Read the following text. What is the writer’s position?

“Life in rural areas has benefits and drawbacks. It fosters our physical and mental health because of a higher chance of physical activity and our proximity to nature. By contrast, life in such places can be highly dull and massively harmful to the environment because there is little to do, and humans tend to pollute nature. Therefore, life in rural areas has some advantages and disadvantages.”

Did you notice the problem above? Our first sentence promises a balanced view of the advantages and disadvantages. However, the words “highly” and “massively” change the balance because the disadvantages now seem weightier. We must be careful with our choice of words.

Now look at this text. What is the writer’s position?

“There are numerous reasons why people are obese, and there is a multitude of solutions to solve the problem. People are overweight because they do not move, and to solve the problem, they should stop eating”.

Did you notice anything odd above? If there are numerous reasons, why is there only one reason? If there is a multitude of solutions, why did the writer introduce one solution? Also, both the cause and solution are not explained clearly. Should people stop eating to be fit? Really? Do you see the importance of choosing the right words and clarifying ideas?

Now let us look at another text. What is the writer’s position?

“Traveling by car is good because we can pull over, find a tree, and go to the bathroom whenever we want. Trains are not good because, like a taxi, they do not take us to our doorstep. Therefore, governments must invest money in roads rather than rails.”

Isn’t the text above peculiar? The last sentence reveals that the task concerns the government’s responsibility to improve roads and rails. However, the supporting ideas are about a traveler’s thoughts on how cars are better than the metro.

When we fail to understand the task and write an essay based only on the shadow of the task, we produce a confusing essay. The supporting ideas do not support the main idea, so our position becomes too hard to detect.

Our position is nothing but the way we think or feel about an issue (the task). It becomes unclear for several reasons:

1) We fail to understand the task, producing a wrong response.

2) We make bad word choices and confuse the reader.

3) We do not clearly explain our ideas.

We must do three things before we sit the test of IELTS:

1) Honing our language skills

2) Learning critical thinking skills

3) Expanding our general knowledge about common topics used in the test of IELTS.