It is believed that people who read for pleasure develop their imagination more and acquire better language skills compared to people who prefer watching television. To what extent do you agree or disagree?
Sample Response
Some people subscribe to the belief that reading helps enhance language skills and creativity, whereas watching television does little to develop these abilitiesdoes very little for these abilities. Personally, I support this opinion for several reasons, which I explain belowwhich will be laid out in this essay.
BooksAs we all know, books use text to convey ideas and quite often there are no images or illustrations depicting the scenesillustrations to picture the scenes described in the book; therefore, we have to use our own imagination while reading. For example, reading a fantasy novel that contains mythical creatures one would normally see the appearance of those characters in their mind while following the plot. In contrast, movie heroes on a TV screen are usually visually presented to the viewercreated for the viewer by directors and producers of the film. Watching TV removessubstitutes the need to develop one’s own imagination because the characters and their surroundings are shown on the screen.
Furthermore, it is argued that reading is the best way to expand one’s vocabulary. The reader learns the correct spelling of a word by seeing it printed in a book, and they grasp its meaning from the context, without having to look it up in a dictionary. Not only new words but also numerous sentence structures can be learnt from books. To take advantage of these benefits, English teachersTo take advantage of these benefits English teachers in many schools use English novels as teaching materials. Students are asked to read the story and identify the key wordscapture the keywords to answer the questions in the exam. In comparison, learning new words while watching a TV show isn’t always easy because the viewer’s attention is drawn to the action on the screen and if there are no subtitles, the spelling of the words is not obvious. All this makes a book a more effective tool for a language learner than televisioncompared to TV.
In conclusion, I believe people who love to read tend to have a more active imagination and stronger language skillsadvanced linguistic comprehension than those who watch television, since readers are required to imagine the story in the book and learn the meaning of new words from the context.
Why this response received Band 8.0
The essay presents a clear, consistent agreement and develops both imagination and language learning through effective comparisons and relevant examples. Its organization and language are strong overall, though a few sentences contain awkward constructions or imprecise collocations that slightly interrupt the polish. Prioritize revising those locally strained sentences while preserving the focused comparative development.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Response
The response fully addresses the claim with a consistent position and well-developed reasons covering both imagination and language skills.
Make the educational example more directly demonstrate lasting language acquisition rather than examination technique.
Coherence and Cohesion
The essay follows a clear progression, with focused body paragraphs and well-managed comparisons between reading and television.
Reduce slightly formulaic signposting and let the logical relationship between adjacent sentences carry more of the cohesion.
Lexical Resource
Vocabulary is varied, topic-appropriate, and generally precise, despite a few awkward collocations and some repetition of key terms.
Choose more idiomatic phrases for mental visualization and examination reading, and vary repeated references to words and books.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
Complex sentences are frequent and mostly accurate, with only occasional awkward attachment and punctuation problems.
Recast the fantasy-novel example with a clear main clause and check commas after introductory phrases.
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IELTS Writing Task 2
It is believed that people who read for pleasure develop their imagination more and acquire better language skills compared to people who prefer watching television. To what extent do you agree or disagree?
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.