CHỮA ĐỀ THI THẬT BAND 8.0+ IELTS WRITING TASK 2 NGÀY 04/11/2023

ESSAY INFORMATION:

Written by: Xuân Phi, 05/11/2023

Supported by: Ex-BC Examiner, 06/11/2023

Question: Today people are surrounded by advertising. This affects what people think is important and has a negative impact on people’s lives. To what extent do you agree or disagree?

(IELTS Academic – 04/11/2023)

ANSWER (8.0+):

The advertising industry has undeniably thrived in recent decades, infiltrating many aspects of daily life including preferences. From my perspective, I consider this growth to be completely negative as it leads to a distorted perception of reality and overconsumption among consumers.

My foremost concern lies in the tendency of advertisements to cause audiences to falsely perceive the relative importance of major factors in their lives. They generally prioritise material possessions and physical appearance while failing to appreciate the value of other positive qualities. A prime example is advertising campaigns run by cosmetics brands which often praise physical attractiveness as being vital to a healthy relationship, although reliability and sympathy have been long proven by experts to be more influential in fostering personal connections. This well-established truth would likely be more popularly embraced if marketing messages did not exaggerate the significance of physical appearance.

The consumerism caused by excessive advertising is another reason for my disapproval of its popularity. Marketers nowadays are armed with new customer insights and advanced technical tools to skillfully entice viewers into making impulsive purchases. To illustrate, TikTok has developed a detection feature that can constantly identify the preferences and hobbies of users based on their content search, subsequently prompting suitable buying suggestions that accurately trigger their temptation to buy these things. This has given rise to impulsive buying that consequently leads to not only personal debt but also excessive waste which contaminates the environment since more unwanted obsolete items would be discarded. It is a testament as to why advertising campaigns are detrimental at both individual and societal levels.

In conclusion, the prevalence of advertisements appears to me as a disadvantage as they distort the audience’s view of life and breed overconsumption. That is why governments should issue more stringent laws to restrain the development of the advertising industry until the aforementioned issues are comprehensively addressed.

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