Many people believe that social networking sites (such as Facebook) have had a huge negative impact on both individuals and society. To what extent do you agree?
Sample Response
Social networking sites, for instance Facebook, are thought by some to have had a detrimental effect on individuals as well as societyon individual people as well as society and local communities. However, while I believe that such sites are mainly beneficial to the individual, I agree that they have had a damaging effect on local communities. With regardregards to individuals, the impact that online social media has had on each personeach individual person has clear advantages. Firstly, people from different countries are brought together through such sites as Facebook whereas before the development of technology and social networking sites, people rarely had the chance to meet or communicate with anyone outside of their immediate circle or community. Secondly, FacebookSecondly, Facebook also has social groups which offer individuals a chance to meet and participate in discussions with people who share common interests. On the other hand, the effect that Facebook and other social networking sites have had on societies and local communities can only be seen as negative. Rather than individual people taking part in their local community, they are instead choosing to showtake more interest in people online. Consequently, the people within local communities are no longer forming close or supportive relationships. Furthermore, society as a whole is becoming increasingly fragmenteddisjointed and fragmented as people spend more time online with people they have never met face to face and who they are unlikely ever to meetunlikely to ever meet in the future. To conclude, although social networking sites have brought individuals closer together, they have not had the same effect on society or local communities. Local communities should do more to involvedo more to try and involve local people in local activities in order to sustain community lifepromote the future of community life.
Why this response received Band 8.0
The response presents a clear, nuanced position and develops a coherent contrast between benefits for individuals and harm to communities, supported by relevant explanations. Its main limitation is that several points remain general and repeat similar ideas about online and local relationships; adding a more specific illustration and sharpening the causal analysis would make the argument more fully compelling.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Response
The essay directly answers the question with a consistent, qualified position and develops both sides of that position relevantly.
Deepen one central claim with a concrete example or more detailed explanation of how the stated social effect occurs.
Coherence and Cohesion
Ideas progress logically through a clear contrast, with cohesive devices and paragraph functions that are easy to follow.
Reduce repeated references to individuals and local communities by using tighter referencing and more varied transitions.
Lexical Resource
Vocabulary is broad, precise, and appropriately formal, with effective choices such as detrimental, disjointed, and fragmented.
Refine occasional wordy phrases so that distinctions between individual benefits and community harms are expressed more economically.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
A wide range of complex sentence structures is used accurately, and errors are rare and do not impede communication.
Polish minor awkward constructions and control sentence length to make already accurate prose even more concise.
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IELTS Writing Task 2
Many people believe that social networking sites (such as Facebook) have had a huge negative impact on both individuals and society. To what extent do you agree?
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.