Traveling to learn cultures? We can learn from books, films, and internet.

IELTS Writing Task 2 - traveling topic

Topic: It is not necessary to travel to other places to learn about other cultures. We can learn from books, films, and internet. To what extent do you agree or disagree?

Some people believe that traveling to other sites of other countries to know about their cultures and customs is not essential since they believe that we all now can learn from other materials. I disagree with this view because I think that we should make the images, or the words that we learn from those materials to be practical.

On the one hand, I accept that nowadays we can literally know everything by just looking it up on the internet. In this way, we can probably absorb the information that we want to get, for example, a lot of people know about American football, which is one of the most popular sports in the US, by just searching it up online. Besides of that, to learn about other cultures, we can also learn in a variety of ways, from watching films to reading books . Because of recent advances in technology are making a great contribution to the search for learning about the language, the culture and the society of that country, I can understand why some people feel that we do not need to explore that country by travelling.

At the same time, I believe that by travelling to other places, we would have a so much more exciting and interesting experience that we could never have via books or films. We can enjoy the works of infrastructure, we can see the aesthetic qualities of the views by our naked-eyes that without travelling to those sites, we could just see it in a book and flipping the pages over. In my opinion, to be a connoisseur of a country that we want to get to know about, we need to have a realistic experience so we can make and keep the portrayal of that country by ourselves, not through others'thinking or reviews written.

In conclusion, going to places to learn about other cultures seems unnecessary but I believe that it could bring lots of practical experience which books, films or other materials cannot fully provide to us.

You should avoid using "I" or "We" which makes your essay less objective. Some of your sentences are too long and thus hard to follow.

You state that you completely disagree with the view given but your way of presenting sounds like you just partly disagree. Your first body paragragh which supports the given view is even longer than your second paragraph in which you present claim against the given opinion and support your thesis statement. I think if you want to complely agree or disagree, you should have a more appropriate outline.

For example: completely disagree
- First body paragraph: reason 1 for disagree with explanation or example
- Second body paragraph: reason 2 for disagree with explanation or example
- Third body parapraph (optional): you should present the opposite view a little bit and explain why it is not as strong as your

You make some grammar mistakes with because, because of, besides...

If something can be seen with the naked eye, it can be seen without the help of an instrument rather than seeing something at the site.

There are 2 reasons as to why you must use first person pronoun references in this essay.
1. Proper sentence structure includes your ability to use pronouns in the proper manner. This is scored under the GRA section of the essay.
2. The question posed is a direct opinion question. This requires a direct personal response therefore the use of I, me, myself, and other first person pronoun forms are necessary in the opinion presentation of the essay.

You did not make a mistake in your presentation. Had you given a proper response to the discussion requirement, your score would have been better because you would have been able to prove your knowledge of grammar rules and showed that you knew how to properly first person references in your opinion and reasoning presentation.

That said, the main problem with your essay is the lack of emotional response to the question provided. The question required you to show a measured response in terms of reasoning based on the agree or disagree question. So the strength of your response should have varied from:

I strongly...
I vehemently...
I completely...

to name but a few measured response representations to the question. You gave a proper but lacking response to the task discussion question in the prompt paraphrase section.

Now, while you did a good job in showing your GRA knowledge, the reason this essay will not score well is because you did not focus on a single opinion reasoning presentation in the 2 reasoning paragraphs. This is a single opinion essay. You were asked a clear question that has only one response, yes or no, agree or disagree? In this type of essay, you must focus on presenting 2 strong reasons that support your stance. That is so that you can continue to highlight your LR ability to use words that depict strong emotions in terms of supporting your opinion.

What happened in your essay is that you gave a conflicting response. You both agree and disagree based on the reasoning paragraph that you gave. Which will confuse the examiner as you already stated a disagreement in the paraphrase. You cannot have 2 opinions presented when a single opinion is required by the direct question. Stick to one opinion and highlight why you believe that is the correct opinion, using first person pronouns.