1. In task two, you have to write a 250-word essay on a topic of general interest. You have to give an opinion about the question and present a written argument. You have 40 minutes in which to do this. Task two is assessed on 1. Arguments, ideas and evidence refers to how well you answer the question by giving relevant ideas, and how well you discuss or present your ideas; 2. Communicative quality refers to how well you have structured the essay and how easy it is to read. This includes use of sentence connectors; 3. Vocabulary and sentence structure refers to how many mistakes you make in sentence structure and word use.
II Layout of an essay
When you write your essay you should use standard, general layout. That is to say, it should have three distinct sections, as outlined below.
第一段：
The purpose of this section is to introduce the topic and present your own opinion
第二三段：
The purpose of this section is to explain your opinion
第四段：
The purpose of this section is to briefly summarize your opinion NOTE：中国的考生要特别注意中文和英文写作风格之间的不同。中文中，一般先论证再给出观点，这同英文正好相反。在英文中，你应该在引文中先提出观点，在正文中进行论证，然后在结论中重申自己的观点。
III Analyzing the question
Your ideas are important, and can make a big difference to the quality of the essay. However, without analyzing the title, it is very difficult to think of good, relevant ideas, you should therefore spend one or two minutes thinking carefully about the title. People often fail to do as well as they should do in the essay writing because they didn’t think question before beginning to write the essay. Remember that a few minutes spent planning the essay could potentially improve your score in the essay writing by one band.
IV Three Styles of Task Two
1)
讨论某物或现象的利与弊（advantages and disadvantages of sth）。
2)
寻找某种社会现象的原因并提出建议（find out the causes for a social phenomenon and provide some solutions）。
Examples: Nuclear power is far too dangerous. Therefore, countries should ban its use and concentrate, instead, on developing alternative sources of energy such as hydroelectric power, wind power and solar energy. What about your opinion? Topic sentence: One of the main benefits of nuclear power is that it doesn’t use natural resources such as coal, gas and oil.
Supporting sentences: It helps to protect that environment because fuel such as coal and oil produces waste gases that pollute the atmosphere. It also ensures a reliable supply of electricity for many generations to come.
Topic sentence: Dealing with nuclear waste is a big problem.
Supporting sentences: Nuclear waste is very dangerous, and takes many years before it becomes safe. Even if it is buried, if anything happens, such as an earthquake, the damage to the environment could be very serious. Nuclear waste also has to be transported to the place where it is to be stored. If anything happens whilst it is being transported, an accident, for example, the results could be very serious.
4、开头太臃肿，废话太多
一篇文章的开头仅起到介绍主题和展示自己观点的作用，不需要写的太多，一般40个字左右较为合理。有些范文的开头太长，这只会浪费你的时间和笔墨，而考官可能根本不看你的开头。这是考官给考生的忠告。下面是一个不好的例子，尽管文字优美，但不符合雅思写作的要求。
Nuclear power is a relatively recent discovery in the field of physics. Yet it has proven to be a very popular to be a very popular method of producing electricity, and is used widely by many countries worldwide for this purpose. Using a minimum of natural resources, it is capable of producing vast amounts of electricity at a cost far lower than traditional methods have thus far been able to achieve. However, it has many disadvantages, namely, it is highly dangerous. In fact, as I shall argue, it is far too dangerous to be used as a method of producing electricity. （共101个字）
