Some people think that the main influence on young people's diet is advertising rather than family and friends. To what extent do you agree or disagree?
Sample Response
With the growing influence of advertisingWith an emerging impact of advertisements, young people's dietary habitsyoung people's diet habit is a cause for concerna concerning issue as the number of overweight children is on the rise. While some people are convinced that adverts targeting the young residents to shape their preferences of food have higher influence than family and friends. I, however, disagree with this notion. To begin with, we are living in a world where adverts are all around us and their influence on the younger generationtheir influence on young generation is greater than their influence on adultsmore severe than adults. Advertisements, especially those targets teenagers and related to food and beverage, spend a huge amount of money to allure them to a better living standard which are, most of the cases, lies. Consequently, young people are trapped and prefer fast food tothan home-cooked mealshome-made menus. For instance, a recent survey conducted on college students in my city revealed that they prefer pizzas, submarine sandwiches, and burgerspizza, subway sandwich and burger to the foodthan the foods their mums prepare at home. Further studies explained that those students have little awarenessconscious of athe balanced diet and are exposed to TV and online advertisements. Having said that, family and friends have a greater influence on a teenager's eating habit. The family plays a greater roleA family has a greater role in shaping a child's eating habitsfood intake habit and scientific studies prove that our diet habit is deeply rooted in the type of food we eat in our childhood. Thus, if a teenager has a bad eating habit, the family is to blame for that. On top of that, when a child starts making friends, they are significantly influencedhe is significantly get influenced by their friends' eating and drinking habitshis friends eating and drinking habit. To illustrate, based on recent researcha recent research published in the magazine 'Healthy Living', more than 70% school going teenagers try to mimic the diet habit of their friends who they spend time with. This statistic clearly revealsThis statistics clearly reveal that our family members and friends have more influence on our choices of foods and drinks than the advertisements we are exposed to. To conclude, eating habits are a significant part of our livesfood habit is a significant part of our life as it defines who we become and how healthy, both physically and psychologically, we would be in the future. Advertisements, to a certain extent, have an impact on young people's diet, but family and friends have an even greater role.
Why this response received Band 6.0
The response gives a clear degree of disagreement and develops both advertising and family-and-friend influences with relevant explanations and examples. Its main weakness is presentation and language control: the whole essay forms one paragraph, and frequent grammatical and collocational errors make several sentences awkward despite an understandable argument. Prioritise clear paragraph divisions and accurate comparative structures when explaining why one influence is stronger than another.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Response
A clear position is sustained and both sources of influence are developed with relevant reasoning and illustrative evidence.
Explain more precisely why long-term family habits and peer behaviour outweigh the immediate persuasive effect of advertising.
Coherence and Cohesion
The reasoning progresses coherently from advertising to family and friends, but the single-paragraph format and mechanical transitions weaken overall organisation.
Separate the introduction, advertising discussion, family-and-friends discussion, and conclusion into distinct paragraphs.
Lexical Resource
The response has sufficient vocabulary for diet, media, and social influence, but frequent inaccurate collocations and word forms reduce precision.
Use natural phrases such as eating habits, influence on the younger generation, prefer fast food to home-cooked meals, and awareness of a balanced diet.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
Simple and complex structures are attempted, but fragments, agreement errors, comparative-form mistakes, and faulty relative clauses recur throughout.
Check every sentence for a complete main clause, then revise comparisons to use forms such as more influential than and prefer one thing to another.
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IELTS Writing Task 2
Some people think that the main influence on young people's diet is advertising rather than family and friends. To what extent do you agree or disagree?
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.