In this lesson, we will provide you some tips for the Task 2 Essay Type, in which you often are asked the question, to what extent do you agree or disagree?
Example 1:
"True friends should always support each other's decisions. To what extent do you agree or disagree?"
Example 2:
"It is wiser to use your money to gain meaningful experiences than to use it to acquire possessions. Do you agree or disagree?"
Basically, these are standard opinion essay questions. You are being asked to give your own perspective, your own opinion, about some kind of topic. Usually, it is a debatable question or a debatable topic. The strategy for these will have very good points on both sides.
It is unlikely that you are going to have a very, very strong opinion about the question. Because they rarely ask questions that clearly have one side, that is better than the other to most people. You can find different ways to answer the questions. In fact, that is a basic part of the strategy for these questions.
You have complete freedom to decide how much you agree or disagree with the question that is asked to you. You can agree very strongly, you can disagree very strongly with the statement. Or you can have a kind of mixed opinion, sometimes you agree, sometimes you disagree.
There are different options. In a moment, when you look at outlining for this essay type. You will look at how to approach these different ways of answering this question. It is recommended that you should go with the first thing you think of, what can you write most about? Even if what you decide to write about on your IELTS exam is not truly your deeply held opinion, it does not matter.
There is no wrong answer for this question, what you need to do is to find something as quickly as possible. That you can write about to meet your word limit within the time that you have. That is priority number one, so whatever you can think of quickly to brainstorm topics for this essay type, do it. The key thing you must not do for this essay is to argue against yourself.
Sometimes students get confused when they are trying to, especially when they are trying to write a mixed opinion. Trying to present two sides to the question that is being asked. Sometimes students will, in one body paragraph, argue one thing. And then in the second body paragraph, they will argue against themselves, they will say the opposite thing.
Actually, weaken the argument from the first paragraph that they made, this is something to avoid. This is a key thing you want to not do in this essay, do not argue against yourself. The rule is that each point in your essay must strengthen the argument that you make in your thesis.
Your thesis statement should present the opinion that you will write about in your essay. And every point in your essay must support and strengthen the argument that you make in your thesis. That is a key strategy for this question type. Obviously, you must make your position very, very clear in your introduction.
More tips for this type of question can be found in the video below (will be updated later):
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