IELTS Writing Task 2: Lesson 9

Goal: establish the weight of Task 2 and the one failure that no amount of English can rescue.

Put the numbers up first: 250 words, 40 minutes, two thirds of the Writing mark. Ask which task they should shorten if they run out of time. Most will say Task 2 because it is longer. Correct it once and firmly.

Then the trap. Write a task on the board and, underneath it, a whole opening paragraph from a real answer: everything in it is about the topic, none of it is about the question. Read it aloud before you say anything about it.

TASK          Some people think adults do not need to study in a classroom,
              because self-study is more effective. Do you agree or disagree?

WHAT THEY WROTE
              "Education is very important in our life. Since ancient times,
               people have wanted to learn new things and improve themselves.
               In the past, students had to go to schools and universities,
               and teachers were the only source of knowledge. Nowadays
               technology has changed education a lot. There are many online
               courses, videos and applications, and people can learn
               anywhere at any time. In this essay I will discuss this
               important topic in detail."

VERDICT       Every sentence is true.  Every sentence is about education.
              Not one word is about adults, classrooms, or self-study.
              We still do not know what this writer thinks.

Land the rule: the topic tells you what to write about, the instruction tells you what to do. Marks come from the second one.

Goal: a reliable habit of reading the task in two parts and counting the jobs before planning.

Part A. Show them how (5 min). Write one whole task on the board. Take it apart in front of them. Say each step out loud as you do it. Do not explain the steps. Do them.

STEP 1   find the statement     background. no marks here.
STEP 2   find the instruction   your job. all the marks here.
STEP 3   count the jobs         how many things must I write?


THE TASK

  Fewer and fewer young people read books for pleasure.

  What do you think are the causes of this and what measures
  could be taken to encourage young people to read?


TAKE IT APART

  STATEMENT     young people read fewer books

  INSTRUCTION   job 1   what are the causes?
                job 2   what measures could be taken?

  MY OPINION    not asked

  SO            Body 1 = causes
                Body 2 = measures

Now do a second task. This time they tell you the statement, the instruction, and how many jobs. Use Q1 of the worksheet. It has one job, and it does want their opinion. They need to see the number change.

Part B. The five types (8 min). Real exam papers use a small set of instructions, over and over. There are five of them. Build the table on the board one row at a time: read the instruction, ask them which type it is, then write the name.

Part C. The pair that teaches it (4 min). Put Q6 and Q7 of the worksheet one above the other. Same shape: two questions in the instruction. Ask whether the writer's own opinion is wanted. Wait for answers before you tell them.

Q6   "Why is this the case?  What can be done about this problem?"

       job 1 = reasons        job 2 = solutions      my opinion? NO


Q7   "Why might this be the case?  Do you think this is a
      positive or a negative situation?"

       job 1 = reasons        job 2 = my judgement   my opinion? YES


Same shape.  The second question decides it.

Then say it once, simply: read the second question, because it decides whether you are allowed an opinion. In Q6 an opinion is off-task. In Q7 leaving it out costs half the answer.

Part D. Worksheet (3 min). Worksheet 1. Alone first, then in pairs to compare. Eight questions. Two answers for each: which type, and does it want my opinion. Check Q1 to Q4 quickly. Spend your time on Q5 to Q8.

Goal: four criteria they can actually use on their own work, and the realisation that half the mark is not about English.

Write the four names on the board and, next to each, the plain question. Do not read out the official descriptors: they are written for examiners and will lose the room.

TR    Task Response                  Did you answer it?
CC    Coherence and Cohesion         Can I follow it?
LR    Lexical Resource               Is the word the right word?
GRA   Grammatical Range & Accuracy   Is the sentence right?

Each one is a quarter.  TR + CC = half your Writing mark,
and neither of them is about your English.

Then split CC in two, because it is the one criterion whose name contains two different jobs and students treat it as one. Write this underneath.

COHERENCE   can I follow your ARGUMENT?      the whole essay
   one idea per paragraph · topic sentence first · sensible order

COHESION    can I follow your SENTENCES?     sentence to sentence
   bridges · this shift, such measures · pronouns · real linkers


COHERENT, NOT COHESIVE
   good structure, but every sentence starts cold.
   the reader has to do the joining.

COHESIVE, NOT COHERENT       <- the common one
   Moreover ... Furthermore ... In addition ...
   glued sentences, and no argument underneath them.

Say the second failure out loud, because most of the room is producing it. They have been taught that linking words are cohesion, so they add them to sentences that had no relationship in the first place. A marker sees decoration, and decoration costs marks instead of earning them.

Then show the two failures written out. Both are in the student primer, so put them on screen rather than copying them onto the board. Read the broken cohesion example aloud first and ask what is wrong with it: they will hunt for grammar mistakes and find none, which is the point. Then read the broken coherence example, and ask them to delete every linker and say what is left. Nothing is left.

Then give them the two tests, which are the same two they will use in Worksheet 3. Coherence: read only the four topic sentences and see whether they tell the whole argument. Cohesion: read the last sentence of one paragraph with the first sentence of the next and see whether they sound like a conversation.

Give that last line time. It reframes the planning stage that is coming: five minutes of thinking protects the half of the mark that vocabulary study cannot touch.

Then Worksheet 2: eight weak sentences, and for each one, which criterion it damages. Two of each. Feedback fast, and where students disagree, ask them which of the four questions the sentence fails.

Goal: one shape that survives every question type, and the topic-sentence-explain-example move inside a body paragraph.

Put the skeleton on the board and leave it there for the rest of the lesson. Be firm about the numbers: two sentences of introduction, two bodies of four to five, one or two of conclusion. Students want an introduction of six sentences and a body of two, which is exactly backwards.

THE SHAPE                                     250+ words

INTRODUCTION    2 sentences
                1  say the issue in your own words
                2  say what this essay does
                   (your position, or the two jobs)

BODY 1          4-5 sentences    first main point
BODY 2          4-5 sentences    second main point

CONCLUSION      1-2 sentences
                restate your answer. no new ideas.

Then open one body paragraph and show the three moves inside it. Stress that the explanation is two to three sentences, and that it is the part they habitually skip. A paragraph that is a topic sentence plus an example is 40 words and half a paragraph.

INSIDE ONE BODY PARAGRAPH

TOPIC SENTENCE   1 sentence     the whole idea of this paragraph.
                                comes first. always.

EXPLAIN          2-3 sentences  why is it true? what follows from it?
                                the marks live here, and this is
                                what students leave out

EXAMPLE          1 sentence     one specific case: a place, a year,
                                a person. "For example" is enough.


   TOPIC SENTENCE + EXAMPLE with no EXPLAIN = half a paragraph.

Then Worksheet 3. They label the four paragraphs of a model essay, then say what each numbered sentence inside body 1 is doing. Pairs compare before feedback.

Last five minutes: bridges.Having done the topic sentence test, ask what the model's body 2 would sound like if it began The second argument is health. True, relevant, and arriving from nowhere. Then read what it actually says, and let them find Apart from discipline.

A bridge lives INSIDE the topic sentence, not in a sentence of its own.

  follows from    therefore · as a result · for this reason
  other side      however · those who disagree · on the other hand
  second point    a second factor · another reason
  point backward  this shift · such measures · these changes   ← the band-7 one

NOT a bridge:  Moreover / Furthermore in front of an unrelated sentence.

Spend the time on the fourth row. This shift, such measures: a pointing word plus a noun that compresses the previous paragraph. Do one live. Take the class's own body 1 point from Stage 5 and ask the room for the two-word noun that sums it up. They will find it hard, and that difficulty is the lesson: a bridge is a test of whether you know what you just argued.

Goal: a plan that takes five minutes and is written in notes, not sentences.

Model one on the board, out loud, in real time, with a task they have not seen. Think aloud as you reject an idea you cannot exemplify. That moment is the lesson: an idea you cannot give an example for is a bad idea, however clever, because the paragraph will die after two sentences.

TASK     In many cities, traffic congestion is getting worse.
         What are the causes, and what could be done about it?

PLAN     jobs: 2  (causes / solutions).  my opinion: not asked

  B1  cause: car ownership up, cities built for fewer cars
      ex: our city, road widened 2019, same jams within a year
  B2  solution: make the alternative faster, not the car slower
      ex: bus lanes, metro extension

  Three lines. No sentences. Five minutes.

Then Worksheet 4. Two questions, five minutes each, strictly timed. Call time even if they are not finished, because finishing is not the point and the clock is.

Between the two, pairs swap plans and each says the partner's argument back in one sentence. If they cannot, the plan is not clear enough yet and that is useful information before any writing happens.

Goal: one paragraph they could defend, built from their own plan.

They choose one point from either plan and write it as a full body paragraph: topic sentence, two or three sentences of explanation, one example. Nothing else. No introduction, no conclusion.

Send them to Worksheet 5, which has three boxes so the three moves stay visibly separate. Fifteen minutes to write, then re-read their own before swapping.

Circulate and read over shoulders. The two things to intervene on, in this order: a topic sentence that does not predict the paragraph, and an explanation of one sentence. Both are fixable on the spot with a question rather than a correction: what does that mean for ordinary people? usually produces the missing two sentences.

Goal:a checklist habit, applied to someone else's paragraph where the faults are visible.

Swap. Each student fills in the check sheetabout their partner's paragraph. It is four judgements and one instruction to improve, and it is deliberately not a band score. Students cannot band-score reliably and trying makes them defensive.

Take feedback on one criterion only: did the example actually belong to the point? A surprising number of examples are true, interesting and about a different idea from the topic sentence. That is a Coherence problem and it is invisible to the writer.

Their answers land on the dashboard, so you can read the room's judgements while they are still talking and pick two to read out.

Goal: the exam-day process, and a clear statement of what comes next.

 0-5    PLAN     jobs, position, 2 points, 1 example each
 5-35   WRITE    four paragraphs, straight through, no editing
35-40   CHECK    hunt your own known errors only

Ask each student to name the one error they will hunt in their last five minutes. Make them say it aloud. A general intention to check produces nothing; a specific one, articles or plurals or comma splices, actually gets found.

Close by saying what today was not: they have not written an essay, and that is deliberate. The first full essays come with the opinion lesson, and the homework between now and then is the model essay, copied sentence by sentence.