Band 7+ for IELTS academic task 2 can be easily secured by achieving 3 simple GOALS.

They are: 

1. Question paraphrasing with position statement.
2. Position elaboration with main idea, justification and general examples. 
3. Position restatement by summarizing main ideas. 

Let’s analyze a band 7+ IELTS academic task 2 essay and figure out how it is developed achieving these three GOALS. 

Question:

It Is Important for People to Take Risks Both in Their Professional Lives and Their Personal Lives. Do the advantages outweigh the disadvantages?

SAMPLE ANSWER:

INTRODUCTION (Question paraphrasing with position statement.)

It is important to make some risky moves in career as well as in personal life. Although this may harm a person in the short term, it allows them to create new opportunities and I believe this advantage far outweighs any potential disadvantages.

BODY 1 ( Position elaboration with main idea, justification and general examples.)

Making a risky move may hurt a person short term. Take, for example, adults who are psychologically controlled by their parents because they still receive financial support from them. If they stop relying on their parents so that they can be free to go after their dreams, they may face the short-term downside of losing the comfort their parents’ money provides. The same can be true of making a career change that involves a big pay cut. However, I do not think that a short-term sacrifice should be seen as a major disadvantage in life because it can pay off greatly in the long run.

BODY 2 (Position elaboration with main idea, justification and general examples.)

On the positive side, risks bring opportunities. For instance, if Priscilla Chan’s grandparents hadn’t been courageous enough to move to the US from Vietnam, Chan wouldn’t have had the opportunity to study at Harvard, let alone meet and marry Mark Zuckerberg. If Mark Zuckerberg hadn’t dropped out of Harvard to focus on building Facebook, it could have probably been another platform, rather than Facebook, that became the world’s biggest social media giant. I think that opportunities like these are extremely important because they can be life-changing.

CONCLUSION (Position restatement by summarizing main ideas. )

In conclusion, although taking risks may harm people in the short term, I believe this downside is greatly outweighed by the upside that the risks they take can create life-changing opportunities for them.