13898 Economy
IELTS Writing ask 2
Essay Topic: Working Hours and Economic Success
20130912 China
Sample Answer by Jeenn Lee Hsieh
ielts360toefl@hotmail.com
Essay Prompt:
>Do you agree or disagree with the following statement? "Countries with a long average working time are more economically successful than those countries which do not have a long working time."
Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your knowledge or experience to support your opinion.
Example Writing (Jeenn Lee Hsieh):
To understand that technological development varies from economy to economy is to realize that time is not always money. We cannot fail to see that some countries which do not have a long working time are more economically successful than those with a long average working time. What then is the logic of working less time but making more money?
Economic success is achieved not only by working hard but also by working with technology. Imagine, if working long hours were all that was required for economic success, we could simply encourage people to repeatedly dig holes with hand shovels and fill them back up. In some under-developed countries, for instance, a backbreaking task has a great track record of not making people rich, and that hard work for hard work's sake does not guarantee a huge profit in return. Therefore, for a country which wants extreme success, it is critical to do something that the world market values, but in a way that few other countries can do. That is to say, as technology develops, boosting workers' productivity, people could bank these benefits by working fewer hours and enjoying more leisure. After all, there is no evidence that if a country has shorter working hours as norm, it would have a less successful economy.
Actually, quite the reverse is happening in some developed countries. Historically, there has been a tendency world-wide to legislate a maximum working week, due largely to the development of the technological know-hows. To illustrate, Germany only 120 years ago, average working time was said to be around 3,000 hours per year. As of now, average working time has declined by almost 50 percent while wages have risen tenfold since then, according to an estimate. Of course Germany's example is not unique, and to different degrees across the world, workers work not only shorter hours but also in a different way because the labor process has been intensified through scientific management methods. Following this pattern, as far as technological development can go, we can anticipate that cutting the working week to, say, 20 hours would not be a distant reality in countries which are more economically successful.
In sum, we are led to think that the logic of a successful economy is not necessarily related to a country's average working time. Accordingly, we see that countries in the less industrialized world with a long working time are by no means more successful than those in the developed world which do not have a long working time. However, given that time is not exactly money, just how much working time is enough may depend on each economy's individual needs that are different from country to country. (Essay created by Jeenn Lee Hsieh, ielts360toefl@hotmail.com pigai zuowen)
Notes from Jeenn Lee Hsieh's Online Writing Lab:
>Opinion essays are very common in the IELTS Writing Task 2 exam. An opinion is not a fact. Your opinion is arguable. A fact is a fact.
Typically, each essay question asks for your opinion, and you are required to give reasons and include any relevant examples and/or explanations from your knowledge or experience to support your opinion.
It can be a bit confusing to work out different types of essay, so it is usually not necessary to know this. The important thing is to analyze each question as you see it and answer it. (The question=the topic+the task)
>IELTS Task 2 Writing band descriptors: (an essay at the level of Band 9)
Task Response (TR)
--fully addresses all parts of the task
--presents a fully developed position in answer to the question with relevant, fully extended and well supported ideas
Coherence and Cohesion (CC)
--uses cohesion effectively
--skilfully manages paragraphing
Lexical Resource (LR)
--uses a wide range of vocabulary with very natural and sophisticated control of lexical features; rare minor errors occur only as 'slips'
Grammatical Range and Accuracy (GRA)
--uses a wide range of (sentence) structures with full flexibility and accuracy; rare minor errors occur only as 'slips'
>An essay (English composition) at the top level: (logical composition+grammatical English)
Logical Composition
Thesis--well focused
Structure--well organized
Content--well supported
Grammatical English
Rhetoric--language effectiveness
Syntax--sentence variety
Lexicon--word choice
