✍️ Writing
Task 1 is Integrated: read a passage for three minutes, hear a lecture that challenges it, then write 150–225 words in 20 minutes explaining how the lecture responds to the reading. Task 2 is Writing for an Academic Discussion: a professor's question and two students' replies, and you have 10 minutes to contribute at least 100 words of your own.
❓ What you will be asked
- Integrated — reading and lecture, always in disagreement; your job is to connect the three points
- Academic discussion — a short, specific, reasoned contribution to an online class board
♟️ How to work
- For the integrated task, the reading always gives three points and the lecture always attacks all three in the same order. Note them in two columns as you go.
- Never state your own opinion in the integrated task. Report: 'The lecturer argues that…, which contradicts the reading's claim that…'.
- For the discussion task, do three things in ten minutes: state a clear position, engage with at least one classmate by name, and add one specific reason or example of your own.
- Specific beats general every time. 'Bus fares in my city rose by twenty per cent last year' beats 'transport is expensive'.
- Keep three minutes to reread. Most marks lost at this level are lost to carelessness, not to ignorance.
⚠️ What loses marks
- Copying whole sentences from the reading passage.
- Writing about the reading and forgetting the lecture, or the reverse.
- Producing a memorised five-paragraph essay for the discussion task — it does not fit and it reads as prefabricated.
- Writing 300 words of generalities when 120 specific ones would score higher.
✍️ Now practise it
Original material written for this site, with every answer explained.
