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Task 2 · Opinion (agree or disagree) · Government

Compulsory voting

An agree-or-disagree essay on mandatory turnout, where the band 9 answer disagrees with the policy as proposed and supports an amended version of it.

The question

You should spend about 40 minutes on this task. Write about the following topic. Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience. Write at least 250 words.

Some people believe that voting in national elections should be compulsory for all adult citizens. To what extent do you agree or disagree?

A 250-word discursive essay — the half of the paper that carries two thirds of the marks. This prompt is original, written in the standard format for teaching purposes — it is not taken from any past paper.

What separates the three answers

The 6.5 and 7.5 both refuse compulsion on grounds of freedom or of diagnosis; the 9 concedes that compulsion genuinely fixes a real distortion, and then specifies the version it would accept.

The three answers

Band 6.5

268 words (the task asks for at least 250)

The answer works. It addresses the task, the reader follows it, and the meaning survives — but ideas stay general, linking is mechanical, wording repeats, and small errors are visible throughout.

The answer

In some countries the citizens must vote in the election and if they do not vote they pay a fine. Some people think that this system should be used in every country. I do not agree with this opinion completely, because the voting is a right and not a duty, but I understand the reason of this idea.

Firstly, the supporters of this idea say that when everybody votes, the government is more representative. It is true that in many countries only the half of the people go to vote, and most of them are old and rich. So the young people and the poor people do not have the voice3, and the politicians do not care about them. If the voting is compulsory, the politicians must think about all the citizens.

However, in my opinion the freedom is more important. In a democracy, the people have the right to choose, and this right include also the right to not choose. If a person does not like any candidate, why he must vote?4 Moreover, if the people are forced, they will vote without thinking, only for finishing quickly, and this is not good for the democracy.

Also I think the real problem is not the law but the trust. Many people do not vote because they think all the politicians are the same and nothing will change.1

In conclusion, I disagree that the voting must be compulsory, because it can not solve the real problem and it takes away the freedom of the citizens, although I agree that the low participation is a serious problem for the democracy.

What an examiner notices

  1. 1. Task response

    “Also I think the real problem is not the law but the trust. Many people do not vote because they think all the politicians are the same and nothing will change.”

    The best idea in the essay, given two sentences and no development. The conclusion then relies on it as if it had been argued.

  2. 2. Coherence and cohesion

    “Also I think the real problem is not the law but the trust.”

    A one-idea paragraph of two sentences, opened with a conversational connector. Paragraphing is about proportion as well as division.

  3. 3. Lexical resource

    “the young people and the poor people do not have the voice”

    Have no voice or are not heard is the phrase being reached for. The essay also never produces turnout, which is the single most useful word for this topic.

  4. 4. Grammatical range and accuracy

    “this right include also the right to not choose. If a person does not like any candidate, why he must vote?”

    Two errors in consecutive sentences — a missing third-person s and statement word order inside a question. Both are typical of the band: conspicuous, systematic, harmless to meaning.

One honest caveat

Band labels here describe what each piece of writing demonstrates against the four published assessment areas, paraphrased in plain language. They are teaching illustrations produced for this site, not official material, and no sample has been marked by a test provider. Real scripts are marked whole; two answers with the same label can still look quite different from each other, and nothing on this page can promise anyone a particular result.

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