The most important function of music is that it helps people reduce stress. To what extent do you agree or disagree with this statement?
Sample Response
Music plays a vital role in our liveslife as a source of entertainmentfor being a source of entertainment, and it is often said that music's primary purpose is to relieve stressthe primary purpose of music is being a stress reliever. I disagreeIn my opinion, I disagree with this viewpoint because I believe that many other functions are just as critical.
Some people would claim that the most crucial role of music is to help us unwind as it has a profound effect on both emotions and the body. To be specific, research has found that music can be a powerful tool to not only help us calm our mindssettle our mind when feeling stressed, but also promote healing and improve our overall emotional well-being.This is the reason why listening to music has always been a popular activity for peoplea popular activity people would do after a hectic day to relieve stress caused by work or studyease their stress from work and study.
However, I believe that various other functions are just as significant as the aforementioned relaxation functionrelaxation purpose aforementioned. To begin with, music has also always been part of cultural and religious rituals, which includes national anthems or wedding and funeral marches. This is the way in which music helps countries representhelps countries to represent their national identity. Moreover, music is also a form of art which enriches our daily liveshelps decorate our daily life. It can be seen that many routine daily activitiesdull events of the day such as exercising or cooking can turn into something more enjoyable thanks to music, and movies which feature music are also more captivating.
In conclusion, relieving stress is obviously an important purpose of music, but cultural and artistic functions are equally significant.
Why this response received Band 7.0
The response’s clearest strength is its consistent position and logical comparison of stress relief with cultural and artistic functions. Its main limitation is that several supporting points remain broad, while awkward collocations occasionally weaken precision. The highest-priority improvement is to develop one or two claims with more concrete explanation or examples and revise unnatural phrases so the argument sounds more exact and fluent.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Response
The response maintains a clear disagreement and supports it by explaining several important functions of music beyond stress relief.
Develop the cultural and artistic claims with a more specific example or fuller explanation of their importance.
Coherence and Cohesion
The argument progresses logically from acknowledging stress relief to presenting alternative functions, with clear paragraphing and referencing.
Use less formulaic linking and make the movement between the cultural and artistic points more seamless.
Lexical Resource
The vocabulary is varied enough to discuss emotional, cultural, and artistic roles, though several collocations sound unnatural.
Replace phrases such as “settle our mind” and “decorate our daily life” with more idiomatic, precise alternatives.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
A range of complex structures is used successfully, and most sentences remain clear despite occasional agreement and construction errors.
Check subject–verb agreement and relative-clause structures, especially around plural nouns and embedded descriptions.
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IELTS Writing Task 2
The most important function of music is that it helps people reduce stress. To what extent do you agree or disagree with this statement?
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.