Cambridge IELTS 17 Academic Writing Test 2 opens with a Task 1 table and closes with a Task 2 two-part question essay, so it stress-tests both data description and discursive argument in a single hour. Task 1 asks you to summarise and charts below give information on the police budget for 2017 and 2018 in one area of Britain. Task 2 then turns to a discursive prompt: Some children spend hours every day on their smartphones.
Round large numbers when comparing — '£12.4 million, almost double the 1999 figure' beats four decimal places. Answer the two questions in order with one body paragraph each. The introduction should paraphrase both questions and signal the structure; the conclusion should answer both, not merely summarise the prompt.
Spend twenty minutes flat on Task 1 — five planning, twelve writing, three reviewing — and forty on Task 2, with at least five of those at the end for proofreading. Task 2 is worth twice the marks, so do not let an over-long table description steal time from your essay. For band 7, the essay's argumentation matters more than the report's elegance, but a clean overview sentence in Task 1 is non-negotiable.
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