Do you agree or disagree with the following statement? Advertising can tell you a lot about a country.
Sample Response
Each country has its own culture and traditions. In favour of luring a maximum number of customers, companies often use attractive advertisements that cope with the local culture and trends. I personally believe that an effective commercial is the one that addresses national interests and reflects as well people's inclinations and country's image in general.
Over the last few decades, marketing has acquired the momentum to reach larger patterns of potential consumers. However, marketing campaigns may not be fruitful in terms of sales if advertisements, the most powerful mean of marketing, don't consider the way how people live, thus coping with their traditions. For instance, in India, you will find billboards figuring commercials about cloth washing hand soap much more than those of washing machine's soap, which indicates that most of the people are still washing their clothes by hand thus the percentage of poor people in the country is still very high.
Moreover, advertisements incarnate the economic situation in a country like banks commercials about car loans in countries where people cannot afford to pay a considerable amount of money at once. Ethics in certain countries can also be embodied in some advertisements which, for example, encourage citizens to vote for new laws against women's abuse; this indicates the high rate of relative crimes in this country.
Additionally, advertising generally resumes the extent of development in a country. Companies and merchants should efficiently and diligently react to the changing and cutting-edge needs of their markets. For instance, you find commercials about windows operating system for personal computers in developing countries, while in industrialised countries you are eye-bombarded by advertisements about cloud computing.
In a nutshell, it has been proved that marketing should talk the same language as potential clients, and should ultimately evolve with their changing needs. For that main reason, companies make always sure to offer advertisements that reflect market's interests and updated needs. Thus advertisements in a country may provide one of the most realistic images of this country.
IELTS Writing Correction
- 1. Use natural purpose phrase Original: In favour of luring Suggested revision: To attract Why it matters: This phrase is an unnatural way to express the purpose of the advertisements.
- 2. Correct the collocation Original: cope Suggested revision: align Why it matters: Advertisements align with a culture rather than cope with it.
- 3. Fix adverb placement Original: reflects as well people's inclinations Suggested revision: also reflects people's inclinations Why it matters: The adverb belongs before the verb in this construction.
- 4. Add the article Original: and country's image Suggested revision: and the country's image Why it matters: The singular possessive noun needs a determiner here.
- 5. Use natural collocation Original: has acquired the momentum Suggested revision: has gained momentum Why it matters: Gained momentum is the conventional collocation for increasing influence.
- 6. Choose the right noun Original: patterns Suggested revision: groups Why it matters: Patterns does not refer naturally to groups of consumers.
- 7. Use the correct noun Original: mean Suggested revision: means Why it matters: Means is the correct singular-form noun for a method.
- 8. Remove redundant wording Original: the way how people live Suggested revision: the way people live Why it matters: Way should not be followed by how in this structure.
- 9. Clarify the relationship Original: thus coping with their traditions Suggested revision: and therefore adapt to their traditions Why it matters: Coping with traditions does not express the intended idea of adapting advertising.
- 10. Use the correct verb Original: billboards figuring commercials Suggested revision: billboards advertising products Why it matters: Figuring cannot mean displaying or promoting advertisements here.
- 11. Clarify the product Original: cloth washing hand soap Suggested revision: detergent for washing clothes by hand Why it matters: The original noun string is unclear and incorrectly formed.
- 12. Use a natural term Original: washing machine's soap Suggested revision: washing-machine detergent Why it matters: Soap is not normally expressed as belonging to a washing machine.
Suggested Rewrites
- In favour of luring To attract
- cope align
- reflects as well people's inclinations also reflects people's inclinations
- and country's image and the country's image
- has acquired the momentum has gained momentum
- patterns groups
Why this response received Band 7.0
The response takes a clear position and supports it with a well-organised range of examples linking advertising to culture, economics, social concerns, and technological development. Its main limitation is imprecise language: ambitious vocabulary and complex sentences often produce unnatural collocations or unclear wording. The highest-priority improvement is to choose simpler, more idiomatic expressions and edit sentence structures so that otherwise relevant ideas are conveyed with greater precision.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Detailed feedback by IELTS writing criterion after the annotated essay.
Task Response
A clear position is maintained and developed through several relevant ways in which advertising can reflect a country.
Make the causal links in examples more measured and fully justify broad inferences about poverty, crime, or development.
Coherence and Cohesion
The response progresses logically through distinct themes, with clear paragraphing and generally effective linking.
Reduce reliance on formulaic connectors and divide a few overloaded sentences to sharpen the progression within paragraphs.
Lexical Resource
Vocabulary is varied and ambitious, but recurring inaccurate collocations and word choices sometimes obscure precision.
Prefer natural combinations such as adapt to local culture and reflect economic conditions, checking ambitious wording for idiomatic accuracy.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
A range of complex structures is used, although article, possessive, agreement, and sentence-boundary errors recur.
Edit long sentences for clause control and systematically check articles, possessives, and subject-verb agreement.
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IELTS Writing Task 2
Do you agree or disagree with the following statement? Advertising can tell you a lot about a country.
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.