IELTS Writing T2: Some people think that the government is wasting money on the arts and ...

Topic: Some people think that the government is wasting money on the arts and that money could be better spent in elsewhere. To what extent do you agree with this view?

Some people argue that the government should allocate funds more appropriately to some aspects other than arts. I agree that some city's projects are more important than arts but arts investment can be considered if the government has funds surplus.

Tackling the issues such as infrastructures improvement and transportation system development of a city are essential to increase living standards and safety of the public compared to investing in arts. For example, if the government spends money to widen roads and improve road conditions, car accidents are likely to reduce. Whilst expanding the transportation network by increasing the number of services is also beneficial to commuters who live in remote suburbs. With better facilities in cities, people's life quality can be enhanced, hence to achieve a higher life satisfaction. If the government only have a limited budget for city development, arts should not be included in its plan.

On the other hand, the government can develop arts if it has excess funds. Arts can bring green and attractiveness to a bustling city where people can enjoy and release some stress in life. To illustrate, some arts such as installation arts were made from plants and flowers, which not only color the streets or train stations but also lower the effect of air pollution through absorbing carbon dioxide. Sometimes, arts can be more than just for enjoyment, it also helps greening the environment when the government displays arts on environmentally friendly purposes.

In conclusion, the government should prioritise the available funds based on city's needs before considering arts investment. While arts should be promoted only if the government has residual funds.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hi! I am Rae.
This is my first post in this forum, I am trying to achieve band 8 in writing in IELTS. I am studying IELTS by myself and have attended IELTS two times in 18 months, writing is the only part that I did not improve and scored the same as the first attempt, which is 6.5.

I am hoping that any of you can give me some useful recommendations on IELTS writing especially to improve my grammar skills and sentence structure. Any suggestions and corrections would be appreciated. Thank you very much :)

Hi Wai,

I can see that your target is quite high for writing. Perhaps, I can only give you some suggestions or perhaps the criteria of band 8 in IELTS writing task 2 and a possible way to achieve it. There are four essential criteria of IELTS writing task 2. Those are Task Response, Coherence and Cohesion, Lexical Resource, and Grammatical Range and Accuracy. The detailed descriptions would be explained below.

For achieving band 8, you need to:

Task Response:
- Sufficiently addresses all parts of the task
- Presents a well-developed response to the question with relevant, extended and supported ideas.

> If you agree on something and you still mention "but", it can be considered a partial agreement and you cannot sufficiently addresses all parts of the task.

Coherence and Cohesion:
- sequences information and ideas logically
- manages all aspects of cohesion well
- uses paragraphing sufficiently and appropriately

> To sequence information and ideas logically, I think that mentioning example after topic sentence is not a good idea. You are suggested to explain it first, then you can mention some examples about it to support your argument.

Lexical Resource:
- uses a wide range of vocabulary fluently and flexibly to convey precise meanings
- skilfully uses uncommon lexical items but there may be occasional inaccuracies in word choice and collocation
- produces rare errors in spelling and/or word formation

> Uncommon lexical items are still quite infrequent in your essay. I notice most of your vocabularies are common. Try to look up and memorize as many advanced vocabularies (C1 or C2) as you need in Cambridge English Online dictionary to help you. Remember, those advanced vocabularies should be collocated properly to achieve band 8.

Grammatical range and Accuracy:
- uses a wide range of structures
- the majority of sentences are error-free
- makes only very occasional errors or inappropriacies

> Some of your sentences are still inaccurate. I can still notice subject-verb agreement problems occur in your essay. My suggestion is that you can use "Ms. Word" Grammar and Spell checker to help you (it is okay if you have another software that is better than ms word). However, you also need to know that Grammar and Spell checker is also a software made by human, it is possible to be inaccurate. If your sentence is quite complicated, sometimes it won't work properly. Also, avoid making fragmented sentence like the last sentence in your last paragraph. This can drag your score down below 8.0 if you keep doing the same mistake.

Hope this helps :)

@ichanpants89

thanks for your help! I am struggling to learn new vocabularies and I hardly read books, but from now on, I have started to using dictionary to look up linking words and synonyms to build up my vocabularies by using the Wordfinder in Oxford dictionary.

anyway, thank you very much
and I am gonna work harder for my upcoming essays :)