Can you invent statistics in IELTS Writing Task 2?

Nobody fact-checks your essay. An examiner has no way to check a study you cite and no time to try — which is precisely why inventing one buys you less than you think. The Task 2 descriptors reward how far an idea is developed and supported; they say nothing about verifying your evidence. What is left is the work the example does inside the paragraph, and an invented figure usually does none: it sits there, unexplained, while the next sentence repeats the claim. The personal example you were told to avoid is not forbidden anywhere, and it often develops an argument better.

The two beliefs that cost marks

The first is that research-sounding support raises the band. It does not. A number is not an argument; it is something you then have to reason from. Without the reasoning, you have spent thirty-odd words of an essay that only has to run to 250 on decoration.

The second is that "my friend" or "in my country" is banned. Nothing in the assessment says so. What sinks a personal example is its vagueness, not its personal nature: "My friend studied hard and got a good job, so education is important" supports nothing, because it could support the opposite claim just as easily. An example that shows a mechanism is legitimate support; a vague one is filler whoever it came from.

One claim, three kinds of support

Prompt: Some people believe that governments should ban private cars from city centres. To what extent do you agree or disagree?

The claim being developed in this body paragraph, in all three versions: a ban only changes behaviour where an alternative already exists. Only the kind of support varies.

Version A: the invented statistic

One reason such bans work unevenly is that drivers weigh the ban against what else is available. According to a 2021 study at a well-known university, 78 per cent of commuters abandoned their cars within six months of a city centre restriction, and overall traffic volumes fell by 41 per cent. This clearly proves that banning cars is effective and that governments everywhere should introduce these measures without delay.

Task Response verdict. The paragraph is decided by "This clearly proves that banning cars is effective" — the sentence where development should begin, and instead the topic sentence returns in louder words. The figures are never reasoned from; nothing says what those commuters switched to, which is the whole claim. The statistic is decoration; the idea stays an assertion.

Version B: the friend's anecdote

One reason such bans work unevenly is that drivers weigh the ban against what else is available. A friend of mine lives in a city that closed its central streets to traffic two years ago. She carried on driving for a month, parking on the ring road and walking twenty minutes, because the only public route involved two buses that did not connect; when the council added a direct tram, she sold the car within weeks. Her decision was determined by the alternative, not by the restriction itself.

Task Response verdict. The paragraph is decided by "because the only public route involved two buses that did not connect". That clause supplies a mechanism: it explains the behaviour instead of announcing it, and the closing sentence generalises from it to the position. A small, unverifiable story — and properly developed.

Version C: the concrete general observation

One reason such bans work unevenly is that they remove journeys without replacing them. Where a city centre closed to cars was already served by frequent buses, trams and connected cycle lanes, drivers simply switched and the streets filled with pedestrians instead; where the same policy was imposed on a centre ringed by car parks and reached by one infrequent service, shoppers drove to out-of-town retail parks and the restricted streets emptied. The ban does not create the alternative. It only exposes whether one exists.

Task Response verdict. The paragraph is decided by "It only exposes whether one exists" — a sentence that extends the claim into a principle, earned by the contrast just before it. No study, no numbers, and the most fully developed of the three.

The rewrite that saves Version A

Keep the writer's instinct, drop the fiction, and spend the words on the causal link:

One reason such bans work unevenly is that drivers weigh the ban against what else is available. A commuter who loses a ten-minute drive and gains a forty-minute journey with two changes pays the parking charge and keeps driving; the same commuter offered a direct fifteen-minute tram switches within a week. Restrictions therefore work as the second half of a transport policy and fail as the first half.

The same length as the original, to within a word. The 78 per cent has become a comparison between two journeys, and the paragraph reasons instead of announcing.

What this means for your practice

Stop collecting facts and start collecting reasoning moves. Candidates who plateau around band 6 on Task Response are rarely short of ideas; they are short of the second and third sentences that turn an idea into an argument. Progress here is slow — something like 200 to 240 hours of instruction per half band on average, slower still above band 6 — so keep the drill narrow. Take one prompt, write the same body paragraph three ways as above, and mark only the sentence that follows the example. That sentence carries your Task Response band, and you can rewrite it in ninety seconds.

The band 7 criteria for Task 2 covers what each of the four wants, and the band 6.5 versus band 8 comparison shows the same gap across a whole script.