How to plan an IELTS writing task 2 essay

In this article, I will cover the essential stages of planning and you will learn how planning can help you to boost your IELTS score. 

What is the point of planning? 

Planning is an essential stage in any successful  IELTS  writing strategy.  Failure to plan will increase your risk of not directly answering the question and not getting the best score that you possibly could. Planning will help to boost your score in both the task achievement and coherence and cohesion parts of the test (50% of your overall score). 

I have been teaching IELTS now for a number of years and it is my observation that students that take the time to plan and pay attention to this essential lesson do much better on the test.

Students that do not plan normally have an essay that reads a bit like they are thinking out loud.  As such it is not clearly organised and poorly written.  Starting to write before you plan is a bit like driving before you know where you're going ---  you will surely get lost.

To continue with my driving analogy a good plan should be like a map helping you to know exactly where you are going and how you are going to get there. It should also help you decide what you do not need to write.  The IELTS writing task 2 essay is after all only 250 words long, or just over,  meaning that you do not have enough time to include sentences that do not develop your argument. Every sentence in your essay should have a purpose.  If you do not know what the purpose of the sentence is --- do not write it.

Common problems with planning 

There is only really one common problem that students have with planning and that is actually doing it. The most common excuse that I hear is “I don't have time”. 

The reality is you do not have time not to plan.  Planning in the test should take you a total of 5-7 minutes at the maximum, though when practicing at home you can always take longer.

Students are correct in their assumption that planning will slow them down but only for the first few times.  This is because the process of planning is often new and for that reason, it takes some time to learn.  But I can guarantee you that if you do learn how to plan following this method it will actually take you less time overall to write your essays.

I'm going now to use my car analogy one final time…

Someone who does not plan writes like...

Drive- stop-drive-stop-drive-stop-where are we going?- was it left or right at the lights?- drive- stop 

Someone who plans writes like... 

Enters address in GPS - follows instructions - stops for a coffee - gets home safely -passes IELTS- moves to another country- gets dream job - lives happily ever after

I could continue arguing all the reasons why you should plan but I'm not going to. I'm going to stop here and simply tell you to plan. 

How to plan an IELTS writing task 2 essay in 4 simple steps

1/ Analyse the question  

2/ Think of your ideas 

3/ Write out the structure of your essay 

4/ Brainstorm vocabulary 

Step 1 - Analyse the question  

Before you start to write you should understand exactly what the question is asking you. If you do not then you are in danger of writing an essay for a question you were not asked --- and consequently being limited to a grade 5 or below in task achievement. 

There are 3 essential stages to question analysis in IELTS

 STAGE 1  -  IDENTIFY THE TOPIC WORDS

 STAGE 2 - IDENTIFY OTHER KEYWORDS AND IMPORTANT MODIFIERS

 STAGE 3 -  IDENTIFY THE INSTRUCTION WORDS 

STAGE 1 -  IDENTIFY THE TOPIC WORDS

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

What is your opinion?

You can see here that the question is about space exploration and spending money.  However, if we just talk about space exploration and money in general we are probably not directly answering the question. 

 STAGE 2 - IDENTIFY OTHER KEYWORDS AND IMPORTANT MODIFIERS

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

What is your opinion?

By highlighting the words above hopefully, you can see that this question is actually asking you about how we should spend our money as a society. Any general discussions of space and money will not be relevant to the question.

 STAGE 3 -  IDENTIFY THE INSTRUCTION WORDS

It is important to identify the instruction words so that you can properly structure your response. 

For the question above we are asked "what is your opinion?”.  Quite simply we are being asked here what our opinion is and in order to answer the question we will need to provide our opinion and give supporting evidence. 

Step 2 - Think of your ideas

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. 

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. 

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. 

Step 3 - Write out the structure of your essay 

The following structure is for OPINION based questions. For other question types please see my relevant style guides. Each stage represents one sentence. I recommend writing out the structure so that you can easily organise your ideas.

PTO TEE C

Peter Told Oliver That Elephants Eat Cats - An easy way for you to remember the structure. 

 Introduction 

1/ Paraphrase the question and introducing the general topic

2/ Thesis statement 

3/ Outline statement 

Supporting paragraph 1 

4/ Topic sentence - introduce the topic 

5/ Explanation sentence - explain how the topic supports your thesis statement

6/ Example - provide evidence

Supporting paragraph 2

7/  Topic sentence - introduce the topic 

8/ Explanation sentence - explain how the topic supports your thesis statement

9/  Example - provide evidence

Conclusion paragraph

10/ Concluding sentence

11/ Optional prediction or recommendation 

And that's it, the sentences above all have a clear purpose and function within the essay.  there are of course many other additional types of sentences that you can add but the above structure should be sufficient for those wishing to get a grade 7.  Those wishing to score higher may wish to use a more advanced structure. 

Step 4 - Brainstorm vocabulary 

One of the key skills for IELTS writing is to paraphrase the question.  For this reason, before you start writing you may want to brainstorm some vocabulary ideas including synonyms and alternative ways to say words that will likely repeat in your answer.

In the task, you'll probably only have about 1 minute for this section of planning.  However, at home, I do recommend that you spend some time on this section as it will help you to improve your writing. Before you start to write you can also try reading some articles on the same subject on websites like bbc.co.uk and make a list of any words or phrases that you can use in your own essay.   

Let's continue with the same question. 

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

What is your opinion?

Example paraphrasing- 

Space exploration - space research 

Too expensive - costs too much money

Money should be spent - financial resources should be allocated 

Important things - significant things 

In addition to paraphrasing and thinking of synonyms, you may also want to use this part of your plan to think of collocations, academic idioms, and topic-specific vocabulary. Using these types of words can help you to boost your score. 

Example collocations 

Deep space

Example academic vocabulary

When it boils down to it

The bottom line is that

Topic-specific vocabulary

The moon landing 

The Andromeda galaxy 

Next steps?

I hope that you have enjoyed reading this blog.  If you have any questions regarding the test or would like to inquire about my writing correction services or IELTS online classes please email me at info@lovetolearnenglish.com.