IELTS Task 2 Band 7 Sample: Should the Working Week Be Shorter? (Part 2 of 3): How CC 8 Was Achieved and What Kept It from 8

How CC 8 was achieved: the body paragraphs sentence by sentence

In paraphrase, the CC 8 descriptor says: information and ideas are sequenced logically, all aspects of cohesion are managed well, and paragraphing is sufficient and appropriate. That sounds abstract, so I have broken the two body paragraphs into individual sentences and marked the function of each one. You will see that every sentence “connects” to the previous one rather than starting something new.

Body 1: rest → efficiency

Body 2: a long weekend → mental health

The two paragraphs are almost symmetrical: topic sentence → explanation → inference or restatement → example → extension. After reading the first paragraph, the reader knows how the second will go, and this predictability is the key to a high CC score. In addition, the two topic sentences match efficiency and mental health in the introduction, and the conclusion wraps up with increases the productivity and enhances mental well-being, so the whole essay is tied together from beginning to end.

There is another detail that is easy to miss: this essay doesn’t actually use many linking words, and they are not concentrated at the start of sentences. Cohesion “hidden in the middle of a sentence”, such as let alone, leading to and which positively impact, feels more natural than putting Moreover or Furthermore at the start of every sentence. The Band 7 descriptor mentions that cohesive devices may be under- or over-used; at Band 8 they are “managed well”. That is often where the difference lies.

What kept it from 8: reasoning, articles and word choice

TR: two jumps in reasoning

The Body 1 example says: most workers’ productivities decrease after working eight hours a day, let alone … five complete days; hence, shorter working week …. The problem is that “an eight-hour day is tiring” does not lead to “the week should be four days”, because a shorter working week does not reduce daily hours. A more logical chain would be: tiredness builds up over the week and efficiency is lowest by Friday, so removing that day costs little output and leaves people fresher the following week.

The last sentence of Body 1, the competitiveness of society will increase, also jumps too quickly: from “employees have more energy” straight to “the whole of society becomes more competitive”, with no explanation in between. I realised this was a closing sentence I used a lot. It can be attached to almost any topic, but precisely because it fits anything, it does very little for the argument in this particular essay.

The Body 2 example uses my own experience: a trip to southern Taiwan, a long way from where I live, needs at least three days off. That is acceptable in IELTS, but personal examples are usually less persuasive than general ones, and the last part, where does not have any natural landscape or spectacular architecture, starts describing my neighbourhood, which is rather far from the topic of mental health. Also, the essay never mentions the other side’s likely concerns (for example, that healthcare and service jobs can’t simply lose a working day). Acknowledging and answering that in one sentence would bring TR closer to 8.

Introduction and conclusion: short, but they could be more precise

The introduction is only two sentences: one paraphrasing the question and one giving my position and reasons. A short introduction like this became my standard approach later on, because it leaves more of the 40 minutes for the body paragraphs. Still, the first sentence has two small things that could be better: the working week should be fewer than five days works grammatically, but the working week is a period of time, so should be shortened to four days is more natural; and labor in the workplace uses the uncountable word for the workforce to refer to people, so it should simply be workers or employees.

The conclusion, I want to reiterate my agreement of the implementation of longer weekend in the workplace, packs two ofs into one sentence and misses an article, so it reads heavily. A conclusion only needs to restate the position and reasons, and the cleaner the better, for example: In conclusion, I firmly believe that a four-day working week would benefit employees, as it would make them more productive and less stressed. One sentence covers the position and both reasons, in different words from the introduction.

LR and GRA: a list of errors

Repeated words

In this essay, productivity, efficiency and efficient appear seven or eight times in total, mental health and mental well-being alternate several times, and workers appears in almost every sentence. Repeating the same concept is not necessarily an error, but it makes the LR range look narrow. Here are some alternatives: