Some people prefer to spend more time improving their careers. Others think that it’s more important to spend time with family and friends. Discuss both views and give your own opinion.
Sample Response
People have different priorities in life, as some choose to focus more on their workworks while others prefer to have more time with their family and relatives. The following essay will discuss both opinions, but I personally feel that we should have a balanced view regarding the discussion. On the one hand, some people choose to spend more timetimes in career development. These people believe that career would be the most important aspect of their life, as a successful career would change their life. They would be able to earn a good salaryearn handsome money, drive a luxurious car, live in a big houselive a big house, travel overseas or wear fancy clothes. Therefore they choose to focus more on their career improvement. One of the ways would be by working longer and with more dedicationmore dedicatedly than what an average employee would do. Then, they also would take additional courses and training which are related to their workwhich correlate to their work during the night or onin the weekend. As a consequence, they do not have time for themselves and for their family and friends as well. On the other hand, other groups of people believe that family, relatives and friends are more important than workworks. They believe that spending more times with the family would have a positive effect on children's mental development. They also believe Deletethat that people should be close to relatives and neighbours, as they are the first onesone who will help during financial difficulties or natural disasters. Consequently, many of these people cannot improve their careers, because they do not want to spend some of their times for self-development. In my opinion, I personally believe that people should have a balanced life. It means that people must develop their potential and should also have targets and ambitions in their career life, but they should not sacrifice the socialisation time as well. People should learn more about time management such as setting priorities at work, therefore they could work more effectively and efficientlywork more effective and efficient. As a result, they do not have to work overtime and they could spend some timethey could some spend some time with their family and friends.
Why this response received Band 7.0
The response is well organized, considers both priorities, and gives a clear personal preference for balancing career development with relationships. Its main limitation is that several supporting claims remain broad or materialistic, while repeated phrasing and inaccurate collocations reduce fluency. The highest-priority improvement is to deepen the comparison between the two extremes and make the balanced position more analytical and persuasive.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Response
The essay discusses both career improvement and time with family or friends, and it gives a clear personal opinion that balance is best. Development is relevant, though some examples focus on material success and some claims about family support are broad.
Add more analysis of why a balanced life is better than either extreme, and make the opinion paragraph the strongest part of the essay.
Coherence and Cohesion
The response is clearly organized with two view paragraphs and a final opinion paragraph. Cohesion is generally sound, but repetition of "they believe" and several wordy transitions make the argument less fluent.
Use fewer repeated sentence starters and make each paragraph end with a short evaluative sentence linking back to life priorities.
Lexical Resource
Vocabulary covers the topic well, including priorities, career development, relatives, ambitions, and time management. Some expressions are inaccurate or unnatural, such as works, more times, handsome money, and correlate to their work.
Use natural collocations such as "work", "more time", "earn a good salary", "work-related training", and "efficiently".
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
Meaning is clear throughout and there is a mix of sentence types. Errors with plural nouns, prepositions, modal repetition, and adverb forms occur regularly but rarely obscure meaning.
Check plural and uncountable nouns, especially "work", "time", and "career", and use adverbs after verbs such as "work effectively".
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IELTS Writing Task 2
Some people prefer to spend more time improving their careers. Others think that it’s more important to spend time with family and friends. Discuss both views and give your own opinion.
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.