IELTS Essay about the freedom of creative artists -

Topic from Cambridge IELTS test Book 4 - part 3

Creative artists should always be given freedom to express their own ideas (in words, picture, music, film) in whichever way they wish. There should be no government restrictions on what they do.

To what extend do you agree or disagree with this statement?

Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience.

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People often have differing views on whether there should be a line drew to limit artistic freedom for the benefits of the society. In my opinion, I fully support to set a certain rule to keep artists' expression within the limits.

Each society and nation has different set of practices to follow and artistic freedom should be demonstrated within that containments. For example, an artist should respect local culture and avoid incurring any controversial implications or attempting to fuel any sensitive topics such as religions or personal believe. Having the nationwide constraints in place will also help to ensure fairness and equality, with no artist getting a competitive advantage over one another. Moreover, the restrictions enforcement can benefit the artists to minimize the chance of being lure to be the victim or a proxy of viral marketing.

Artistic freedom with zero control can pose several threats to the healthiness of the society. Firstly, successful artists and famous figures have great influence on the population at large. In fact, they are supposed to be the role model to children, so any bad example will affect our future generations. Secondly, everybody must abide the laws, regardless of their popularity. Therefore, nobody should be given the special right to cause any disturbance to the public. Finally, it will be hard to distinguish whether the opinion or idea is purely from an artistic perspective. Undoubtedly, there is a chance of a hidden agenda being cloaked as a simply innocent point of view. Artists will be prone and at risk of being used more to gain political advantages or attack certain individual for monetary gains, for instance.

In conclusion, I disagree to eliminate the ground rules for artists' freedom of speech toward the public. Since there are several drawbacks as stated above.

I scored Band 6 in my first attempt last year and my target in the exam next week is for at least Band 7. Could anyone assess my work and provide your feedback on the evaluation (if possible, based on IELTS criteria), your opinion about the Band I should get out of this, and way to improve. Thank you so much in advance.

Hi wauiwa, perhaps for the next post it is better for you to complete your data as a member in EssayForum.com. Despite meaningless feedback, I reckon that unclear data can also cause suspension. It will be really unfortunate if you get suspended in this remarkable website. However, with regards to your essay, I can see that it is too sudden to have a practice in this forum in quite a short time. Usually, I can respond within 24 hours, but Muslims, including me, from all over the world were celebrating IED in the last two days. So, that is the reason why I was quite inactive. I hope that my feedback would not be too late.

Task Response:
- I notice that you were able to address all parts of the task but seems to me some parts were fully covered than others. This is the importance of having a balance development of a paragraph. Your first body conveys 2 main ideas and your second body paragraph conveys 3 main ideas. I reckon that this is an imbalance paragraph development. Moreover, your conclusion was too simple, it is only restating what the your point in short. It can be considered as unclear or repetitive. This causes difficulty in achieving band 7 in task response. For me, this essay is around 6 or 6.5 maximum. Remember, a band 7 in task response should have all the following:

> address all parts of the task
> present a clear position throughout the response
> presents, extends, and supports main ideas, but there may be a tendency to over-generalise and/or supporting ideas may lack focus.

Coherence and Cohesion:
- Your essay was lack of overall progression. There is no thesis statement and outline of your thesis statement in your introduction paragraph. Again, your introduction is almost the same as your conclusion, too simple. You need to be careful since "lack of overall progression" is one of the criteria of band 5. Furthermore, you need to remember that each body paragraph needs a concluding sentence. You can say "Therefore/all in all or many more cohesive devices related to conclusion. Thus, I think this essay is only worth 5 or maximum 5.5 for coherence and cohesion part. Remember, a band 7 in coherence and cohesion should have all the following:

> logically organises information and ideas, there is a clear progression throughout
> uses a range of cohesive devices appropriately although there may be some under/over-use
> presents a clear central topic within each paragraph

As seen, by improving those two parts I am really sure that you will get your desirable score. This is because you have no serious problem with lexical resource and grammatical range and accuracy. However, do not hesitate to ask if you need further assistance. :)

Hi ichanpants89,

First of all, thank you for your suggestion on getting my profile completed. I've just finished it.

Honestly, you are right, I was expecting to receive an earlier response as my exam is due in a week. Anyway, thank you for your insight and appreciate your feedback as my first responder.

With regards to your comment, while I found them extremely useful, it was actually disheartened ;), knowing that I might not have enough time to adopt to a new writing style. Anyway, let me share my input on how my approach was developed on and perhaps if any other enlightenment you, or any moderator may have. Please feel free to further shred the lights.

Task response
- Conclusion is too short => I read somewhere that both introduction and conclusion aren't the key to improve your score and focus should be made on the body paragraph(es). Also since I simulated the practice under 40 mins time constraint, same as the exam condition, I didn't really have much time to write any proper ending.

Question: So the concise conclusion and abrupt ending will definitely impact my score?
Coherence and Cohesion
- No progression starting from the introduction => Again, similar to the above reason, also I was under the impression that we should just paraphrase the task stimuli. And for the type of this question (agree or disagree), I was supposed to just give the straight answer and go to the body paragraph to explain. I read that sentences saying something such as "in this essay, I am going to ..." would not help your score and will be a waste of the word counts and the time. Not sure if this is true?

Apart from lacking of real life examples provided, if anything else in the body paragraph stands out as a problem, please kindly advise. Admittedly I am not seeking a way to really improve my overall writing skills, nor this particular essay in specific. But rather a technique or a universal approach in order to gain the highest score that I possibly can. Anyway, your feedback is very useful to pay my attention on IELTS scoring criteria.

Thank you again for helping out.

Hi ichanpants89，

Thank you so much for your great advice, well, I might have exaggerated when I said it was disheartened :). But it does feel better when you shred some lights and it's something that is within my reach to achieve.

Just for the record, I'm developing my writing style referring to tips from ielts-simon, for example this one: ielts-simon/ielts-help-and-english-pr/2016/06/ielts-writing-task-2-keep-the-introduction-short.html

This is also the reason why I choose to try and get feedback elsewhere, in order to seek unbiased feedback from other experts if the approach on the website would definitely work. I guess, I might have to try to research some more than.

Anyway, thanks again for providing a tremendously helpful input and I wish you the best, and a good weekend.

No worries wauiwa, I would be glad if my feedback is really helpful. I have just read in IELTS-simon website and I think that it is all about time management. Both short and long introduction are okay (he said). For me, I would like to follow the advice from IELTSadvantage because I think it is in the middle, which is not really long and not really short. Plus, all of the sample answers in IELTSadvantage are band 9. I do really appreciate the advice that I got from there because I scored overall 7 in the last two months exam. Most of the tips in that website are really fruitful.

However, if I'm not mistaken, the rule of this forum is that before posting a new essay practice, you need to give meaningful feedback to at least two essays in this forum. Giving constructive feedback is one of the ways to improve your IELTS writing skill. I do remember one of the tips from IELTSadvantage is that you need to "think like an examiner".How? By grading other members' essays based on IELTS writing band descriptors from IELTS.org.

You can post another essay practice here after doing some research into several IELTS practice websites. I can't wait to see your improvements soon. Break a leg! :)