In what order should you do the writing tasks?

You can do Task 1 first and Task 2 second, Or you can do it the other way—Task 2 first and Task 1 second. It’s up to you. But which way is better? Well, it depends on which task seems easier to you on the day of the test. As a general rule, you should to the task which seems easier first.

Why?

The test paper advises you to spend 20 minutes on Task 1 and 40 minutes on Task 2. This is important advice because your score for Task 2 is given twice as much weight as your score for Task 1. So if you received 7.5 for Task 1 and 6.5 for Task 2, you would not get 7.0 (the average of the two scores) for Writing overall.

(6.5 x 2 + 7.5)/3 = 20.5/3 = 6.83 which would be rounded down to 6.5.

Here is a table that shows all the overall score resulting from all possible score combinations.

This is why you should spend the recommended time on each task if they seem equally difficult to you (or equally easy).

So if, for example, Task 2 seems relatively easy, you should do it first. Since it’s easier for you, you may be able to write a pretty good response in 35 minutes or less. This will give you 5 valuable minutes of extra time to write your response to Task 1. If you manage to complete Task 1 in the recommended 20 minutes, you could use your 5 spare minutes to review and improve your Task 2 response.

Alternatively, if Task 1 seems easy, get it finished first, and if you can do it in less than 20 minutes, you will have extra time to complete the harder (and more important) Task 2.