Many museums charge for admission while others are free. Do you think the advantages of charging people for admission to museums outweigh the disadvantages?
Sample Response
Museums preserve and represent important local and global history, scientific inventions, traditions and many other important aspects of our civilisations. Many museums charge visitors admission feescharge visitors for granting entry while some are free. I believe that charging admission feescharging visitors for entrance bringsderives more benefits than drawbacks. This essay will justify this view by analysing both the advantages and disadvantages of this policy.
A major disadvantageA huge demerit of charging a museum entrance feeimposing an entrance fee to a museum is that it reduces the number of visitors. If people do not go to museums and learn about important history, scientific inventions, cultural aspects and so on, the museums fail to serve their purposes. To illustrate, a botanical garden located in my city gets more visitors per day than a science museum located nearby. The reason perhaps the entry to the garden is free while the museum charges about $20 for each person.
On the other handOn the flip side, one major advantage of charging an entry fee to a museum is that the money could be utilised to maintain and develop the museum. For instance, it can be used to cover utility bills, repair and renovate the structure, enrich the collection and pay salaries to employees. Maintaining a large museum costs a huge amount of money and visitor revenuethe revenue earned from the visitors could cover these costssupport the cost. Not all museums are funded by the government and sometimes a museum's fundingmuseum‘s fund is not enough to cover all its costsall the costs it requires. If visitors do not pay to visit such a museum, it might have to closethe authority would need to shut it down. Furthermore, because of admission feesdue to applied tariffs, museums are not overcrowded, whichnot overcrowded which keeps the museum environmentenvironment of the museums conducive tofor visitors who want to learnlearners and curious people. A crowded park may still be useful, but a museum packed with people is not an ideal placenot a very ideal place to visit and learn. Therefore, I believe that museum admission feesadmission money to a museum seemsis seems beneficialvery utilitarian and useful.
To conclude, although admission fees deter some people from visiting a museum in some cases, considering how it covers the necessary expenses, and keeps the environment favourable for learning and enjoying, it seems to have more significant advantages than drawbacks.
Why this response received Band 7.5
The essay gives a direct and convincing outweigh judgement, developing reduced access as the main drawback and showing how fees fund maintenance, collections, staffing, and a better learning environment. Its strongest features are relevant examples and logical progression; the main limitation is occasional awkward grammar and imprecise terminology such as tariffs. Prioritise precise museum-related vocabulary and a careful edit of agreement, possessives, and clause structure.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Response
The response fully addresses the comparison and supports its clear judgement with well-developed advantages, a relevant disadvantage, and concrete examples.
Briefly consider affordability measures such as concessions or free days to strengthen the weighing without changing the conclusion.
Coherence and Cohesion
The argument progresses logically through a focused drawback, multiple linked benefits, and a concise conclusion, with effective paragraphing.
Tighten repeated statements about museum costs so each sentence advances a distinct part of the justification.
Lexical Resource
A broad and generally precise vocabulary covers funding, maintenance, access, and learning conditions, with occasional inaccurate choices.
Replace demerit, applied tariffs, admission money, and museum authority with drawback, admission fees, revenue, and museum management.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
A good range of complex structures is used, but recurring agreement, possessive, article, and complement errors prevent consistently strong accuracy.
Correct patterns such as the reason is that, a museum's funds, the authorities may need to close it, and admission fees seem useful.
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IELTS Writing Task 2
Many museums charge for admission while others are free. Do you think the advantages of charging people for admission to museums outweigh the disadvantages?
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.