Task Two: Making a Plan

The first thing you need to do in the Writing Part Two is to make a plan.  It's incredibly important and it only takes one minute. 

• It will help you focus on the key points you want to make.
• It will show you how many points you have for each side of the argument.
• It will stop you including irrelevant information.
• You can use the plan to form your paragraphs: one idea = one paragraph.

The kind of plan you use depends on you.  What works for you?  However, a very simple way of doing this is just to make a table or a list of pros and cons (advantages and disadvantages).

Imagine the question is this:

"Living in a big city is very stressful and brings nothing but disadvantages."

You need to make arguments for and against living in a big city.  Your plan could look like this:

Here I've given three arguments for each side - you might choose to have two arguments, but your arguments should be balanced. 

From this plan, you can see that: 

• you have a balance of arguments for and against.
• you have enough arguments for your essay.
• everything is relevant to the question.

TASK

Below are some topics. They are the same topics as in 'Introductions'.  For each topic, make a plan.  Make sure that you have a balance of arguments.