The Task 2 two-part question: answer both, or cap your band

The two-part question is the only Task 2 prompt that tells you, in plain numbers, how many jobs you have — and the marking follows that instruction with no mercy at all. Address one question fully and the other in a clause, and Task Response is capped below the top regardless of how good the covered half is: the descriptors treat a prompt that is only partially addressed as exactly that, and no amount of fluent development of your favourite question buys back the other one. This is not a sophistication problem. It is an arithmetic problem, and the recurring failure here is structural rather than linguistic.

Here is a prompt in the exam's own register:

In many countries, a growing number of people continue working beyond the traditional retirement age. Why do some people choose to keep working later in life? Should governments encourage this trend?

Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience.

Two questions. The first is a causes question and wants explanation; the second is an opinion question and wants a position. They are different species of answer, and that is precisely why essays drift: explanation is easier to generate, so writers keep explaining and then remember the second question with four minutes left.

Treat the two questions as two equal halves

Two questions, two body paragraphs, roughly equal in length. Not one long paragraph and an afterthought. The table below plans for about 290 words — comfortably clear of the 250-word minimum — which leaves each half around 100 to 110 words of real content, enough for one developed idea per half and not enough for two shallow ones. Plan to the table before you write a sentence — it takes three minutes and it is the whole defence against drift.

Notice what the table forbids. There is no paragraph for "the other side" unless the prompt asked for one — this prompt did not. Spending a body paragraph arguing against government encouragement when you have already said you support it burns 110 words you owed to Q1, and the examiner reads it as an unclear position. If you want the full criteria walk-through behind that judgement, the band 7 criteria for Task 2 covers it in detail; here, just obey the count.

A fully written second half

The second question is the one that gets starved, so here is what a finished Body 2 for the prompt above looks like at the level you are aiming for, written to the table's own target:

Governments should actively encourage later working, though with clear limits. The decisive argument is fiscal: pension systems in ageing societies are funded by a shrinking number of contributors, so every year a willing worker stays employed both removes a claim on the pension pool and adds to it, easing the pressure without cutting benefits outright. Encouragement is also cheap, since adjusting the tax treatment of post-retirement earnings costs little. It must not slide into obligation, however, because manual workers whose bodies have absorbed forty years of labour cannot extend their careers as an office worker can, and penalising them for retiring on time would be regressive.

That is 106 words: a position in the first sentence, one reason developed through its mechanism, a secondary reason compressed into a single sentence, and a limit that shows judgement rather than hedging. The limit is not a second opinion — it qualifies the one position, which is what a clear-but-nuanced stance looks like on paper.

The introduction that silently drops a question

A recurring point of failure is an introduction that commits to only one of the two answers. Compare:

Before: Nowadays, more and more old people are continuing to work instead of retiring. This essay will discuss the reasons behind this phenomenon and its effects on society.

Two problems. "Its effects on society" is not the question asked — the question was whether governments should encourage it — and the sentence announces no answer to either part. An examiner reaching the conclusion has no idea what you think.

After: In many countries, people are increasingly staying in employment well past the conventional retirement age. This trend is driven mainly by financial necessity and by the loss of purpose that retirement brings, and governments should encourage it, provided that encouragement never hardens into pressure on those whose work is physically punishing.

The second version answers both questions in advance. It costs 24 extra words, it makes the body paragraphs easier to write because the claims are already stated, and it makes a partially addressed prompt almost impossible — you can see the missing half from the introduction alone. The same logic applies to the conclusion, which gets one sentence per question and nothing else; how paragraphs and conclusions carry their weight goes further into that.