It is generally believed that some people are born with certain talents, for instance for sports or music, and others are not. However, it is sometimes claimed that any child can be taught to become a good sports person or musician. Discuss both these views and give your own opinion.

Same questionCompare 9 different answers (Band 5.5–7)

Sample Response

1

The statement raisesstates the old discussion of the role of nature and nurture. The first group believes that the innate capacities, inherited genes, or inbornborn talent play a key role in fields like sportsin the professions like sports and performing arts such as music. It’s true that there are people who are born with certain talentspeople who born with certain talents can perform exceptionally well in their fields. It’s also a general belief that musicians and artists are born with the ability in music, art, or sportability of music and arts or sports.

2

The other groupgroups of people believe in learninghave confidence in the learning. For them, any talent can be acquired whether it is music or sportbe it a music or sports and any person can achieve anything through hard work and determination. They believe that people can shape their own abilitiesthe man is an architect of his own fate.

3

In my opinion, I support the second statement, though no one can rule out the role of natural talents. A person can be born with a good tone and voice qualitygood voice tone and quality but he cannot achieve harmony, scale and rhythm without learning. And beyond one's basic abilityone’s primitive ability, every innate talent is basic in nature and its development requiresfor its development, it requires encouragement and teaching. Consistency and hard workThe consistency and hard work can then make you perfect. The poets and writers, though born with the talent, do not let out their work before making it perfect through several alterations. For example, William Wordsworth, the famous poet, revised and amended his poem daffodils. As it is said, “Deletedraft while drunk, but revise when sober.”

4

On the whole, innate abilities do provide an aptitude for art and sports but success and perfection require a trial-and-error methodtrial and error method.

Overall assessment

Why this response received Band 6.5

The response presents a clear position and develops a generally logical comparison between natural talent and the role of training, using relevant discussion of practice and improvement. Its main weakness is that some support, especially the literary example, is only loosely connected to sport or music, while awkward phrasing and grammatical errors reduce precision. Prioritise specific sporting or musical examples and explain directly how coaching develops innate ability.

Band score breakdown

IELTS Writing Criteria Scores

TR

Task Response

6.5
Scoring rule

The essay discusses both innate talent and training and gives a clear opinion that teaching and practice are more important, though some support is more literary than directly about music or sport.

Next step

Use one sports or music example for each view and explain how training develops an initial talent into high performance.

CC

Coherence and Cohesion

6.5
Scoring rule

Paragraphing is clear and the argument progresses logically from natural ability to learned skill and opinion, but a few links and examples are abrupt.

Next step

Add clearer topic sentences and connect the Wordsworth example directly to the teachable-skill argument.

LR

Lexical Resource

6.5
Scoring rule

Vocabulary is generally effective for the nature-versus-nurture topic, but there are some awkward collocations and word-form issues.

Next step

Use precise phrases such as innate ability, inherited talent, coaching, deliberate practice, musical ability, and sporting performance.

GRA

Grammatical Range and Accuracy

6.0
Scoring rule

There is a range of sentence forms, but errors in relative clauses, articles, and parallel structures reduce accuracy.

Next step

Check clauses after people who and use consistent noun forms when listing music, arts, and sports.

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IELTS Writing Task 2

It is generally believed that some people are born with certain talents, for instance for sports or music, and others are not. However, it is sometimes claimed that any child can be taught to become a good sports person or musician. Discuss both these views and give your own opinion.

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