The reading provides three reasons why online encyclopedias are not as good as traditional encyclopedias. However, the professor in the lecture disagrees with the points in the reading for several reasons.
To begin, while the errors in online encyclopedias may number more than traditional encyclopedias, they are more easily corrected than published encyclopedias. Online documents are, in a sense, living documents. Editors can make revisions when new information comes out and incorporate these changes in real time.
Changes to online encyclopedias by hackers can happen. While this is a concern put forward in the reading, the lecturer handily counters by stating that editors monitor changes, and that crucial facts are protected within the website through read-only formatting. Whereas researchers may come upon altered information in online encyclopedias, these malicious attacks are prevented and corrected for by the editorial staff of the online encyclopedias.
Finally, the significance of information is questioned in the reading, but the lecturer again debunks the claim by explaining that traditional print encyclopedias have limited space, over which an editorial board judges what ought to be included. However, there is no limit to the space of online encyclopedias, and the diversity of views and information is the greatest advantage that the online version offers as it reflects the much broader interests of the public than published encyclopedias ever could.
We read about the large stone structures, or “great houses,” in the Chaco Canyon and the three theories on which their existence is based. The professor in the lecture presents three reasons, one for each theory, as to why the origin of the large houses remains unknown.
The professor begins with the first theory on the structures as apartment buildings. The main flaw in this theory is that while there are indeed many rooms for a large number of inhabitants, there are relatively few fireplaces. If there had been residents, there would have had to have been enough fireplaces for each family.
The second theory proposes that the buildings stored corn. The lecturer explains that there were very few containers among the remains and little corn. Therefore, if these structures were for storage of maize, excavators would have found much more corn and many more ceramic containers.
Third and finally, the professor rebuts the proposal that this had been a ceremonial center. There are many remnants in addition to any possible religious artifacts, and the random distribution of the remains suggests just as likely that this was simply a trash heap.
The topic comes from the Magoosh link below. I suggest at the start of the video to turn off spelling and grammar assistance in your word processor. I set my timer and composed the essay live in the screencast video. It took about 25 minutes to write and edit my example essay. I made two additional spelling corrections after completing the video.
“Many workers change jobs a few times in their career. However, several workers instead do the same type of work throughout their career. Of these two career paths, which is a better option? In your essay, include supporting details.”
Original model essay:
Some people prefer to keep a single job in their career for a long time, whereas others like to change jobs or even change careers periodically. While either path can provide fulfilling work, changing jobs within one career can provide a rewarding balance between variety and success.
Keeping a single job in the same company throughout one’s career is not particularly common in the modern age. While large corporations may offer quite a lot of career growth, workers in small firms would eventually reach a plateau above which they would not be able to advance their careers. That is why seeking a higher position in another company would be required in order to advance one’s career. That does not mean the same as changing career paths.
On the other hand, changing career paths would present a number of challenges that might be highly rewarding to those who crave challenge. However, there are many reasons beyond simply seeking change that might propel someone to change career entirely. These could be work-related, but the reasons may have to do with personal health, environment or family issues. Perhaps most commonly, people change career when they need to devote more time to family. For instance, new parents may stop work for a time, and then upon returning to the workforce, they look for careers that will allow more flexibility with schedules than they had before their children were born.
A third rationale for changing jobs within one career or to a new career may be outside of one’s control entirely. Over time, industries change, businesses evolve, or entire sectors of the economy disappear. In the case of my father, who is now at retirement age, his work in the university textbook industry has changed dramatically because of the now widespread use of online textbooks. When print media was slowly phased out over the past five years, my father’s workload declined to almost zero. This example is not unique. Many other companies find themselves in difficult financial situations every time there is an economic downturn. Even once stable large corporations are now overleveraged and heavily indebted. When the 2020 Pandemic led to stay-at-home orders and shut-downs, over twenty percent of the workforce in the United States was either furloughed or laid-off. These workers will be lucky if they can return to their previous jobs. However, many have already sought career changes.
In conclusion, there are many reasons individuals may seek new opportunities at other companies or in other industries. However, staying within one industry allows a person to build skill and grow in their careers even when changing jobs. Nevertheless, changing jobs may not be a personal choice, but rather a result of market forces. Sometimes this means changing careers when a type of job is outsourced to a location in another country or when an industry collapses entirely as a result of technological innovations.
The following video is my live composition of the 30-minute timed essay. The text below the video is the essay I wrote.
The study in this trial of the use of lavender pillows as a remedy for insomnia lasted a period of three weeks, and claims terrific results within that time period; however, the findings do not include any discussion of the limitations of the study, of which there are several.
As all clinical trails do, this study was conducted in a controlled setting where the volunteers were monitored at night time. Controlling the room’s temperature and having standardized accommodations for all the participants would be a minimal expectation. However, lighting and darkness for set times would be one aspect of the study that could significantly improve sleep conditions compared to the participants’ bedrooms at their homes. These situational aspects stand apart from the one modification that was targeted, the lavender pillow. Bringing us to the pillow itself–apart from the scent, how might the pillow be different from standard pillows in size or firmness?
Another major detail that is not presented in the synopsis of the study is whether or not there was a control group in addition to the 30 participants who received the sleep modification of the lavender pillow. Any scientific study of merit would make a point of comparing the targeted modification against a placebo, which in this case would be a substitute for lavender. Perhaps this could be a pillow with a different scent, no scent or an imitation lavender. The aim of testing alternatives and/or an imitation could potentially strengthen the findings of this study significantly if the results support the claim of the researchers.
The three-week time period is a third detail that calls into question the claim that the lavender pillow “cured” the participants’ insomnia. Insomnia, the condition of chronic sleeplessness, is on-going over periods of time much longer than three weeks. Extending this study to a period of several months could greatly support this claim if the results are sustained.
Finally, as sleep enhancers are many in type, the fact that all the participants had already been taking a medication to improve sleep does not make for a good case either. While the three week time period includes gradual adjustments to take the participants off their medications, the fact that the medications continued to be administered at the same time as the introduction of the lavender pillow makes for a weakened argument. Perhaps, commencing environmental changes at the same time prior medications are stopped would strengthen the findings. Combining medications and a secondary aid, like the lavender pillow, present a completely different solution to treating sleeplessness that could be valid. However, it would make a much better argument for this particular study by beginning with the claim that eliminating the need for medication was the main aim of testing the effect of the lavender pillow.
In conclusion, the findings of the study could be strengthened by including in the report exactly how the room was controlled, other details regarding the pillow and by comparing the results to those of a control group that had been given a placebo.
The following video is my live composition of the 30-minute timed essay. The text below the video is the essay I wrote. The essay had five typos and a few extra commas that have been removed. Following the text of my final draft, I have added some comments and links for reading and listening related to the topic.
Considering the case of a country that is experiencing an economic depression, some people may say that funding for extraneous public programs like the arts ought to be eliminated, and that their funding should be diverted to the true needs of the people in the way of food assistance or unemployment income. However, the arts, of which there are many forms, are a sort of jobs program. Public artwork not only benefits artists, but also the public that enjoys viewing art, and listening to or watching performances.
The types of government programs that put money into the economy are many. They range from education to military expenditures. The funding for the arts is relatively little in comparison to some of the other types of social welfare programs that exist, the largest of which are typically health care and pensions. The money that is spent into the economy by the government also has a multiplier effect that compounds the amount of money in circulation as the funding changes hands. The benefit of government spending in the economy is quite significant. Not only is the amount great, but the health of the economy depends on it.
The extent to which the general public benefits from government spending depends in part on the types of spending. The money that goes directly into industry in the form of subsidies makes the domestic products of a country relatively competitive. However, the money that the government spends in funding public works that create jobs, such as infrastructure projects and the arts, is actually paid into the bank accounts of employees and artists. These workers are in turn going to spend their incomes, which generates even more growth in the economy. Moreover, the income that is spent by the underemployed, as is typically the case among artists and gig workers, is greater in percentage than money injected into the market through buy-back of government bonds. Bond-holders, after all, do not tend to spend their disposable income in the same ways that low-income earners would.
Besides the income that artists receive through funding of the arts, there are two additional beneficiaries. They include the general public and the facilities that are created to house performances. These public spaces include museums and concert halls, among which there are many historic landmarks in both small and large cities. Venues ranging from opera houses to band shells require maintenance. The circular flow of money would direct this spending through every type of job related to the operation of these attractions that are so vital to tourism, further compounding the multiplier effect of government spending in this sector of the economy.
The third and largest stakeholder is the viewing public. Consider the well-being and health of a population during an economic downturn. The people that live through tough times have the same mental and emotional needs as any others. The art that is created during periods of depression reflects the conditions under which the people are living and creates a living record of those times. Both visual and performance art created under times of turmoil allow for the relief of the pressure of the society. Art, music, theater and dance are an outlet for the pain of living with deprivations. Governments have not only an obligation to support the fiscal health of their nations, but also the emotional repair that a society must go through. The funding of public arts that supports design and infrastructure projects contribute to both the economic rebuilding of a nation and the sustained development of a country through such periods of economic difficulty.
In conclusion, the money spent into the economy through a range of public programs should not be limited to the most obvious types of public assistance, nor should the spending be limited to the industries that require the greatest attention to maintain the international reputation of a country. Government spending during difficult times when people are experiencing hunger and unemployment must also include spending in the arts as it is the arts that boost the morale of the people through such depressions.
(678 words)
After composing my essay under mock exam conditions with a strict 30-minute time limit, it occurred to me that I should point out the limitations of the argument I have presented. First of all, I did not spend time preparing by brainstorming or outlining the essay, and so there were a few ideas that I was not able to include in the essay because I didn’t have sufficient time to incorporate them.
The statement in the prompt lacks any mention of the conditions under which a population may come to experience mass hunger, famine and widespread unemployment. It also makes the assumption that the debate in governments where these problems exist is restricted by the requirement of a balanced budget, and that the government is prohibited from excessive deficit spending, in which case one would assume that government spending is funded either by revenue from state-run industries or taxes. These are economic conditions that vary depending on the nation in question.
Conversely, a government’s domestic policy is legally separated from the policies of central banks, which have tools that target an optimal level of unemployment. Moreover, there is some contention among economists over federal banking policy with respect to targeting an optimal balance between inflation and employment and the real ability of federal banks to effectively control these economic indicators with monetary policy tools.
As opposed to English proficiency examinations, the GRE score is based on the strength of the argument of the essay, which is a product of the writer’s ability to directly address the prompt using logic, effective word choice, cohesion and coherence. While I approached this topic from an economic perspective, there are important foreign policy considerations involving international aid, embargos and long-term food shortages resulting from climate change, which are discussed in the links below from a United States radio and television program called Democracy Now! from Friday, October 9, 2020. In the episode, the host interviews writer Vijay Prashad on the announcement of the awarding of the 2020 Nobel Peace Prize to the UN World Food Program (link to mainstream news story below).
“Some scientists believe that in the future computers will have more intelligence than human beings. While some see this as a positive development, others worry about the negative consequence. Discuss both views and give your opinion.”
This prompt was found on an IELTS preparation blog. A follower of the blog reported that this was the topic they’d received as the Task 2 prompt in July 2020. I made these videos with a free version of Screencastify, which only allowed for recording five-minute segments at a time. I accidentally deleted the first segment in which I had recorded myself typing the introductory paragraph. Oops!
For anyone interested in seeing the commentary on writing process, view the last video. Here also is the full text of my essay, to which I made a change at the end of the third paragraph after completing the videos.
Some believe that artificial intelligence will outperform human intellectual capacity at some point in the future. Although there are clear benefits to working with smarter machines, there are many drawbacks. The greatest benefits include the aid that we as a society will get, but we must neither become overly reliant on the technology nor sacrifice individual liberty for the sake of our non-human counterparts.
As for the drawbacks, we can see how our peers, family members and perhaps, if we are reflective enough, ourselves interact with digital devices. We already employ lots of artificial intelligence in our computing systems, but the likelihood that AI will surpass our intelligence is not far off. The computer, however, is not all-knowing. The real beauty of the intelligence is not in its replication of human ability but rather in the fact that it can learn. We would hope that computers could learn all the positive traits that we possess. However, our best minds do not presently populate the internet with ideas. Hence, as AI attempts to replicate authentic human communication, it has demonstrated the more obnoxious end of the online chat world. This was not such a problem when it was easy to distinguish bots from real users, but it has become harder to pick the two apart in recent years. This, unfortunately, is the most divisive element of the fake posts that have been aimed at political discourse. Our imagination is the limit as to what possible negative outcomes of AI may arise as it gains on us.
The positive aspects of artificial intelligence lie not in the system’s ability to recreate a virtual world, but rather in its implementation in public policy. Using AI to model outcomes and make predictions would help policy makers “see the future.” This does not mean that computers will actually make the decisions, but rather that their human operators will seek their guidance. Again, the machine is not all-knowing but will have greater capacity for knowing without being swayed by intuition or ‘gut feeling.’ The fear of a cold-hearted AI is misplaced, as what we avoid in its implementation are the biases and misconceptions of even the most adept among us in their inherently limited scope. The abilities of high-achieving, powerful businesspeople and technocrats are aided in many ways by teams of assistants and subordinates. Even still, these teams of managers and political operators are prone to error and are swayed by emotion. That is not to say that they are always misguided, but rather that their abilities would be aided by AI to the benefit of all people.
In conclusion, the benefits to the population are outweighed by the drawbacks when we consider the greatest tool AI provides. The technology would seem to grant a supernatural power—the power of seeing the future through modeling and algorithms. Employing this tool at the highest levels of business and government would give us all an upper hand since there would be no need to second guess ourselves. (499 words)
This is the 8-video playlist. At the start of my first video, I am reading my introductory paragraph. Click forward to move to the next video in the playlist.
Here’s an example IELTS Writing Task 2 prompt that combines the question types cause&effect and problem/solution. The question asks for an explanation of causes and solutions to the problem of species loss. I have long enjoyed teaching IELTS preparation because the contents of the exam provide many learning opportunities. Prior to my example essay are four background readings for reference.
Here’s an October 2018 article citing a special UN report on the topic of climate change:
Animal species are going extinct due to human activities on land and sea.What are the reasons and solutions?
Sample Essay:
The Anthropocene, our present era, has brought about the sixth mass extinction. The causes of rapid species loss in this era as opposed to past great extinctions result from human activities on land and spill-over effects in the sea. Any proposed solution must be undertaken rapidly to be effective at preventing the collapse of human society itself.
To list the many causes of rapid species loss would require several pages. But, to highlight the main causes is fairly simple. Modern industrial society is fueled and sustained by dirty energy sources and industrial farming. These two activities in combination have put unprecedented amounts of greenhouses gasses in the air and prevent their reabsorption. The gasses then warm the atmosphere and prevent the cycling of ocean currents. This prevents the oceans from natural cooling. Warming waters acidify and lead to aquatic life die-out. Drought and fires, along with excessive deforestation for farming, have led to species loss on land. However, the decline in biodiversity is not limited to fauna, as the declining numbers of pollinators also leads to the extinction of flora.
Comparatively dramatic solutions are required to address such disturbing problems. In fact, nothing less than the wholesale transformation of industrial society will need to happen. The changes must be undertaken at the global level by nations enacting laws that restrict certain industrial practices. The changes would all be to target a reduction in activities that generate greenhouses gasses. To a large extent these changes would need to be undertaken by major multinational corporations. For instance, in the aviation industry, planes would have to fly at lower altitudes in order to reduce their pollution in the stratosphere. Factories would have to change energy sources from fossil fuels to renewable energy. Petroleum extraction would have to be curtailed, and petroleum use would have to be limited to plastics for certain durable consumer products, not for fuel. In addition, agribusiness must be transformed with the intent of reducing as much as possible mono-cropping and the raising of livestock for meat. Last but not least, all of these changes must be made by the year 2050 in order to have any impact in preventing runaway ecological change resulting from the feedback loops of global warming.
In sum, it is plain to see that the problems lie at the foundation of modern industrial society, and that the great and necessary solutions would be met with substantial push-back from industry.
Task 2 Prompt: “Some people believe that unpaid community service should be a compulsory part of high school programmes.” To what extent do you agree or disagree?
This video features guidelines to composing a successful argumentative essay for the IELTS exam, and a complete model essay.
Some think community service done for free ought to be made mandatory to graduate high school. In addition to benefiting the community, this type of work would boost student self-worth and provide non-traditional learning opportunities applicable to students’ future job prospects. Therefore, mandating community service in high school is undoubtedly beneficial.
Widespread volunteerism would primarily be of great benefit to the community at large. By providing a young, able-bodied work-force to charitable groups that otherwise lack the resources, a high school program of this sort would allow charitable organizations to further meet the needs of the community and perhaps take on more ambitious projects. After all, charities by nature have limited means and tend to collapse under lack of funding or squandering resources. Because human resources are such a large cost to many organizations, the ability to harness the labor capacity of the youth in a positive way would allow charitable groups to focus less on fund-raising and resource management, and more on coordinating labor and meeting the needs of the community.
Secondly, involvement in charitable work would bring a multitude of benefits to the students themselves. Students would develop interpersonal skills that are applicable to future work. Because high schools are age ghettos, community service exposes teenagers to other social demographics which are found in the working world. Moreover, the work experience the high school students obtain could be added to their resumes when they look for that first job. Not only that, but students can also develop their sense of self-worth through involvement in charitable work. While some students may already be involved in collaborative activities which develop their interpersonal skills, others have limited opportunities to participate in groups or clubs that offer such rewarding involvement as community service does. Because of the extent to which technology has replaced outdoor activity and the emphasis placed on high-stakes exams today, working with charities not only provides a respite from study and time away from screens, it gives students the chance to encounter the working world and exposure to professions before they must actually fend for themselves as adults.
In sum, mandatory community service ought to be a component of all high school curricula. (364 words)
