The integrated writing task gives you a short academic passage to read, a lecture that almost always challenges it, and about twenty minutes to write roughly 150–225 words explaining how the two relate.
The commonest failure is not language. It is answering the wrong question. Students argue whether the reading is right. The task asks what the LECTURER said about it, and an opinion of your own earns nothing and costs space.
The structure is fixed, and using a frame is allowed:
- One sentence naming the relationship: "The lecturer challenges the reading's claim that …"
- Point one of the reading, then the lecturer's response to it.
- Point two, then the response.
- Point three, then the response.
Three pairs. No conclusion is needed; the pairs are the answer.
Joining language you should own, because it carries the relationship the task is marked on: casts doubt on · refutes · contradicts · undermines · concedes that · counters by arguing · whereas the reading claims … the lecturer points out …
Use the reading, but paraphrase it. Copying a full sentence from the passage is penalised, and the paraphrase is easy: the reading's sentences are already short.
Keep the balance. The lecture matters more than the reading, because it is the part you had to listen to. A script that summarises the reading in detail and the lecture in a line has the proportions backwards.