How to think of ideas for an IELTS writing task 2 essay

In this article, I will talk about some of the common problems that people have when trying to think of ideas for an IELTS writing task 2 essay.  I will also offer you some solutions that will help you to generate ideas that perfectly match the question and help you to boost your score.

It is important to note that before you start to think of ideas you should make sure that you have properly analysed the question so that you know what you are being asked. More information on how to analyse an IELTS task 2 question can be found here. 

Common problems

1/ Using fake questions from unreliable sources 

First of all, I would recommend making sure that you only use official questions when studying for the test. You may in fact just be struggling because you are trying to answer a question that is not written very well from a random website. 

 I highly recommend the Cambridge IELTS authentic practice tests series which contains many high quality, realistic exam questions.

2/ Cultural differences

In many countries all over the world, people are often not encouraged to form their own individual opinions.  In addition, some of the questions or issues discussed in IELTS are also not commonly discussed in many cultures. 

In order to remedy or fix this problem, I recommend that students take the time to self educate and explore the most common topics found in IELTS. The internet is full of information on all of the most common topics for IELTS and failing this you can always head to bbc.co.uk and read the most relevant sections. The TED Talk series also has a lot of excellent information on a wide range of topics.  The TED talk series is presented in an academic style and therefore will be very useful for those wishing to hear cohesive devices and academic vocabulary in use. 

If you do struggle to express your opinions and debate I recommend that you find some other students or a teacher with whom you can discuss topical issues. 

In no particular order the most common topics are: 

• Health

• Environment

• Education

• Development

• Globalisation

• Public Transport

• Criminal Justice

• Youth Crime

• Technology

• Government Spending

3/ Trying to be interesting or original 

Just remember that it's more important how you write than what you write. IELTS ultimately is an English test and you will not be actually expected to solve the problems of global warming in 250 words.  

Your ideas do not need to be interesting, original, special, or even reflect how you really feel or think. My recommendation is to be like electricity following the path of least resistance.

In other words, choose the ideas that will be the easiest to write.

4/ Difficult topics that you know nothing about

Once again here I feel there is no excuse for not self educating on the main topics for IELTS.  the test actually also does not require you to have any specialist knowledge of any of the topics.  As long as you have your opinion and you can justify it that will be sufficient for you to get a good score. 

How to think of ideas for IELTS writing task 2

My favourite method for generating ideas has three simple stages. Please note the following method only applies to questions that require you to have an opinion or thesis. I will explain how you can adapt this method later in the blog for other question types.

Stage 1 - decide your thesis 

Stage 2 - change your thesis into a question 

Stage 3 - think of two answers that directly answer the question

 Let's take a look aT an example question

W2 Question 

You should spend about 40 minutes on this task.

Write about the following topic:

Space exploration is much too expensive and the money should be spent on more important things.

What is your opinion?

Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience.

Write at least 250 words.

Stage 1 - decide your thesis (opinion)

There are a number of possible ways in which we could answer this question.

 We could ...

1/  argue that space exploration is too expensive and that the money should be spent on more important things

2/  argue that it is not too expensive and we should continue to spend it on space exploration

3/  argue that it is perhaps too expensive and while we should not stop funding it entirely we should perhaps reduce the current amount of spending

For this example I'm going to choose the first response however there is no particular reason for this and any of the above responses would be fine. 

THESIS = argue that space exploration is too expensive and that the money should be spent on more important things

Stage 2 - change your thesis into a question 

For the second stage we quite simply just change our thesis into a question.  Reformulating it in this way makes sure that we directly answer the question.

Why should the money spent on space exploration be spent on more important things?

You may want to use a different question word depending on the type of question you have: question words include how, why, what, when, who, and where. 

We now need 2 answers that directly answer this question.  You may be wondering why we only need two answers.  This is simply because most IELTS writing task 2 responses will have just four paragraphs. An introduction, two supporting paragraphs, and a conclusion. We only need two ideas because we only need one idea per supporting paragraph. In fact, if we have more than one idea in the paragraph we are at risk of not properly developing ideas or not having a clear central theme to the paragraph and therefore losing points. 

Stage 3 - think of two answers that directly answer the question

Why should the money spent on space exploration be spent on more important things?

1/  There are many people on Earth without access to basic necessities such as health care and education. It is immoral to not prioritize them.

2/ Investing in space exploration is a risky business.  Much of the money invested in space exploration is merely wasted with many scientific experiments and projects delivering little to no results. On the other hand, investing in basic necessities is guaranteed to have a measurable impact on well-being. 

TIPS -

If you are going to use words like good, bad, better, or worse make sure that you specifically define in what way exactly your idea is good or bad, better or worse.  To clarify, you need to be specific with your ideas.

 I could say for example that solar energy is better than energy gotten from non-renewable resources.  However, I am not being clear with exactly how it is better or to what extent it is better.  A more specific idea would be to say that solar energy is better because it is more efficient and environmentally friendly. 

Thinking of ideas when you are not asked for a thesis

There are some question types in IELTS  that do not require you to give an opinion or thesis. Problem and solution based questions typically do not ask you to give a  thesis statement.  For this question type just make sure that you have one problem and one solution.  Make sure that your solution solves your problem and that you can easily provide evidence for the fact that it does so.