Writing Task 2: Two-Part (Direct) Question Essay: Question 4
Syllabus W.task2
In many countries, growing numbers of adults in their thirties, forties and fifties are enrolling in university degrees, professional qualifications or other formal courses, often many years after they first left full-time education.
What are the reasons for this? Do you think it is a good thing?
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 trend and previews both answers clearly: the reasons (changing workplace skills and flexible study) and a firm opinion (“clearly good thing”). The first body paragraph fully answers the “reasons” question with two developed causes and a specific example. Grace’s Meridian Open Campus qualification. The second body paragraph fully answers the opinion question, extending the same example with a new outcome (her pay rise and sense of control) and adding a distinct, broader economic point, so the opinion is not merely a restatement of the reasons.
Coherence & Cohesion
Topic sentences flag which question each paragraph answers (“The main driver is…”, “I consider this trend genuinely good…”), and “More broadly” clearly signals the shift from the individual example to the wider economic point. Reference such as “this trend” and “Grace herself” ties detail back to the person and cause already introduced.
Lexical Resource
Vocabulary is precise and topic-appropriate: “reshape entire industries”, “remain employable”, “retrain throughout their working lives”. Near-synonyms avoid repeating “study” (e.g. “formal qualifications”, “data-analysis qualification”), and collocations are accurate (“restoring a sense of control”, “adapts to technological change”).
Grammatical Range & Accuracy
The response shows confident control of complex structures: a colon introducing an explained cause, a non-defining relative clause (“which no longer requires giving up a job to attend classes during the day”), and a participle clause (“pushing adults back toward formal qualifications”). There are no errors of tense, agreement or word form anywhere in the response.
Common pitfalls specific to this task
See commonMistakes above: the most damaging is explaining the reasons for adult re-enrolment in detail while never stating an explicit opinion on whether the trend is a good thing. A band 9 two-part response must give each question its own clear, fully developed answer.