Cricket has become more popular than the national sports in the sub-continental countries. What do you think are the reasons behind this?
Sample Response
Cricket is a gentleman’sgentlemen’s game and it originatedit is originated in the United Kingdom. Although it is England's national game,Although it is England's national game but people here in India and from other subcontinent countries like Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh follow this sport from the core of their hearts. How valued is this sport in the subcontinentsport in sub-continent when compared to the national sport can be ascertained from a recent newspaper article where a contrasting comparison is being done among the prize money received by the man of the match of a cricket match and a hockey match. The difference is humongous, Rs 5 lakhLac in the case of cricket and a meagre sum of Rs 20,000 for the national sport. The popularity of cricket in sub-continent can be linked to teams’ performanceteam's performance in this sport; apartin this sport, apart from this sport sub-continent teams do not have any presence in the world arena. For instance, popular sports like football, basketball, golf and even hockey which are our national sport but we haven't won a world cup ever since the legendary Mr Dhyan Chand have left this sport. So fans tend to support their team only when the team is performing well, because successful teams give them idols to emulatewhere they can have their idols to imitate. The second reason I can identifyI can make out pertains to a distant past when the British ruledwhen British ruled the sub-continent for around 200 years. At that timeAt that point of time, the sub-continent didn't have its own identity. We have drawn considerable inspirationWe have taken a lot of inspiration from that era e.g. our legal system, infrastructure design and even the sport of cricket. Even in those days, the Britishin those days British used to play cricket, it was then considered a sport of the elitea sport of elite class and from there people from the subcontinent developedpeople from sub-continent develops a liking of this sport. Even after independenceEven though after the declaration of independence, India adopted its own constitution and laws, butits own constitution, laws but the influence of British era is quite evidently visible. And the same is true for our national game as well, we declared hockey as our national sportsports but citizens of our country still have an inclination toward cricket more than any other sportsports.
Why this response received Band 6.0
The response offers two relevant and reasonably developed explanations, especially national-team success and the historical influence of British rule. Its main limitation is presentation: the entire essay forms one dense paragraph, and frequent grammatical and collocational problems weaken clarity within long sentences. The highest-priority improvement is to separate the reasons into purposeful paragraphs and edit each sentence for agreement, tense, articles, and complete clause structure.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Response
The response identifies and explains two relevant reasons, with examples that generally support the argument.
Make the causal link in the prize-money example explicit and end with a concise synthesis of the reasons.
Coherence and Cohesion
The ideas follow a recognizable two-reason progression, but the single long paragraph and overloaded sentences reduce readability.
Use an introduction, one paragraph for each reason, and a short conclusion with clearer sentence boundaries.
Lexical Resource
There is an adequate range of topic vocabulary, including some less common items, but inaccurate collocations and word forms are frequent.
Use more natural phrases for historical influence, sporting success, and public preference, and avoid informal choices such as ‘humongous’.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
The response attempts varied complex structures, but frequent errors in agreement, tense, articles, and clause construction reduce control.
Break run-on sentences into complete units and systematically check verbs and articles in every sentence.
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IELTS Writing Task 2
Cricket has become more popular than the national sports in the sub-continental countries. What do you think are the reasons behind this?
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.