Writing Feedback / IELTS 2: Are formal 'pen and paper' examinations useful as evaluation? [2]

Many people believe that formal "pen and paper' examinations are not the best method of assessing educational achievement. What is your view of examinations?

Many people state traditional written examns are not the best method to meassure a person's profit from education. In my opinion, these pen and paper exams are a fair way to evaluate a student as will be expounded below.

People who think exams are useless when assessing adwuired knowledge argue this doesn't put the studient in a real situation, therefore, onely continous learning should be considered to say whether a student pass a subject or not. But in my opinion written final task shoulnd't be excluded as far as they give a fair result of the general achievement obtaiden along the academic year.

Other evidence used against written exams is the possibility of cheating it offers to a group of students performing the same examn at the same moment. It makes them to consider better alternatives such as oral examination or group assingments. The first option breaks the condition of equallity for every student, moreover, it may be a very subjective evaluation method. In the other hand, working in groups doesn't solve the problem of cheating, and doens't offer a sample of individual effort.

Some of the detractors of final examns think is wrongful to put a student under such a preassure to weigh up if they deserve to pas a whole subject only by their rendering in a certain moment. But I think they can find this situation in their everyday as a proffessional when all their efforts are reduced to the ability they demonstrate in an instant: as surgeons, lawyers, teachers or engineers,...just a decission can change everything.

To conclude, there must be a lot of aspect to evaluate in a student, but all of them meet in the point of a global examination, that makes much easier the work of putting a mark in a subject.

Writing Feedback / 'not only money' - IELTS: Reasons why people go to work. [3]

The main reason people go to work is to earn money. To what extent do you agree or disagree?

Some people think work is just a way of maintenance, and a job is as well paid as its salary is. In this essay I'm going to discuss why I disagree with the thought that having a job is only for making money.

One of the arguments used to defend that position is that without a job you can't earn money, and money is neccessary to live. Though I agree at some point with this view, above all when it comes to families with no other way to survive, we can observe in our socienty a lot of examples of people working for no remuneration. Volunteers, charities and non-paid interships. Some of them feel they are paid enough with the wellness obtained from contributing to make a better world and to help other people. In the case of interns, they make their job very often without any grant or fellowship, just for the pleasure of learning or gaining some experience. But there are other little gorup of people with patrimony big enough to live their whole lives without having a job, but even then, they work for different reasons: to feel useful people, to mantein all the efforts their ancestor did, or to fill in their artistic ambitions.

The other main argument is that salary is a good tester of success and one of the most important criteria for people when the choose a job. But I think other factors as working near your home, schedules, prospective promotion, and good working enviroment are as important as salary and play an important role when making a decision. It's known there are fields (as researching, for example) where people develope a very important role not so well-paind.

In conclussion, there are a lot of motivations for people to work, not only money although in same cases this is the imperative reason.

Writing Feedback / IELTS: Convenience foods cannot replace traditional methods of cooking [5]

Convenience foods will become increasingly prevalent and eventually replace traditional foods and traditional methods of food preparation. To what extent do you agree or disagree with this opinion?

Nowadays we can find almost every kind of meals in the fridge of the supermarket already cooked, packed and ready to heat and eat. This fact has made ours lives easier and its acceptance seems to be more and more usual. But, will convenience foods become prevalent over traditional foods?

As a matter of fact, none can deny buying everyday convenience foods is far cheaper than going all the weekdays to the cantine at work or at University. Though, even when prices are getting lower and lower, we would never save so much money as cooking the same dishes by ourselves.

This last point is a complete truth when it cames to a family, but in case you live alone sometimes you can't simply buy all the ingredients because it takes the risk of going off before you use all of them. And, of course, it takes a lot of time to prepare a different meal for each day.But for a little money you can get any kind of food with plenty of variety, from Spanish to Indian food, without gluten or for vegetarian diets, with long expiration date.

This saves a lot of time: you only need a day in the week to go and choose seven meals from all around the world and enjoy the rest of your free time without cooking.

All in all, even when is getting more and more importance, convenience foods could never replace traidional methos of cook preparation as the result is not so food as traditional food, although convenience foods are a very good alternative.

Writing Feedback / IELTS Writing task 1: Percentage of UK adolescents following a vegetarian diet [2]

The graph shows the evolution of the percentage of adolescents who live on a vegetarian diet in UK.

From 1960 the percentage of teenagers following this kind of nourishment increased gradually until 1980 when it preaked at 16 %. Between 1980 and 1990 it decreased to the half, followed by a brief rose to 9% around 1992. Then, the amount of adolescents who didn't ate meat dipped in 1997 when it reached a minimum of 4 %. After fluctuating during 2 years, the percentage of vegetarian teenagers has been rising steadly to 10% in 2010. Since then, the porcentage has levelled off, and is expected to increase modestly at the end of the decade of 2010's.

We can observe how the interest in vegetarianism has suffered ups and downs since the beginning of this diet leaning in 1960. It seems there is a upward trend in the future.

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