News stories on TV and in newspapers are very often accompanied by pictures. some people say that these pictures are more effective than words. what is your opinion about this?
Sample Response
In our daily life, we see many photos or images of news events in newspapers and on television. Somesome people say that the images are more effective at conveying the truthmore effective to tell the truth than words. Basicallybasically, I agree with this idea, but there are some contrasting viewssome different ideas as well.
The idea that showing pictures is the effective way is obviously true because we can see a lot of photos and images in the media. Wewe can see the atmosphere, facial expressions, and background detailsscenarios from the photos. Everybodyeverybody believes that visual information is more effective than spoken informationwatching is more important than hearing.
In addition, young people do not like reading nowadaysrecently. they are used to collecting information from the internet rather than books. For the younger generationbooks. for the young generation, images should be much more effective than reading written textreading every single letterDelete, needless to say.
However, photos cannot tell more than they show. Youyou can see a murderer's facial expressiona facial expression of a murderer in the picture, but you never know his history or habits without reading an investigative report about himan investigation about him. When an earthquake occurred in eastern Japanwhen the east Japan earthquake occurred, I read a lot of newspaper articles about the family of victims. there are a huge amount of stories of children who lost parents with the tsunami and a man who lost his wife with a baby in her tummy, and so on. Atat that time, I felt strongly that words are much more effective than pictures.
In conclusion, if I am asked the question which more effective is, pictures or words, I would say pictures. but we should be more flexible to accept reading words as well as watching images, not escaping from letters.we have to try to collect the balanced information from media, not only by the pictures but also valuable words.
Why this response received Band 6.0
The response presents a clear preference and supports it with a useful contrast between the immediate impact of images and the deeper context supplied by words. The main limitation is frequent inaccuracy in sentence formation, capitalization, articles, and collocation, which makes several passages awkward despite generally clear meaning. The highest-priority improvement is to proofread sentence boundaries and core grammatical patterns while expressing claims more precisely.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Response
The question is answered with a clear opinion, relevant reasons, and a developed counterexample, although some claims are broad or insufficiently justified.
Develop the central comparison more analytically and replace sweeping assertions with specific explanations of when each medium is more effective.
Coherence and Cohesion
The response follows a clear introduction-to-conclusion progression, but linking is sometimes mechanical and paragraph development is uneven.
Use clearer topic sentences and connect each example explicitly to the paragraph’s main claim rather than relying on basic transition words.
Lexical Resource
Vocabulary is sufficient to discuss the topic and includes some effective detail, but repetition and several unnatural word combinations reduce precision.
Build more accurate collocations for describing media impact and avoid repeatedly relying on “effective,” “pictures,” and “words.”
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
The response uses both simple and complex structures, but frequent capitalization, article, agreement, and sentence-boundary errors weaken control.
Proofread every sentence for initial capitals, complete boundaries, article use, and subject-verb agreement before attempting more complex phrasing.
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IELTS Writing Task 2
News stories on TV and in newspapers are very often accompanied by pictures. some people say that these pictures are more effective than words. what is your opinion about this?
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.