Today due to Advanced Medicine, People are Living Longer- IELTS Writing Task 2

Today due to advanced medicine, people are living longer. Therefore, the number of elders is expected to exceed that of young people. Do the advantages of this development outweigh the disadvantages?

Outline

Essay Type

Advantages/Disadvantages essay

Introduction

Paraphrase the topic of the essay and mention that it has its merits and demerits.

Body paragraphs

Paragraph 1 – Talk about the advantages of having a longer lifespan and how it affects people around them.

Paragraph 2 – Implore the drawbacks.

Conclusion

Restate your opinions.

Sample Essay

The life expectancy of humankind has witnessed an upswing owing to the significant advancement in medicines. Without a doubt, this is associated with merits and demerits.

Firstly, with more aged people living, the market for products used by them simultaneously goes up, thus creating jobs for many. The elderly population extensively consume health supplements, hearing aids, fruits, milk, and dairy products. Besides, they often visit healthcare facilities giving them good business. Secondly, families can also get assistance from their wisdom and experience. In difficult times, they can provide valuable advice and emotional support to the younger generation. They also look after their grandchildren and educate them on various life skills and moral and cultural ethics. Ultimately, the government also benefit from the elderly. They can make older people more productive by increasing the retirement age or availing their non-labour intensive managerial community work services.

But while there are tremendous advantages to increased lifespan expectancy, they depend, to an extent, on good physical condition and having money. Older people are more prone to suffer from medical problems, especially chronic illnesses like diabetes and muscle pain, seriously restricting their activities. This also means increased health care costs for both individuals and society. Additionally, if older people aren’t working, they will have to be dependent on savings and pensions to pay for their living, which many older people won’t have saved enough for a long old age.

Overall then, while increased lifespan has brought about many problems, in my view, the advantages of this development far outweigh the disadvantages.

Vocabulary

• Upswing

Meaning – an increase in strength or quantity; an upward trend.
Example – I think we are on the brink of a housing explosion that will strengthen the solid current upswing in property interest in the city.

• Supplements

Meaning – a thing added to something else in order to complete or enhance it.
Example – Most vitamin and mineral supplements stay in your body and continue to work for two to three days.

• Aid

Meaning – help, typically of a practical nature.
Example – With little aid and no roof over their head, these crestfallen people are facing the worst nightmare of their lives.

• Wisdom

Meaning – the quality of having experience, knowledge, and good judgement; the quality of being wise.
Example – After a day of eating, drinking and making merry, we rounded off with some words of wisdom from our favourite family.

• Ethics

Meaning – moral principles that govern a person’s behaviour or the conducting of an activity.
Example – We should not put up with the army of health and ethics experts who are now trying to police both public debate and private lives.

• Intensive

Meaning – causing disruption or annoyance through being unwelcome or uninvited.
Example – After some intensive discussion, the young gentleman left in a huff.

• Tremendous

Meaning – very great in amount, scale, or intensity.
Example – Continuing, we saw a massive dump of fresh red clay reaching high up like a tremendous anthill.

• Prone

Meaning – likely or liable to suffer from, do, or experience something unpleasant or regrettable.
Example – People prone to severe allergic reactions need to carry an adrenaline injector pen that can help reverse the symptoms quickly.

• Pensions

Meaning – a regular payment made by the state to people of or above the official retirement age and to some widows and disabled people.
Example – The second alternative is the pensions should be calculated based on working experience and volume of contributions made.

• Chronic

Meaning – (of an illness) persisting for a long time or constantly recurring.
Example – New therapies based on proteins and antibodies would help to stop chronic diseases such as cancer.