IELTS Two Part Question Sample Answer: The Full Essay, Then the Half That Costs a Band

A two part question in IELTS Writing Task 2 asks you two separate things in one prompt. Most sample answers you will find online show you the finished essay with a band written next to it, which tells you where you are going and nothing about how to get there.

This page does it the other way round. One prompt, one complete answer, and then the same answer with the second question handled the way most candidates handle it under time pressure. The difference between the two versions is one paragraph, and it is the most expensive paragraph in the essay.

The prompt

Many people now choose to live alone rather than with family or housemates. Why is this happening, and is it a positive or negative development?

Two questions. The first asks for causes. The second asks for an evaluation, and the word development means a change over time, so the evaluation is about the trend and not about living alone in general.

Both questions carry equal weight. Task Response is marked on whether you addressed all parts of the task, and nothing in the criterion says the first part counts for more than the second.

The full answer

More people than ever live in single person households, and this shift is driven mainly by rising incomes and by later marriage. On balance I consider it a positive development, although it carries a real cost for older people in particular. The first cause is economic. Living alone has always been expensive, and until recently most young adults simply could not afford it; a generation of higher wages and a larger rental market has put a one bedroom flat within reach of people who would once have stayed at home. The second cause is that the age at which people marry has risen in almost every high income country. Someone who marries at thirty two rather than twenty three has nearly a decade of adult life to house, and for much of that decade living alone is the obvious arrangement. I regard the trend as positive because of what it allows. A person who lives alone decides when to work, when to sleep and whom to invite in, and that independence tends to arrive at exactly the age when people are forming careers and habits. Households of one also make a city more flexible, since a single tenant can move for a job in a way a family of four cannot. The clearest cost falls on the old. A widow living alone at seventy eight has the same independence and far less of the support that used to come with a shared house, and loneliness in later life is a health problem rather than a preference. In short, living alone has spread because people can now afford it and marry later, and the change is a positive one for younger adults while leaving older people more exposed than they were.

That is 303 words. Both questions are answered in the introduction, each has its own body paragraph, and the conclusion names both halves again.

What each paragraph is doing

Two details in that table are worth slowing down on.

The introduction answers both questions, briefly. The examiner reads your position in the first four lines. A two part introduction that only answers the first question reads as an essay with one subject, whatever the second body paragraph later does.

Body 2 names a cost and then keeps its position. Band 7 Task Response asks for a clear position throughout. Admitting a cost does not weaken a position; changing your position halfway does. The paragraph says positive, gives the reason, names the exception, and does not revisit the verdict.

Now the version almost everybody writes

Here is the same essay with one change. The second question is answered, but in a sentence rather than a paragraph, which is what happens when the first half runs long and the clock reaches thirty five minutes.

... The second cause is that the age at which people marry has risen in almost every high income country. Someone who marries at thirty two rather than twenty three has nearly a decade of adult life to house, and for much of that decade living alone is the obvious arrangement. Living alone is also a very positive development for most people because it gives them freedom. In conclusion, living alone is happening because of money and marriage, and it is mostly a positive thing.

Nothing is misspelled. No grammar has changed. The vocabulary is the same vocabulary. And the answer has moved from the band 7 Task Response bullet, addresses all parts of the task, to the band 5 one, addresses the task only partially, because one of the two things the prompt asked has a single unsupported clause behind it.

Read the two band 6 bullets next to each other and you can see where the line sits:

Band 6: addresses all parts of the task although some parts may be more fully covered than others. Band 5: addresses the task only partially; the format may be inappropriate in places.

A second half that is thinner than the first is a band 6 answer. A second half that is one sentence is not a part of the task that has been covered less fully; it is a part of the task that has not been covered. That is the whole distance between those two bullets, and because the four criteria are averaged, a two band drop in one of them pulls the writing band down by half.

What the marked library sample shows

The one published two part answer in the two part question sample library responds to this prompt: More and more people buy their goods online rather than in shops. Why is this happening, and what effect does it have on high street shops? It is 315 words, and the four criterion estimates on it are Task Response 8, Coherence and Cohesion 7, Grammatical Range and Accuracy 7, and Lexical Resource 6, for an overall estimate of 7.

The pattern is the one to notice. On an answer where both halves genuinely got a paragraph each, Task Response came back the highest of the four, and vocabulary was the thing holding the band down. Structure was not the problem on that answer, because the structure the prompt demanded was already there.

Those bands are estimates from Bandly's own scoring engine, which has not been checked against a qualified human examiner, so read them as one marked example rather than as proof. The structural point stands on the descriptors, which are public.

The five minute version of this page

1. Underline both questions before planning. Write the second one in the margin, in your own words.
2. Answer both in the introduction, one clause each.
3. Give each question its own body paragraph. Not one paragraph covering both.
4. If you are short of time, cut a sentence from the first body paragraph, never from the second.
5. Name both halves in the conclusion.

If you are not sure which of the two halves your own answer actually developed, the structure guide for two part questions has the recognition checklist, and a Task 2 answer with the band explained shows the same reasoning on a different question type. Write one of these under exam conditions today, then paste it into Bandly and look only at the Task Response estimate and the sentences it points to; the band is an estimate, but which half of your essay the evidence comes from is a fact you can check yourself.