How to Plan & Write ielts opinion Essays

How To Plan IELTS Opinion Essays
# 1 Decide on your opinion
The question I've chosen to work on is quite straightforward and easy to understand so we don’t need to spend time analysing it. The first task, then, is to decide on our opinion.
Here’s the question again:
A big salary is much more important than job satisfaction.
Do you agree or disagree?
For this essay, I’m going to disagree with the statement and argue that job satisfaction is more important than a big salary.


# 2 Generate ideas
The second task is to generate some ideas to write about.
Since I‘m going to argue that job satisfaction is more important than a large salary, I need ideas to support this view.
There are several different ways to think up ideas. I cover them fully on the IELTS Essay Planning page.
With this particular question, I immediately thought of a couple of examples of situations where job satisfaction did prove to be more important than a high salary, so I’m going to use the ‘example method’ of generating ideas.
Once you’ve thought of an example or two, ideas to include in your essay should come to you easily.
You might want to try this yourself before reading on for my ideas.
Here are my examples and some ideas they generated.
Both the examples are partly true but I've adapted them to better fit the essay. It's fine to do this as the examiner won't check your facts.
Examples:

• 
  Uncle Barry – boasted about high salary but hated his job. Nervous breakdown – lost job & can’t work.
  

• 
  Me – gave up teaching. Now enjoy my work and am much more relaxed and happy even though I earn much less money.
  

Ideas:

• 
  High-salary jobs are generally more stressful
  

• 
  Stress leads to ill health, both mental and physical
  

• 
  40 hours a week at work – a third of the day
  

• 
  Money doesn’t bring happiness
  

• 
  Better quality of life
  

• 
  Sense of fulfilment
  

• 
  Less stressed – healthier and happier
  

I’ve got more ideas here than I need so I’m going to pick two to develop in the essay – one for each of the main body paragraphs.