IELTS opinion essays, also known as ‘agree or disagree’ essays,

come up frequently in the writing exam. In this lesson, I’m going to

show you how to plan and write them step-by-step.

Here’s what we’ll be covering:

 3 Common mistakes

 Essay structure

 How to plan

 How to write an introduction

 How to write main body paragraphs

 How to write a conclusion

Click the links to see lessons on each of these Task 2 essay writing
topics. 

Once you understand the process, practice on past questions. Take

your time at first and gradually speed up until you can plan and write
an essay of at least 250 words in the 40 minutes allowed in the exam.

The Question
The first part of the question for an IELTS opinion essay will be a
statement. You will then be asked to give your own opinion about the
statement. Here is some typical wording that might be used:

 What is your opinion?

 Do you agree or disagree?

 To what extent do you agree or disagree?

Here's a question from a past test paper.

A big salary is much more important than job satisfaction. 

Do you agree or disagree? 

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

Write at least 250 words.

I’ll be using this question to guide you through the process of planning and writing an
IELTS opinion essay.

3 Common Mistakes
These three errors are common in IELTS opinion essays.

 Not stating an opinion.

 Giving arguments for both views.

 Not supporting your opinion with clear reasons.

The most common mistake that students make is not giving an opinion.
The question will clearly state that you must choose one side of the
argument. If you fail to do this, you will get a low score for task
achievement.

It doesn’t matter which side of the argument you take or even, that you
agree with it. Choose the one you can develop the best argument for.

Make sure that you don’t change your opinion part way through the
essay, and don’t give reasons for the opposing view.

Essay Structure
Now let’s look at a simple structure you can use to write opinion
essays. It’s not the only possible structure but it’s the one I recommend
because it’s easy to learn and will enable you to quickly plan and write
a high-level essay.
1) Introduction

 Paraphrase the question

 Give your opinion
 State two supporting reasons

2) Main body paragraph 1

 Topic sentence – outline 1st reason for supporting this view

 Explanation – explain this idea
 Example – give an example or expand the idea

3) Main body paragraph 2

 Topic sentence – outline 2nd reason for supporting this view

 Explanation – explain this idea
 Example – give an example or expand the idea

4) Conclusion

 Summarise opinion and key reasons

This structure will give us a well-balanced essay with 4 paragraphs.

We now need some ideas to add into the structure and we’ll have
everything we need for our essay.

How To Plan IELTS Opinion Essays

# 1  Decide on your opinion

The question I've chosen to work on is quite straightforward and easy
to understand so we don’t need to spend time analysing it. The first
task, then, is to decide on our opinion.

Here’s the question again:

A big salary is much more important than job satisfaction.

Do you agree or disagree?  

For this essay, I’m going to disagree with the statement and argue that
job satisfaction is more important than a big salary.
# 2  Generate ideas
The second task is to generate some ideas to write about.

Since I‘m going to argue that job satisfaction is more important than a
large salary, I need ideas to support this view.

There are several different ways to think up ideas. I cover them fully on
the IELTS Essay Planning page.

With this particular question, I immediately thought of a couple of

examples of situations where job satisfaction did prove to be more
important than a high salary, so I’m going to use the ‘example method’
of generating ideas.

Once you’ve thought of an example or two, ideas to include in your

essay should come to you easily.

You might want to try this yourself before reading on for my ideas.

Here are my examples and some ideas they generated.

Both the examples are partly true but I've adapted them to better fit the
essay. It's fine to do this as the examiner won't check your facts.

Examples:

 Uncle Barry – boasted about high salary but hated his job.
Nervous breakdown – lost job & can’t work.

 Me – gave up teaching. Now enjoy my work and am much more

relaxed and happy even though I earn much less money.

Ideas:

 High-salary jobs are generally more stressful

 Stress leads to ill health, both mental and physical

 40 hours a week at work – a third of the day

  Money doesn’t bring happiness

 Better quality of life

 Sense of fulfilment

 Less stressed – healthier and happier

I’ve got more ideas here than I need so I’m going to pick two to
develop in the essay – one for each of the main body paragraphs.

Idea 1 – High-salary jobs are generally more stressful and can lead to
ill health.

Idea 2 – Job satisfaction gives a sense of fulfilment.

We’re almost ready to start writing our IELTS opinion essay but first,
we have one other small task to do.

# 3  Vocabulary
In an IELTS essay, it’s important to be able to say the same things in
different ways, either by paraphrasing and/or using synonyms. During
the planning stage, quickly jot down a few synonyms of key words you
could use to save you having to stop and think of the right language
while you’re writing.

For example:

satisfaction – fulfilment, achievement, sense of accomplishment,

content, sense of well-being

salary – income, wages, pay, earnings

important – significant, valued, has more meaning

job – work, employment, position

With that done, we can focus on the first paragraph of the essay – the
introduction.

How To Write an Introduction

A good introduction has a simple 3 part structure:

1)  Paraphrased question

2)  Thesis statement

3)  Outline statement

An introduction should:

 Have 2-3 sentences

 Be 40-60 words long

 Take 5 minutes to write

1)  Paraphrase the question

Start your introduction by paraphrasing the question.

     Question: A big salary is much more important than job

satisfaction.

                       Do you agree or disagree?  

Paraphrased question: 

It is argued that earning lots of money has more significance to

people than being content in their work.
Note that I’ve used some of the synonyms I listed, although it’s fine to
repeat one or two words if you need to. Above all, your language must
sound natural.

2)  Thesis statement

In IELTS opinion essays, the thesis statement is where you state your
opinion. For example,

   Thesis statement: 

   This essay totally disagrees with that statement.

That’s all you need to say.

If you decided to agree with the statement, you would write:

'This essay completely agrees with that statement.'

3)  Outline statement

Finally in the introduction, you must outline the two main points (ideas
1 and 2 above) that you’ll cover in the rest of the essay. Do it in one
sentence, or you can add them onto the end of the thesis statement if
appropriate.

Outline statement: 

I believe that people are increasingly concerned about the risk of

stress-related ill-health frequently experienced by people in
highly paid positions and they care more about feeling fulfilled at
work.

So, let’s bring the three elements of our introduction together.

     Introduction

This introduction achieves three important functions:

 It shows the examiner that you understand the question.

 It acts as a guide to the examiner as to what your essay is

about.

 It also helps to keep you focused and on track as you write.

The two ideas in your introduction will become your two main body
paragraphs.

Main body paragraph 1 – concerns about the risk of stress-related ill-
health

Main body paragraph 2 – a sense of fulfilment at work

How To Write Main Body Paragraphs

The structure of a good main body paragraph has 3 parts:

 Topic sentence

 Explanation

 Example
If you can’t think of an example, you can add further supporting ideas
but we already have our two examples so that’s not an issue here.

A common problem when writing main body paragraphs for IELTS

opinion essays is having too many ideas. Again, we have already
chosen the two ideas we are going to develop, so we are all set to start
writing.

You can see how important the planning stage is and how it makes the
actual writing of the essay far quicker and easier.

Main Body Paragraph 1

The topic sentence summarises the main idea of the paragraph.
That’s all it needs to do so it doesn’t have to be complicated.

It plays an important role in ensuring that your ideas flow logically from
one to another. It does this by acting as a signpost for what is to come
next, that is, what the paragraph will be about.

If you maintain a clear development of ideas throughout your essay,

you will get high marks for task achievement and cohesion and
coherence.

We’ll now take the idea for our first main body paragraph and create
our topic sentence.

Main idea 1 – concerns about the risk of stress-related ill-health

Topic sentence: 

Employees earning a large income are generally under significant

mental and emotional pressure to perform well and achieve
targets.

Next, we must write an explanation sentence. This explains to the

examiner what we mean. It expands on our first idea.

Explanation sentence: 
This causes many individuals to suffer high levels of stress which
can result in both mental and physical health problems.

Finally, we add an example to support our main point. I thought of this

in the planning stage so I have it ready to use.

If you can’t think of a real example, it’s fine to make one up, as long as
it’s believable. The examiner isn’t going to check your facts.

Example sentence:

This happened to my uncle. He used to boast about his huge

salary but the boss kept increasing his sales targets and in the
end, the stress became too great and he had a nervous
breakdown. Now he regrets being driven by the money.

That’s the 3 parts of our first main body paragraph complete. Here’s
the finished paragraph.

We now follow the same process for our second main body paragraph.

Main Body Paragraph 2

Main idea 2 – Job satisfaction gives a sense of fulfilment.

First, we write the topic sentence to summarise the main idea.

Topic sentence:

Having a job that they enjoy doing, and in which they feel valued,
is a major concern for most of the modern workforce.

Now for the explanation sentence to explain this idea.

Explanation sentence:

A significant number of people are giving up well-paid positions

to do jobs which pay less but that they find more enjoyable and
less stressful.

Finally, an example to support our main point. As before, I thought of

this in the planning stage so just need to form it into a couple of
sentences.

Example sentence:

I am an example of this myself. A year ago I left the teaching

profession because the workload had become too great and I am
now a gardener. I feel really fulfilled in this work and I am much
more relaxed and happy even though I earn far less money.

That’s the 3 parts of our second main body paragraph complete.

Here’s the finished paragraph.

Now we need a conclusion and our IELTS opinion essay is done.

How To Write a Conclusion

Conclusions to IELTS opinion essays should do two things:

  Summarise the main points

 State your opinion

This can generally be done in a single sentence.

If you are below the minimum 250 words after you’ve written your
conclusion, you can add an additional prediction or
recommendation statement.
Our essay currently has 233 words so we’re on target and don’t
need this extra sentence but you can learn more about how to
write a prediction or recommendation statement for IELTS opinion
essays on the Task 2 Conclusions page.

The conclusion is the easiest sentence in the essay to write but

one of the most important.
A good conclusion will:

 Neatly end the essay

 Link all your ideas together

 Sum up your argument or opinion

 Answer the question

If you achieve this, you’ll improve your score for both task achievement
and cohesion and coherence which together make up 50% of the
overall marks. Without a conclusion, you’ll score below band 6 for task
achievement.

You can start almost any final paragraph of an IELTS opinion essay
with the words:
  In conclusion

        or

 To conclude

Now all you need to do is briefly summarise the main ideas into one
sentence.

Here’s a top tip. Go back and read the introduction to the essay
because this is also a summary of the essay. It outlines what you are
going to write about.

To create a great conclusion, you simply have to paraphrase the

introduction. Let’s give it a go.

Introduction:

Here is the same information formed into a conclusion:

That’s it. We’ve completed our essay. Here it is with the 4 paragraphs
put together.

   Question:

   A big salary is much more important than job satisfaction.

   Do you agree or disagree?

Finished IELTS opinion essay.

Go through this lesson as many times as you need to in order to fully

understand it and put in lots of practice writing IELTS opinion essays
from past exam questions. Practice is the only way to improve your
skills.