Planning your answer before you write is very important if you want to score above band 6.
Planning helps make sure that you:
- address all parts of the question (band 7 Task response)
- logically organise information (band 7 coherence and cohesion)
- adequately develop your ideas (band 6 task responses can have main ideas that are inadequately developed – in other words there is a lack of balance)
Nevertheless, many people tell me that they do not have time to write a plan in the test. If your aim is to score above band 6, you can only afford to take this attitude if you plan on taking and retaking the test many times. To help address this, I devised a quick way to plan your answer using the question you are given. This image shows how this ideas works.
To demonstrate how this works whether you agree, disagree, or neither completely agree or disagree, look at the following answers I have written to this question. Try to notice the ways that I make the different positions clear throughout.
In this first version, I completely disagree with the idea in the question:
In the second version, I completely agree with the idea in the question:
In this final version, I neither completely agree nor disagree:
Of course, this is not the only way to answer this question – there is no single correct way to answer any question. This is just one way to help you answer the question fully, in a balanced way, as quickly as possible in the test. You can read more about planning and getting ideas in my free book: