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Answered by Radosveta Valkova from the British Council in Guangzhou
This type of question gets asked by lots of candidates as people often feel anxious about unknown topics. Sometimes candidates try to compensate by memorizing answers to topics they are not sure about – they think the goal is to just write enough words about anything and hope that it will be enough.
I’d say that this is a big mistake and the following is a much better strategy. When you get a topic that you’re not sure what to say or write about in Writing Part 2, take a deep breath to gather your thoughts. Think about friends or family that might have talked to you about something similar and try to remember what their opinion was. You can then imagine that it was your own opinion and write about it. You can also embellish it with some examples from your own life experience in order to support your opinion.
It is a good idea for Writing Part 2 to try and write at least 4 paragraphs at a minimum. This means an Introduction, 2 body paragraphs, and a conclusion. Of course, you can and should write additional body paragraphs if you have more ideas and there is still time left on the clock. In each body paragraph you should try to present a main idea, and then give reasons to support it and examples from the real world to illustrate it. The examples can be taken from your own experience (e.g. “in my city”, “at my school” etc.). However, I wouldn’t recommend making up completely fake studies to support your argument. Some students try to use phrases like “a study at Oxford University shows that…” and then use it as support for their opinion, but this kind of phrase looks memorized and doesn’t really add much of value to the argument.
The main point is: make it plausible! The examiners want to read your opinion or experience about something – it’s fine to write: “I haven’t personally experienced this yet, but I have heard that……”. At the end of the day the examiners are not going to judge you on whether they agree with your opinion, but on how well you support your arguments, what language and grammar you use to express your ideas, and how well you organize your ideas.
So, don’t memorize something which will be difficult to remember and relate to, but have your own ideas of how to respond to a situation with unknown topic.
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