IELTS Writing Task 2: Cure or prevention? - EngExam.info

IELTS Writing Task 2: Cure or prevention?

“Prevention is better than cure.”
Out of a country’s health budget, a large proportion should be diverted from treatment to spending on health education and preventative measures. To what extent do you agree or disagree with this statement?

Some people argue that instead of fighting with diseases by using medication as well as spend huge sums1, it is better to invest money on2 preventive procedures. In my opinion, I agree3 with the statement that people should increase their health knowledge, so they can4 improve they health and avoid spending sums5 on pharmaceutical treatments.

First, I believe that increasing health education of humans let6 them be prepared and face diseases easily. By saying this, I mean that people, for example, can improve their immune system by consuming particular vitamins and minerals or prevent themselves7. For example, many countries use vaccination to fight with such diseases as, Rubella8, tuberculosis and one of the most noticeable now «Corona virus»9, for example. Those people who have advantage of knowing how to increase their immune system10 fight against viruses more easy, rather than those do not have such information.

Another reason why I agree, that11 people should use preventative measures is to save money. It is thought by many, that pharmaceutical companies are what us to buy12 more and more treatments. They use the fact that people have a few knowledge13 about healthcare to sell as much medicaments as possible. A good example could be old people, who tend to watch a lot of new14 on TV with advertising of medication. Due to a lack of15 health proficiency, they usually follow such offers, spending their last money.

To conclude, knowing about preventative measures and generally knowing about one`s health is an extremely important to live healthier and longer life. Moreover, it is always better to be aware of health problems, which means to be prepared face them16, rather than waste money on medication checks17.

281 words

The commentaries are marked in brackets with number (*). The numbered commentaries are found below. The part in italics is taken from the text, the word underlined is the suggested correction. Words in (brackets) are the suggested addition to the original phrase or sentence.

  1. … spending huge sums of money – remember that when you use conjunction to connect two clauses (and, or, as well as etc.) both parts have to be in the same form. You can say ‘do something and doing something’.
  2. to invest money in
  3. If you agree, it is already your opinion, so you don’t have to say it twice here 🙂
  4. A hypothetical situation requires the use of ‘could’, not ‘can’
  5. The word ‘sums’ in English doesn’t have the meaning of big amounts of money, so an adjective is needed, e.g. ‘huge, big sums’.
  6. education … allows/lets‘ – the word ‘education’ should be treated as singular grammatically
  7. You can prevent something or prevent somebody from something. Here your are preventing someone! You can’t do that.
  8. No comma is needed before the first item in the list: “such diseases as Rubella, tuberculosis…”
  9. No parentheses are needed here
  10. Develop/strengthen/reinforce immune system
  11. No comma is required before that. Here is a good article on that.
  12. “… companies want us to buy…” ?
  13. ‘Knowledge’ is countable, can’t use ‘few’ with it. “… people have little knowledge…”
  14. ‘new’ needs a noun here, you can’t use it without one.
  15. ‘Lack’ is uncountable and will never take an indefinite article. No article is needed here
  16. “To be prepared to face them”
  17. “Healthcare/medication bills” would work better here