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What Band 7 actually requires in Task 2

The checklist first. Most people who are stuck fail on the first item, which is where the rest of this page spends its time.

  1. Did I answer every part of the prompt?
  2. Is my position the same in the introduction and the conclusion?
  3. Does each body paragraph have one main idea, stated early?
  4. Can I find three consecutive sentences with no errors?
  5. Did I use any word I was not sure about?

Item 1 is where the marks go

The most common Task 2 failure is writing about the subject instead of answering the question. It does not feel like a mistake while you are doing it, because the essay is on topic, fluent, and about the right thing.

"To what extent do you agree?" wants a position, held consistently. "Discuss both views and give your own opinion" wants three things, and people routinely hand in two: both views and no opinion, or one view and an opinion.

So count them before you write. If the prompt asks for three, the essay owes three, and a well-written response supplying two is capped however good the sentences are.

It is the most expensive habit in Task 2 and the cheapest to fix. Thirty seconds of counting.

Item 4 is the other one

Around band 7 the expectation shifts from "makes some errors" to producing a good proportion of sentences with no errors at all. Note the wording: not perfection, frequency.

Which should change what practice looks like. Reaching for longer, more ambitious sentences that each carry a small mistake moves you away from band 7, not toward it.

Although the government have introduced many policy, but the problem is still remain.

Although the government has introduced many policies, the problem remains.

The first attempts more and lands worse: subject–verb agreement, a missing plural, a redundant but after although, a doubled verb. Four errors buying one clause. The second is simpler, clean, and scores higher.

What you want is a mix — some genuinely complex sentences you fully control, alongside shorter accurate ones. Not everything long, and not everything short either, because a page of simple sentences caps Grammatical Range instead.

Two smaller things

Lexical Resource rewards precision, not rarity. A common word used exactly beats an unusual word used approximately, and an unusual word used wrongly is marked as an error, so it costs you on both criteria at once.

And linking words are the most over-taught part of the exam. Mechanical signposting is noticed and penalised at the top bands; Moreover at the head of every paragraph is worse than nothing. Good cohesion is mostly invisible, and it has a page of its own.

Want to know which item you are failing? IELTS Writing Checker scores Task Response separately, so you can tell whether the problem is the question or the sentences. Try it — writing is free, or see pricing.