IELTS: 'bring happiness to my nearest and dearest' - which salary would be better?

Which would you choose: a high-paying job with long hours that would give you little time with family and friends or a lower-paying job with shorter hours that would give you more time with family and friends? Explain your choice, using specific reasons and details.

If I had to choose between a high-paying job with long hours that would give me little time with family and friends and a lower-paying job with shorter hours that would give me more time with family & friends, I would choose the latter without a shadow of doubt.

My primary goal in life is to bring happiness to my nearest and dearest so I will make sure that my parents and younger sister are living in relative ease with flourishing circumstances. When my parents get older and as the oldest child I will be in charge of throwing myself into the outside world and earning a living to cover the daily family needs. Nonetheless, money does not guarantee happiness and I can feel my father's joy when I give him a ring to tell him I will be home around 6:00p.m for dinner. During dinner, I can see my mother's infectious smile across the table and she just cannot wait until we have finished our dinner to ask me about my personal life and my work. These things bring me happiness. It feels like I have managed to accomplish my duty as a child in my family. From my point of view, spending time with my family, keeping track of their lives and taking care of them will bring them happiness.

I think that working too much without spending time being with family and friends gets you nowhere. The high salary that you're offered does not make sense here. It's because you have only one family and only a certain number of great friends to be around while you can quit your current job and switch to another if you find it monotonous or you don't like your boss. Furthermore, the more intensively you work the more frequently you're put under fierce pressure and you have to face up to failure or rejection. This is when you need to take time with your family and friends to get moral support from them. Perhaps they could not really make much difference to your issues, yet I'm sure they could put themselves into your shoes to feel your depression wholeheartedly. At the very least, you would not feel alone. Also, being with your family and friends really helps, especially when you're in a mad dash to orient yourself at work because they know you and your dreams most.

For those who want to climb the career ladder, by all means they should choose a higher-paying job with less regard to their family. However, unlike them, I give my family and friends top priority and I just cannot imagine going a day without them. Work makes me exist, but my family and friends make me live. I treasure every single moment being with them. It stands to reason I would choose the lower-paying job with fewer hours.

It seems you have good writing skills. You have good ideas and excellent grammar and vocabulary. As for the approach, the introduction sounds pretty good. However, I personally feel that you should improve your body paragraphs. You say you wish to have more time with your family by taking up a job with a low salary. So, concentrate more on that and defend this position in the body paras. Begin your body para with the reason as to why you take that stance. Then talk about your parents and sister as examples to justify your reason. You need to keep your body paras more with your topic requirements.

Yep, thank you very much indeed, Pahan. I myself feel my essay somewhat rambling too. I'll bear this lesson in my mind.

I too agree with Pahan. You display good writing skills, good grammar, vocabulary knowledge, sentence structures etc. What you lack is an idea of how this essay be structured. For IELTS, which is also a time bound task, you need to work a lot on your approach to score marks while managing your time effectively. In the body paras, as Pahan suggests, you must give reasons to justify your opinion. This is a sample body para from me;

First, money is not guaranteeing one's happiness. If my job provides me a great salary without any free time, then I would not be able to have my time for my family which may affect our personal lives negatively. For example, I can feel my father's disappointment when I give him a ring to tell him I will not be able to make it for dinner and to have it before I come home.