Many manufactured food and drink products contain high levels of sugar, which causes many health problems. Sugary products should be made more expensive to encourage people to consume less sugar. Do you agree or disagree?
This IELTS Writing Task 2 answer was marked Band 7 on the four official criteria. Its strongest criterion was Lexical Resource (7); Task Response (6) held it back. The biggest single improvement: Strengthen Task Response by fully explaining the wealthy-consumer limitation in "The wealthy consumers still purchase these products" and by linking the proposed alternatives directly to whether sugary products should become more expensive.
How it was marked
| Criterion | Band | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Task Response | 6 | The essay addresses the question and presents a clear partly supportive position in statements such as "This essay will analyse why I partly agree" and "taxation alone cannot reduce consumption across all income groups". However, the argument is not fully developed because the claim that taxation mainly affects poorer people is asserted rather than convincingly explained, and the discussion of education and healthier sweeteners moves away from directly evaluating higher prices. |
| Lexical Resource | 7 | The essay uses a good range of topic-specific vocabulary, including "excessive sugar", "allocate their budget", "health conditions" and "income groups", with generally appropriate meaning. There is some repetition of words such as "products", "consumption" and "healthier", and the spelling error in "eductional" prevents consistently precise control. |
| Grammatical Range & Accuracy | 7 | The essay demonstrates a good mixture of complex and compound structures, including the conditional sentence "if the price of an ice cream rises from $10 to $20, people will reduce the frequency" and the relative clause "products that contain high levels of sugar". Grammar is generally accurate, but the phrasing "if people recognise this is healthier" would be more controlled with an additional conjunction. |
| Coherence & Cohesion | 7 | The response has a clear four-paragraph structure, with the first body paragraph presenting a benefit and the second presenting a limitation before the conclusion restates the position. Cohesion is generally effective through phrases such as "On the other hand" and "As a result", although the repeated use of "Therefore" makes the latter part of the essay somewhat mechanical. |
The answer
A learner answer, not a model answer — study what the marks reward, don't copy it.
Nowadays, many processed food and drink products contain excessive sugar, which causes a wide range of health problems. Views differ on whether sugary products should be more expensive to encourage people to consume less sugar. This essay will analyse why I partly agree with this view.
Increasing the price of sugary products can considerably reduce consumption, as people are sensitive to price changes and have to allocate their budget between living expenses and snacks. For instance, if the price of an ice cream rises from $10 to $20, people will reduce the frequency with which they eat it from once a week to once a month. As a result of this decline in consumption, people can reduce their risk of developing health conditions such as obesity and high blood pressure.
On the other hand, the measure is only effective for poor people who have a lower income. The wealthy consumers still purchase these products that contain high levels of sugar. Therefore, retailers and manufacturers need to produce food and drinks using healthier sweeteners. For example, Coca-Cola, a renowned company producing various drinks, has a zero-sugar option. If people recognise this is healthier than other drinks, they will increasingly pay more attention to their health. Therefore, taxation alone cannot reduce consumption across all income groups, so it should be combined with eductional alternatives.
In conclusion, I partly agree that sugary products should be more expensive to reduce consumption. However, it is crucial to make individuals understand how to maintain healthy habits. Both the government and businesses need to educate the public.
Corrections from the marking
Therefore, taxation alone cannot reduce consumption across all income groups, so it should be combined with eductional alternatives.
Therefore, taxation alone cannot reduce consumption across all income groups, so it should be combined with educational alternatives.
"Eductional" is a spelling error; the correct adjective formed from "education" is "educational".
How this answer could score higher
- Strengthen Task Response by fully explaining the wealthy-consumer limitation in "The wealthy consumers still purchase these products" and by linking the proposed alternatives directly to whether sugary products should become more expensive.
- Improve lexical accuracy by correcting "eductional" to "educational" and reducing repetition of "products", "consumption" and "healthier" through precise alternatives.
- Make cohesion less mechanical by replacing the repeated "Therefore" and explicitly explaining how the Coca-Cola example supports the main argument about taxation.
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