IELTS Academic Writing Task 2: Essay Writing (Effect of the Internet in society)

Question:
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We live in a world of technology these days. While the internet brings with it clear advantages,the problems in terms of control and security of information outweighs the advantages.

To what extent do you agree?

Answer:
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importance of the internet in today's world

Internet is clearly one of the greatest inventions of this age. Though it offers a lot of benefits to the society,it is often argued by many that the damages caused by the uncontrolled and insecure environment of internet negate the positive impacts. However, I strongly disagree with this notion considering the benefits provided by it, such as improvement in human lives and ease of access to knowledge ,which will be discussed in this essay.

Internet has played a key role in improving the quality of human life worldwide. Firstly, communication among people on a global level has become very easy and fast due to the internet. People from all over the world can interact at real time using the applications, namely Whatsapp, Facebook, Twitter, what was not even imaginable a few years ago. Secondly, people are able to perform their day to day activities,such as banking, shopping, paying bills from the comfort of their homes through the internet. As a result, the time and energy saved can be put in into other activities like pursuing a hobby or nurturing a skill, which in turn improves the quality of human lives.

Moreover, the internet has given people easy access to knowledge regardless of their nations and economic conditions. The rapid growth of internet has made it a place of knowledge sharing. People are taking to the internet to share their knowledge in every possible fields. Take, for example, the Youtube channel 'Khan Academy',where an MIT alumni Dr. Salman Khan has been creating educational videos to teach people various subjects such as mathematics, science,computers to name a few. Owing to this revolution in knowledge sharing,people from all over the world with internet access can learn almost everything at least up to a basic level for free. This has caused a great positive impact especially amid the population of emerging economies.

In conclusion, though I think that measures should be taken to control and safeguard information in the webspace, I do not accept the fact that the disadvantages such as these have a bigger impact than the positivities it is bringing to the society by improving the quality of human lives and providing access to knowledge.

Please review it keeping the IELTS writing exam criteria in mind.

Riya, I believe that this is a level 6 essay. It has a clear presentation of the discussion points as provided in the original prompt, you were able to discuss solid lines of reasoning albeit on a less than effective scale, and you managed to not confuse the reader with your declarations. All of these are the good points in your essay that helped to bring up your score to the 6 bracket range. Now for the problem points.

In the opening statement, you immediately outlined the topics for your discussion as part of your discussion instruction sentence. That is unacceptable. Under no circumstances are you allowed to present any form of actual information in the thesis statement because of the lack of paragraph development that exists. It is enough that you stated the strength of your disagreement with the statement in the thesis sentence. All you had to do was imply that 2 reasons supporting your claim would be discussed.

The following line confuses me a bit:

People from all over the world can interact at real time using the applications, namely Whatsapp, Facebook, Twitter, what was not even imaginable a few years ago.

At the point where you said ".... Twitters, what was not imaginable..." makes it sound like you accidentally merged 2 different sentences as the first part of the sentence seems to be headed in a different direction than the closing portion of the sentence. Was this an accident or was this intentional? I think that what you meant to write was:

... Twitter, all of which were not even imaginable... Notice how the addition of the correct words created more understandable meaning in the sentence? Make sure that you always write fully developed sentences otherwise you will be scored down in terms of grammar accuracy and coherence.

In the second paragraph, you divided the attention of the examiner by presenting a first and second line of reason in the same paragraph. This effectively lowered the C&C as well as the GRA score for your essay because neither reason you presented was developed adequately enough to convince the examiner that your reasons are sound, effective, and applicable to the original statement. It is always best that you just focus on just a single topic per paragraph. By presenting only one reason, you will be able to prove that you have the analytical ability and written ability to express your thoughts in a coherent English paragraph, which will be the main requirement for students attending school in Australia, Canada, and the UK.

The closing paragraph is also problematic because you continued to introduce new aspects to help support your discussion. The closing paragraph must always just do a recap of the previously presented discussion within 3-5 sentences. That is considered to be an effective conclusion. Just as with the opening statement, you cannot introduce new facts at the end of the essay because there is no room to further develop that line of presentation. You only have 5 sentences per paragraph and a maximum of 5 paragraphs to work with so make sure that all your presentations are tight and on point in order to increase your chances of a higher than just passing score.