Academic Writing 3 — a process and a problem-solution essay

A third Academic Writing paper, and the first one here whose Task 1 is not a set of numbers. It is a process: seven stages by which one factory turns waste paper into moulded egg boxes, from collection and sorting to dispatch.

A process asks for different writing from a chart. There is no trend to describe and nothing to compare between years; what the task achievement mark rewards is order and completeness. Every stage has to be there, in the right sequence, and the two points where the process turns back on itself — the water drawn out at the moulding stage and the boxes rejected at inspection both go back to the pulper — have to be placed exactly. Those loops are what most answers get wrong, and the key points check for them.

The language changes too. Stages are usually written in the present simple passive (the paper is mixed with water, contaminants are removed), because who does the work does not matter. Sequencers carry the cohesion — first, next, once, after which — and a paragraph that begins every sentence with "then" is marked down under coherence and cohesion however accurate it is. The overview is still required: a sentence naming how many stages there are, where the process starts and ends, and that it is partly circular, before any detail.

Task 2 is a problem-and-solution essay about small towns losing their shops and bank branches as people shop and bank online. It asks two questions, and both have to be answered: what problems this causes for residents, and what could be done about them. The commonest failure is an essay that explains why people prefer online banking — a question nobody asked. The other is a list of solutions with no link back to a problem. The key points look for measures tied explicitly to the problems they solve.

Task 1 is at least 150 words in about 20 minutes; Task 2 is at least 250 words in about 40 and counts for twice as much. You print the sheet, write by hand, photograph the pages and upload them. The check goes task by task — length first, then task achievement or response, coherence and cohesion, lexical resource, and grammatical range and accuracy — and names what your answer did not do rather than issuing a band. A short flashcard deck goes with the paper: the phrases of process description and of problem-and-solution writing, each with an example sentence.

The factory, its figures and the towns are invented. No IELTS® material is reproduced.

• Write a process overview that names the number of stages, the start and end points and any loop back to an earlier stage
• Describe every stage in order, placing each loop exactly where it occurs
• Use the present simple passive for the stages of a process, with some active and relative clauses for range
• Vary sequencers (first, next, once, after which, finally) and join stages without comma splices
• Describe a process without adding opinions or reasons the diagram does not give
• Answer both questions of a problem-and-solution prompt: the problems and the measures
• Link each proposed measure explicitly to the problem it would solve
• Budget sixty minutes between a task worth one share and a task worth two

Practice paper written by Zestly, based on the ielts.org description of the Academic Writing test (Task 1: a diagram of a process; Task 2: presenting a solution to a problem). The factory and its figures are invented.