The world is consuming natural resources faster than they can be renewed. Therefore, it is important that products are made to last. Governments should discourage people from constantly buying up-to-date or fashionable products. To what extent do you agree or disagree?
Sample Response
In today’s world, many opine that exploration and exploitation of natural resources are at their peak for the sake of personal benefit and luxury, and there is a dire need for taking precautionary measures. However, I do agree that we need to limit the use of modern products and encourage companies not to continue their innovation. By doing so, we will compromise safety issues and deprive people to take benefits of modern and advanced technology while also limiting economic progress.
There is no doubt that modern products are designed following the latest technology and safety measures. For instance, today’s cars are much better in performance and more secure than cars from the past decades. The latest cars have the state of the art features such as airbags, crash sensors, cameras and internet connectivity and so on, and those functions make cars safer, more comfortable, reliable and durable. Now if we are asked to buy cars from the past decade and use the same mobile phones for years, it will not only take away our comfort and safety but also restrict us to take advantage of the latest technology.
Moreover, highly durable and long-lasting products will create a discriminatory market condition for people. Products would be expensive and not affordable for poor and lower middle-class people. Furthermore, this will limit product research and innovation in technology and production. This will have a drastic negative impact on employment, the economy and overall national development. In this regard, other alternatives like recycling products whenever possible, imposing more tax on luxury items etc. could be more effective and the governments should consider those rather than doing something that would impede our progress.
To conclude, governments should come up with pragmatic approaches to protect the scarce natural resources rather than confiding people not to use the latest and modern products which has even drastic impacts on our life and economic progress.
IELTS Writing Correction
- 1. Correct the verb pattern Original: encourage companies not to continue their innovation Suggested revision: discourage companies from continuing to innovate Why it matters: “Discourage someone from doing something” is the required grammatical pattern.
- 2. Correct the collocation Original: compromise safety issues Suggested revision: compromise safety Why it matters: Safety itself can be compromised, whereas “safety issues” cannot be compromised.
- 3. Correct the verb structure Original: deprive people to take benefits of Suggested revision: prevent people from benefiting from Why it matters: “Prevent someone from doing something” naturally expresses the claimed loss of access.
- 4. Use the right preposition Original: following Suggested revision: using Why it matters: Products are designed “using” technology and safety measures rather than “following” them.
- 5. Use precise comparison Original: more secure than cars from the past decades Suggested revision: safer than older cars Why it matters: “Safer” is the appropriate comparison for vehicle protection, and “older cars” is concise.
- 6. Remove the vague ending Original: and so on Suggested revision: Delete Why it matters: The preceding examples already illustrate the feature range, so this vague addition is unnecessary.
- 7. Correct the verb pattern Original: restrict us to take advantage Suggested revision: prevent us from taking advantage Why it matters: “Prevent someone from doing something” is the required construction.
- 8. Remove redundant wording Original: highly durable and long-lasting Suggested revision: highly durable Why it matters: “Durable” already means long-lasting, so both terms repeat the same idea.
- 9. State the market effect clearly Original: a discriminatory market condition for people Suggested revision: an inequitable market for consumers Why it matters: The replacement clearly expresses unequal access without the awkward phrase “condition for people”.
- 10. Avoid semantic repetition Original: expensive and not affordable Suggested revision: unaffordable Why it matters: “Unaffordable” already conveys that the products would be too expensive.
- 11. Use neutral wording Original: poor and lower middle-class people Suggested revision: people on low and lower-middle incomes Why it matters: The replacement is more precise and neutral in an academic discussion of affordability.
- 12. Improve the collocation Original: drastic Suggested revision: severe Why it matters: “Severe negative impact” is the more natural academic collocation.
Suggested Rewrites
- encourage companies not to continue their innovation discourage companies from continuing to innovate
- compromise safety issues compromise safety
- deprive people to take benefits of prevent people from benefiting from
- following using
- more secure than cars from the past decades safer than older cars
- and so on Delete
Why this response received Band 6.5
The response presents a sustained case against discouraging purchases, supported by coherent arguments about safety, affordability, innovation and the economy, and it offers recycling and taxation as alternatives. The main weakness is an internally contradictory thesis and some imprecise phrasing, which make the exact position initially difficult to follow. The priority is to state the disagreement unambiguously and connect each argument more directly to resource conservation and product longevity.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Response
Relevant arguments and alternatives are developed, but the opening position is contradictory and the links to resource renewal and product longevity are sometimes indirect.
State a consistent degree of disagreement and explain explicitly how each proposed alternative would reduce resource consumption.
Coherence and Cohesion
The four-paragraph structure supports clear progression, and the central arguments are linked logically from safety to economic consequences and alternatives.
Make the thesis accurately preview the argument so the introduction aligns smoothly with the body paragraphs.
Lexical Resource
There is sufficient range to discuss technology, affordability, innovation, and conservation, though several unnatural collocations weaken precision.
Use more natural combinations for safety, access to technology, consumer restrictions, and economic effects.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
The response uses varied complex structures, but errors in complements, agreement, articles, and relative clauses recur without generally obscuring meaning.
Review verb patterns and agreement carefully, especially after structures involving deprive, restrict, products, and impacts.
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IELTS Writing Task 2
The world is consuming natural resources faster than they can be renewed. Therefore, it is important that products are made to last. Governments should discourage people from constantly buying up-to-date or fashionable products. To what extent do you agree or disagree?
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.