Blog

This is a good question we received from a member of our private Facebook group and an IELTS examiner gives their advice

I would recommend that you explicitly agree or disagree in these types of question. The main reason why I say this is because it is easier. High users of English (Band 8/9) are able to partially agree and say why. Lower users of English usually struggle to do this and meet all the points on the criteria.

So, let’s imagine the question is “Online gambling should be banned. To what extent do you agree?” and we agree.

All you need to do here is present two body paragraphs that support your opinion along with a concise introduction and conclusion. That is it. You can spend time planning, developing your supporting examples, check your writing after you finish much more efficiently because you are supporting your opinion; it is easier. If you partially agree, you need to think of an argument to counter your opinion and this is harder to do.

Many candidates make the mistake of thinking they have to balance these types of questions and what happens is, they support their opinion in their first body paragraph which is detailed and quite long, yet when they have to argue against their position, they present a much shorter paragraph that is not as detailed. This affects their Task Achievement score and usually caps it at Band 6.0.

So, as I said before, it is easier to explicitly agree/disagree. IELTS writing is hard enough, and you don’t want to waste time arguing against yourself.

If you want an IELTS examiner to evaluate your IELTS writing, you can order a Full IELTS writing correction test here.  They will tell you exactly what you need to do to get higher marks and, as in most cases, what is stopping you from getting a higher mark.

To what extent do you agree?!!