IELTS Writing Marking Criterion: Task Achievement | IELTS Luminary
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Task Achievement

Task Achievement is one of the four marking criteria for IELTS Writing part. The other criteria are:

  • Coherence and Cohesion

  • Lexical Resource or Vocabulary

  • Grammatical Range and Accuracy

Each of these criteria bears 25% of your Writing marks. That means, if you fail to meet one of these criteria, you will lose 25% of your total Writing score. We have given detailed discussions on each of these items on the dedicated pages. Here on this page, we are going to give you a clear understanding about the criterion Task Achievement.

Task Achievement is simply answering all parts of the question properly. You cannot imagine, most of the students fail in this section, they tend to give partial responses rather than answering fully. For example, look at this question below:

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Some people say that history is one of the most important subjects. Other people think that, in today’s world, subjects like science and technology are more important than history. Discuss both these views and give your own opinion.

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Look, you are asked to cover three areas:

1) Discuss one view

2) Discuss the other view

3) Give your opinion

If your answer covers all these three parts properly, you are fulling the criterion Task Achievement. That means, if you have given an unequal discussion; in other words, if you have discussed one view more than that of the other view, or if you have discussed both views equally but have not given your clear opinion, you will lose marks. So the idea is, you have to answer all the three parts to get the maximum score in this section (Task Achievement / Task Response).

Look at the sample response below how it fulfils the Task Achievement criterion:

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Question: Some people say that history is one of the most important subjects. Other people think that, in today’s world, subjects like science and technology are more important than history. Discuss both these views and give your own opinion.

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Response: In today’s world, it is often argued that history is an essential subject, while others say that science and technology are of greater relevance than history. Though we can learn invaluable lessons by studying history, this essay believes that the modern world is accelerating mainly based on revolutionary scientific and technological innovation. 

 

On the one hand, advocates of history believe that knowledge about the past plays a crucial role in understanding the present and predicting the future. This is because they believe that past experiences will likely be repeated in the future, which will assist humanity in overcoming future challenges. For example, many years ago, the world has experienced a pandemic that killed thousands of people in many countries, similar to the one that we live with nowadays. This way, knowledge about history can assist people in dealing with today’s challenges with the COVID pandemic. Consequently, we cannot deny that learning about the past facilitates overcoming today’s problems.

 

On the other hand, science and technology subjects are more relevant because they enable human development and progress. In other words, only these subjects can effectively transform the world, make life more convenient, and improve people’s well-being. For instance, the development of new medicines is of greater importance than any historical moment. Furthermore, technological development makes our lives easier. Nowadays, we can drive electric cars and we communicate with someone on the other side of the world. As a result, all these developments would not be possible if science and technology were not prioritized.

 

In conclusion, although learning history helps us to understand current world issues to better deal with them, the benefits provided by advances in science and technology are more relevant because it improves people’s lives and promotes human progress. Therefore, people should be encouraged to study and work in these areas more than that of history.

Look closely, in the introduction part, we have clearly stated both views and our opinion. Afterwards, we have discussed in the first body paragraph how studying history is important to understand the past, and how it helps us learn from previous experiences. Moreover, in the second body paragraph, we have elaborated the incredible importance of knowing science and technology. In the conclusion part, we have wrapped up the discussion by restating the key points, and reasserted our clear opinion based on the discussion that we have given above.

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This is how, if you want to get full marks in the Task Achievement criterion, you need to cover all the parts of the question.

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