IELTS Writing Task 2

Some people hold the opinion that as technology advances, cultural traditions die out undoubtedly (1). I partly agree with this view as that technological development and cultures are not compatible in large cities but it will be different when it comes to the suburban (2).

To begin with, it can be seen that the urban areas have been changed a lot as a result of the dramatic development of technology. For example, in the past ways for people to get rid of tension were usually spend time with their families or friends (3); however, in these modern days (4), people tend to use the Internet as a means of relaxation and recreation. As a result, all the relationships in the society will gradually be destroyed. Moreover, it is clearly that people knew clearly about their neighbourhood and always got along with their neighbours, which is unlike people these days who do not know their closest neighbours (5).

However, traditional cultures and the advances in technology are compatible in the rural areas as many customs and beliefs are still maintained. A clear example is that many traditional skills such as embroidering or pottery are still passed on from parents to children. Furthermore, advances in technology also make a great contribution to the development of the traditions in the countryside. Technology makes it far easier for the farmers when the harvest season comes, this development also helps people living in the suburban have more opportunities to access to the latest information by using the Internet (6).

In conclusion, in some cases it is true that the loss of customs and beliefs is brought about by technological developments; however, in some areas, many traditions are still preserved despite the significant advance in technology.

290 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. Some people hold the opinion that as technology advances, cultural traditions inevitably die out. — inevitably would sound more natural here. Adverbs of certainty (‘inevitably‘) are normally used before the verb.
2. I partly agree with this view in that technological development and cultures are not compatible in large cities but it will be different when it comes to the suburban — use ‘in’ instead of ‘as’ to indicate that you agree with a certain part of a statement.
3. For example, in the past the ways for people to get rid of tension were usually to spend time (or spending time) with their families or friends — first of all, without the definite article past can be mistakenly attributed to ways. The second part needs either an infinitive (to spend time) or gerund (spending time).
4. however, these days (or in modern days/nowadays) — the suggested examples are more commonly used when referring to the present.
5. Moreover, it is clear that people knew their neighbourhood (better) and always got along with their neighbours, unlike people these days who do not know their closest neighbours (or who do not know people they live next to) — avoid using the same expression in the same sentence, let alone the same line. I have rephrased the first part of the sentence to avoid using clear (and its forms) twice. I have also included the ending of the sentence in brackets that avoids using word neighbours twice.
6. Technology makes it far easier for the farmers when the harvest season comes, this development also helps people living in suburban areas have more opportunities to access the latest information by using the Internet.— Suburban areas is the phrase you should be using here. Avoid using the word ‘suburbs’ which means ‘away from the city centre’ but doesn’t imply that the area is out of town.  Access is a transitive verb so you don’t need a preposition.

The essay fully addresses the point of the task. It has a clear structure, varied vocabulary and appropriate style. It could use better use of collocations and prepositions. You should also pay attention not to use the same word twice. This is easy to avoid by proofreading your essay after you have finished your draft. Don’t be shy to make any corrections in it — as long as the correction is readable your mark won’t suffer from it.

The debate of minimum age limit for driving is on-going from ages , wherein people have contradictory views (1). It has been argued by some people that the minimum age to learn driving should be 18 years, whilst others disagree and feel it should be 25 years. In my opinion, the lower limit to start driving should be 25 years.

To begin with, there are plenty of reasons to illustrate increasing age limit for driving is utmost essential (2). First and foremost, accidents are inevitable while driving, which can be handled at its best from experienced elders. Juvenility is the age wherein people cannot make judgemental decisions during any accidents and end up losing their precious life. A prime example is a survey conducted by Indian government using data collected over 10 years with respect to accidents encountered in the country. The result of the survey was astonishing, as the people who lost their life during accidents involve 70% of juveniles under 20 years.

On the other hand, it is always good to give opportunity for the younger generation who are keen on learning things. Even though age is a deciding factor, there are some juveniles who are capable of taking right decisions and drive carefully. If the government make 25 years as the lower limit for driving, some juveniles may feel depressed who are eager to learn driving (3). An instance illustrating this in action is the life of “George Mellor” who invented Mercedez at the age of 29 years (4). He had a great passion for a car right from the age of 10, which was nurtured by his parents, who allowed George to learn driving from very young age.

Driving is popular among people which is a mandatory skill to lead a balanced and happier life. In my view, though lower limit to kick start driving can be 18 years, I am convinced that, it is always better to make it 25 years and give extreme importance to our offspring’s life who are assets of our nation.

340 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. wherein people have contradicting views — ‘contradictory views’ would imply that a person has two views that contradict each other e.g. ‘Young people shouldn’t be driving because they have poor judgement’ and ‘Young people should be allowed to drive to give them more personal freedom’.
2. To begin with, there are plenty of reasons to illustrate (that) increasing age limit for driving is most essential — ‘utmost’ is not an adverb and therefore shouldn’t be used with an adjective.
3. If the government make 25 years the lower limit for driving, some juveniles who are eager to learn driving may feel depressed — rearranging the sentence sometimes makes it easier to follow. In this case it is better to describe what type of people may feel depressed first.
4. An instance illustrating this in action is the life of “George Mellor” who invented Mercedes at the age of 29 years — spelling mistake. If you want to mention factual data such as the name of a person here, make sure you use it correctly. I couldn’t find any connection of George Mellor with Mercedes.

The essay has a defined structure and well-developed argumentation. It is easy to follow and understand. Well done!

From (1) the last few decades, educational institutions have witnessed a tremendous change in the way of teaching, due to technological inventions. However, in my opinion, online courses provide extravagant benefits to educatees, I also believe that there might be a definite drawback if all courses are made online (2).

To begin with, there are several advantages of self-study courses which are offered by universities. First and foremost, online courses provide a great deal of flexibility and freedom for students, in terms of commuting to college and attending classes (3). In other words, online courses can be taken from anywhere, which in turn enable people who are working to pursue their higher education. A prime example is a survey conducted by UNESCO by taking a sample of 10 years data from oxford university (4), in terms number of students in each course. The results were astonishing, as students opting for online courses have skyrocketed exponentially (5) right from the introduction of online courses in the university curriculum.

Nevertheless, the advantages of online courses have not all been beneficial. That’s because, one of the fundamental responsibility of educational institution is to provide an environment wherein students can learn skills, such as empathy, debate, discourse et cetera. Furthermore, no one can replace the true value added in education by lecturers who guide, support and motivate students to set high goals and thrive to achieve those goals.

To sum up, development of online courses are extremely useful for pupils to suffice (6) their hunger for knowledge, along with their normal routine work. However, giving more importance to the online course can lead to adverse ramifications, which disable students from learning human skills which are utmost essential in one’s life (7).

287 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. Over(or in) the last few decades — I believe the result of development is meant here. So we can either imply the gradual improvement with ‘over’, or use the more generalised ‘in’.
2. Even though online courses provide extraordinary benefits to educatees, I believe that there might be a definite drawback if all courses are made online — I’ve taken the liberty to alter the sentence to make the contrasting more evident. I also changed ‘extravagant’ to ‘extraordinary’ as it is a more common collocation.
3. Use of commas in the text is not always optimal. There is a nice (and long) article on commas here. I might compile a shorter set of must-know rules later.
4. A prime example is a survey conducted by UNESCO in which a sample of 10 years data from Oxford University, in terms number of students in each course.(A prime example is a survey conducted by UNESCO using data collected by Oxford University over 10 years on number of students in each course) — Names of universities, various institutions and organisations are normally capitalised. The sentence is difficult to understand because of three separate clauses. Consider breaking it up into shorter ones. Sentence in brackets is my suggestion that does not involve turning one sentence into two.
5. have skyrocketed — ‘skyrocketed’ already implies surging growth, you don’t need to emphasise it any further, even if it means using fancy vocabulary.
6. To sum up, the development of online courses is extremely useful for pupils to satisfy their hunger for knowledge — ‘satisfy’ collocates with ‘hunger’, ‘suffice’ doesn’t.
7. However, giving more importance to the online course can lead to adverse ramifications that prevent students from learning human skills which are essential in one’s life — ‘disable’ and ‘from’ aren’t used together. ‘Utmost’ is not an adverb and you need one if you want to use it with the adjective ‘essential’ here. Avoid using two ‘which’ determiners in one sentence.

A well-structured essay with clear ideas and decent use of vocabulary. A more focused punctuation would make it very decent — namely the use of commas needs some brushing up. Another aspect that needs attention is collocations — some of the expressions have established word pairs (‘to satisfy hunger’, ‘prevent from doing something’).

Students with good command of English usually believe that the longer and more complicated sentences they write, the higher score they will get. While this is partially true, longer sentences can be tricky to do right and they are usually harder to understand. A minor mistake in a bigger sentence can make it impossible to make out which can seriously harm the final score. Keep this in mind when planning your narrative.

Childhood is the golden age in anyone’s life which molds each individual to grow as responsible citizens (1) of the nation. In many countries, children are raised without giving (2) too many responsibilities in contrast with the earlier days, where kids have to accomplish more tasks (3) in order to fulfill the assigned responsibilities (4). It is often argued that this approach is beneficial, whilst other think it has its own drawbacks. This essay will sight both the opinions before coming to a reasoned conclusion.

On one hand, children were assigned with more duties in the past and they were encouraged to fulfill those duties to learn and unlearn things from the very young age. This view of making children get acquainted with the responsibilities from childhood helps them to grow as responsible individuals and in turn act (5) as a stepping stone in their success. Beethoven is a prime example whose parents indulged him in a musical instrument from his childhood which made him worlds renown instrumentalist. He is well known around the world and appraise his parents and give all credits (6) to them for his extravagant success.

On the flip side, juveniles of these decades (7) are given liberty to assert their opinion which is very well received by elders. This is one of the must criteria for having a good bonding, as we should not force kids to perform things which is doesn’t appeal to them and burden (8) with responsibility. It is advisable to give anyone more space and time which helps children to identify their self interest and work upon them (9). For example, Sachin Tendulkar is a well-known cricket player who always shares his parent’s role in making him a big success by giving much-needed space for himself.

In my opinion, parents should always nourish children with love and care rather than make them feel burden with the responsibilities (10).

317 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. molds each individual to grow as a responsible citizen — since ‘each’ is used here it means every single individual. Therefore it is better to use singular to emphasise that idea.
2. In many countries, children are raised without having too many responsibilities (or without being given too many responsibilities) — I would suggest using the passive construction here to show the examiner your command of English.
3. in contrast with the earlier days, when kids had to accomplish more tasks — the author refers to time rather than space, therefore ‘when’ should be used. We are also talking about the time in the past, so you should be using past tense (either Simple of Perfect). See more on basics of tenses in English.
4. The word ‘responsible’ and its variations are used nine times throughout this text. Although it isn’t an easy word to find a synonym for, it is advisable to avoid repeating the same word too many times. Think of some ways to alter your choice of words: Responsible — accountable, obliged; Responsibility — obligation, duty. This list of most commonly used words in English could be worth reading to avoid overusing other widespread words and expressions.
5. This view of making children get acquainted with the responsibilities from childhood helps them to grow as responsible individuals and in turn acts as a stepping stone in their success. The word ‘act’ refers to view (singular) and not children (plural).
6. He is well known around the world and appraised his parents and gave all credit — as Beethoven is no longer with us it makes sense to use past sense here. ‘To give credit’ is a set expression that isn’t pluralised.
7. On the flip side, juveniles of today (or juveniles nowadays) — ‘these decades’ is an expression I haven’t encountered, and Google didn’t return any relevant examples either.
8. This is one of the must criteria for having a good bonding, as we should not force kids to perform things which don’t appeal to them and burden (them) with responsibility — things are plural. Burden is used as a verb here and needs an object.
9. It is advisable to give anyone more space and time which helps children to identify their self-interest and work upon it — Self-interest is spelled through a hyphen; it refers to self-interest (singular).
10. rather than make them feel burdened with responsibilities (or feel the burden of responsibilities)

This essay nails almost every aspect and deserves a high mark. Two areas that could use improvement — the first one is use of synonyms, i.e. responsible, responsibilities. The second improvement would be a more even balance of paragraphs — single sentence conclusion looks tiny in comparison with four-sentence introduction and voluminous body paragraphs.

Some people believe that corporations should also be responsible for social issues, besides making profit (1). In my opinion, while paying high priority to earnings, firms also need to consider public responsibilities.

On the (2) one hand, it is undeniable that generating profits brings various benefits for the public as a whole. This is mainly because the more money these companies earn, the more taxes they will have to pay for (3) the government. As a result, residents’ lives will be improved significantly as more revenue will be spent on public needs (4) especially health care and education. Another reason supporting for this view (5) is that a large number of people will not be unemployed as once firms (6) able to earning profits, they will expand their business and consequently more jobs will be created.

On the other hand, enterprises should also conduct their businesses in a socially responsible manner besides paying excessive attention to generating profits. Firstly, if companies are not fully aware of their responsibilities towards society, it will lead to a devastating result. A clear example for this case is that there has been a serious environmental degradation such as pollutted (7) atmosphere brought about by factories. Another illustration is that emissions or industrial and chemical wasted (8) have been discharged into lakes or rivers, contaminated the water and killed thousands of underwater features (9) especially fishes. Secondly, firms should also use their profits to do philanthropic actions such as give charitable donations to homeless or orphanages. Consequently, these businesses could enhance their public image and build up community’s trust and confidence.

In conclusion, although I believe that making profits is the most important princepal (10) in doing business, considering about (11) public responsibilites (12) is also needed.

290 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. Some people believe that corporations should pay attention to social issues as much as to making profit — the idea here is not to use ‘also’ in the beginning, as it implies that there was something mentioned and the ‘also’ part is an addition to the previous statement. The suggested example is one way to rephrase the sentence without using ‘also’.
2. On one hand — no article is needed here. The phrase goes ‘on one hand … on the other hand’.
3. The more taxed they will have to pay to the government — ‘for’ would mean that the companies pay the tax instead of the government. Read more about prepositions.
4. more revenue will be spent on public needs, especially — a new clause is introduced with a comma.
5. another reason supporting this view— supporting this view would me more correct — there is no need to use ‘for’ here.
6. once firms (are/become) able to earning profits — a verb is needed here.
7. polluted — spelled with one ‘t’. See other words with difficult spelling.
8. chemical wastes — another typing inaccuracy.
9. killed thousands of underwater creatures, especially fishes. — wrong word is used (features), and a comma is missing before a new clause. I didn’t correct ‘fishes’ in case the author meant certain species of fish. See this article on fish/fishes for more information.
10. principle — spelling mistake.
11. considering/taking into consideration — ‘consider’ isn’t used with ‘about’ as far as I know.
12. responsibilities — spelling.

Great essay with serious approach to structuring, paraphrasing and usage of synonyms. Most inaccuracies could be easily avoided if the author proofread it more thoroughly. Remember to read your IELTS/CAE essay before handing it in to your examiner. You are not penalised for making corrections as long as they are easy to read and understand. Everybody makes mistakes and those couple of minutes for proofreading can make a world of difference.