Email and discussion 2 — campus offices and science questions

Eight writing tasks of the two kinds the revised TOEFL iBT® writing section includes alongside Build a Sentence: four Write an Email tasks and four Write for an Academic Discussion tasks, set in the specification at the CEFR range from B1 to C2 and worth up to five points each.

The emails go to campus offices, and every one is about a problem: a window lock in a residence hall that nobody has repaired, a meal-plan charge on a tuition bill after the plan was canceled, a library fee for a book already returned, and an evening shuttle that no longer runs when your lab ends. The facts carry the complaint; anger and blame do not. The model answers state the problem precisely, say what has already been tried, name the evidence, and ask for one specific action with a date or a fallback — and they suggest a cause ("the return may not have been scanned") rather than accuse anyone.

The discussion posts take four science and technology questions: the single step that would cut a university's carbon emissions most, whether social media platforms should verify users' ages, whether governments should keep funding space exploration, and whether manufacturers should have to sell spare parts and repair manuals. Here a third idea on the list is not enough. The model posts show how to argue that your option matters more than a classmate's, how to build a middle position that answers both students, and how to support a claim with a clear chain of cause and effect instead of invented statistics.

How it works. The eight tasks print as a sheet you answer by hand, then photograph and upload. The check comes back task by task: for an email, whether each of the three required points was actually done, whether the register suited the reader, and its organization; for a discussion post, whether you took a position, supported it with something specific, added something the two students had not said, and how much range and accuracy your grammar and vocabulary showed. You get a list of what each answer did and did not do, not a score. The flashcards drill the phrases these tasks keep needing.

How this differs from test day. On the test, the two tasks are typed, and they share a 23-minute writing section with ten Build a Sentence items — the specification times only the section as a whole. The 7 and 10 minutes printed on each task, and the 100-word target, are our pacing suggestions, not published rules. If your test is close, also do at least one email and one discussion post typed and timed.

Every situation, discussion and model answer here is written by Zestly. No official test material is reproduced, and facts about the test format are paraphrased from the published specification rather than copied from it.

TOEFL iBT® is a registered trademark of ETS. This product is not endorsed or approved by ETS.

• Describe a problem to a campus office as facts, with what you have already done
• Point out a billing or record error without accusing the reader
• Ask for one specific action, with a date or a realistic alternative
• Propose a solution to an office and ask whether it could be considered
• Argue why your option matters more than a classmate's, not just add another
• Support a claim with a clear chain of cause and effect and a concrete example

Practice material written by Zestly, based on the ETS description of the Write an Email and Write for an Academic Discussion tasks in the TOEFL iBT test revised in January 2026.