IELTS Task 2 Band 6.5 Sample: Driverless Vehicles and the Missing Comparison (Part 2 of 3): Coherence, Vocabulary, Grammar and the Missing Weighing

3. Why this essay got a 6.5: criterion by criterion (continued)

Coherence & Cohesion 6: a structure that does not fit the question type, and templated linking words

The CC problems come in two layers. The first is structure: four paragraphs with two advantages and two disadvantages, evenly balanced, visually tells the reader that “the two sides are roughly equal”, while my position was that “the advantages clearly weigh more”. Structure and position pull against each other, and the reader has to get to the conclusion to find out which way the writer leans.

The second layer is the linking words. Almost every point in this essay starts with a fixed opener: The main reason is that, Another key benefit is that, First and foremost, Secondly, In other words, To put it another way, it is readily apparent that. Several of them are used imprecisely:

• To put it another way, it is readily apparent that driving driverless cars reduces the usage of traditional energy…: “To put it another way” introduces a restatement of the previous sentence. But the previous sentence says “most driverless cars run on electricity”, while this one says “they reduce the use of traditional energy”, which is more of an inference (“therefore”) than a restatement.
• In other words, when driverless vehicles replace the traditional ones, those drivers will definitely lose their jobs.: this sentence is really an example of unemployment, so “For example”, or simply naming specific jobs, would fit better.
• Those opposed to the usage of driverless vehicles due to the following two reasons.: this sentence has no main verb; it should be “Those who oppose … do so for two reasons.” An error in the very first sentence makes the whole paragraph get off to a laboured start.

Also, the background sentence in the introduction, “Individuals have different opinions regarding whether the merits … exceed the demerits”, paraphrases the question rather than the situation in the prompt. The prompt sets up a scenario, “in the future all vehicles will be driverless”, and that scenario does not appear anywhere in my introduction. A reader who only reads the introduction would have no idea what kind of future the essay is discussing.

Lexical Resource 7: enough vocabulary, quite a few small slips

LR reached 7 because the topic vocabulary was used fairly well: economical, lowering expenditure, environmentally friendly, eco-friendly, unemployment rate and road safety are all natural choices for this question, and the collocations are mostly right. What kept it below 8 were some small errors:

Grammatical Range & Accuracy 7: enough variety, but an error in a paragraph’s first sentence is costly

GRA performs much like LR: the structures are varied (a non-defining relative clause, “which always costs…”, compound sentences with a semicolon, “by + -ing” for method), and most sentences are error-free, so it reaches 7. The main errors are the missing verb in the first sentence of paragraph three and the missing article in “is good example of this matter” (a good example). Going from 7 to 8 requires fewer, less noticeable errors, and an error in the first sentence of a paragraph is especially visible, so it is the first thing to fix.

4. The major problems: an Outweigh essay with no weighing

The “weighing” in an Outweigh essay can be done in several ways, none of them complicated:

• Show that the disadvantage is short-term and the advantage long-term: for example, unemployment is a transition problem that can be eased by retraining, while lower costs and environmental benefits last.
• Show that the disadvantage can be solved: for example, safety concerns will decrease as the technology matures and regulation improves.
• Show that the number of people affected, or the scope, differs: for example, drivers are a minority, while lower transport costs affect every user.

Make just one of these comparisons in the last sentence or two of the disadvantages paragraph, or in the conclusion, and the argument of the whole essay is complete.

This is the point that struck me most when I reread the essay. Companies not paying drivers’ wages = drivers having no jobs; these two arguments are tied together. If you argue that the advantages weigh more, you have to face this contradiction: why is the money saved more important than the jobs lost? That is a natural entry point for weighing, and at the time I completely missed it.

An examiner will not necessarily take off many marks for a leap like this, but it makes the argument look weak. A more convincing approach is to find environmental reasons in self-driving itself: computers accelerate and brake more smoothly than humans, so they use less energy; shared driverless cars could reduce the total number of vehicles on the road, cutting congestion and emissions. Those arguments belong to driverless cars specifically.

When I later rewrote this question myself, I switched to five paragraphs: one paragraph for each of the two advantages, a single paragraph on just one disadvantage (unemployment), and a conclusion with an added recommendation that the government provide retraining. The structure itself says “the advantages weigh more”, and the recommendation in the conclusion responds directly to the disadvantage, so the weighing feels natural.

Four paragraphs vs five: the same arguments send different messages

Many people ask: does an Outweigh essay have to have five paragraphs? My view is that the number of paragraphs is not the point; the point is whether the structure speaks for your position. Here is how the same set of arguments feels to a reader in different layouts:

If you write slowly, the third option is very useful: it is still four paragraphs, but the disadvantages paragraph contains only one disadvantage, and all the remaining space goes on weighing. That does not add words, yet it gets the “judgement” TR cares most about onto the page. Conversely, the layout I used, two disadvantages with two or three sentences each, is the worst of both worlds: the disadvantages are not explored deeply enough, and there is no room left to rebut them.

Why did I write it this way at the time?

Looking back, I think the root of the problem is that I had prepared for Outweigh questions as if they were “list the points” questions. At the time I had a set of all-purpose paragraph openers: There are several reasons why…, The main reason is that…, Another key benefit is that…, Those opposed to … due to the following two reasons…, which fitted any question. The templates helped me write fast (I finished in 34 minutes), but they only “lay the arguments out”; they do not “make the arguments talk to each other”.

Templates are not bad in themselves. The trouble is that they make you think “every paragraph has a topic sentence and an example, so the essay is complete”. Outweigh is exactly the question type where the arguments most need to talk to each other: advantages must be compared with disadvantages, and disadvantages must be limited or answered. So my advice is: keep your templates if you like, but in the disadvantages paragraph and the conclusion, always write at least one extra “comparison sentence”. That sentence is something no template can give you.