Living in a Country Where You Have to Speak a Foreign Language Can Cause Serious Social Problems as Well as Practical Problems – IELTS Writing Task 2
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In opinion essays, it is usually important to agree or disagree with a certain fact or piece of information mentioned in the topic. Your argument must support one of two opposing views in the essay.
Given below is an example of an IELTS Writing task 2 opinion essay. Let’s understand how to frame the essay from the ideas we have.
Living in a country where you have to speak a foreign language can cause serious social problems as well as practical problems. To what extent do you agree or disagree with this statement?
Outline
Essay Type
Opinion Essay (Agree or Disagree)
Introduction
Sentences 1 & 2: Introduce the topic.
Sentence 3 – Agreed with the notion of the essay.
Body Paragraphs
Paragraph 1 – Not knowing a language in a foreign country can cause communication problems.
Paragraph 2 – Lack of proper language skills may create problems in daily activities
Conclusion
Sum up and state your opinion.
Sample Essay
It is definitely a problem to live in a country where you have to speak a foreign language. Language barriers can cause serious social as well as practical problems. According to me, this statement is true due to several factors that are discussed in the essay.
Staying in a foreign country where one cannot speak their native language will make it difficult to communicate with the locals. At public gatherings, they will often feel isolated since they may not understand each other’s language. Furthermore, normalizing themselves in a completely different culture from the one they grew up in and not having fluency in the language will be fairly difficult. As a result, they usually do not develop good relationships with local citizens and prefer to stay within the confines of their own community. This is a major social problem.
Apart from that, the inability to speak the local language may negatively affect one’s everyday activities in a foreign country. For example, some people may find it difficult to go grocery shopping at the local market or access local transportation. Moreover, at their workplaces, they may have to face a lot of problems. Certainly, it is important for an individual to be able to communicate effectively within an organization. If they struggle with the common language, they may be unable to freely express their ideas, which will hinder their ability to progress in the organization despite their talents. Having trouble establishing good relationships at work can also affect the probability of a promotion, regardless of how hard they work. As a result, these individuals often doubt themselves and feel under-confident.
However, many people say that linguistic barriers are not a major problem as they get easier over time, but one may feel alienated in the beginning and trying to rectify the situation may not be easy.
To sum up, I agree that living in a country with poor access to the local language is challenging both socially and practically.
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Band 9 Sample Essay
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Migrating to foreign countries has become a common phenomenon, irrespective of the age and qualification of a person. But many people back off on their desire to migrate as they feel that being unable to speak the foreign language may cause social and practical problems. Fortunately, recent developments in technology and globalization have aided in solving such communication gaps. In this essay, the latter view will be discussed to show that living in a foreign country has become a piece of cake regarding language issues.
To begin with, settling in a country with a different linguistic system and moving to a part of the country with a different language setup has the same issue – lack of common language. As aforementioned, this drift has become quite prevalent nowadays. Due to this, local people welcome international visitors or immigrants with open arms and try to help them as much as possible. In a social setting, the neighbours invite the newcomer to gatherings or parties, if they are interested and accept them as a part of the community. Furthermore, when one moves to countries like U.K., U.S, Australia and others, they have to prove their language skills in a global language like English. So, even before moving to the country, people are already fluent in the common language that will enable them to communicate.
Apart from that, applications like Google Translate and Maps have become the ultimate solution to these correspondence problems. While travelling, one may not need to ask for directions anymore as they have maps and similar apps to guide them. In case one needs to translate certain words on documents or while interacting, they can definitely benefit from language apps like Triplingo, Microsoft Translate and Baidu, among others.
However, technology does not help when one moves to remote parts of the world without a network for smartphones or apps to work. Sometimes, locals may not even welcome the outsider naturally. But, with globalization, these cases have become very rare as technology has reached greater lengths of the earth, and people have opened up to different cultures and people from various locales.
Therefore, to conclude, it can be said that although few people may face the communion issue socially, if they try to adapt themselves and search for like-minded people, they will definitely enjoy their new lease of life in the new country.
Vocabulary
- Practical
Meaning: of or concerned with the actual doing or use of something rather than with theory and ideas.
Eg: “Always think in a practical way before taking any important decision.”
- Communicate
Meaning: to share information with others by speaking, writing, moving your body, or using other signals
Eg: “Did you communicate your needs with the manager?”
- Isolated
Meaning: separated from other persons or things; alone; solitary
Eg: He was isolated from his family at birth.
- Fluency
Meaning: the ability to speak or write a language easily, well, and quickly
Eg: His fluency in the language is quite impressive.
- Confines
Meaning: the limits or borders of something
Eg: The prisoners remained in the confines of the room for more than 15 years.
- Organization
Meaning: a company or other group of people that works together for a particular purpose
Eg: Our organization aims to help people with problems in immigration.
- Promotion
Meaning: the act of raising someone to a higher or more important position or rank
Eg: Her family was thrilled to hear about her promotion.
- Under-confident
Meaning: lacking in confidence
Eg: The fresher was under-confident when he joined the job.
- Linguistic
Meaning: of or relating to language or linguistics, the scientific study of language.
Eg: He is a professional well-known for his linguistic skills.
- Alienated
Meaning: to cause someone or a group of people to stop supporting and agreeing with you
Eg: Tom’s friends alienated him as soon as he was accused of murder.
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