The skeleton never changes. The job of Body 2 does.
Write Essay gives you twenty minutes for 200 to 300 argued words. The essays that score are not the ones with the rarest vocabulary; they are the ones that answer all of the question, inside legal sentences, at the right length, on the clock. Each of those four things can be trained separately, and this page trains them.
Why this matters. The essay is machine-scored on seven traits, and two of its rules are absolute: under 120 or over 380 words scores zero, and a memorised template opening is detected, penalised, and eats the words Content needs. What survives contact with the scoring engine is a frame, a fixed skeleton whose paragraphs each owe the prompt something specific, filled with your own words on the day.
Four rules that hold for every prompt.
The skeleton is fixed, the budget is fixed, the length is checked mechanically. Fix these once and every essay you ever write starts from the same solid ground.
Twenty minutes, budgeted
3 plan · 14 write · 3 sweep
Three minutes to name your position and the job of each paragraph, fourteen to write, three for the sweeps in section 03. An essay that spends all twenty writing has no defence at all.
Do not practise untimed. An untimed essay measures your English; a timed one measures your score.
200–300 words, counted
Under 120 or over 380 scores zero
The target is 200 to 300. The hard walls are 120 and 380, and outside them the essay scores zero however good it is. The screen shows a live word count, so the check costs five seconds.
Count it, never estimate it. Estimates run forty words optimistic.
The unchanged skeleton
Introduction · Body 1 · Body 2 · conclusion
The introduction states your position. Body 1 makes your strongest case. Body 2 does the job the prompt type demands, which is section 02. The conclusion restates without new material.
The skeleton never changes. Only the job of Body 2 does.
Plant before you build
Range is paid, not merely permitted
Decide the structures you owe, a conditional, a graded comparative, a passive, and write each as a bare sentence in your plan before you build the paragraph around it. Structures added mid-draft tend not to survive.
A clean simple essay does not score as a good essay. Range is a paid trait.
Learn the four jobs and no PTE prompt can surprise you.
Every essay prompt is one of four types, the skeleton is the same for all of them, and the difference lives almost entirely in what Body 2 must do.
| Prompt type | What Body 2 must do | The trap |
|---|---|---|
| Discuss both views and give your opinion | State the other side fairly, then turn it towards your position | Saving your opinion for the conclusion. It belongs in the introduction. |
| To what extent do you agree or disagree | The strongest objection to your own position, granted, then answered | Sitting on the fence. Both sides have good points is not a position, and Content pays for it. |
| Do the advantages outweigh the disadvantages | The disadvantages, weighed against Body 1 and found lighter, in words | Two lists side by side, with the word outweigh never actually answered. |
| What problems does this cause and what can be done | Solutions matched one to one against the problems you named in Body 1 | Solutions that answer problems you never mentioned. |
Outweigh means answer the question. Somewhere in the essay there must be a sentence that actually weighs: the cost of X is real, but it is smaller than Y, because… Two lists is not a comparison, and this is the single most common place candidates lose the Content mark on an outweigh prompt.
Check in a fixed order, or find one error and miss three.
Your last three minutes are four separate passes, each hunting one kind of error, always in the same order. Sweep for detail first and your cursor is on the words while the two most expensive errors in the essay sit untouched on the commas.
Form
Count the words, check the paragraphs
Inside 200 to 300, four paragraphs on the screen. Binary, mechanical, and five seconds with the on-screen counter, so it goes first and buys certainty.
185 words feels like 220 when you are tired. The counter does not get tired.
Content
All of the question, not most of it
Does the essay answer this prompt type, or the one you practised last week? Check Body 2 against its job in the table above, and on an outweigh prompt find the sentence that weighs.
Opinion in the introduction, Body 2 doing its job, no new material in the conclusion.
Splice
Cursor on every comma, one question
Is there a complete sentence on both sides of this comma? If yes, repair legally: a full stop, a semicolon, a comma plus one of and, but, or, so, yet, for, nor, or subordinate one clause. Four repairs; vary them.
The scheme is expensive, however the alternative costs more. However is an adverb. It cannot do the joining.
Detail
The mechanical list, swept last
Articles. Agreement. Adjectives are invariable: many different ways, never differents. Uncountables: research shows, never researches show. The closed compounds: halfway, nowadays, nevertheless, furthermore, therefore, moreover, whereas, throughout, worldwide, one word each. And spelling, in one convention.
environment · pollution · government · because · beginning
Frames, not templates
A memorised opening that fits every prompt carries no content, and the scoring engine both detects it and refuses to pay for it, while it eats the words Content needs. Learn what each paragraph owes, the four jobs above, and write the words fresh each time. If you can name the job of Body 2 for all four prompt types, you are already better defended than a candidate with a template, because your structure answers the prompt in front of you.
Ten to drill.
Choose the correct option for each one. Press Check answers for your score and the reason behind each. Nothing is sent anywhere.
The frame is free. The feedback is the lesson.
You can learn the four jobs of Body 2 tonight. Knowing which one your own essays fail to do, under a real clock, is a different kind of knowledge.
Write essays timed, all four prompt types, then have them marked. In a lesson I mark your essay line by line against the seven traits, name the dominant error, the one costing the most, and build the drill that removes it. Lessons are £20 for fifty minutes, one to one, in proper British English; the first step is a discounted trial lesson.