In this post: The advertising discuss-both-views question, my unedited Band 6.5 essay with its score card, and why Task Response and Coherence and Cohesion both reached 7.
Advertising Band 6.5 Sample · 3 parts
- 1. Question, essay, TR and CC (you are here)
- 2. Where the language slipped
- 3. Rewrites and singular/plural checks
✦ In this post
This is Trial essay 3, a Task 2 essay I submitted for marking on 18 June 2024. It was a homework question: is advertising very persuasive, or has it become so common that nobody pays attention any more? According to my notes, I wrote it from 11:58 to 12:40, about 42 minutes, and the essay body is 332 words. The scores were TR 7, CC 7, LR 6 and GRA 6, for an overall 6.5.
I wrote this in the same week as my gap year essay, and the score pattern is very similar: content and structure both at 7, both language criteria down at 6. But the language problems are different. In the gap year essay they were mainly an invented phrase and articles; here they are singular/plural and pronouns. Almost every paragraph has a “plural subject with a singular verb”, or “advertisements” earlier and “it” later.
The next day (19 June), I wrote Essay 30, another discuss-both-views essay, on “competition vs cooperation” (Cambridge 19, Test 1), and got 8, 8, 7 and 7, for an overall 7.5. The question type and paragraph frames of the two essays are almost identical, yet the scores are a whole band apart. In Part 2 I put them side by side to see why the same template flowed in one and got stuck in the other.
1. The question and its type: discuss both views, and present both fairly
In short, the question says that some people think advertising is extremely successful at persuading us to buy things, while others think it is so common that we no longer pay attention to it. Discuss both views and give your own opinion.
This is a standard discuss both views question. View A: advertising is very persuasive. View B: there is so much advertising that it gets ignored. You need to explain each side’s reasons and then say which side you agree with more.
| Paragraph | What this essay did | Does it fit the question type? |
|---|---|---|
| Introduction | Paraphrased both views + position (advertising is a useful marketing tool) | Yes |
| Body 1 | View A: catches attention (targeted Facebook ads), introduces products | Yes |
| Body 2 | View B: forced ads get skipped (YouTube), fake ads make people distrust advertising | Yes |
| Conclusion | Both sides have reasons, but I think advertising is still useful | Yes, but it adds a new reason |
The overall structure is right, and that is the foundation for TR and CC both reaching 7.
2. Score card and the original essay
The four criteria average 6.5, and the overall score was 6.5. Below is the essay exactly as I submitted it, unedited:
Original submission (unedited, all errors kept)
Some individuals think that advertising is persuasive, whereas others claim that advertising is useless because it is frequently been ignored. The purpose of this essay is to analyze both sides of this argument and explain why I believe that advertisements are a useful tool for marketing.
Advertisements is beneficial to some extent. The main one is that it helps producers to catch customers’ attention from various brands. In other words, if a person keep seeing an item’s picture from a specific brand on a regular basic, it is undoubtedly that they will purchase it because of deep impression. For instance, facebook, which predicts customers’ preference by previous purchasing behaviors, shows the discount of those goods to motivate customers to buy it. Another reason is that advertisements are a good opportunity for producers to introduce their products to customers. To put it another way, since people is so busy to search the functions or characters of goods, advertisements are brillant paths for sellers to promote their items.
However, some people advocate that the option of advertising is useless because it is so common that people always ignore it. First and foremost, people always overlook those mandatory advertisements. Take myself as an illustration. I usually skip those advertising videos when using Youtube, let alone focus on the information it delivers. In this situation, advertisements are useless because people will not concentrate on the advertisements themselves. Furthermore, it is readily apparent that people do not believe those information on advertisement because they do not know which one is reliable. With increasingly cases of fake advertising, people now always ignore those advertisements; therefore, advertisements are not able to grant benefits or enhance the incomes.
In conclusion, both sides are supported by some reasons. On balance, it is my opinion that advertisements are still useful since they provide a unique opportunity to introduce products and further attact more customers, as I feel that advertising is a relatively cheap and available marketing tool for most manufacturers and producers.
3. Why this essay got 6.5: the four criteria one by one
What follows is my own analysis against the public IELTS band descriptors. With TR and CC both at 7 and LR and GRA both at 6, I think the marks were lost entirely on language.
| Criterion | Score | What the descriptor stresses (paraphrased) | Evidence in this essay |
|---|---|---|---|
| Task Response | 7 | Band 7: addresses all parts of the task, presents a clear position, extends the main ideas, though there may be some over-generalisation. | Both views get two reasons; my own YouTube experience is a good example; absolute words such as “undoubtedly” and “always” over-generalise. |
| Coherence & Cohesion | 7 | Band 7: logically organised with clear progression; a range of cohesive devices, with some under- or over-use. | Clear division of paragraphs; “Take myself as an illustration” is natural; the reference of “The main one” and “it” is unclear. |
| Lexical Resource | 6 | Band 6: attempts less common vocabulary with some inaccuracy; some spelling errors. | regular basic, brillant, attact, characters of goods, the option of advertising, advocate that … useless. |
| Grammatical Range & Accuracy | 6 | Band 6: a mix of simple and complex sentences; quite a few errors, though they rarely impede understanding. | Advertisements is, a person keep, people is, it is frequently been ignored, it is undoubtedly that, those information, increasingly cases. |
Task Response 7: both sides covered, with concrete examples
The TR side of this essay does several things well. First, each view gets two reasons and roughly the same space, which meets the both-views requirement of presenting both sides fairly. Second, the examples are concrete: for view A, Facebook pushes discounts based on past purchases; for view B, my own habit of skipping YouTube adverts. A personal example like “Take myself as an illustration. I usually skip those advertising videos when using Youtube” is perfectly acceptable in IELTS, and it reads as genuine.
There are three main reasons it did not reach 8:
- Over-generalisation: “it is undoubtedly that they will purchase it”, “people always overlook those mandatory advertisements”, “people now always ignore those advertisements”. Absolute words like “undoubtedly” and “always” push the argument too far. Will people definitely buy something once they see an advert? Does everyone always ignore adverts? These claims are easy to challenge.
- A slight mismatch between my position and the question: the question asks whether advertising can “persuade us to buy things” (the consumer’s perspective), but my position is “advertisements are a useful tool for marketing” (the company’s perspective). The two are related but not the same.
- A new reason in the conclusion: “advertising is a relatively cheap and available marketing tool” was never mentioned before, and being “cheap” has nothing directly to do with whether advertising is persuasive.
There is also the fact that I gave the example “I skip YouTube adverts” for view B, yet my final position was “advertising is useful”, and the conclusion never dealt with this contradiction. If I had added one line such as “even though many people skip adverts, well-targeted advertising still influences what they buy”, my position would have been more convincing.
Coherence & Cohesion 7: clear structure, occasional referencing errors
CC reached 7 because the paragraphs have clear roles, each has a topic sentence, and the ideas progress. Linkers such as “However”, “First and foremost” and “Furthermore” are not overused, and “Take myself as an illustration” adds some variety.
Where it lost marks was referencing. The clearest case is the second sentence of Body 1, “The main one is that it helps producers…”: what does “one” refer to? The previous sentence is “Advertisements is beneficial to some extent”, which contains no noun that “one” could stand for (it should be “The main reason” or “The main benefit”). The “it” that follows refers to “advertisements”, but “advertisements” is plural, so it should be “they”. There are similar problems with “shows the discount of those goods to motivate customers to buy it” (“goods” is plural, so it should be “them”) and “focus on the information it delivers” (“videos” is plural, so it should be “they”).
Referencing errors are sometimes counted under GRA (singular/plural pronouns) and sometimes under CC (unclear reference), but whichever criterion they fall under, they make the examiner stop and think “who or what is ‘it’?”
Continue reading · Part 2 of 3
IELTS Notes in English · Band Score Samples (post 12 of 19)
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✦ Target Your Future
Some days you practise for hours and the score still does not move. I hope these notes remind you that the setbacks are part of the road: every recording you replayed, every essay you rewrote and every sentence you finally dared to say is progress you have already made.
I wrote this down so the next person can take fewer detours. You do not have to follow my method exactly. Find a rhythm that works for you, rest when you need to, and come back for the next small step.
I hope what you take away is more than a number on a score report: a little more confidence in yourself, and the courage to step a bit closer to the world.
— Ting
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