IELTS Writing Task2: Throwaway culture reasons and consequences

throwaway society

Today people are living in a "throwaway society" where they use things for a short time and then throw it away. What are the causes? And what problems can it lead to?

In recent years people tend to possess things for a short period of time before getting rid of them. There are a number of reasons why is this the case, and it could have many undesirable consequences.

People today live in a throwaway culture for three main reasons. Firstly, the flourish in the global economy has led to increasing the availability of new cutting-edge products at cheap prices; which encouraged people to buy new possessions and throw away the old ones conversely. Secondly, the humankind tendency of comparing and competing with others creates a culture of showing off and trying to possess the most sophisticated products. For example, people today replace their phones with the last version and their cars with the final model in spite the fact that the old ones can do the same purpose. Finally, the growth in the advertising industry affected people decisions on what to buy in a negative way.

The development of a consumerism society could have a number of drawbacks. From an environmental perspective, throw away culture creates more waste and consumes more natural resource in order to produce them; all of which are harmful to the environment and could be damaging for the planet eco-system. From an individual point of view, this trend could affect one's financial security. When people spend most of their money on buying things they do not actually need, they will eventually sell thing they need. Moreover, the traditional value of sharing and borrowing things will disappear if everyone only relies on themselves and buy whatever they need.

To conclude, throwaway culture can be caused by a variety of reasons, and it might have a negative impact on both environment and individual life.

Mohammed, your prompt paraphrase is too close to the original one to be considered a personal version of the original prompt. You are even using specific phrases from the original prompt in your presentation, which shows a limited English vocabulary on your part and an inability to use alternate words for the presentation. A better rephrasing of the prompt would be as follows:

People these days tend to have disposable items at their fingertips. The tendency is for the items to be thrown away even if it has only been used for a limited amount of time or a few uses. This can be attributed to three reasons; increased availability of products at cheap prices, competition among manufacturers, and advertising pushes for these items. All of which can lead to potential environmental problems such as eco-system damage and various types of unrecyclable materials.

As a direct question essay, you must represent or outline your discussion reasons within the last sentence or response sentence within the prompt paraphrase. That way you immediately outline the upcoming discussion for the reader. Had you presented the paraphrase in the above manner, you would have been able to present a strong 3 paragraph reasoning line, which would have pushed your score higher in the end. The results of the reasons should also be indicated in a strong manner within the paraphrase.

Learn to use proper transition sentences within your paragraph in order to connect the 3 reasons within a single paragraph. Keep in mind though that you have a 3-5 sentence requirement for each paragraph. Since you cannot discuss all 3 reasons in one paragraph in a coherent and cohesive manner, you will need to divide the presentation into related discussions (for transition sentence use) and then create a strong final transition sentence per paragraph to introduce the next topic. With 3 reasons, you can discuss 2 in one paragraph then transition to the third reasoning paragraph, from where you will transition into the drawbacks paragraph, resulting in a completely developed 3 reasoning paragraph discussion.

Your drawbacks paragraph is inconsistent and confusing in presentation because it is only providing discussion points, but no actual discussion development with proper reasoning, examples, and supporting statements. Using 2 connected drawbacks (using transition sentences), would have allowed you to do that.