Getting to the bottom of IELTS Essay Esoterica
One mark of a well written essay is that you can guess what question its answering by reading it.
However, when it comes to the IELTS Writing section, conflicting advice often makes it difficult to follow a strategy with confidence. Rather than winging it or trusting dubious sources on the internet, I decided to ask the organizations that write and administer the IELTS about best practices.
As the Assistant Director of Studies and Head of IELTS Studies at Camelot English School, this is literally my job.
Below is a letter from IDP, one of the three organizations that creates and administers the IELTS, responding to me.
What do you think my question was?
Dear Sam,
When it comes to preparing for your IELTS test, we advise that you make use of the resources available through the IELTS Essentials website under the “Prepare” section:
https://www.ieltsessentials.com/global/prepare. Here you will find a variety of free tools as well as links to purchase official practice books.
For information regarding the test format, please visit https://www.ieltsessentials.com/global/testinformation/testformat/testformatdetail.
I trust that this information is of assistance and wish you all the best.
for further queries kindly get in touch with the test center.
Any ideas?
If this were the response to an IELTS prompt, it would receive a very low mark for Task Achievement since it says nothing at all.
This is the letter I wrote in the first place:
Hi!
I prepare students for the IELTS and only consult official materials to do so.
I was wondering what exactly was meant here:
The way the advice is written, it looks like the candidate should discuss both the advantages and disadvantages.
However, the question seems much simpler: yes or no and why. Such a response would look more like the “thesis-led” style of essay rather than a “discursive” style.
Could you please clarify what the best approach to this type of question is? Thanks!
I wrote to Cambridge and The British Council asking them the same thing, but their responses were similarly useless.
So I kept looking.
IELTS publishes plenty of useful material for test-takers, including real candidates’ work with examiner comments.
While on the search for some of these, I found one from 2023.
Better still, this document contained a response to the very question I had asked the aforementioned three organizations about: Do the disadvantages of international tourism outweigh the advantages?
Here is a response that earned a band score of 7:
“Tourism” — friend or foe?
Tourism is a very big industry in the modern time and is growing quite rapidly. Thousands of people travel everywhere to various destinations every year. Arguments have come up regarding the benefits and negative impacts of tourism in places and on its local inhabitants and environment; however, I believe there are more advantages than disadvantages of international tourism.
People travel for various reasons; we travel for business purpose, holidays, visit friends and relatives etc. Travelling is mostly seen as a recreational activity. Tourism has many advantages. Tourism can play a tremendous part in a countries economy, the more tourists visit a country and spend money there the better it is for the country; that way more money is circulated within the country and even the stability of their currency rate of exchange persists if not improve. Vendors and shops get to sell more goods and make an income. Tourism also has its non-monetary advantages; it brings cultures and people closer. People from all around the world get to share their culture with each other and even learn more. This is a good opportunity in education.
Tourism seems to have some disadvantages too. However, I believe the problems caused by tourism are not something that cannot be solved or prevented. A lot of people believe that tourism can destroy or deviate culture and causes quite an impact on visited locations such as pollution and littering. People can adhere to their own beliefs and way of life if they want to; no one can really forcefully influence someone to change from their morals and ethics Pollution can be avoided by increasing usage of environmental friendly vehicles used for tours and rents, warning and visual education on littering and smoking, specific times can be allocated for tours to certain areas, such as peak times where local inhabitants feel uncomfortable due to too many foreigners.
Where there are problems there can always be solutions. Tourism brings great amount of advantages for any place in many ways and is a ‘win-win’ exchange process. The very few problems caused can always be avoided or taken care of. I believe tourism should be highly promoted, specially in traditional and poor countries with natural beauty such as Bangladesh. (374 words with title)
Notice the structure:
Introduction (with a position on the issue)
Body paragraph 1 (elaborating the position)
Body paragraph 2 (explaining and addressing the opposite view)
Conclusion (summarizing what has come before in support of the position)
Not bad, right? But why is it good?
The Examiner’s comments answered the question I’d been chasing: does the writer need to discuss both the good and the bad or just which side they believe is dominant?
The test taker addresses both aspects of the task and presents a clear position throughout the response.
Ah-ha!
So, the test does want you to discuss both the advantages and disadvantages of the issue.
Straight from the horse’s mouth.
OK, so the format should be the same as in a discursive/advantages and disadvantages essay.
Later in the Examiner’s comments, though, there’s another interesting revelation:
Ideas are relevant, well extended and supported, although there are occasional lapses in content (as in the opening of paragraph 2 and the tendency to ‘present solutions to the disadvantages’ in paragraph 3).
Prompts like these do not require refuting whichever side of the question (advantages or disadvantages) you do not support.
I infer that this means you need to simply list some of them but make it clear that the position you take is supported by the more relevant, meaningful information.
Putting those ideas together, a good structure that meets the Assessment Criteria would look like this:
Introduction (Big picture, paraphrase that X issue has both advantages and disadvantages, state which are more significant)
Body paragraph 1 — state the OPPOSITE of the position you hold but do not explain how the flaws be mitigated or the benefits enhanced
Body paragraph 2 — state your position with examples and/or the reasoning animating it
Conclusion — tie together your evidence to support your position, don’t add anything new
There you have it.
The same format for a discursive/advantages and disadvantages essay is what IELTS Examiners are looking for in questions asking about the relative strength of positive versus negative aspects of an issue.
