Task Fulfilment: The Criterion Most People Lose
A quarter of your writing score is decided by whether you did the specific thing you were asked to do. Almost every mark lost here is lost to reading, not to English.
What Task Fulfilment actually measures
Task Fulfilment is 25 per cent of the writing score, and the criterion is narrow and literal. It asks whether all the instructions and bullets were addressed, whether there is a clear purpose or opinion, whether the tone suits the reader, whether Task 1 uses proper email format, whether Task 2 clearly selects and supports one option, and whether the length is roughly 150 to 200 words.
Nothing in that list requires better English than you already have. Every item is a decision, and every decision is made in the first four minutes, before you write a sentence. That is why this is the criterion where preparation pays fastest: you can fix it this week, whereas grammar takes months.
It is also the criterion that pulls others down with it. Missing a bullet does not just reduce Task Fulfilment; it removes an idea from the response, so Content and Coherence falls too. The two criteria together are 55 per cent of the score, and one skimmed instruction can damage both.
Every bullet, and what counts as answered
Task 1 gives three bullets. A bullet is answered when it has been developed with a specific detail, not when it has been mentioned. This is the distinction that separates a 7 from a 9 more often than any grammar point.
Take a bullet that asks you to state the date of your move, your booking number and the amount you paid. I moved recently and paid quite a lot for the service mentions the bullet and answers none of it. My move took place on 14 March under booking number MR-40821, and I paid $1,340 for the full-service package answers it completely, and the facts were invented on the spot.
The bullets that get under-written are almost always the administrative ones. Candidates find the emotional bullet easy, the request bullet obvious, and then give the dates-and-numbers bullet a single vague clause. That bullet is worth exactly as much as the other two.
On Task 2 the instruction is usually a single sentence rather than three bullets, but it still contains requirements. Read it for the audience, for whether an explanation of your reasons is asked for, and for anything it says about who is affected. Those are the parts an answer built from a memorised template quietly skips.
Register: the fastest way to lose this criterion
The Task 1 scenario decides whether the email is formal or informal, and writing the wrong one carries a clear penalty. Grammar and vocabulary can still score normally, but Task Fulfilment takes the hit, and that is a quarter of the task.
The test is simple. Ask who the recipient is and what your relationship to them is. A manager, a landlord, a company, an official, someone you have never met: formal. A friend, a cousin, a former classmate, someone the prompt calls by first name: informal.
Then commit completely. Formal means Dear Ms Okafor, no contractions, full sentences, Sincerely at the end. Informal means Hi Sam, contractions, shorter sentences, a warm close. The damaging version is neither: Hi Ms Okafor, I would be most grateful if you could furnish me with the details, talk soon. Mixed register reads worse than either register done consistently, because it suggests you did not identify the reader at all.
One option, held to the end
Task 2 gives two options and you must select one. The criterion is explicit that arguing for a different option than the one you selected, or selecting none, is penalised heavily.
Three failures recur. The first is the balanced essay: Option A has many advantages, but Option B also has advantages, continued for 180 words and never resolved. The second is the drift, where the answer opens with Option A and by the final paragraph is praising Option B's flexibility without noticing. The third is the tick-box mismatch, where the selection control says A and the text argues B.
State your choice in the first sentence, name the option by its label and its content, and use the phrase again in your closing sentence. I would choose Option B, the extended library hours at the top and For these reasons, extended library hours are the better use of the budget at the bottom makes drift almost impossible.
Conceding a genuine strength of the option you rejected is not drift. It is one of the things that lifts a response, provided you then answer it. A new arena would certainly serve the hockey programme well, but it would stand empty for most of the week concedes and resolves in one sentence.
Answer the administrative bullet with invented specifics: a date, a reference number, an amount. A vague clause such as "I paid a lot" leaves a third of Task 1 unanswered while looking as though it has been covered.
Length, format and the small mechanical things
The target is 150 to 200 words for each task. Length affects your score when it starts to affect completeness, relevance or clarity, which is a two-sided rule. Under 150 words usually means a bullet is thin. Over 200 usually means repetition, and repetition damages Vocabulary as well.
Task 1 needs email format, and format here is not decoration. A subject line that states the issue, a greeting matched to the register, paragraphs rather than one block, and a sign-off with a name. Writing the body of an email with no greeting and no close is a format failure even if every bullet is covered.
Task 2 needs the opposite discipline. No subject line, no greeting, no sign-off. It is a piece of connected prose in paragraphs, and the email furniture that earns marks on Task 1 loses them here.
None of this is worth more than a minute of your time on the day, which is precisely the argument for doing it. A minute spent confirming greeting, paragraphs, close, word count and bullet coverage protects a quarter of the score.
A checking routine that takes ninety seconds
Work in a fixed order, because a fixed order does not rely on you remembering what to worry about. First, count your bullets against your paragraphs. Point at each bullet in the prompt and find the sentence in your answer that answers it with a specific detail. If you cannot point at one, the bullet is not answered.
Second, read the prompt's nouns and numbers and check that your answer uses the same ones. This is the fidelity check, and it catches the error that caps the criterion at 8.
Third, read your first line and your last line together. On Task 1 they should match each other in register. On Task 2 they should name the same option. Two sentences, five seconds, and it catches both drift and mixed tone.
Fourth, look at the word counter. If you are under 150, the fix is to develop the thinnest bullet, not to add a general closing sentence. If you are over 210, find the sentence that repeats something you have already said and delete it.
Name your chosen Task 2 option in both your first and last sentence. Drifting to the other option during the middle paragraphs is penalised heavily, and bookending the choice makes drift visible to you before you submit.
Practise it
Five judgements on coverage, register and commitment, which is where this criterion is won and lost.