Task Fulfillment is one of the four scoring areas, and it holds four of the sixteen factors:
| Factor | What it checks |
|---|
| Relevance | Did you answer the question they actually asked? |
| Completeness | Did you cover every part of it? |
| Tone | Does your voice suit the person reading? |
| Word count | Are you near 150 to 200 words? |
None of these is about your English. That is what makes them dangerous. A test taker with excellent grammar can lose this entire area without writing a single incorrect sentence, and usually has no idea it happened.
🎥 Where these four come from (17:10)
The video takes the full list of sixteen factors from Paragon's own published study pack and walks a real email through them. Two of the eight rules it covers sit squarely in this lesson: never change the information you were given, and give reasons rather than suggestions.
Jump to: 1:16 the four areas and sixteen factors · 10:36 give reasons, not suggestions · 12:29 do not change the information you were given
1. Relevance
Relevance is whether you answered the question in front of you, rather than a similar question you would have preferred.
Three ways people lose it
Answering the topic instead of the task. The prompt asks you to explain how a change would affect you personally. You write about how it would affect the city. Same subject, different question.
Giving suggestions when you were asked for reasons. If the task asks why you chose an option, explain why. Do not drift into telling the reader what they should do instead. This is one of the official rules, and it is a common slide, because suggesting improvements feels helpful and reads as off task.
Changing the information you were given. If the prompt says the meeting is on Tuesday at the community centre, it is on Tuesday at the community centre. Moving it to Wednesday, or to a different building, or inventing a second meeting, breaks relevance. Small changes count. This is also one of the official rules, and people break it without noticing when they invent detail to make an example sound better.
The filter. Before you write each line, ask whether it answers part of the prompt or supports your choice. If it does neither, cut it, however good the sentence is.
2. Completeness
Completeness is whether every part of the task appears in your answer, and whether each part was actually developed.
Task 1: three bullets, three paragraphs
Every Task 1 prompt ends with three "do the following" points. Build your body around them, one short paragraph each. Not "reason A and reason B", which gives you two slots for three jobs and quietly drops one.
- Read the three bullets.
- Write one plain sentence for each. Just one.
- Add one real detail to each sentence.
- Before you submit, point to the line where each bullet is answered.
That last step is the one that catches things. Do not skim and feel satisfied. Point at the actual line.
The bullet people miss is the third one. It is usually the one that asks you to suggest something, offer something, or ask what happens next, and it reads as optional politeness rather than a task. It is not optional.
Half answers count as misses. A bullet that says suggest a way to show your appreciation is not answered by "I really want to do something for you." That is an intention. The bullet asked for a specific proposal, so give one: "Let me take you for dinner on Friday, my treat."
Task 2: two reasons, and the close
The survey answer needs your choice, two developed reasons with an example each, and a close that acknowledges the other side before restating your choice.
That closing acknowledgement is scored. Older advice, including an earlier version of this page, called it optional if you had space. It is not. Naming the other view and answering it shows you weighed both options and chose deliberately, and it earns credit in this area and in Content and Coherence.
Three short moves, two or three sentences total. Agree with one point the other side has. Show why it is smaller or fixable. Return to your choice.
Free evening parking does help visitors on event nights. But residents need somewhere to park every night, not just when there is an event, so permits solve the bigger problem.
3. Tone
Tone is scored. It is one of the sixteen, sitting here in Task Fulfillment, and it is judged separately from your grammar.
Task 1 is formal or informal, never in between
You may have seen Task 1 described as semi-formal. Treat that as a starting idea rather than a rule, because across the real question bank every prompt is clearly one or the other.
| Formal | Informal |
|---|
| Writing to | a manager, a company, an office, building management, the city | a friend, a neighbour, a cousin, a classmate |
| Greeting | Dear Ms Chen, / Dear Program Office, | Hi Emily, / Hey Sam, |
| Voice | no short forms, polite distance | short forms, warm, still clear |
| Sign off | Kind regards, and your full name | Talk soon, and your first name only |
Read the prompt for the relationship before you write anything. It takes one minute and it decides every line after it.
Both directions are wrong
Slang to a company is a tone error. So is business language to a friend, and that one is far more common among people who already write well, because it feels like the safe choice.
Too casual, writing to a company
❌ Hey, this keeps happening and it's really annoying. Can you guys sort it out?"
✅ "Hello, I am writing about the repeated delays on Route 9. Could you please add an evening service?
Too formal, writing to a friend
❌ I am writing to formally submit a request regarding the temporary custody of my dog. Kindly confirm your availability at your earliest convenience."
✅ "Hi John, any chance you could look after Biscuit for the week? No pressure at all if you are too busy.
The second pair is the one to study. That first version has clean grammar, correct structure, every bullet covered, and the right word count. It still loses marks, because a neighbour who has already looked after your dog is not a legal department.
Task 2 has its own voice
Direct, confident, and polite. No greeting and no sign off, because a survey is not an email.
Two things to avoid. Essay language, because Task 2 is a survey response from a resident or an employee, not a university paper, and official guidance says so directly. And point form, which is also an official rule: no bullets, no dashes, no numbered lists. Write full paragraphs. People break this one when time runs short and they start listing.
❌ In summation, the aforementioned proposals exhibit considerable merit."
✅ "For these reasons, longer hours help more people.
4. Word count
Aim for 150 to 200 words, and around 180 is comfortable.
Under about 130 your answer looks thin, and there is not enough there to score well on the other factors either. Over about 220 you start repeating yourself and making more small errors.
If you are short, add in this order: a number, then a date or time, then a place or a person, then a result. Real detail makes the answer both longer and better at the same time.
If you are long, cut in this order: filler words such as very and really, then padded openings, then anything you have already said once, then any closing sentence that only repeats your points.
Never pad with empty phrases. "This is a very important issue that affects many people" adds eleven words and no content, and it costs you on Vocabulary while it helps you on length.
The whole area in one example
Prompt. Your building manager has proposed closing the shared laundry room at 9 pm instead of 11 pm. Write an email to the manager. In your email: say how the change would affect you; explain why the current hours matter to residents; suggest something the building could do instead.
Losing Task Fulfillment
Dear Manager, I think the laundry room is very important for everyone in the building. Many people use it and it is a good facility. I hope you will think carefully about this decision. Thank you for your time.
Grammar is fine. Every sentence is correct. It fails anyway, on three of the four factors at once. It never says how the change would affect the writer, so completeness is gone. It never suggests an alternative, so the third bullet is missing entirely. It is 39 words. Only tone survives.
Meeting it
Dear Ms Alvarez,
I am writing about the proposal to close the laundry room at 9 pm.
I work until 7 pm most weekdays, so I usually start a wash around half past nine. An earlier closing would leave me only the weekend, when the machines are already busy and there is often a wait of an hour or more.
I am not the only one. On my floor alone, four of us work evening shifts, and the machines are in steady use between nine and eleven. The late slot is the quiet one, which is exactly why shift workers rely on it.
Could the building keep the 11 pm closing on weekdays and bring it forward to 9 pm at weekends instead? Weekend evenings are much quieter, so the noise the proposal is meant to reduce would still be reduced, and shift workers would keep the only window in which they can realistically wash clothes. I would be glad to help ask the other residents on my floor what they think, and pass the answers on to you.
Kind regards,
John Smith
Read it against the four. Relevance: it answers the question asked, about this change, from this writer. Completeness: personal effect, why the hours matter to others, and a real alternative, all three present and each developed. Tone: formal throughout, because the reader is the building manager. Word count: 183.
Before you submit
Relevance
Completeness
Tone
Word count
Practice
1. Relevance sort (3 min). For each pair, mark which one answers the prompt "explain how the change would affect you": (a) "Many families in the neighbourhood would find this difficult" or (b) "I would have to leave work an hour early twice a week." Then write two more of your own in the (b) style.
2. Find the missing bullet (5 min). Take your last Task 1 answer, cover the prompt, and write down what you think the three bullets were. Then check. If you cannot reconstruct all three from your own answer, one of them is underdeveloped.
3. Tone swap (10 min). Take the laundry room email above and rewrite it to a neighbour who organises the building's residents group, rather than to the manager. Same three bullets, same facts, informal voice. Compare your greeting, your sign off, and how you phrase the request.
4. Count check (2 min). Take any answer you have written that came in under 140 words. Add one number, one date, and one result. Recount.
Practise it scored
Related: Lesson 2: Scoring and What "Good" Looks Like for all sixteen factors · Lesson 4: Task 1 Essentials · Lesson 5: Task 2 Essentials · Lesson 10: Timing Drills and Editing Routines for the checking minutes that protect this area.
