Many manufactured food and drink products contain high levels of sugar, which causes many health problems. So, sugary products should be made more expensive to encourage people to consume less sugar. Do you agree or disagree?
Sample Response
Sugary foods and drinks are detrimental to health, so many suggest increasing their pricesprice to dissuade many people from purchasing and consumingintaking them. However, I disagreeBut, I will have to disagree with this opinion. This essay explains the reasons forbehind my opinion.
To begin with, even if the government increasesthe authority suddenly increases the prices of all sugary products, many people will continue buyingwe will still notice that many people are still buying those products as usual. They will be buying them either because they are just too much “addicted” to those sugary products, or a high price does not really curtail their abilities to buy such expensive products. It will, however, negatively affect the prices of the necessary food items, and poor people will suffer to a great extent because it is not only “sugar” that is needed to make sugary products, but rather several other raw materials, such as flour, milk, egg, oil and etc. This means thatAnd that means that if governments wantthe governments want to increase the price of sugary products, they will not only have to impose a higher tax exclusively on sugar but also on other raw materials.
Another problem with taking such a decision is that some manufacturers of these sugary products would still try to sell them illegally to their existing customers at a lower price, through some “back channels” or secretly, in order to keep their businesses, because a higher price of their products would almost inevitably push many of their regular customers away from buying their products.
A far better solution to this problem would be to raise people's awareness of the consequencesmake people aware of the consequences of eating and drinking sugary items. When the general publicmass people are aware of the health risksaware of the issues, they will voluntarily avoid sugary itemsspontaneously reject sugary items without distorting the marketwithout creating any pressure on the market.
In conclusion, we need to conductrun awareness campaigns to inform people about the health risks of consuming sugary productsnegative aspects of eating and drinking sugary items. Once people understand these risksWhen they are made aware, this awareness will produce positive resultsit will bring positive results while increasing the prices of sugary productsprice hikes on sugary items would only make matters worsewould make things only worse.
Why this response received Band 6.5
The response maintains a clear disagreement and is organised effectively around reasons why higher prices may fail, followed by an alternative solution. The main weakness is that some supporting claims, especially about taxing raw materials and illegal sales, are speculative or logically underdeveloped. The highest-priority improvement is to use more convincing causal reasoning and precise examples while correcting recurring unnatural word choices.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Response
The position is clear throughout and the response develops several relevant arguments, though some reasoning is questionable or not fully substantiated.
Strengthen each argument with a plausible, specific explanation of how higher prices would affect consumption and different income groups.
Coherence and Cohesion
The essay is clearly paragraphed and progresses logically from objections to an alternative and conclusion, with generally effective cohesive devices.
Make the relationship between the first paragraph's pricing claims more explicit and avoid repetitive references to sugary products.
Lexical Resource
There is sufficient range to discuss taxation, consumer behaviour, and public awareness, but several unnatural choices and collocations reduce precision.
Replace awkward expressions such as purchasing and intaking, mass people, and abilities to buy with natural academic phrasing.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
The response uses a variety of complex sentences with generally clear meaning, although article, agreement, punctuation, and phrasing errors recur.
Improve control by shortening overloaded sentences and checking articles, plural forms, and clause punctuation during proofreading.
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IELTS Writing Task 2
Many manufactured food and drink products contain high levels of sugar, which causes many health problems. So, sugary products should be made more expensive to encourage people to consume less sugar. Do you agree or disagree?
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.