That tells a lot about our society

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IELTS Writing Task 2/ IELTS Essay:

You should spend about 40 minutes on this task.

Do you agree or disagree with the following statement?

Advertising can tell you a lot about a country.

Use specific reasons and examples to support your answer.

You should write at least 250 words

Model Answer 1:
Every country has its own culture and traditions. There is no doubt that an advertising campaign conducted in Russia will not have the same effect here in the United States. Let us take for example advertisement of food and restaurants.

A large number of fast food stands suggests their services for breakfast, lunch, dinner and supper here in Houston. The competition is very strong. Every week you get in your mailbox an envelope with different types of discounts in exchange for visiting them or ordering pizza. Watching TV you are also from time to time invited to visit a restaurant in order to taste some delicious food. It is not because it is easy to make money cooking but because the demand for such service is high. First of all, people like to go out sometimes to have dinner with friends. Second of all, it is often impossible to drive home for lunch. It can be time-consuming.

As for Russia, it is a great tradition to have dinner at home with the family and go to the restaurant for big holidays. Additionally, fast food is not popular in Russia. So you will see advertisements of the yogurt, coffee, dairy products and juice instead of restaurants and fast food stands.

In conclusion, I would like to add that in order to succeed in advertising campaign especially on the international market company must know traditions, language and history of the country.

Sample Answer 2:
Advertising throughout the world is aimed to attract the targeted consumers or to promote the awareness of brands. Since the advertisement types and styles vary from country to country, it indeed exposes a lot about a country. That is why an advertisement aimed to target the Asian people would greatly vary from the one targeted for European citizens.

A large investment and talented professionals are involved to produce different types of advertisement for television, radio, newspapers, banner or street ads. From these advertisements, someone can get an idea about the most famous products and services of a country. If anyone watches advertisements of a particular country in the television, s/he would be able to sense a lot of information about this country.

The theme, ingredients and models used in today’s ads greatly vary from country to country. While fast food neon-ads are pretty common in the United States, this can rarely be seen in a poor country. The costume, the makeup and even the models of an advertisement give many insights of a country. Nowadays, global brands like Samsung, Nokia and LG are making different types of ads for different countries and that’s mainly because those countries have different people with different cultural behaviours and choices. While a swimsuit advertisement may be a very popular one in one country it might be completely forbidden for another country. While one country has numerous streets ads of alcohol or other drinks, they might be prohibited in another country.

After judging all the above-mentioned logics and arguments, we can easily understand that from the advertisement we can learn a great deal of information about a country.

Sample Answer 3:
Each country has its own culture and traditions. In favour of luring a maximum number of customers, companies often use attractive advertisements that cope with the local culture and trends. I personally believe that an effective commercial is the one that addresses national interests and reflects as well people’s inclinations and country’s image in general.

Over the last few decades, marketing has acquired the momentum to reach larger patterns of potential consumers. However, marketing campaigns may not be fruitful in terms of sales if advertisements, the most powerful mean of marketing, don’t consider the way how people live, thus coping with their traditions. For instance, in India, you will find billboards figuring commercials about cloth washing hand soap much more than those of washing machine’s soap, which indicates that most of the people are still washing their clothes by hand thus the percentage of poor people in the country is still very high.

Moreover, advertisements incarnate the economic situation in a country like banks commercials about car loans in countries where people cannot afford to pay a considerable amount of money at once. Ethics in certain countries can also be embodied in some advertisements which, for example, encourage citizens to vote for new laws against women’s abuse; this indicates the high rate of relative crimes in this country.

Additionally, advertising generally resumes the extent of development in a country. Companies and merchants should efficiently and diligently react to the changing and cutting-edge needs of their markets. For instance, you find commercials about windows operating system for personal computers in developing countries, while in industrialised countries you are eye-bombarded by advertisements about cloud computing.

In a nutshell, it has been proved that marketing should talk the same language as potential clients, and should ultimately evolve with their changing needs. For that main reason, companies make always sure to offer advertisements that reflect market’s interests and updated needs. Thus advertisements in a country may provide one of the most realistic images of this country.

Sample Answer 4:
Advertising is the best marketing policy of selling goods all around the world. It is commonly seen that multinational companies use different ways of advertising their products to increase their sale. It is agreed that advertising tells a lot about a country. In the following paragraphs, I will explain my point of views.

Firstly, most of the countries use their cultural way to advertise their goods and services. For instance, in Pakistan Junaid’s Kurta house, a clothing company, advertises their dresses in a cultural way, which is called Kurta. This makes it clear that the cultural dress of Pakistan is kurta, which is usually used on several occasions. As this shows that advertising can tell and show you a lot about a country.

In addition, some companies advertise imported products from different countries, which can tell you a lot about the country itself. For example, in china noodle is their national food and if look at the noodle advertisement you will see a person eating noodles with two sticks though it is really hard for other countries’ people to eat with sticks. This makes it clear that eating noodles with sticks are Chinese brand while other countries people use folks. As this shows that you can judge a country by watching their advertisements.

To sum up, the above statement, advertising clothes, food, services or any other product can be easily understandable that what the people of that country commonly use. It has been proven that you can tell about a country through watching their advertisement. Thus, it is recommended that keep advertising and keep cultural aspects alive.

Sample Answer 5:
An advertisement is a branch of mass communication that provides information about the products and services offered by different companies as well as about country for its culture, society and geography. In my opinion apart from boosting the economy, it puts a multidimensional description of that area. I do agree that advertisement narrates much useful description about that region.

In modern era advertisement is a necessary tool to sell the products. Apart from its utility in energising the sale of products, it has a lot other benefits. Just observing the advertisements for few days one can estimate the amount of business, social norms, costumes, levels of education, language and history of a certain population group or of a nation. Involvement of any sports star in advertisement tells us it is the favourite sports of this Nation. Fashion magazines highlight garments that are vague in that society. Shooting of scenes is shown in background of historical places, hill-stations and tourist places. These clips provide information about those places.

Few advertisements are made only for the sake of promoting business. Actors are paid high for international tours and shooting is performed on world renowned places. The information in this strategy is mostly exaggerated and tried to be linked with culture and social norms of the community.

In conclusion, an advertisement is a source of knowledge to a person living there and also to people who are seeing it from other countries. This subgroup of mass communication is a good tool to get useful information about a particular country.

That tells a lot about our society

Вы услышите рассказ мужчины о его первых годах пребывания в Англии. Выполните задания A8-A14 вставив цифру 1, 2 или 3, соответствующую выбранному варианту ответа. Прослушайте запись дважды.

A8 The Polish lady knew a lot about the property market because she
1) was going to move house soon.
2) worked as an estate agent.
3) got information from her future husband.

A9 Bill and his wife were happy to
1) be able to make use of Mr Black’s contacts.
2) have their landlady’s support and advice.
3) have a variety of houses to choose from.

A10 The house the couple was going to buy
1) proved to be profitable for them.
2) needed little repair work.
3) belonged to a local building society.

A11 The couple couldn’t move into the house right away because
1) it was hard to get money to move house.
2) Bill was too busy working for the BBC day and night.
3) the house was not suitable for living in yet.

A12 When the couple had finally moved into the house, they
1) couldn’t get over the nervous stress.
2) had to carry on improving it.
3) invited their friends to come round.

A13 Bill cycled to work because
1) the bus fare was unreasonably high.
2) the buses were unreliable.
3) cycling was environmentally friendly.

A14 Bill doesn’t feel like an Englishman because
1) he prefers to lead the lifestyle he is used to.
2) his heavy accent makes it difficult to understand him.
3) he has strained relationships with his English neighbours.

That tells a lot about our society

Charity

Around the world there are a lot of children who suffer from different diseases, running A24 out of time and hope. The biggest charity project in Russia is ‘Contribution to the Future’ whose goal is to help any child in need. Its programmes help poor, homeless and disabled children.

There are a lot of people in the world who have chosen charity as their main mission in life. One of the most famous missionaries was Mother Teresa. She lived the hard life of the poor alongside them; she knew how it felt sleeping on hard floors and living on dirty streets. And because she was experiencing A25 first-hand what the people she was helping were going through, she so effectively knew how to give. Besides meeting people’s basic physical needs by giving them food and medicine, she met people’s emotional needs as well.

A lot of rich people also feel the necessity to help the poor. For example, Bill Gates is a famous billionaire, but he is also a noted philanthropist who donated the proceeds of his successful books to A26 non-profit educational organizations. He has also given millions to initiatives in global health and learning, hoping to A27 enable more and more people to have access to A28 vital facilities in these areas. A good example is the opening of ‘The School of the Future’ in Philadelphia, sponsored by his company ‘Microsoft’.

The spirit of philanthropy is not about what or how much you give but rather about the feeling that you are helping others in need.

A22