W r I t I n g this post will clarify what I mean when I advise band 5 candidates to ‘discuss both sides’, and help you to understand when and where to write a counter- argument. I often find my advice about ‘discussing both sides’ being misunderstood or

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18th April 2019
W R I T I N G
This post will clarify what I mean when I advise band 6.5 candidates to ‘discuss
both sides’, and help you to understand when and where to write a counter-
argument.
I often find my advice about ‘discussing both sides’ being misunderstood or misinterpreted. Some people mistakenly believe that when I
say that ‘
you must always discuss both sides of the question
‘ that this means ‘ 
You must always give a counter-argument
.’ This is not at
all what I mean, especially as I know that the latter 
can be bad advice for people stuck at band 6.5 in writing.
In writing task 2, 
we can always
 
talk about ‘two sides
‘ of the question, 
but
 
there are times when it is not a good idea to write a whole
paragraph presenting a counter-argument.
To understand this, let us begin by understanding the key terms we are using.
Understanding the terms
1 What is ‘a side’?
The word ‘side’ has several different meanings in English. The image below, from the Cambridge online dictionary, shows the two most
relevant meanings here.
As you can see, 
the word ‘side’ does not always mean
‘opinion.’
It 
can
be used to refer to ‘one opinion’
in an argument 
but it 
can also 
be used to mean ‘
one
part
‘ of an issue. We can only understand the precise
meaning of a word from the context it is being used
in. So, only when I am talking about a question with
two opinions, should you interpret ‘both sides’ to
mean ‘both opinions.’
2 What is a ‘counter-argument’
To fully understand what a ‘counter-argument’ is we need to also understand the verb ‘to counter’:
So, a ‘counter-argument’ is an argument made ‘against’ an opinion. The main problems arise when this idea is mistakenly interpreted as:
‘I must always write a paragraph that argues against the opinion in the question.’
In my experience, this mistaken belief stops many people from reaching band 7 because they often alter the question or task in some way
in order to force what they see as a ‘counter-argument’ into their answer,