Writing Task 2: Advantages & Disadvantages Essay: Question 6
Syllabus W.task2
Many companies are redesigning their workplaces so that most staff work together in one large open-plan area instead of in individual private offices.
Do the advantages of this shift to open-plan offices outweigh the disadvantages?
Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience. Write at least 250 words.
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Worked solution
Examiner notes: why this is a band 9 response
Task Response
The introduction paraphrases the prompt and states an unambiguous verdict (“I believe the disadvantages… outweigh the advantages”) that is sustained without contradiction throughout. Each body paragraph develops a genuinely distinct, fully extended point (collaboration benefits, then the cost to concentration and privacy) each anchored in a specific, plausible example rather than a generic claim, and the conclusion restates the verdict while explicitly weighing the two sides against each other rather than simply repeating the introduction.
Coherence & Cohesion
The essay moves in a clear line from acknowledging the case for open-plan offices to overturning it, signposted by “The clearest advantage is…” and “However, this benefit comes at a considerable cost…”. Reference chains (“this low-friction contact”, “this benefit”, “the absence of a private space”) tie sentences together smoothly, and the two extended examples are integrated directly into each paragraph’s argument rather than appended as an afterthought.
Lexical Resource
Register is consistently formal and precise: “low-friction contact”, “considerable cost to concentration and wellbeing”, “a matter of course”. The essay varies its vocabulary for the central contrast rather than repeating “good” and “bad”, instead using collocations such as “physical barriers”, “sustained loss” and “heavier cost”.
Grammatical Range & Accuracy
A wide range of structures is used with full control: relative clauses (“a copywriter and a designer who sat three metres apart…”), a concessive opening in the conclusion (“although open-plan offices do encourage…”), and varied sentence lengths and openings throughout. There are no errors of tense, agreement or article use anywhere in the response.
Common pitfalls specific to this task
See commonMistakes above: the most damaging band 6 error on this prompt is describing open-plan offices neutrally, covering both sides without ever committing to whether the advantages or disadvantages actually outweigh the other, which caps Task Response regardless of how fluent the language is.