How Long Should You Spend Planning an IELTS Task 2 Essay?

Why planning pays more than writing

Almost every expensive Task 2 mistake is made before you write your first sentence:

• answering a question adjacent to the one asked
• choosing four ideas when you have room to develop two
• starting without a position, and drifting into one halfway through
• picking a second idea that turns out to be the first idea rephrased

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What to do with the five minutes

Figure 1

Five minutes, minute by minute

Minute 1
decode

Underline the instruction: to what extent, discuss both views and give your own opinion, what problems… what solutions. Then say in your own words exactly what is being proposed, with all its conditions. If the prompt says “banned during working hours,” your essay must address during working hours.

Minute 2
position

Write one sentence answering the question directly. Not “both sides have points” — an actual answer. Partly agreeing is fine, but say so specifically: I agree, provided that…

Minutes 3–4
two ideas

Two, not four. For each, ask: can I write three sentences about this — claim, why it works, an example? If not, it's not a main idea. Then check the two are genuinely different, not one idea in two outfits.

Minute 5
shape

Four paragraphs, a few words each. Which idea goes where, and what your conclusion will say.

That's it. Not sentences, not an outline in full prose — notes.

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The 40-minute split

Figure 2

Forty minutes, to scale

plan5 write30 min check5

Plan · 5

Decode, position, two ideas, shape.

Write · 30

About nine words a minute; don't stop to edit.

Check · 5

Your own repeat errors, sentence boundaries, word count.

Two notes on the last row. Do your checking pass looking for specific things — the three grammar errors you personally repeat, plus run-on sentences — because generic re-reading catches almost nothing. And don't rewrite content in the final five minutes; late structural changes usually damage cohesion more than they improve anything.

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“I don't have time to plan”

This is the most common objection, and it's usually a symptom of the opposite problem: candidates who don't plan spend longer writing, because they stop mid-paragraph to work out what they think. The pause you take at minute 18, staring at a half-finished body paragraph, is the planning you skipped — done at the worst possible moment.

Planned essays are also shorter to write. Two developed ideas reach 270 words naturally. Four undeveloped ones require constant improvisation to fill the space.

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Practise the plan on its own

You don't need 40 minutes to train this.

That five-minute plan is exactly the step PrepForIELTS walks you through before you write: what type of question this is, what your position is, and whether your two ideas are actually distinct and developable.