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IELTS Writing Task 2 practice
An essay prompt you have not met, the real 40-minute clock, and a band for each of the four published criteria — with the sentence that earned it.
Format checked against IELTS on .
The task, as IELTS sets it
One essay, at least 250 words, 40 minutes. It is the same task on Academic and General Training, and it is worth twice as much as Task 1 in your Writing band — which is why it is the section most worth practising.
There is no upper word limit. Under 250 costs marks under Task Response before a single sentence is judged on its quality. Most band 7 essays sit between 260 and 320 words: enough to develop two ideas, short enough to leave time to check the grammar.
Four criteria, four bands, and the one that usually hurts
IELTS marks Writing on four published criteria, each scored separately and then averaged:
- Task Response — did you answer the question actually asked, all parts of it, with a clear position held throughout.
- Coherence and Cohesion — paragraphing and the linking between ideas, not the number of linking words.
- Lexical Resource — range and precision of vocabulary, including whether an ambitious word was used correctly.
- Grammatical Range and Accuracy — variety of structures and how often they are error-free.
The commonest band 6 plateau is a Task Response problem wearing a vocabulary disguise. An essay reads fluently, uses good words, and answers half the question — or answers a question adjacent to the one asked. An overall band of 6 cannot tell you that. Four separate bands can.
What the marking gives back
Every comment names the criterion it came from and quotes your own sentence. So instead of “develop your ideas more”, you get which paragraph left an assertion unsupported, under which criterion, and what a band higher would have needed.
It is an estimate and every result says so. No practice tool can issue an IELTS band — what it can do is show its reasoning so you can check it, which a single number never allows.
Prompts you have not seen before
Every prompt is written for this product, from the real question families: opinion, discussion, problem and solution, two-part, and advantage and disadvantage. Nothing is recycled from a published book, so no model answer exists to have memorised — and no copyright is borrowed to build the bank.
Working from a practice book you already own? Type in its question and the essay you wrote, and it is marked the same way. We keep your essay and its mark; the book’s question is used for that marking and kept nowhere.
Questions, answered
How long should an IELTS Writing Task 2 essay be?
At least 250 words, in 40 minutes. There is no upper limit, but under 250 costs you marks under Task Response before anything you wrote is judged. In practice most band 7 essays land between 260 and 320 words: long enough to develop two ideas properly, short enough to leave time to check the grammar.
What are the four IELTS Writing marking criteria?
Task Response, Coherence and Cohesion, Lexical Resource, and Grammatical Range and Accuracy. Each is scored separately on the published band descriptors and the four are averaged for the Writing band. Task 2 counts for twice as much as Task 1 in the overall Writing score.
Why is my IELTS essay stuck at band 6?
Usually one criterion is holding the other three down, and an overall band cannot tell you which. The commonest pattern is a strong Lexical Resource and Grammatical Range with a weak Task Response: an essay that reads well and does not actually answer the question asked, or answers only half of a two-part question. Marking that reports a band per criterion is the only way to see it.
Is Task 2 the same for Academic and General Training?
Yes. Task 2 is an essay on both tracks and is marked on the same four criteria. Only Task 1 differs — a figure to describe on Academic, a letter to write on General Training — and we build both.
Can AI marking give me a real IELTS band?
No, and nothing can except IELTS. What this gives you is an estimate built against the published band descriptors, with the criterion and the evidence for every comment, so you can check the reasoning rather than take a number on trust. Treat it as a practice estimate, which is what it is called on every result.
Free to start — four writing and four speaking evaluations a month, no card.
The rest of the paper
IELTS Writing Task 1 is the other half of the Writing paper, and IELTS Speaking practice, Reading and Listening have their own pages. The full IELTS practice test covers all four.
Not sure what a band means? The band descriptors explained, and the band score calculator.