IELTS Writing Task 2 Sample Answers

Four criteria, each worth 25% of the band. You must perform on all four. This is the most misunderstood fact about Task 2:

Task 2 questions come in five common shapes, and the shape decides what your essay has to do. Read the last line of the question first.

Question: Some people believe that unpaid community service should be a compulsory part of high school programmes. To what extent do you agree or disagree?

Introduction. Many schools now ask whether teenagers should have to do unpaid community work before they graduate. Some see this as one more demand on students who are already busy, but I agree that it should be compulsory, because it teaches skills that lessons cannot and it builds a habit of contributing to the community.

Body 1. The first reason is practical. Organising a charity sale or helping at a home for the elderly requires students to plan, to speak to strangers and to keep going when things go wrong, and these are exactly the abilities employers say school leavers lack. A student who has run a food collection, for example, has had to persuade local shops to donate, manage a small team and deal with the day when half the volunteers did not turn up. No classroom exercise gives that experience.

Body 2. The second reason concerns the kind of adults schools produce. Teenagers who spend time with people in difficulty stop thinking of poverty or loneliness as something they have only read about. In my own school, a term spent visiting a care home changed how many of my classmates talked about old age, and several of them still volunteer years later. Voluntary schemes rarely have this effect, because they attract the students who were already willing. Making the work compulsory reaches the ones who would never have chosen it.

Conclusion. Compulsory service does take time away from study, and it needs to be organised well if it is to be more than a box to tick. Even so, I believe the benefits clearly outweigh that cost. A school that sends its students into the community gives them skills and a sense of responsibility that examinations alone cannot provide.

285 words

Question: Some people think children should start school as early as possible. Others believe they should begin later. Discuss both views and give your own opinion.

Introduction. Parents and teachers disagree about the best age for children to begin formal schooling. Some argue that an early start gives children an advantage, while others believe they learn better if they begin later. This essay considers both views and explains why I find the second more convincing.

Body 1. Those who favour an early start point out that young children learn quickly. A child of four picks up new words and numbers with little effort, so beginning reading and arithmetic at that age seems to make good use of a short window. There is also a practical argument. In families where both parents work, school provides safe, organised care, and children who start early get used to routines and to being part of a group. For these reasons, many parents feel that a child kept at home until six or seven is being held back.

Body 2. Others reply that the early advantage does not last, and I agree with them. Young children develop social skills, patience and curiosity mainly through play, and a timetable of formal lessons leaves less room for it. A child who is made to sit still and write before being ready may also decide very early that school is something to be endured. Finland, where formal schooling begins at seven, is often given as evidence that a later start need not harm results. In my own family, the cousin who started at six caught up with her older classmates within a year and enjoyed school far more than they did.

Conclusion. In conclusion, an early start has real attractions, particularly for working parents, but its academic benefits appear to be temporary. I believe children gain more from beginning formal lessons a little later, once play has given them the confidence and curiosity that school depends on.

297 words

Question: In many countries, more and more people work from home instead of in an office. Do the advantages of this development outweigh the disadvantages?

Introduction. Working from home, once unusual, has become normal for many office workers. Although it brings some real problems, I believe that for most employees the advantages are greater.

Body 1. The main drawback is isolation. Much of what people learn at work comes from overhearing a colleague deal with a difficult customer or from a quick question across a desk, and none of that happens on a video call. New employees suffer most, because they have nobody to copy. Home working can also blur the line between work and rest. When the laptop is on the kitchen table, it is tempting to answer one more email at ten at night, and some people end up working longer hours than they did in the office.

Body 2. On the other hand, the gains are considerable. The most obvious is time. Someone who used to spend ninety minutes a day travelling gets that time back for sleep, exercise or family, and saves the cost of the journey as well. Home working also widens the choice of jobs, since a person in a small town can work for a company in the capital without moving there, which matters a great deal to parents and to people who care for relatives. Finally, tasks that need concentration, such as writing a report, are often done better away from a noisy open-plan office.

Conclusion. Overall, the disadvantages of working from home are real, but they can be reduced, for instance by spending one or two days a week in the office. The advantages in time, money and choice are much harder to obtain in any other way, and for that reason I think they outweigh the drawbacks.

276 words

Question: In many cities, traffic congestion is getting worse. What problems does this cause, and what can be done to solve them?

Introduction. Traffic in large cities grows heavier every year as more people buy cars. This essay describes two serious problems that result and suggests how city governments could deal with them.

Body 1. The first problem is lost time. In a congested city a journey of five kilometres can take an hour, which means that people leave home earlier, arrive tired and spend less time with their families. Businesses lose too, because deliveries are late and staff are stuck on the road. The second problem is health. Slow-moving traffic produces far more fumes than traffic that flows, and people who live or work beside busy roads breathe that air all day. Children and older people are affected most.

Body 2. The most effective solution is to give people a better alternative to the car. Where buses and trains are frequent, cheap and reliable, many drivers are happy to leave their cars at home, but they will not do so for a service that comes twice an hour. Money for this could come from a second measure, a charge for driving into the city centre at busy times. A charge of this kind discourages unnecessary journeys and makes drivers pay for the congestion they cause. The two measures depend on each other, since a charge without good public transport simply punishes people who have no other way to travel.

Conclusion. To sum up, congestion costs city residents both time and health. Reliable public transport, paid for in part by a charge for driving in the centre, would take a large number of cars off the road, and the two measures need to be introduced together.

268 words

Question: Many young people today spend several hours a day on social media. Why is this the case? Is it a positive or a negative development?

Introduction. It is now common for teenagers and young adults to spend hours every day on social media. This essay explains why they do so and argues that, on balance, the effect is harmful.

Body 1. There are two main reasons for this habit. The first is that social media is where young people’s social life takes place. Plans are made, jokes are shared and news travels through group chats, so a teenager who stays away misses what friends are talking about and risks being left out. The second reason is that the applications are built to hold attention. Short videos follow one another without a pause, and each notification invites the user back, with the result that ten minutes easily becomes an hour.

Body 2. In my view, this is mainly a negative development. Time spent scrolling is taken from sleep, study and exercise, and many students admit that they check their phones late into the night. Constant comparison with other people’s carefully chosen photographs can also damage confidence, particularly among younger teenagers. It is true that social media has benefits. It keeps friends in touch across long distances and gives shy people an easier way to speak. However, these benefits come from an hour or so of use, and they do not increase when that hour becomes four.

Conclusion. In conclusion, young people use social media heavily because their friends are there and because it is designed to be hard to put down. Although moderate use has clear advantages, I believe that spending several hours a day on it does more harm than good.

260 words

All five essays share the same skeleton. Learn it once and it fits almost any Task 2 question:

• Introduction (2 sentences): paraphrase the topic, then state your position or what you will discuss
• Body 1 (5–6 sentences): one main idea → explain it → give a specific example
• Body 2 (5–6 sentences): a second main idea → explain → example (fold your opinion in here for discussion essays)
• Conclusion (2 sentences): restate your position; no new ideas

Notice what carries the band: not fancy words, but developed ideas and accurate, varied sentences. Most candidates stuck at 6.0 are losing marks on Task Response (ideas not extended) or Grammatical Range (safe, repetitive structures), rarely on vocabulary alone.