Popular events like the football world cup and other international sporting occasions are essential in easing international tensions and releasing patriotic emotions in a safe way. To what extent do you agree or disagree with this opinion?

 The World Cup football match and the Olympics are held worldwide with great national support and expectations. Fans of those competitions support the idea that sporting events can be necessary for international relations and national unity, yet others believe downsides of such events cannot be ignored.

From proponents’ perspective, the main advantage associated with the World Cup, Olympics and other international games is easing tensions among different nations. For example, South and North Korea have football games regularly which give two nations a chance to understand each other deeply. In fact, in the mid-1990s, hundreds of North Korean supporters came to South Korea with the footballers and they were very excited during the sporting events. Even if it sounds ridiculous, many South Koreans were quite surprised at that moment when North Koreans shouted and cried during the match. We all realized that they were very normal sports fans even though they were occasionally very secretive. Through the sports, two divided nations could reduce their political and ideological tensions and could feel the patriotic unity.

On the other hand, critics of the above-mentioned idea concede sports matches can make international relations worse. For instance, football or baseball games between Korea and Japan are always big matches in two countries in which tensions overflow. Sometimes, after the matches, the two rivals blame each other and their patriotic emotions explode in an aggressive way. Even much worse scenario is the troubles caused by losing games that affect the players directly. As far as I know, a couple of Korean players in Japan suffered from invisible discrimination after the match between two countries.

In conclusion, I think that global sporting occasions can be one of the surest strategies to relieve tensions or to release patriotism safely.

 Analysis

A. Task response:

1. This essay has covered all parts of the given topic most probably because the candidate has spent enough time on comprehending the topic before he/she started to write.

2. The candidate has stated his own opinion definitely regarding the topic.

3. The central paragraphs of the essay have been supported with a range of techniques like examples

4. This candidate has applied 280 words, which seems to be professional.

B. Coherence & cohesion:

1. The candidate has managed to express his/her position clearly and successfully because of applying correct & appropriate linkers like yet, if, …

۲٫ This piece of writing is both coherent (ideas have been arranged logically) & cohesive.

C. Grammar:

1. This candidate has used a wide range of structures including conditional, complex sentences, …; more importantly, they are correct which mean the candidate has shown an excellent command of English structures by making mistakes in neither basic nor advanced ones .

2. The candidate has paid special attention to punctuation.

D. Vocabulary:

1. This candidate has used a wide range of appropriate & different words whose collocations are correct, for instance associate, invisible, tension, critic, patriotism, …

۲٫ There is no sign of repetitive words or contractions in the essay; also, spelling and capitalization have been taken care of flawlessly.

 Examiner’s final comment:

Totally this essay seems good enough to be worthy of IELTS Band 7+ because of the above-mentioned plus points.