IELTS WRITING TASK2: Advertising Discourages Personalities

is advertising making people similar?

Some people think that advertising discourages us from being different individuals, as all people want to do the same and look the same. To what extent do you agree or disagree?

People are flooded with commercial advertisements all the time either at home or outside. It is sometimes argued that people lose their identity by using similar products promoted in the advertisement. From my point of view, I completely disagree with this statement.

Thanks to advertising, both large and small companies have the opportunity to enable customers to know their products. People are exposed to kinds of products with different styles and patterns produced by the companies. At the same time of providing more choices for the consumers, advertisements also create the demands in the market to a large extent. By using products merchandised by diverse companies, people are distinguished by their clothing and accessories. On the surface, the one wearing a pair of Vans looks entirely different from another one wearing boots produced by UGG.

In addition, individual character comes more from the educational background and thoughts than wearing. The knowledge imparted in schools cultivates students' tough and tolerant personalities so that those who are well-educated tend to look more energetic and courteous than those wearing similar but ignorant and narrow. What's worse, when seeing the same advertisement of a fancy handbag, an ambitious university student may be inspired to earn money to afford it in the future while another youth who drops out of school in the childhood may commit a crime by robbing others of the bag. This is because people react differently to the same advertisement depending on their consciousness.

In conclusion, I do not agree that advertising is making people similar to each other. On the contrary, they have loads of choices to wear and do variously due to diverse advertisements.

Ziming, congratulations on writing a very well developed paraphrase of the original prompt, as well as the fantastically accurate response to the extent question. You are one of the few students here to accurately produced a response essay on the first try. Give yourself a pat on the back for this accomplishment.

Your reasoning paragraphs also prove you have the ability to discuss in coherent English, which will serve you well in a formal class setting and also, in the completion of your opinion and research papers as assigned in your classes. The examiner will note these writing abilities of yours as it applies to the test requirements.

Though not perfectly presented, you did well enough to prove your ability to hold your own in such discussion settings.

You stayed focused and discussed only one opinion, your personal opinion, with supporting and relevant examples indicated. You have passed half the test because you proved that you have the ability to understand English instructions based on your English comprehension skills as proven by your proper task instruction response.

If I were to find a problems with your presentation, these errors would be so minimal that it would most likely have very little effect on your overall score.

The main mistake that I can see here is in the concluding summary. While you did offer a repeat of your personal opinion based on the discussion, you should have continued to present that opinion within the "extent" response that you gave in the prompt paraphrase.

In addition to that, you forgot to present a rephrased discussion of the given topic before offer a summary of your discussion reasons.

Consider the concluding summary as a reverse prompt paraphrase. This time, indicate a new presentation for the same discussion topic , the supporting reasons, your opinion, and a closing sentence.

All of these are meant to help boost your LR and GRA scores since you will be restating your presentation of the prompt and its accompanying discussion in a new manner.

In terms of presentation, don't use informal language such as contractions (What's worse = What is worse) and "they had loads of choices" should be in any of the following formal language combinations: "they have many/plenty/several/ assorted choices".

Using more descriptive adjectives will also help increase your GRA score (e.g. similar products = equivalent products, different styles = distinctive styles, large extent = a considerable extent) The use of more descriptive adjectives will help create more complex sentence presentations as well.

Like I said, the presentation mistakes are minimal and would not really have a direct effect on your overall score. However, improving your presentation style to reflect a more complex use of words and sentence presentations can only help to further boost your final score. Good work. I look forward to reviewing your next practice essay.