IELTS Writing Task 2 #194
Academic Writing module: Task 2
'Agree or disagree' questions are the most common questions in both IELTS Academic and General Training modules. You can either answer them like a 'for and against essay', looking at both sides of the argument, or you can put forward your own personal opinion and take one side of the argument, i.e. 'agree or disagree'.
You should write at least 250 words. There is no choice of questions. It provides two thirds of the mark for the writing test, so you should spend two thirds of the time (40 minutes) on this part of the exam.
You should spend about 40 minutes on this task.
Write about the following topic:
Governments around the world spend too much money on treating illnesses and diseases and not enough on health education and prevention.
Do you agree or disagree with this statement?
Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience.
Write at least 250 words.
Sample answer
I very much agree with the statement that governments are not spending their health budgets in the best possible way. If governments continue to spend such large sums of money on treating illness and disease instead of preventing these diseases, then perhaps they should rename our national health services ‘national illness services’!
Governments will probably argue that it is necessary to spend a large proportion of health budgets on treating illness because the general population do not live healthy lifestyles and so become ill. They would argue that most people do not listen to health campaigns. Also, they would say it is not possible to prevent many illnesses and diseases such as flu and many types of cancer, as well as accidents and emergencies. The problem with this argument is that it is very negative because it assumes that people are stupid and refuse to lead healthy lives. However, when people have the right information, they often do the right thing – in my country than in the past. I believe that the main reason for this is government health campaigns, including very strong health warnings on the products.
In my opinion, governments can do a lot to prevent not only illnesses and disease, but also accidents. Why don’t governments spend more money on installing speed cameras on roads to make people drive more slowly? That would reduce the number of accidents.
To summarise, I really think that there is a lot that governments can do to prevent illness and disease to make the world a healthier place to live. In particular, rich governments can spend more money on scientific research to find the causes of new diseases such as AIDS, while governments from less well-developed countries can spend money on providing clean water for all their people. In this way, the world will have less need for expensive cures and hospitals.
(311 words)