IELTS Writing Task 2: question types, structure, scoring

Two scores, same numbers, different bands. A 7 on the essay next to a 5.5 on Task 1 gives you Writing 6.5. Flip them, so the essay takes the 5.5, and the same two numbers land at 6.0. That's the weighting at work: Task 2 counts double, which makes one 250-word essay worth two-thirds of your Writing band.

Most preparation doesn't match that weight. People drill word lists, write the occasional full essay, get back a number with no reasons attached, and write another one. The essay deserves a system instead: know the five question patterns, hold one structure that fits all of them, and understand the four criteria the examiner reads your essay against.

That's this guide. Each of the four band descriptors has its own deep dive on this site; this page is where they meet.

What Task 2 is, and what it's worth

The format first. Task 2 gives you a statement or question on a general topic and asks for a written argument: at least 250 words, and the official advice is to spend about 40 minutes on it. It comes after the 20-minute Task 1 report, and it's scored on four criteria with equal weight: Task Response, Coherence and Cohesion, Lexical Resource, and Grammatical Range and Accuracy. 25% each.

The weighting between the two tasks is what candidates underestimate. When the Writing band is calculated, Task 2 counts twice as much as Task 1, the same kind of averaging that sets your overall band score. Two-thirds of Writing rides on the essay, which is why the arithmetic in the first paragraph swings half a band on nothing but task order.

Academic and General Training share the task. Same instructions, same minimum length, same four descriptors. What changes is the flavour of the prompts: General Training leans toward everyday subjects like work schedules, neighbours and family life, while Academic goes more abstract, in the direction of education policy, technology or the environment. If you switch from one version to the other, your Task 2 training carries over almost untouched.

The five question types, and what each one demands

IELTS doesn't publish an official list of essay types. Read enough past prompts, though, and the wording settles into five patterns. The names don't matter. What matters is that each pattern asks for different things, and Task Response, the criterion examiners read first, is scored against exactly those things. Misread the pattern and you can write 280 fluent words that answer a question nobody asked.

Opinion: "to what extent do you agree or disagree?"

The prompt makes a claim and asks where you stand. One demand, held for the whole essay: a position. "To what extent" explicitly allows a partial stance, agreeing under a condition, and a qualified position often gives you more to write about than total agreement. What it doesn't allow is neutrality. An essay that lists both sides and never lands reads, in descriptor terms, as conclusions that are "unclear, unjustified or repetitive", and that's a band 6 ceiling on the first criterion.

Discussion: "discuss both views and give your own opinion"

Three demands in one line: the first view, the second view, and yours. The classic mistake is covering the first two properly and compressing your own opinion into a hedge in the final paragraph. The band 6 wording, "some may be more fully covered than others", describes that essay almost word for word. Your opinion needs to appear early and get argued, not appended. The discussion essay deep dive breaks down exactly where it goes.

Advantages and disadvantages, with one trap

The plain version, "what are the advantages and disadvantages?", asks for both sides and no verdict. The variant, "do the advantages outweigh the disadvantages?", looks nearly identical and is a different task. "Outweigh" demands a verdict: which side wins, and why. Answer the outweigh version with a balanced list and you've written the wrong essay in good English. The advantages and disadvantages deep dive breaks down where the verdict goes.

Problem and solution

"What problems does this cause, and what can be done about them?" Two demands at roughly equal weight: name problems, propose solutions, and keep them connected. A solution that doesn't answer any problem you named reads as filler. The common failure is three paragraphs of problems followed by one thin sentence of solutions, the same uneven coverage that sinks discussion essays. The problem-solution deep dive breaks down how to match every solution to a problem.

The two-part question

Two direct questions, back to back: "Why is this happening? Is it a positive or negative development?" Answer both, in order, with comparable depth. Under time pressure the second question is the one that gets forgotten, and an unanswered part caps Task Response hard. The band 5 line is "the main parts of the prompt are incompletely addressed". The two-part question deep dive breaks down how to answer both, including the part that asks for your opinion.

Five patterns, one habit. Before writing, spend sixty seconds counting what the prompt asks for: one question or two, opinion required or not. Most Task Response marks are won or lost in that minute, before the first sentence exists.

One structure that fits all five

You don't need five templates. Four paragraphs cover every pattern above:

• Introduction. Two sentences do the job: restate the prompt in your own words, then state your position if one is asked for, or name the two things you'll cover if not. No hook, no proverb, no "in today's modern world".
• Body paragraph one. One central idea, stated in the first sentence, then explained, then shown with a specific example.
• Body paragraph two. The second idea, or the other view, or the solutions, built the same way.
• Conclusion. One or two sentences restating the position. Nothing new enters here.

What happens inside a body paragraph matters more than the skeleton around it. The working unit is claim, reason, case: state the idea, give the reason it holds, then show one concrete situation where it plays out. An idea stated and dropped is a band 6 paragraph however correct the grammar. Extended and supported is what the band 7 descriptor asks for, and it's the difference between "online courses are flexible" and a sentence that shows one student using that flexibility.

Time runs the same way for every type. Five minutes planning, thirty writing, five checking is the standard split, and each slice pays a different criterion. The planning minutes are where Task Response and coherence get decided: type identified, position chosen, two ideas picked and put in order. The last five belong to grammar, because the band 7 grammar line, "error-free sentences are frequent", describes something mostly made in the read-through, not the first draft. Skipping the check to push word count usually trades a longer essay for a lower one.

The four band descriptors, one essay

The examiner reads one essay four times over, once per criterion. Each criterion has a full guide on this site; here's the short version of what each one rewards in Task 2.

Task Response asks whether you answered every part of the prompt, held a clear position from first line to last, and developed each idea instead of listing it. Question-type misreads land here, which is why the five patterns above matter. The Task Response deep dive covers the band 6 to 7 boundary in the descriptor's own words.

Coherence and Cohesion is paragraph logic, not linking words. Band 7 wants each paragraph built around one central idea, with a progression the reader can follow without effort; a mechanical chain of "Firstly, In addition, Therefore" is exactly the faulty-or-mechanical cohesion the band 6 descriptor describes. The coherence and cohesion guide shows why adding more linkers moves you sideways, not up.

Lexical Resource rewards precision and natural collocation over rare words. At band 7 the descriptor looks for less common items used with an awareness of style and collocation, which is a description of fit, not of difficulty. The lexical resource guide breaks down why a thesaurus pass usually lowers a band 6.5 essay.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy wants two things at once: a range of structures and sentences that are frequently error-free. A clean simple sentence beats a collapsed complex one, and the grammar guide is about that trade.

If you can't name which of the four is holding your score down, the band 6.5 self-diagnosis walks through all four axes with the symptoms of each.

Band 6 to band 7: the same paragraph, rewritten

Descriptors are abstract until you watch them act on a paragraph. Here's a body paragraph arguing that governments should fund public transport, written at a band 6 level:

Firstly, public transport reduces pollution. Cars produce a lot of emissions and this is bad for the environment. If more people take the bus, there will be less pollution in cities. In addition, public transport is cheaper than driving a car. Therefore, governments should spend more money on it.

Nothing in it is wrong. The grammar mostly holds, the topic is relevant, the linkers are all present. That's what makes band 6 frustrating: the essay feels fine. Now the rewrite:

The strongest argument for funding public transport is what it removes from the road. A full bus carries the passengers of dozens of cars, each of which would otherwise run its own engine through the same streets, so every passenger who switches cuts the city's exhaust by one car's worth. Fares decide how many people make that switch, which is exactly where public money works: the cheaper the ticket, the more drivers it pulls out of traffic.

Same idea, same position, no harder vocabulary to memorise. What changed, axis by axis: Task Response, because the idea is now extended through a mechanism instead of stated and left there. Coherence, because the paragraph holds one topic from first sentence to last and the logic carries the reader instead of "Firstly" and "Therefore". Lexical Resource, because the precision sits in ordinary words doing exact work: "pulls out of traffic", "one car's worth". And grammar, because the sentences vary in shape and none of them breaks.

That's also why generic feedback stalls people at 6.5. "Good ideas, add more detail" doesn't tell you which of those four moves your paragraph is missing.

Drill Task 2 in five minutes a day

A full essay takes 40 minutes to write and longer to get marked, which is why most people produce so few of them, and learn so little per essay. The parts can be trained separately, in five-minute pieces:

• The plan-only drill. One prompt, five minutes, no essay: name the type, write a one-sentence position, pick two main ideas, attach one example to each. The essay you never write still trains the read that decides Task Response.
• The one-paragraph drill. Take a single idea and build the claim-reason-case unit. One good body paragraph teaches more than a rushed full essay, because it's small enough to compare against the band 7 wording when you're done.
• The rewrite drill. Pull one band-6-flavoured sentence from an old essay and rewrite it twice: once for word precision, once for sentence shape. You're doing to your own writing what the example above does.

Five minutes, one axis at a time. That's the design behind IELTS Drills: every piece of feedback comes back tagged to a single Band Descriptor, so when your essays keep landing at 6.5, you can see whether the missing half band lives in Task Response, coherence, vocabulary or grammar, and drill that one instead of writing another unmarked essay.

Frequently asked questions

How many words should I write? At least 250; there's no upper limit and no bonus for length. Under 250 costs you directly through Task Response. Past about 300, extra words mostly spend the checking time that grammar accuracy depends on. On computer the word count is displayed, so you never need to count. If you are sitting Writing on Paper, learn what 250 words looks like in your own handwriting before test day.

Do I need a conclusion in Task 2? Yes. The Task Response descriptor expects a position carried through to a conclusion, and an essay that just stops reads as incomplete on two criteria at once. One restating sentence is enough. Note this is the opposite of Task 1, which wants an overview and no conclusion.

Can I use a memorised template? Structure, yes; sentences, no. A four-paragraph skeleton and a planning habit are reusable on any prompt. Pre-built sentences are not, because they answer no prompt in particular, and an examiner who reads hundreds of essays recognises a paragraph that almost fits the question. Content that doesn't engage with the exact prompt loses Task Response marks no matter how polished it is.

Is Task 2 the same in Academic and General Training? Same format, same 250-word minimum, same four band descriptors, same timing. The topics differ in register: General Training prompts stay closer to daily life, Academic prompts run more abstract. Preparation for one version works almost unchanged for the other.

How is Task 2 scored? Four criteria at 25% each: Task Response, Coherence and Cohesion, Lexical Resource, and Grammatical Range and Accuracy. The four are averaged into your Task 2 band, which then counts twice as much as Task 1 in the Writing band.

What should I do if I'm running out of time? Close the position. A two-sentence final body paragraph plus a one-line conclusion beats a long unfinished paragraph and no ending, because the unfinished version leaves a task part uncovered and the position hanging, and both of those are Task Response damage. Plan so it doesn't happen: the five-minute plan exists exactly to size the essay to the time.

The bottom line

Task 2 is two-thirds of your Writing band, and it rewards reading before writing. Sixty seconds spent naming the question type and counting its parts protects Task Response better than any phrase list. One four-paragraph structure fits all five patterns. Inside it, the claim-reason-case unit is what separates a stated idea from a developed one, and the four band descriptors mark the result from four different angles at 25% each.

So stop measuring practice in finished essays. Measure it in parts trained: one plan, one paragraph, one rewrite. With IELTS Drills, the feedback on each of those comes back tagged to the one Band Descriptor it serves, five minutes a day, until the essay stops being the thing that costs you the 0.5.