Structuring an ‘advantages/disadvantages’ IELTS Essay: From Diagnosis to Solution

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From Band 6 Templates to University-Level Authority

This essay appears to be simply about giving advantages and disadvantages of doing something. However, if that is all you do, you will be stuck at band 6.5.

Do you know the purpose of an advantage/disadvantage essay?

It is to assess whether doing something is ‘worth it’ or not.

Any activity we do requires use of our energy, so before we go rushing off to do things, we need a way to decide if it’s a good use of our time or not.

So, for your IELTS essay, you need to ‘evaluate’ the points.

An advantage could appear to be very great, but if you think carefully about it, you can find reasons why it’s not so great. That is good academics!

You need to do all this in a very small space. (You need to say things in the shortest way possible)

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Bonus sentence:

At the start of body 1 or 2 write:
While (advantage) appears to be great, when (situation), this advantage is greatly diminished. (Smaller). (Bonus: they never tell you this, not AI and not IELTS teachers but it’s crucial for university. Next, say ‘further, this advantage becomes a disadvantage when……..).

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Examiners, and university lecturers, are looking for

Original thinking

A clear thesis

Strong background in the introduction

Coherence (can they understand you?)

Organisation of ideas (do the ideas in your paragraph flow logically)

Progression of ideas

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Structure:

The structure, in plain terms, overall, is

Introduction: background and thesis (your point-of-view)

Body paragraph 1: advantages (but include the possible negative)

Body paragraph 2: disadvantages (include a possible positive, depending on the situation.)

Conclusion: summarise all the ideas. 

Notes:

*this structure is not fixed. You can adjust it depending on your needs, but the general purpose of ‘explaining the advantages and disadvantages in detail’ does not change.

*note on templates (the famous teachers give you these because they are easy to teach and appear to be a solution). This is where you are given exact phrases to use and you ‘fill in the blanks’. Examiners see thousands of essays per year and can recognise templates. You will lose marks if you do this. (You will also find university extremely hard if you do this)

The 2-Body Essay is Recommended:

You can include a body 3 for your evaluation of the two sides. This is where your critical depth comes in.

Paragraph Structure

Background sentence

Topic sentence (what reason for your point-of-view are you giving?)

Explain your reasons for agree/disagree 2-3 sentences

Example (if space permits) (I would leave this out. The paragraph is too short)

Result/summary

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These pages will teach you to write academic advantage/disadvantage essays.

Education Advantages/Disadvantages

Where the ‘big IELTS teachers’ fail you.

Teachers like ‘IELTS Jacky’ are famous, but their advice is often weak.

In the advantages/disadvantages essay, she suggests that you can write ‘just one advantage’. Does this make sense to you? If they question says advantages with an s, it’s there for a reason, and if they say that you only provided one and then got a lower mark, what will you say?

You have to think for yourself, and be careful!

The stronger method is using 2 related advantages that may have similar disadvantages attached. We will get into them in the topic pages linked on this page.

Critical thinking is crucial for university, so if you can do it for IELTS, you’ll get a high band AND start preparing for university.

An example is “While we have seen that X provides (advantage 1-2) money and resources, it is also true that these benefits can be costly. Namely, when a company monopolises resources and money, they often forget the importance of the customer and ultimately lose loyalty.

If you just write one advantage, “the company can get money.” But there’s only the one and no negative, it’s far too simplistic for band 7+

Compare

Jacky tells you to ‘analyse the question’ with ‘keywords’ but is that really all?

Academic thought requires you to ask many questions of the question.

For example, if the question says ‘public transport is good’. You might think, “right, it’s good!” But this is exactly what we want to avoid.

Academic thought is “What do you mean by good?” Which parts of good are good for who and when? Is it always ‘good’? Maybe it’s good for the environment but not good for the person who is claustrophobic etc.

There you have the difference between band 6, YouTube ielts teachers, and band 8-9 and University of Cambridge, well, most UK universities, thinking.

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