Writing Task 2: Discussion (Both Views) Essay: Question 8
Syllabus W.task2
In some professions, qualifications expire and workers must periodically retake tests to keep them, while others believe a qualification, once earned, should last for life.
Discuss both these views and give your own opinion.
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 both positions and states a clear, qualified position (“periodic retesting should be extended to more professions where a lapse… could genuinely put other people at risk”) that is sustained to the conclusion’s precise line-drawing between higher-risk and lower-risk fields. Both body paragraphs are developed to comparable depth with a specific example, the experienced structural engineer and the aviation authority’s five-yearly recertification, rather than one side being explored and the other merely mentioned.
Coherence & Cohesion
Topic sentences make each paragraph’s viewpoint explicit (“Those who favour lifetime qualifications argue that…”, “Advocates of periodic retesting counter that…”), and “counter that” cleanly marks the pivot between views. Reference chains such as “habits a lifetime qualification would never have caught” and “competence, unlike a certificate” tie ideas back to earlier points without a mechanical list of connectors.
Lexical Resource
Vocabulary is precise and appropriately sophisticated: “recertification”, “fade silently over time”, “discourage capable people from entering fields”. Near-synonyms avoid repetition (e.g. “retesting”, “recertification”, “formal review”), and collocations are used accurately (“demonstrates real competence”, “matched updated safety procedures”).
Grammatical Range & Accuracy
The response shows confident control of complex structures: a “while” clause of contrast opening the introduction, a defining relative clause (“private pilots… who had quietly developed habits”), and a comparative construction (“as valuable a guarantee… as a formal retest could ever be”). There are no errors of tense, agreement or word form anywhere in the response.
Common pitfalls specific to this task
See commonMistakes above: on this higher-difficulty prompt, the most damaging failure is developing the lifetime-qualification view fully while giving the periodic-retesting view only a token mention, which fails to discuss both views with comparable depth as the task requires.