Newspapers have an enormous influence on people’s opinions and ideas. Do you think it is a positive or negative situation?
Sample Response
Newspapers play a vital role in societyin the society because of their influencebecause of its influential abilities. It has a huge impact on the thoughts of people in various waysmanners. In my opinion, newspapers can act as a constructive tool if used in a positive and fair manner, but it can also be a lethal weapon for society, if in the wrong handsif in wrong hands. Starting from the independence movementfreedom fight of our nation, the newspaper had played a major role in the awakening of common man. As the result of that, our nation got independence. In today's world, newspapersnewspaper act as the centralized chain to report what is happeningspread about what is happening all around. It enlightens people about the crisis situations which help them to be prepared and take all the preventive actions needed. It also makes the common people aware of the economy of the nation and helps public to know about their elected leaders. On the other hand, biased newsa biased news in the newspaper, leadslead to a negative influence on the reader's mind and can adversely affect the perceptions of the reader. Nowadays, newspapers publish model photographs just to increaseraise their sales. Some of the newspapers are being used by political leaders, in order to manufacture a favourable public imagecreate their fake image to get political benefits. As a result of growing competition and commercialization, newspapers can easily break the thin line of an ethical barrier, which can have negative effects on societyhave negative on the society. To sum up, there is a great saying that the pen is more powerful than the sword so newspapers playnewspaper plays an important role in developing the opinion, either positive or negative, in the society.
Why this response received Band 5.5
The response recognises that newspapers can inform citizens or manipulate them and supplies several relevant examples on both sides. However, it does not answer the required positive-or-negative choice clearly, and the argument is compressed into one paragraph with frequent agreement and article errors. Choose a definite overall judgment, organise contrasting effects into separate paragraphs, and explain how each example supports that judgment.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Response
Relevant positive and negative effects are presented, but no clear final judgment answers the question.
Decide whether the influence is predominantly positive or negative and evaluate both sides accordingly.
Coherence and Cohesion
Ideas have a broad contrastive order, but one-block presentation and weak transitions limit progression.
Use separate introduction, positive, negative and conclusion paragraphs.
Lexical Resource
There is some effective topic vocabulary, alongside awkward collocations and imprecise wording.
Use precise media terms and avoid dramatic unsupported metaphors.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
Errors in agreement, articles and clause construction are frequent but meaning is usually recoverable.
Check singular newspaper, plural newspapers and their verbs consistently.
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IELTS Writing Task 2
Newspapers have an enormous influence on people’s opinions and ideas. Do you think it is a positive or negative situation?
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.