Task
News stories on TV and in newspapers are very often accompanied by pictures.
Some people say that these pictures are more effective than words.
What is your opinion about this?
Candidate’s Answer
This is an answer written by a candidate who achieved a Band 6 score.
In our daily life, we see many photos or images of news events in newspapers and on television. Some people say that the images are more effective to tell the truth than words. Basically I agree to this idea, but there are some different idea as well.
The idea that showing pictures is the effective way is obviously true, because we can see a lot of photos and images in media. We can see the atmosphere, facial expressions, and background scenaries from the photos. Everybody believes that watching is more important than hearing.
In addition, young people do not like reading recently. They are used to collecting information from the internet rather than books. For the young generation, images should be much more effective than reading every single letters, needless to say.
However, photos cannot tell more than they show. You can see a facial expression of a murderer in the picture, but you never know his history or habits without reading an investigation about him. When the East Japan Earthquake occurred, I read a lot of newspaper articles about the families of victims. There are a huge amount of stories of children who lost parents with Tsunami and a man who lost his wife with a baby in her tummy, and so on. At that time, I felt strongly that words are much more effective that pictures.
To sum up, if I am asked the question which is more effective, pictures or words, I would say pictures. But we should be more flexible to accept reading words as well as watching images, not escaping from letters. We have to try to collect the balanced information from media, not only by the pictures, but also valuable words.
Examiner’s Comment
All parts of the prompt are addressed and a position is presented that is directly relevant to the prompt. Main ideas are relevant, but some would benefit from further development. Ideas are generally arranged coherently and there is a clear overall progression. Some paragraphs are rather short, due to a lack of development of ideas. The range of lexis is generally adequate and appropriate for the task, with only a few spelling errors. There is a mix of simple and complex sentence structures, generally produced accurately.
