IELTS Writing Task 2 with sample answer.
You should spend about 40 minutes on this task.
Your school has enough money to purchase either computers for students or books for the library. Which should your school choose to buy – computers or books?
Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience.
Write at least 250 words.
Model Answer:
Book and computer play a vital role in our education. However, when it comes to the point of whether school should spend money on books or computers, I would prefer books rather than computers. Books are far better than computers for more reasons than one.
First and foremost, learners comprehend what they are reading on books far better than whey they read those same sentences on a computer screen. This is because, book is material. Pupils can feel the texture, weight, and thickness of a book. They can see where it begins and ends. They can promptly leaf through the pages with their fingers. The perceivable, direct experience provides students with a mental map of the whole text. Thereby, learners can not only recount the text, but also can use it in other contexts. A Norwegian study, conducted by Anne Mangen and her colleagues, reveals that students who read on computer screens can comprehend less than those who read on paper.
Likewise, printed pages are easy to navigate and summarize than pdf version texts that needs scrolling and may cause umpteen distractions. Couple with empirical experience many studies paint a compelling view that reading on paper is easier than on computer screen. For example, reading printed text is 10-30% faster than reading pdf text, since it is comfortable to track where the reader is on the page, according to the studies from Wayne State University. The Cambridge research further infer that to learn, learners require to summarize, and to summarize they need to understand a topic comprehensively, which is very often more difficult with computer.
Finally, our school already has a modern computer lab equipped with latest computers and other hardware. On the other hand, most of the students in our school has their own laptops and computers at home and hand held smart phones and tablet PCs with them all the time. From this perspective, spending on books would be a better idea for your school.
Furthermore, many doctors warn that reading on screen is detrimental for health. Students’ eyesight may be deteriorated by reading from a screen. Besides, the screen light can also damage our sleep as it prevents the production of the sleep hormone melatonin. Thus, the computer’s rays are pernicious to our health.
All things considered, it seems reasonable that school should purchase books instead of buying computers. Because, not only is book much more conducive to learning, but also it is more healthy than computer.