IELTS Advantage/Disadvantage Essay Sample 4 - Communication
In this post, we will look at an advantage/disadvantage essay example from the IELTS writing task 2 test. Students often ask if the questions are repeated year after year and the answer is no, but the topics are. There are so many questions written each year, you may find your practice answering various questions on different topics. For example, you could write essays to answer questions about education or the environment, which benefits you because you learn vocabulary associated with those topics and develop ideas that can help you in your writing test.
Practising writing IELTS task 2 essays on a range of topics is a great way to learn new vocabulary for those topics, but also to practice your essay structures. You begin to develop your ideas around those topics, thinking of examples and giving your opinions.
If you would like to learn how to structure an advantage/disadvantage essay please click the button below >
Take a look at the IELTS essay example below >>
Mobile communication including the use of social media has substituted the usual ways of interacting and being updated about current events. This essay believes that the advancement of social communication is more advantageous rather than a burden. Firstly, this essay will discuss the benefits of using social media as a tool and secondly the detrimental effects of having these apps in our lives.
On the one hand, the main advantage of using social media as a communication tool to message friends and keep up to date with current news and events is that you can easily access this information at any time on your mobile device. Using news apps means that you can read about events as they happen in real time, as well as write comments on news articles. This way of learning about news and interacting with it has evolved with the increasing use of social apps. For example, the BBC news reported in 2017 that 90% of readers use the app to read news and comment on articles via their Facebook page.
On the other hand, the primary disadvantage of using social media to learn about news and events is that it has been used to spread fake news which disseminates the wrong information. Fake reporting of celebrity deaths, bomb scares and government legislation has been widespread and shared on social media apps like Facebook and Twitter. For instance, a news report about the death of US actor Sylvester Stallone in 2017 went viral on Facebook and later turned out to be a fake news story.
In my opinion, I believe that the advantages far outweigh the disadvantages because of how easy it is to use social media to share information with others. Traditional methods of hearing about the latest news are long outdated now that it is easy to share stories via social media apps. You can instantly share a news story with friends on Facebook or Twitter. For example, in my own experience, I regularly use Facebook to read news from the BBC, New York Times and The Economist, sharing articles with friends via the messenger app or into their newsfeed.
In conclusion, the advancement of social media has more benefits than drawbacks for this is the easiest way of sharing information and connecting different people around the world.
(Word count - 384 / Band score 8)
- Task Achievement - The essay provides an answer to the question asked, supported by relevant examples.
- Coherence and Cohesion - The answer has been divided into clear logical paragraphs and each main body paragraph only has one main idea. There are cohesive links between the main body paragraphs.
- Lexical Resource - There is evidence of a wide range of vocabulary, with no errors in the text.
- Grammatical Range and Accuracy - The answer has no grammatical errors. The sentences have a wide range of structures.
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