IELTS language bank: Concession (Although, Despite)

Concession is the move of granting that an opposing point has some truth to it before making your own point anyway, and it is one of the few pieces of Task 2 language an examiner can spot doing real argumentative work rather than just decorating a sentence. An essay that only ever asserts its own side reads as one-dimensional, even when the content is reasonable, because it never engages with the strongest version of the opposite view. The trouble is that most candidates learn exactly two concession words in preparation — "although" and "despite" — and then reach for whichever one they remember first, regardless of whether the grammar that follows actually fits. The result is either a grammatical error (pairing "despite" with a full clause) or a flat, repetitive essay in which every single concession in a four-paragraph response uses the identical word. There are at least twenty-five distinct ways to signal concession in English, each with its own grammar and its own shade of formality, and knowing several of them is what lets a concession actually vary sentence structure rather than just repeating a template.

The first family is clause-introducing conjunctions, which need a full subject-plus-verb clause on both sides. "Although" and "even though" are the two most common: "Although the scheme initially proved unpopular, participation rose sharply once the financial incentive was introduced." "Even though" carries a slightly stronger sense of contrast against expectation than the plainer "although," useful when the concession is genuinely surprising rather than merely present. "Though" is grammatically identical to "although" but can additionally sit at the very end of a sentence in a more conversational register: "The scheme initially proved unpopular. Participation rose sharply, though." That end-position use is common in speaking and informal writing but reads as slightly loose in a formal Task 2 essay, so reserve it for Speaking Part 3 rather than a written script. "While" and "whilst" can also introduce a full-clause concession — "While critics have raised legitimate concerns about cost, the long-term savings are difficult to dispute" — but both words do double duty for simultaneous time ("while the two policies were being debated in parliament") and plain contrast ("while urban areas have flourished, rural regions have stagnated"), so a reader has to infer from context which job the word is doing in a given sentence.

The second family is prepositions and preposition-like phrases that take a noun phrase or a gerund, never a full clause. "Despite" and "in spite of" are functionally identical and the most common in this family: "Despite the criticism, the policy achieved its stated goals" or "Despite facing sustained criticism, the policy achieved its stated goals." "Notwithstanding" is a considerably more formal, almost legalistic alternative to "despite," more at home in a policy document or a very formal register than a typical Task 2 script, though it is grammatically identical: "Notwithstanding these concerns, the committee approved the proposal." "For all" works similarly but carries a slightly more idiomatic, evaluative flavour, often used with a possessive: "For all its flaws, the original proposal addressed the underlying problem more directly than its replacement." The single most common grammar error in this whole topic is pairing "despite" or "in spite of" with a full clause as though it were "although": "Despite the policy faced criticism" is simply wrong and needs either a noun phrase ("despite the criticism") or a switch to a clause-taking conjunction ("although the policy faced criticism").