The methodology of interacting with individuals have changed through time

IELTS Book 8 Wrting Task 2 Test 2

Question:
Nowadays the way people interact with each other has changed because of technology. In what ways has technology affected the types of relationships people make? Has this become a positive or a negative development?

Answer:
Yes, with the reference to the present technology, the methodology of interacting with individuals have changed through time. It has both positive and negative influence on the kinds of relationships people create these days.

Decades back when communicative devices were not invented, people used to communicate with each other by writing letters from one place to another. In some cases, if the letter had to be dropped to far away lands, it would take few days or weeks or even a month or two. Presently, an individual's access to other people has extended widely all due to the flourishing technology. Firstly, the innovative gadgets have effortlessly made it easier for people to interact with others residing on any nook and corner of the globe which has given ways of perceiving each other's cultural disparity. Secondly, there are several social networking sites and applications such as Facebook, Instagram, WeChat, etc which has enabled people to make new friends anytime. Finally, technology has fostered the efficiency of people who are involved in specific businesses. Internet has become a magnificent source of advertising their products and also in gaining online customers. For an instance, many entrepreneurs have been successful in attracting their products to the customers by using their expertise in maintaining professional relationships with customers via internet such as "Daraz" i.e an online shopping application.

On the contrary, it is depressing to note that people have started urging for validation from social networking sites. Their level of happiness has solely become dependent upon the number of likes and comments they acquire on their posted pictures or videos. Moreover, people are connected to millions of users across the globe but virtual interactions cannot justify the significance of a real conversation. While, scrolling down to the list of hundreds of friends, there may be very limited amount of people to whom an individual looks up to in the real world. People's negligence of their surrounding loved ones due to their obsessiveness to technology has been realized these days. Furthermore, chances of scams and fraudulent accounts are very high which might make people fall under heinous cyber crimes all because of trusting a deceitful account.

Thus, technology have had both positive as well as negative enhancement to the kinds of relationships people make these days.

You have clearly explained the positive and negative impacts of technology on today's world. However, I think you could explain how the negative impact can be overcome and turned into positive in the last paragraph. This will give a clear conclusion to the essay.

Ashis, even though this is a direct response essay, you are still expected to properly summarize and paraphrase the original prompt as the introduction paragraph for your presentation. Your straightforward response is delivered as the thesis statement, in the form of a response at the end of the paraphrase. That means, your first paragraph presentation is incomplete.

The main error in your response is that you chose to discuss this as a comparative point of view essay when this is a single opinion focused essay. All Task 2 essays are single opinion presentations unless you are asked to discuss both points of view in the instructions. Without that clear phrase instructing you to use points of view, you are supposed to pick one side to strongly defend in the essay. So you will not score as highly as you could have with this presentation because you did not pick a clear opinion to defend within your 2 paragraph reasoning presentation.

In addition to that, your summary conclusion is incomplete in a similar manner to your opening paraphrase. There is no paraphrase of the reasoning discussion and a restatement of the original prompt. So you are not really fulfilling the task assigned in a proper, clear, and well scoring manner.