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How to write an agree/disagree essay for IELTS Writing Task 2
Date Published
01 February 2023
- This article was first published on WeLoveIELTS.org (this website is now closed)
Knowing how to write an agree or disagree essay is very important because if you get this type of task question in the test and you don't know how to approach it, you might not get a very high score. To what extent do you agree or disagree with this statement?
An agree/disagree question is very similar to the one above. Let’s look at two typical agree/disagree essay questions:
- Some people believe that nowadays we have too many choices. To what extent do you agree or disagree with this statement?
- Living in a country where you have to speak a foreign language can cause serious social problems as well as practical problems. To what extent do you agree or disagree with this statement?
Can you see how these are similar to my question at the beginning? Both include a statement (= a sentence expressing an opinion) and ask you to what extent (= how much) you agree or disagree with it.
OK, so what are you going to do first? Start writing? Absolutely not .
After you’ve carefully read the task question and understood the topic, the first thing to do is to ask yourself to what extent you agree or disagree with the statement. There are three possible cases:
- You agree completely
- You disagree completely
- You partially agree (which means you also partially disagree)
Next, ask yourself: ‘ Why do I think that?’ This is a very useful question because by answering it you will start generating ideas that you will then include in your essay.
How many ideas should you come up with? In all three cases the secret is that less is more, so I recommend having no more than four in total.
Let’s have a look at an example from Cambridge IELTS 11:
- Governments should spend money on railways rather than roads. To what extent do you agree or disagree with this statement?
I’ve read the question and now I’m going to make some notes before I start writing. Here are my notes:
Partially agree - Both needs funding Why?
- Safety reasons
- Taxpayers expect government investment in both
Two main ideas. Now we have some direction and know where we are going with our essay. Should you now start writing? Not yet. You’ll need to develop these ideas, and the best way to do this is to give explanations, details, reasons and examples. Let’s add these to the notes.
- Safety reasons - Both roads and trains are widely used / all ages / need to be kept in good condition / if not, risk of crashes / example: Ponte Morandi collapse 2018 – Italy / lots of casualties / could have been avoided with more funding - maintenance / Trains are crowded at rush hour -> a railroad accident might be a terrible tragedy
- Taxpayers expect government investment in both - governments need to provide good services / citizens pay tax for this / example: train commuters pay to have efficient trains / if not – disruptions - late for work / same is true for road users / example: opening a new highway -> less traffic
Notice that I didn’t write full sentences but notes. Keep your full sentences for the essay! If you don’t do this brainstorming exercise before you start writing, the risk is that you’ll write whatever comes to your mind, and your essay will probably be confusing to read.
Top Tip: Think of how you’re going to structure your text. Keep life simple and always aim at four paragraphs: introduction, two body paragraphs and conclusion.
Introduction
Two sentences are enough here. In the first sentence you should paraphrase the task question. In the second sentence say if you (partially) agree/disagree so you immediately let the reader know what you think.
Two main paragraphs
Why these paragraphs? A paragraph contains ideas about a single subject and using them will make your essay organised, structured and easy to read. When writing an agree/disagree essay there are, again, three possible options:
- You completely agree - First paragraph: reasons why you agree. 2nd paragraph: other reasons why you agree.
- You completely disagree - First paragraph: reasons why you disagree. 2nd paragraph: other reasons why you disagree.
- You partially agree - First paragraph: reasons why you agree. 2nd paragraph: reasons why you disagree.
Remember: it’s much better to have few well-developed ideas than a lot of poorly developed ones , so when you write the paragraphs make sure to give reasons, examples and details. All these must be relevant to the reason you agree/disagree.
Again, keep life simple and write one or two sentences only. You should briefly repeat and summarise your answer to the question. Don’t introduce information that you didn’t mention in your paragraphs before. We need a conclusion to conclude right? So, don’t introduce other reasons or topics at the end of your text.
- Read the topic of the question and make sure you understand it
- Ask yourself if you agree or not with the statement in the question
- Brainstorm ideas before you start righting
- State your opinion in the introduction
- Use four paragraphs
- Logically organise the main paragraphs (for example, one for reasons why you agree and the other for reasons why you disagree)
- Extend and develop your ideas with reasons, examples and explanations
- Write a short conclusion.
- Start writing immediately
- Include too many different ideas. Less is more!
- Introduce more information in the conclusion.
Hope this helps you with your writing. Good luck!
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IELTS agree or disagree essay - band 9 guide
This is a band 9 guide to writing agree/disagree essays in IELTS Writing. Agree or disagree essay questions are very common for IELTS Writing task 2 . This type of questions asks you to say whether you agree or disagree with a given statement and justify your opinion .
In this lesson you will see IELTS writing task 2 sample question + model answer and learn
- how to choose an opinion for agree/disagree question
- how to generate ideas
- how to give a band 9 answer for agree/disagree question
IELTS agree/disagree question sample
Let’s look at an example of IELTS writing task 2:
Big salary is much more important than job satisfaction.
Do you agree or disagree?
Provide relevant examples if necessary.
This is a classic example of agree or disagree question that you may get on IELTS Writing task 2.
You can watch our video tutorial on how to tackle agree/disagree questions in IELTS Writing:
Choose your opinion & generate ideas
Agree or disagree question asks you to clearly determine whether you agree or disagree with the statement. Unlike questions that ask you to what extent do you agree or disagree , this question asks you to have a super-clear opinion. After you’ve decided your opinion, generate 2-3 supporting points for it .
For the task above you have two possible options:
- You fully agree that big salary is more important than job satisfaction
- You completely disagree that big salary is more important than job satisfaction
Now let’s generate supporting points for each of the opinions:
- Big salary is more important
- Having a job with a high salary makes people feel satisfied no matter what kind of job they do
- Money is essential for survival and good living
- Job satisfaction is more important
- Job satisfaction gives you a sense of fulfillment
- Doing what you like keeps you motivated and therefore leads to a career growth
- Money can’t buy happiness and it’s more pleasant to pursue what you’re interested in
For our essay, we’ll choose the second opinion.
Band 9 answer structure
After you’ve decided whether you agree or disagree and generated your supporting points, it’s time to start writing your essay.
There are a lot of ways to structure your essay, but we’ll use a structure that has been approved by many IELTS examiners to be high-scoring and coherent.
Band-9 essay structure :
Introduction
Body paragraph 1 - the 1st reason you agree/disagree
Body paragraph 2 - the 2nd reason you agree/disagree
Let’s take a look at each of these sections in detail.
Write your introduction in two sentences:
It is often argued that it is more advantageous to choose a job with high wage, even if it doesn't appeal to you at all.
I completely disagree with this opinion and think that job satisfaction is much more important than salary.
- Sentence 1 - state the first reason you agree/disagree .
First of all, I believe that job satisfaction gives people a sense of fulfillment that no money can guarantee.
To explain the reason effectively, you can imagine that your examiner has no knowledge of this subject at all and you have to explain every detail:
Even if someone is earning a high salary, but feels tensed and compromises with his conscience, this person won’t enjoy his life. While pursuing one’s interests will always bring pleasure and feeling of satisfaction.
For example, a lot of famous researchers made their career choices not because of appealing wages, but because they were passionate about science.
That’s why it’s more important to choose the kind of work that makes you happy than to look only at a high salary.
Secondly, doing what you like keeps you motivated and therefore leads to a career growth.
In other words, there is a strong relation between job satisfaction and productivity. People who love their jobs can easily excel in their fields of work and achieve better results than those, who put salary on the first place.
- Sentence 4 - support your idea with an example :
For instance, Henry Miller decided to leave his everyday job despite a good wage and ventured to become a writer. And after enduring years of ups and downs he became one of the most famous and well-paid authors of the twentieth century.
Thus, advantages of jobs that keep you satisfied outweigh the drawback of a low salary in a long-term perspective.
You can write the conclusion in one sentence that summarizes your opinion + 2 reasons for it :
To conclude, I strongly believe that job satisfaction is more beneficial than high salary because it makes people happy and motivated.
DO NOT write new ideas in the conclusion!
IELTS agree/disagree model answer
This is a full band-9 answer for IELTS agree or disagree question above:
It is often argued that it is more advantageous to choose a job with high wage, even if it doesn't appeal to you at all. I completely disagree with this opinion and think that job satisfaction is much more important than salary.
First of all, I believe that job satisfaction gives people a sense of fulfillment that no money can guarantee. Even if someone is earning a high salary, but feels tensed and compromises with his conscience, this person won’t enjoy his life. While pursuing one’s interests will always bring pleasure and feeling of satisfaction. For example, a lot of famous researchers made their career choices not because of appealing wages, but because they were passionate about science. That’s why it’s more important to choose the kind of work that makes you happy than to look only at a high salary.
Secondly, doing what you like keeps you motivated and therefore leads to a career growth. In other words, there is a strong relation between job satisfaction and productivity. People who love their jobs can easily excel in their fields of work and achieve better results than those, who put salary on the first place. For instance, Henry Miller decided to leave his everyday job despite a good wage and ventured to become a writer. And after enduring years of ups and downs he became one of the most famous and well-paid authors of the twentieth century. Thus, advantages of jobs that keep you satisfied outweigh the drawback of a low salary in a long-term perspective.
(277 words)
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IELTS Writing: Agree or Disagree Lesson with Sample Answer
Agree or disagree essays: ielts writing task 2 lesson.
This lesson will teach you how to write ‘agree or disagree’ or ‘opinion’ IELTS task 2 essays that could score a Band 7, 8 or 9.
Agree or disagree question types are among the most common on the IELTS writing paper, so you must learn how to write them properly.
In this post, we will look at:
Deciding Opinion
Idea generation.
- Writing an Effective Introduction
- Writing Supporting Paragraphs
- Writing a Conclusion
We will use a question from an IELTS past paper to help us understand the task.
Many students fail to do well in this type of question because they do not have a clear opinion and they do not use an appropriate structure .
The best structure you can use for this type of essay is:
Paragraph 1- Introduction
Sentence 1- Paraphrase Question
Sentence 2- Thesis Statement
Sentence 3- Outline Statement
Paragraph 2- Supporting Paragraph 1
Sentence 1- Topic Sentence
Sentence 2/3- Explain Topic Sentence
Sentence 3/4- Example
Paragraph 3- Supporting Paragraph 2
Paragraph 4- Conclusion
Sentence 1- Summary and reiteration of your opinion.
That’s it! Four paragraphs.
Note : You don’t have to use this structure; other structures can get you a high score. However, this structure has been approved by IELTS examiners to allow you to write a clear and cohesive essay. This structure will allow you to focus on generating your ideas and then writing an effective essay.
In this essay, IELTS examiners want you to give a clear opinion, so you must decide when you read the question. You will also need to do this to write an effective thesis statement.
Let’s look at an example:
In some countries, many people suffer from health problems due to eating too much fast food. It is, therefore, necessary for governments to impose a higher tax on this kind of food.
Do you agree or disagree?
With this type of essay, we have two choices:
- We agree with the statement or;
- We disagree with the statement
Some teachers advise you to partly agree and disagree. However, I would NOT recommend this because it often leads to an essay with NO clear focus and a CONFUSING structure.
Therefore, for this agree or disagree essay, you can say either:
- This essay agrees that governments should tax fast food or;
- This essay disagrees that governments should tax fast food
I think I will have more ideas for A, so I’m choosing that one. Always choose the one you feel comfortable writing about – even if you don’t feel that way. You don’t get extra marks for writing about how you feel; you want to give the examiner what they need to score your essay a Band 7+.
Now we have to think of ideas for why governments should tax fast food.
Here are some:
- Cigarettes and alcohol are taxed in the same way
- The money raised could be used to treat people with health problems
- Fast food companies should be punished for selling unhealthy food to people
- Making the food more expensive would stop people from eating it
- The money raised could be used to educate people about healthy eating
We don’t need to use all of these, just two for our supporting paragraphs. I will pick the first and the fourth ones because I know a little about these two and feel confident I can expand on them with explanations and examples. Remember, the examiner wants you to fully support your arguments, not just list many ideas.
Now we have two supporting ideas; we can move on to our introduction.
Introduction
As previously stated, we will use the following structure:
For a more detailed explanation, please see our post on writing an effective introduction.
To paraphrase the question, we restate it with a different meaning using synonyms. I will also reorder the question. Here is the question again:
In some countries, an increasing number of people are suffering from health problems due to eating too much fast food. It is, therefore, necessary for governments to impose a higher tax on this kind of food.
Paraphrased: It is argued that governments should levy a tariff on junk food because the health risks associated with consuming this kind of food are rising.
This is our first sentence.
We now need to write our thesis statement. This is our opinion in one sentence. This essay will agree with the above statement and will, therefore, look like this:
This essay agrees that a higher rate of tax should be paid by fast-food companies.
This is our second sentence.
We now need to write our third and final sentence, which is the outline sentence . This sentence outlines what you will write about in the main body paragraphs.
Firstly, alcohol and tobacco companies already pay higher taxes; secondly, higher taxes could raise prices and lower consumption.
So our full introduction will look like this:
It is argued that governments should levy a tariff on junk food because the number of health risks associated with consuming this kind of food is on the rise. This essay agrees that a higher rate of tax should be paid by fast-food companies. Firstly, alcohol and tobacco companies already pay higher taxes; secondly, higher taxes could raise prices and lower consumption.
We now need to write our supporting paragraphs for our agree or disagree essay:
Supporting Paragraph 1
This paragraph should include:
- Topic Sentence
- Explanation
A topic sentence tells the examiner about the rest of the paragraph. In other words, it is a summary of your first idea. It should look something like this:
Higher excise on liqueur and cigarettes has proven to curb the harm caused by these substances.
We now need to expand on this point a little. A good way of doing this is to assume that the examiner does not know this subject, and you must explain clearly what you mean. Here is what this could look like:
This revenue has been used to treat health problems associated with these products and has proven useful in advertising campaigns warning people about the dangers of alcohol and tobacco abuse. Tax from fast food could be used in the same way.
We should now think of an example to support our point. Think about any recent news stories, studies or adverts. If you can’t think of one, make one up. The examiner won’t check if it is real or not.
The United Kingdom is a prime example, where money from smokers is used to treat lung cancer and heart disease while at the same time, pumped into health campaigns in schools to warn children about the dangers of smoking.
That’s it. Four sentences. The full paragraph should look like this:
Higher excise on liqueur and cigarettes has proven to curb the harm caused by these substances. This revenue has been used to treat health problems associated with these products and has proven useful in advertising campaigns warning people about the dangers of alcohol and tobacco abuse. Tax from fast food could be used in the same way. The United Kingdom is a prime example, where money from smokers is used to treat lung cancer and heart disease.
Supporting Paragraph 2
We now repeat the same formula with our second supporting point- higher taxes will increase prices and reduce consumption.
Our topic sentence:
Increasing taxes would raise prices and lower consumption.
Explaining this further:
Fast food companies would pass on these taxes to consumers in the form of higher prices, leading to people not being able to afford junk food because it is too expensive. Junk food would soon become a luxury item, and it would only be consumed occasionally, which would be less harmful to the general public’s health.
We now support our point with an example:
For instance, the cost of organic food has proven prohibitively expensive for most people, and that is why only a small percentage of the population buys it regularly.
The full paragraph would look like this:
Increasing taxes would raise prices and lower consumption. Fast food companies would pass on these taxes to consumers in the form of higher prices, leading to people not being able to afford junk food because it is too expensive. Junk food would soon become a luxury item, and it would only be consumed occasionally, which would be less harmful to the general public’s health. For instance, the cost of organic food has proven prohibitively expensive for most people, and that is why only a small percentage of the population buys it regularly.
Four sentences.
Conclusion
As stated before, a good conclusion for agree or disagree essays should include:
Sentence 1- Summary of main points
Sentence 2- Your opinion
Don’t write any new ideas in this paragraph.
A good conclusion should restate your thesis statement and your main supporting points.
In conclusion, junk food should be taxed at a higher rate because of the good precedent set by alcohol and tobacco and the fact that the increased cost should reduce the number of fast-food people buy.
Agree or Disagree IELTS Sample Essay
In conclusion, junk food should be taxed at a higher rate because of the good precedent set by alcohol and tobacco and the fact that the increased cost should reduce the amount of fast-food people buy.
I hope you found this ‘agree or disagree’ essay IELTS lesson useful.
About Christopher Pell
My name is Christopher Pell and I'm the Managing Director of IELTS Advantage.
I started IELTS Advantage as a simple blog to help 16 students in my class. Several years later, I am very humbled that my VIP Course has been able to help thousands of people around the world to score a Band 7+ in their IELTS tests.
If you need my help with your IELTS preparation, you can send me an email using the contact us page.