuss both views and give your own opinion is a different question type. It requires both views treated fairly and your own view. Answering an opinion question as though it were that one is the single most common structural error in the paper.

Three legitimate positions

You do not have to agree completely. You have three honest choices, and all three can reach a high band as long as you state which one you took.

1. Full agreement. You accept the statement as written, including its scope word. Defend it everywhere.
2. Full disagreement. You reject it. You still have to acknowledge why people hold it.
3. Partial agreement with a specified limit. You agree in defined circumstances and not in others, and you say which.

The third is the one candidates get wrong, because they confuse it with sitting on the fence. The difference is testable. A limited position names the condition. Fence sitting does not.

Fence sitting. There are advantages and disadvantages to both sides, and it depends on the situation.

A limited position. I agree that university should be free, but only for courses where the country has a measured shortage of graduates, such as nursing and teaching.

The second sentence tells you exactly what the writer thinks and exactly where their claim stops. A reader could argue with it. That is the test: if nobody could disagree with your thesis, you have not written one.

Where the position has to appear

A clear position is not one sentence in the introduction. It has to be visible in four places.

• The introduction. One sentence, stating the view and the main reason.
• Each body paragraph opening. The topic sentence should support the position, not merely introduce a subject.
• The concession. One paragraph or one part of one that admits what the other side gets right, then explains why it does not change your view.
• The conclusion. The same position restated, not a new softer one.

The conclusion is where positions collapse. A candidate argues firmly for three paragraphs and then writes in conclusion, both sides have valid points. That contradicts the essay above it, and the examiner marks what is on the page.

A before and after

Some people believe that smartphones should be banned in schools. To what extent do you agree or disagree?

Before, a band 6 introduction and first body paragraph.

Nowadays smartphones are very popular among young people and this is a controversial topic. Some people think they should be banned in schools and other people think they should not. In this essay I will discuss both sides.

On the one hand, smartphones can be a distraction. Students look at their phone during the lesson and they do not pay attention. Also they can use it for cheating in exams. This is a problem for teachers.

Two issues. The introduction states no view, so the reader reaches the body not knowing what is being argued. And the body paragraph is a list of drawbacks belonging to nobody: there is no claim it is supporting.

After.

Several countries have now restricted phone use in classrooms, and the debate has reached most school systems. I largely agree that smartphones should be banned during lesson time, because the evidence of distraction is strong, although I would allow them in a supervised form for older students who use them to study.

The clearest reason for a ban is that attention does not divide well. A pupil who checks a message mid task has to rebuild their concentration afterwards, and in a forty minute lesson that happens repeatedly. Teachers in schools that removed phones report that lessons became easier to run, not because pupils suddenly became studious, but because the interruption was gone. A rule that removes one predictable interruption is worth having even if it solves nothing else.

The introduction now carries a position and a stated limit. The body paragraph opens with a claim, supports it with a mechanism rather than an assertion, and closes by tying the evidence back to the claim. Nothing about the vocabulary is exotic. The structure is doing the work.

Language that signals a position

Keep it simple and direct. These are enough.

• I largely agree that ..., because ...
• In my view, the stronger argument is that ...
• I accept that ..., but this does not outweigh ...
• This is true only where ...
• The main objection is ..., and it has some force, yet ...

Avoid I think it depends, both sides are right, and it is a difficult question. Each of them removes a position rather than stating one.

How strong should the position be

To what extent invites you to say. You can write I completely agree, I largely agree or I agree only in part, and each is acceptable. What is not acceptable is choosing a strength and then arguing at a different one. If you write I completely disagree, then concede three paragraphs later, the position is no longer clear, and clarity is what the criterion measures.

Pick the strength you can actually defend in 260 words. Partial agreement is usually the easiest to sustain, because the concession is built into the thesis instead of fighting it.

What to do today

Take any opinion prompt and write only the thesis sentence, three times: once fully agreeing, once fully disagreeing, once agreeing with a named limit. Each one should be a sentence a reasonable person could argue with. Then choose the one you could support with two real examples, and write the essay from that.

When you have a finished answer, put it into Bandly to see an estimated band for each of the four criteria, with the sentences behind each estimate marked, which is the fastest way to find out whether your position reads as clearly to someone else as it does to you.