

by Tengku


Education, recreation and sports playing a crucial role in the development of our country. They are representing how strong the countries are. Thus, to ensure that our country is well known throughout Asian and the world, the government should take an important action in developing education, recreation and sports industries. Unfortunately, governments must analyse which industries bring a lot of development in the country to prevent the wasting of money to the thing which is less important. It is true that education is important but recreation and sports are playing a big crucial role in showing the progression of a country. It is disagreeable the governments should spend more money on education than on recreation and sports as recreation and sports can attract many visitors from all over the world to visit our country and it displays how excellent the country and the nation are.

First and foremost, recreation and sports can attract many visitors from all over the world to visit our country. If the money is channelled to enhance these industries, our country will become a destiny of choice with many fascinating tourism places with more sophisticated facilities which has been upgrade year by year. Tourists from Europe love to visit our country with a wonderful climate as they love sun and rain more than snow and autumn in their country. Malaysia has its own attraction for instance, the highest Mount Kinabalu in Southeast Asia which has become the first destination for visitors. The guesthouses, the climbing track and all the facilities should be upgrade so the visitors will feel more comfortable and they will come to visit again. In such a way, it will encourage foreign currency exchange and generate Malaysia’s income automatically.

Secondly, sports and recreation represent how powerful a country and the nation are to the eyes of the world. The strength of every countries are depends on the cleverness of the government to manage ups and downs of a country. If the money is used to enhance the sports industry in Malaysia, the sportsmen and sportswomen will work hard till their last breath as the sport equipments are more than enough. For instance in the SEA Games, where the games gathered all Asian countries, they will participate in this game and definitely represent Malaysia as a whole. It is a very big game which needs a full support mentally and financially from the government. Further more, if they win in any sports, they will get trophy or medals and their name that represents Malaysia will be carved in the SEA games record. These shows how vital is the sports industry in our country, therefore government must do something to put up Malaysia as the greatest country in this industry.

In a nutshell, it is important for government to focus more on recreation and sports industries than education as they give many benefits to our country. For that reason, it is clearly seen that money should be spend more on sports and recreation to ensure that Malaysia will become the most powerful and attracting country in this world.


by: IELTS buddy


Firstly, the essay is much too long (513 words). I am guessing you took longer than 40mins to write it or otherwise you did not do a plan.

You should aim to write 265-300 words in your essay (though obviously this depends on your writing ability – someone at a higher level can probably write more in a shorter space of time).


The introduction should be much shorter so you can focus more on your body paragraphs. Shortening your introduction to something like this would be fine:

"Education, recreation and sports play a crucial role in the development of countries around the world, and they represent how strong the countries are. It is true that education is important but recreation and sports play an important role in showing the progression of a country. Therefore, I believe that governments should not spend more money on education than on sport and recreation."

Another couple of points about the introduction.

1) Don’t copy from the rubric – you did this in your thesis statement that I have changed

2) Don’t write like you are referring to a specific country. The question is not asking you about Malaysia. Just talk generally, though of course you can refer to Malaysia in your body paragraphs to give examples.


With regard to your body paragraphs, your ideas are generally ok, but you need to try to make your points in a more direct way, and make your writing less ‘wordy’.

As an example, it is not really clear why this sentence is here or what it means:


You don’t need it.

Also, make sure you explain your ideas clearly. With your idea about making Malaysia more powerful, you don’t really explain exactly why giving more money would make the nation look stronger or why this is such a benefit.

Make sure you plan your paragraph carefully before writing so you have good support for your ideas.

Don’t use ‘in a nutshell’ – this is just for speaking.


The essay is a bit too long for me to check all the grammar, but generally, although there are grammar and vocabulary errors, you have some examples of good grammatical structures and use of vocabulary as well.

I think you really need to focus on planning a shorter answer with good concise support which gets quickly to the point.

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Comments for IELTS Sample Writing Task 2: Government Spending - Education or Sports?

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Nov 17, 2013
The number of elderly people in the world is increasing. what do you think are the positive and negative effects of this trend?
by: farideh

Thanks to improved living standards and universal accessibility of medical facilities great majority of people have life expectancy to seventy or eighty. As we all are well aware, longevity is a positive sign in societies. But what exactly happens when the number of elderly people in the world increases. Let’s take a look at both sides of this issue.

On one hand, over the past two decade medical science has tried to find out ways to increase the life span of persons. There is no doubt that, longevity is measure of livability in a country. In addition to longevity in between people can be owing to the improvement of technology and societies. Therefore, longevity is indication that will emphasize the social welfare schemes are bearing fruit. It should be noted that, elderly persons have other benefits for close relatives and communities. They are more experienced and knowledgeable than before. Hereupon, these can be applied for guidance of younger generation.

On the other hand, society with elderly people is needful to more investment due to special cares and various diseases such as stroke, heart disease, diabetes, so on and so forth which are widespread in between aged population. Almost all of aged people are not able to work, they in retirement age needs to care by their children and other close relatives, owing to financial problems and personal affairs.

From what has been discussed one can draw the conclusion that, it is felt that although longevity all around the world is a positive indication, it is not without its drawbacks. One can not aspire for a society in which elderly people outnumber younger people. The future of a nation, definitely, is in its youth.

May 09, 2014
My essay is here, who can help in proofreading? Thx
by: Anonymous

Education and other social services are equally important for the government to invest and operate. Though some people claim that education investment overweight the other area such as recreation and sport in necessity, I personally believe that the government should proportionately spend money according to the social development.

It is irrefutably that education is crucial to the long term development of the country and should be funded by government. To begin with, education increases the overall literacy of the people and enhances the national strength in economy and homeland security. If individuals are not well educated, there would be insufficient in skilled workers in the factory, specified professionals in the office and scientist who can contribute to the technology development. In addition, since education brings sense of fulfillment and satisfaction throughout one’s life, lifetime education becomes general accepted globally. Such a form of education, therefore, requires a huge investment to build community learning center and online study tools. It is obviously not achievable without the funding from the government. Thirdly, education is vital to children during their formative years. Government is thus responsible to setup enough public schools for various needs from families of different social classes.

Despite there are demand of the fund from government in education field , other social services are not neglectable. Public services in recreation will bring people with more opportunities to enjoy their life and fight against the stress from work. Sports, known as the activities of spiritual and physical incentive, are too beneficial in enhancing the personality of the nation and bringing people together without any political and racial discrimination. Government funding, therefore, should be invested, not all, into these areas to realize an overall development in the social operation.

Conclusively, government fund, though is limited and disposable into any social field, education, sport and recreation are all import area that worthy equally and proportionately treated. I hope that these expenditure should be conducted at the permission of the general public though census and survey.

Nov 23, 2014
my answer
by: siddhartha

For the holistic development of youngsters both educational intstituions as well as sports facilities are required.In such a scenario governmnent is often faced with the dilemma of prioritising either of the two in terms of investment.personally i believe that both of them require subbstantial investments though education demands slightly more attention according to me.i would elaborate my views in the following paragraphs.

Increasing investments in education would go a long way in the development of youngsters into model memebers of society.It will increase the employability of youngsters besides incorporating various moral values.Moreover, education among the masses would help in eradicating the vicious cycle of illiteracy,poverty and overpopulation in developing countries.Also it would empower the weaker sections of society like women.Furthermore,state of the art educational instituions would go a long way in producing pioneers in various fields such as medicine and technology.Thus education deserves utmost priority in the governmnent's agenda.Still,sports facilities cannot be undermined in their role of holistic development more about which would be discussed in the next paragraph.

Investing in sports facilities would subsequently result in elevating the levels of physical fitness of the memebers of the society.Besides,sports teach a lot of important qualities such as leadership and competitiveness in youngsters.Moreover,potential sports champions would be identified early by a proper sports system.Students who show promise in sports may be nurtured from their childhood.Hence,it is vital for the government not to neglect sports development in any way.

To sum up,i would like to state that though education deserves the utmost priority for governmnent fundings,sports should be given its due share as well.

Sep 29, 2015
what band score would you give him?
by: Anonymous

I think is very long (500 words) and it does not respond the question asked. (It is a general question and the answer is only about malasya), It also gives different statements but did not support its own ideas. It looks to me more like a brain storm than like an essay. I will give him a 5. Do you agree IELTS buddy)

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