IELTS Task2: Comfortable lifestyle i.e. Materialism Vs Traditional Values

Topic: People nowadays work hard to buy more things. This has made our life generally more comfortable but it is a pity many traditional values have been lost on the way to such materialism. To what extent do you agree or disagree with the statement?

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Money has become an essential ingredient of life than before. People's priorities and preferences have changed. Materialism has definitely superseded the traditional values in various walks of life. People are willing to work longer and harder to buy comforts and luxuries.

There are numerous factors that attribute to this change. Firstly, the importance for Time has increased, people are giving more importance to work and they want to put in extra time for their professional life, they are looking out for alternatives that make personal life and chores easier and faster. For example, the rise in trend for fast food joints and restaurants shows the change in people's food habits. People are preferring processed foods that are easy to cook but unhealthy by sacrificing the healthy traditional food habits. One more instance of change in people's priority is the level of participation in celebrations and family get-together, people are are willing to devote more time to their profession rather than spending time with their families during festivals and family events. They are preferring to convey their regards over mobile phones are social networking mediums. This change in tendency is waning the importance of traditional cultures and values.

In addition, people's gratification to crave for social status is another reason for long work hours.There is no doubt that in today's society people are judged by the dress they wear and gadget they carry .In order to grab attention of the society, people are ready to shell out money for expensive clothing, electronics and automobiles.This materialistic attitude is also one of the reasons for decrease in traditional values.

However, not all people who work hard and buy comforts and luxuries will compromise on their traditional values. There are many people who strike a fine balance between all aspects of life.

Finally, I opine that it is important for people to maintain a good work-life balance and preserve the traditional cultural and values for future generations.

Your introduction suggests that you have good writing skills. However, you need to adopt a structure that contains all the features that help you earn marks at IELTS.

Thaks Dumi for taking time and evaluating this. I would try to stick to the format that you mentioned. However, do you have any other comments on the content, I mean the ideas and the relevance to the topic and grammar. I'm not a native English speaker and I feel I have lot of mother tongue influence. Hence, I want to focus more on grammar esp tenses.

Thank you,
Raj

I am neither a native English speaker :D .... You are pretty good with your grammar, vocabulary, ideas etc. and that means you can write well and have lots of potential for a great score :D... I only feel that you need to improve the essay structure in order to earn a good score.

Raj thanks for your good essay with lot of good phrases. I will make use of them in my prepartion. As Dumi said, you have excellent vocabulary store.

.... this is the part that describes the background. Seems it has a small issue. :) Let's look at the prompt;


... See, it is only the first part of the prompt is discussed in your sentence which is supposed to describe the background of the issue. The second part is ignored. Therefore, the background section, which earns you more marks than other parts of the intro, is not complete.

That is the only issue I find in your introduction. You write very well :)

Thanks Arun for your comments. However, its taking lot of time for me to write an essay. I want to complete in stipulated amount of time..say 30 mins.I think it takes lot of practice to achieve this.

Read both, I mean your background statement and the topic. Don't you find a slight difference? ( Also, in what you wrote, it is a bit vague as to whether you talk about the older generations or the people belonging to recent generations) Actually, your topic is more direct and it says that modern people are giving a higher priority for worldly pleasures and they work hard to achieve them in life distancing from traditional values. I find there is a gap between what you wrote and the topic. Better you re-phrase the topic with your own words and present so that it does not lose its original sense. For example;

People's priorities and preferences have changed over the time and the modern people are more concerned about worldly pleasures. Therefore they strive hard to lead such materialistic lives with comforts and luxuries. Some people argue that this phenomenon has made the modern people distancing from the traditional values and it has a negative impact on society. ....now you can tell your opinion on the issue. (your title includes the word "pity" and that is why I talked about the negative impact on society - I think it is implied by the title.... You need to spend more time on writing the background as it is the most important feature in the intro. Take lots of help from the title for that :)

Dumi/Pahan,

Hope I'm not bugging you asking for more & more feedback :)

Pahan- You have suggested some changes, do you see any other flaws. I'm trying to stick to the format that Dumi has mentioned. Also, at times I'm finding it difficult to quote reasons & couple of examples... too may points linger in my mind and its eating away my time for me to decide on the appropriate one.

If too many things come to your mind (I guess they are reasons), then what you should do is that type them in sketch mode :D Then go back to your introduction and finish it. Then come to the first thing you sketched (this is your body para) and elaborate it a bit further. Give an example and then move to the second reason in the sketch form :D and do the same.

It is normal for you to feel that way because this task is a trade off between your writing skills and time. So, the best thing is practice, practice and practice with time. Read others essays too that are written on similar topics (you can find loads of them here) to pick points. That would be very helpful.

You write very well and I think you need to be more confident about your skills. Our suggestions are to make you perfect :D