Nowadays celebrities earn more money than politicians. What are the reasons for this? Is it a positive or negative development?
Sample Response
Lately, some people have noticed a disparity between the income of celebrities and politicians, with the former group earning more. Several reasons can explain this situation, and on the whole, I believe that it is a negative development.
The discrepancy between celebrities' and politicians' earning potentialthe celebrities and politicians’ earning ability can be said to stem from the difference in public perception. These days, many celebrities, such as those working in sports and music, are highly marketablepossess great marketability. Not only are they able to generate income from displaying their talentsdisplaying talent, but they can also leveragebut they also can leverage their fame for income from a variety of commercial sourcesbusiness revenue from a variety of sources, such as product endorsementsendorsement and public appearances. Politicians, in contrast, have to serve fixed termsserve their term, and those who display wealththe ones who display wealth prominently are rarely positively receivedpositively-received, due to the expectation that they should be honest public servantsexpectation of them being honest public servants. Both these factors contribute to politicians being limited in their abilitya politician’s being limited in the ability to generate income. Consequently, celebrities can be said to earn morehave better earnings than politicians do.
In my opinion, this development is largely negative, despite some potential benefitsdespite some optimism. One of the supposed benefits is that celebrities, with their income and accompanying status, can inspire societycan be relied on to inspire society. Michael Jordan is the world’s highest paid athlete of all time, thanks to his success in basketball and commercial earnings, but after the 9/11 attack, he decided to donate his entire salary from playing basketball to support those who suffered. Yet, this situation may reduce motivation to enter public servicecause a lack of motivation for serving the public. If young peoplethe youths perceive the people’s representatives to be inadequately compensated, they may shy away from this line of work. This would deprive the government of a poolsource of energetic workers, and reduce the quality of public services altogether. Therefore, celebrities having vastly higher incomes than politicians’ does more harm than good overall.
In conclusion, the public’s different attitudes toward politicians and celebrities havehas resulted in such a negative situation. It may give rise to a perception of inequality in society, which would end up hurting the community. A transparent salary frameworkframe among politicians, in my opinion, should be established to attractestablished, to attract capable individuals to consider a career in public service.
Why this response received Band 7.0
The response presents a clear negative position, explains the income gap through marketability and public expectations, and develops both potential benefits and social costs. Its main limitation is that some supporting material is only loosely connected to the pay disparity, while the conclusion introduces new ideas rather than consolidating the argument. The priority is to tighten the evaluation around the central issue and reserve the conclusion for synthesising established points.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Response
The response answers both questions and maintains a clear negative judgement, with relevant explanation of commercial earning power and public-service consequences.
Connect every example explicitly to the income disparity and develop the claimed social harm before adding any further idea.
Coherence and Cohesion
The four-paragraph structure supports a clear progression from causes to evaluation, though the final paragraph introduces a salary proposal that was not developed earlier.
Use the conclusion only to synthesise the established reasoning and place any proposed remedy in a body paragraph if it is needed.
Lexical Resource
The response uses a flexible range of topic-specific vocabulary, although several collocations and formulations sound awkward or imprecise.
Replace expressions such as broad nominal phrases and unusual labels for groups with simpler, more idiomatic wording.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
Complex sentences are used frequently and meaning remains clear, but agreement, possessive forms, and punctuation errors recur.
Check subject-verb agreement and possessive endings systematically, especially when long noun phrases act as sentence subjects.
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IELTS Writing Task 2
Nowadays celebrities earn more money than politicians. What are the reasons for this? Is it a positive or negative development?
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.