It is frequently remarked that success is easy to attain but difficult to maintain. To what extent do you agree or disagree?
Sample Response
Every human being desires success from his own perspective. Though success in life is a relative term and could vary greatly from person to person, being able to fulfil dreams and ambitions and being able to be recognised among people is a common definition we can attach to the term success. While a sports personality desiresdesire success by breaking recordsdoing some ground breaking records in their sportin his sports, a new actor may dream of performingcan dream to perform in a big budget hit movie as his success. When this actor gains some fame, he might desire to win an Oscarthe Oscar prize and can make it his milestone for success. It is often said that success might be easy to gain but more difficult to maintain and I completely agree with this notion.
First of all, hard work, determination and talent are required to gain success. If we consider a new employee who might expect to climb the career ladderreach the higher ladder of his career and works really hard, he might one day fulfil his dream. But the real challenge lies in performing the duties ofchallenge is in performing the duties as a senior executive and that’s even harder than reaching this position. Singers, actors, and athletesA singer, movie actor and sportsman can gain fame and success by giving one superb performanceshowing superb performance once and everybody will then look at them and expect them to perform consistently wellperform well continuously. This is not that easy and requires even more hard work to maintain the performance. If we look at the film industrymovie industries, it is not uncommon that many new actors and actresses show great potential in their early stages of their careersearly state of career but can’t reach the position they ought to have due to their lack of hard work and determination. Luck often plays its tricks but if we omit the part played by the luck, it remains hard works, determination and excellent performance which become even harder when someone gains popularity.
Second, we all have our short term and long term ambitions and being able to accomplish a goal does not stop us from dreaming even bigger dreams. Being successful for someone does not mean that he can then stop and enjoy his success. It opens new possibilities and responsibilities and to reach the next level, we need to work harder at that stage. Maintaining success means performing excellentlyexcellence all the time which in reality is very hard to maintaina very hard to maintain.
Third, the definition of success is ever changing even for a single person. A 10-year-old childA 10 years old child defines his success by achieving excellent grades and it changes as soon as he enters in his career. The successful students then have to work harder to prove his supremacy among other talented workers. Thus when he attains success and reaches a higher positionreach in a higher position of a company, he then needs to take even bigger responsibilities. A single blunder can then ruin his career and shatter his dream of further success. This keeps on changing and thus success in different stages of lifestates in life varies. Continuous effort and workefforts and works are required to maintain success for a person in his life.
In conclusion, it is indeed true that maintaining success is far more difficult than achieving it as it requires even more hard works and continuous excellent performance in every field.
Why this response received Band 6.5
The essay’s strongest feature is its unambiguous agreement and sustained use of career, performance, ambition, and responsibility examples to explain why maintaining success is demanding. Its main limitation is excessive length and repetition, compounded by frequent agreement, article, and collocational errors that reduce precision. Prioritise condensing the argument into two distinct reasons and editing recurring forms such as ‘hard work’, ‘perform excellently’, and ‘a ten-year-old child’.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Response
The position is clear and consistently supported by several relevant explanations and examples, although the ideas often overlap and become repetitive.
Combine the performance-expectation and expanding-responsibility points, then contrast them with one concise explanation of why initial success may be easier.
Coherence and Cohesion
The essay progresses through clearly signposted reasons in logical paragraphs, but repetition and excessive length weaken overall focus and efficiency.
Reduce the introduction and merge overlapping body points so each paragraph advances a genuinely distinct reason.
Lexical Resource
The vocabulary is adequate and sometimes varied, but frequent inaccurate combinations such as ‘doing records’, ‘higher ladder’, ‘performing excellence’, and ‘hard works’ reduce precision.
Use natural phrases such as ‘setting records’, ‘climb the career ladder’, ‘perform excellently’, and ‘hard work’.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
A mix of simple and complex structures conveys the argument, but recurring errors in agreement, articles, plurals, verb forms, and prepositions are noticeable throughout.
Edit every sentence for subject–verb agreement and noun form, especially around singular examples and uncountable nouns.
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IELTS Writing Task 2
It is frequently remarked that success is easy to attain but difficult to maintain. To what extent do you agree or disagree?
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.