IELTS WRITING TASK 2 - Do the advantages of increased tourism outweigh its disadvantages?

escalation of tourism around the world

Over the past few decades, by virtue of highly-developed means of transport, there has an escalation of tourism around the world. This paradigm shift is often believed to have more merits than demerits. However, is this always the case? Does it really result in a better world for our human beings? Let's delve into the pros and cons of increased tourism.

To commence with, it is mandatory to take into consideration the upsides of this tendency. Firstly, supporters of international tourism would argue that the more opportunities people have to travel, the broader knowledge and experience they acquire. That is to say, they no longer have to depend on books and movies to watch the world, instead now they can genuinely experience the magnificence of our planet. In the second place, the tourism can attract a sheer volume of tourists from many places, contributing to the development of a nation's economy. By way of illustrations, a variety of local businesses, such as hotels, restaurants will benefit from the increasing number of foreign travelers. Also, more job opportunities will be created, which will help to solve the question of unemployment. Hence, many countries now are eagerly disseminating their own unique attractions.

These benefits, on the contrary, truly pale into insignificance when compared to the conundrums of this change. To begin with, as more and more people turn to travelling with reasonable prices, environmental problems triggered by transportation are inevitable. As a matter of fact, there has been significant degradation in air quality when an accelerating number of people opt for air travel. Furthermore, since most places of interest are constructed in the past and their quality could not meet today's standards, exploitation of these sites may result in damage or even destruction. This will heavily affect its nation's culture and history. Following by this, chances are that local living conditions and lifestyle are disturbed and the environment are degraded due to the fact that floods of travelers pour into the once serene places and bring in rubbish and noise.

All in all, albeit some obvious advantages of this trend, I would believe that these are outweighed by the disadvantages.

You are supposed to be writing an analytical and quick response to a given discussion point. You are not writing a short novel. This is not a creative writing exercise, this is an academic paper. Wordy essays such as these do not have a place in IELTS writing tasks. You have written a total of 358 words. An unrealistic number to complete within a 40 minute task that requires you to:

- Outline the topics for discussion
- Write a draft version of the essay
- Double check for content clarity
-Double check for vocabulary and grammar errors
- Correct the errors
- Finalize the content

All before the 40 minutes allotted for the task runs out. Ideally, you should be writing between 275-290 words only due to the other tasks involved in getting a high score for your Task 2 essay. The way you wrote indicates that it was written with more than the actual time allotment consideration. You did not time yourself.

Being an academic essay, I caution you against getting too creative in your presentation. Never pose questions in the prompt restatement section. Always offer direct paraphrases of the given discussion. You should avoid posing questions because you may accidentally change the slant of the discussion. If you change the slant of the discussion without realizing it, you will end up altering the prompt statement and topic for discussion. A straightforward rephrasing is always more appropriate in this instance.

The essay is not going to delve into the pros and cons of tourism. You must state your opinion at the beginning of the essay, within the prompt paraphrase. Do you believe it is an advantage or a disadvantage? If so, why? Discuss the why's in 2 different topic reasoning paragraphs. You do not have to commence with a discussion, you do not have to list the discussion points numerically. Use topic sentences that this help direct the reader towards the actual discussion points of the paragraph instead. Avoid using word fillers just to fill the word count. That is how you run out of editing time. Word fillers never helped anybody pass this test. Believe me, I know. My students who did not listen to me learned that the hard way.

Limit yourself to 5 sentences per paragraph. Hence, the one topic sentence per paragraph suggestion above. The Task 2 essay scores best when it contains:
- Only 1 discussion topic per paragraph
- A proper reasoning explanation sentence
- An example sentence
- A supporting reason for the sample
- A transition sentence into the next topic paragraph.

The above format helps with the clarity and coherence of your discussion. The examiner is looking for well developed reasoning paragraphs not just a bunch of reasons thrown into the essay without proper explanation development, of which your essay is extremely guilty of.

Note that because you just kept on writing and did not spellcheck or grammar check yourself, you ended up with several score lowering mistakes in the essay:

- Improper use of hyphenation (Highly developed is 2 words not one word.)
- Contractions (let's = Let us)
- elementary English words usage (more and more = increased, As a matter of fact = In fact)
- Improper use of jargon (paradigm shift = change in basic assumptions)

There are other errors in the essay that need to be pointed out and corrected but I might be here all day if I do that. Just take note of these basic changes and most score affecting mistakes on your part. I hope to see improvements with your upcoming essays.

Thanks so much for your feedback. To be honest, when I finished the task I feel quite confident of my writing. However, since this is the very first time I have received such a realistic response like this so I can figure it out that I still have much to improve. Maybe I focused so much on the vocabulary range that I made a lot of mistakes. I really appreciate your feedbacks. I will improve my next essay thanks to your suggestions. Thank you!

I think your essay is good overall, but I think you should put clearer examples in two paragraphs in the middle. And I do not know what do you mean but in the first paragraph of the middle, you say "

By way of illustrations, a variety of local businesses, such as hotels, restaurants will benefit from the increasing number of foreign travelers. Also, more job opportunities will be created, which will help to solve the question of unemployment." It does not concern anything about your second idea.

I think your essay is really good but you should shorten it because it is too long for the requirement.