Details

Written by IELTS Mentor

IELTS Writing Task 2/ IELTS Essay:

You should spend about 40 minutes on this task.

Write about the following topic:

It is generally believed that some people are born with certain talents, for instance for sports or music, and others are not. However, it is sometimes claimed that any child can be taught to become a good sports person or musician.

Discuss both these views and give your own opinion.

Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience.

Write at least 250 words.

Sample Answer 1:
People have various opinions regarding what truly makes a person a good performer or a talented individual. Some people contend that the talent is a natural gift, whilst others, including myself, have a different opinion since we believe that any person can become an excellent achiever by guidance, dedication and hard work.

On the one hand, it is believed that some people are gifted and they naturally master musical instruments or sports as if they had been taught for years. For instance, my son, who is a big fan of football, was admitted to a higher level on his first training session because he could easily perform all the required skills of the previous levels. Had he been trained earlier, he would have joined the club official team.. Therefore, it can be deduced that some people are more talented than others.

On the other hand, it can be argued that some people have a passion for a certain leisure activity and it is beneficial that educational institutions and family members exert effort to realize this. An example for this is a questionnaire administered to an American elementary school where the results revealed that around 75% of the students master playing different musical devices after rigorous training by their music teachers. Accordingly, it can be argued that hobbies can be taught as well as being a natural talent.

Having manifested the aforementioned points of view and examples, it can be recapitulated that people can either learn to play music or sports, or they can be naturally talented. However, in my humble opinion, both cases should receive guided training, encouragement and an appropriate environment to perform efficiently. It is recommended that the governments should invest more to add extra skills to the students apart from education.

[Written by - Rasha]

Model Answer 2:
Many artists or football players claim that their talent is of genetic origin. They did not have to learn music or sport to become that talented. Having said that, a growing number of people believe that any child can be the best chess player or the fastest swimmer in the world as long as he receives the right teaching and proper direction. In this essay, I will look at both sides of the argument and give my opinion.

First and foremost, many believe that any child can be a genius one. It is only about how much his parents are paying attention to his needs and what do they do to develop these hobbies. For example, a psychology professor agreed with his wife to raise their children as the books of development and psychology say, and now their daughter is the second best chess player in the world.

In my view, it all starts from home when a mother tries to show her baby various options and different areas of play. Therefore, he will identify the available components around him and try to discover his own interests. As the children grow up, they need continuous support and encouragement to keep his certain hobby, such as music, more developed. This will not happen without professional help to have the famous talented artist at the end. On the contrary, there is a common belief that many celebrities are famous because they were born with specific talents not because they were taught to practice these talents.

To sum up, I strongly believe that either born talented or not, any person can be whatever he wants only by the continuous hard work and practice, not by genetics.

 [ Written by - Hooba Essayed ]

Model Answer 3:
It's well known that some children are born with talents and skills which are very obvious like those who are very talented in playing music from the very early age, or those who have physical and mental power which in fact exceeds their age. In the same context, some people say that these talents are not only found in some children, but in all. They claim that these skills don't appear clearly unless treated in proper ways. While other people believe in natural talents and they opine that talents are something people are born with and what people learn are experience and skills. In my opinion, every child is good more specifically extremely good, in a specific thing, but what is that talent? How can we develop it? Or can we at all develop it?

"He doesn't have an extra foot or hand to be better than you!" - this is a well-known saying which encourages children to develop their skills to catch up with those who are supposed to be talented. Parents and teachers use this common saying just to indicate that someone is not better just because he was chosen at the time of his birth. With efforts, anything can be achieved.

Psychologically, all children have the ability to be good at music or sports, for instance, if they are given appropriate teaching and wise guiding. This doesn't contradict with what is known as natural talents. I believe that these natural talents play an important role in manifesting talents; this can be seen in the fields of music and sports. We can see that most of the stars of sports and the brilliant musician had a natural talent; however, it was treated correctly and finally gave that success.

In conclusion, I completely agree with the idea that any child can excel when he gets enough encouragement, guideline, opportunity and proper environment.

[ Written by Abdullah Hassan ]

Model Answer 4:
These days a talent hunt shows are very popular in India. Some people have quite unique talents which are difficult to imagine. For example, a person can create a shadow of different faces of the freedom fighters of India by just using his two hands. It is a debatable topic whether such talents are learned or it is God gifted.

Few people are born with a talent. For instance, a two years old child can play multiple drums parallel like a professional musician. I am confident that a child cannot learn such skills at the age of two. Sometimes you inherit such skills from your ancestors. For instance, it is not surprising if a great singer's son can also sing very well.

On the other hand, we have a considerable amount of people who are different from their family. For example, a golf world champion belongs to the wrestler’s family. A champion confirmed that his father wanted him to be different than his family. With rigorous training he became would champion at the age of nine. If talent is acquired only by birth than a coaching concept would not have been accepted so widely.

It is said that China won 15 medals in one of the Olympic Games. After that, the government started a training program nationwide where kids are being trained in different sports. In two decades China won 15 medals and became number one in that Olympic game.

I truly believe that talent can be learned by passion and dedication. We would not have got some of the greatest talents in India like Lata Mangeshkar and Sachin Tendulkar if they stopped trying after their initial failures. If talent is acquired by birth then Mr Amitabh Bachchan would have stopped the acting after continuous nice flop films in the starting of his career, thinking he does not have any inherent acting skill.

[ Written by  - Naaz ]
 

Model Answer 5:
The statement states the old discussion of the role of nature and nurture. The first group believes that the innate capacities, inherited genes, or born talent play a key role in the professions like sports and performing arts such as music. It’s true that there are people who born with certain talents can perform exceptionally well in their fields. It’s also a general belief that musicians and artists are born with the ability of music and arts or sports.

The other groups of people have confidence in the learning. For them, any talent can be acquired be it a music or sports and any person can achieve anything through hard work and determination. They believe that the man is an architect of his own fate.  

In my opinion, I support the second statement, though no one can rule out the role of natural talents. A person can be born with good voice tone and quality but he cannot achieve harmony, scale and rhythm without learning. And beyond one’s primitive ability, every innate talent is basic in nature and for its development, it requires encouragement and teaching. The consistency and hard work can then make you perfect. The poets and writers, though born with the talent, do not let out their work before making it perfect through several alterations. For example, William Wordsworth, the famous poet, revised and amended his poem daffodils. As it is said, “draft while drunk, but revise when sober.”

On the whole, innate abilities do provide an aptitude for art and sports but success and perfection require trial and error method. 

[ Written by  - Amna Arshad ]
 

Model Answer 6:
People have differing opinions as to what makes a high achiever. Some believe that a person has got to possess certain innate traits to become an excellent performer while the other school of thought is that anyone can become an excellent performer if being taught in a right way. I tend to gravitate towards the latter school of thought.

Firstly, we have to admit that in certain realms in life, to achieve greatness, you have got to have the right genetics, to illustrate; a shorter person will always be at a disadvantage against a taller person in basketball. Secondly, many children display phenomenal qualities at sports and music that it wouldn’t be irrational to believe that they were born with these characteristics, enabling them to excel in their chosen fields.

However, I strongly believe that talent is massively overhyped in our culture. If we examine the lives of top performers in any field such as Tiger Woods in Golf or Mozart in music, we would realise that these people didn’t have any inborn attributes that we normally associate with geniuses. What in fact happens is that such people normally are exposed to the areas that they would grow up to excel in, later in their lives, from a very tender age. There is indeed no such thing as a child prodigy which is evident from biographies of almost all of highly recognised top performers. In addition, these people spend a painstaking amount of time perfecting their acts whether be it symphonies or a particular kind of move in sports.

To conclude, in spite of the fact that most people believe that talent is inborn, I beg to differ with this notion and believe that as long as the trait in question is not purely physical, like height, any child or person can become a top performer in their chosen domain with enough time spent in practice.

[Writen by  - Sameed ]

Model Answer 7:
'Talent' as defined by many scientists, is a gift and inherent ability that enables someone to be special than others in a particular area, while many people believe in that others argue that talent could be achieved, learnt or could be gained with practice. I agree that talent is a gift but could be strayed without continuous practice.

On one hand, the proof of that talent or being good in certain aspect is something came spontaneously as many famous talented celebrities, whether they are a musician or professional sportsmen, never had any teaching or any special teaching when they were young. Moreover, many of them were raised in a poor environment with very limited resources, in contrast, there are many sports teams which had a huge budget for the best training facilities and they are still losing whereby the team with low budget and even poor training sessions are winning! If talent had nothing to do with our success, then rich students with better facilities would always have performed better than the poor students who study all by themselves. If practice could have done everything, we would definitely have many Einstein, Leonardo da Vinci, Newton, Pele and Shakespeare in every country. The reality is, they are born with talents and their dedication makes them unique.

On the other side talent alone is not enough without practice and hard work. The talented persons need to replenish his/her talent every now and then and try to improve it with practice and learning. The personality like Leonardo da Vinci and Einstein have not achieved their success without sacrifice and hard work.

Many famous and talented singers and famous musicians make hours of daily certain voice exercise for their vocal cords for maintaining the nice voice quality they have and get the maximum benefit of his talent for his community. Furthermore, the government and community associations should contribute in discovering new talents and promote it, facilitate the training for talented persons and sponsor them from their youngest age and make them stars.

In conclusion, talents always play a key role in our success but self-development, commitments, hard work and tender care are also required to maintain the inherent talent and through practice, we can make impossible into possible.

[Written by - Nehal Touski ]

Model Answer 8:
It is said that ‘nothing is impossible ' in this world. To make every impossible thing possible, lots of hard work, sacrifice, determination, and good health are required. In an exception, some people confront to failure despite performing their duties sincerely.

I believe that those unsuccessful people were deprived of inborn talent. Sometimes, it may happen that luck does not favour them. For instance, a highly talented athlete who was preparing for competition breaks his leg. Provided that he had not broken his leg, he would have at least won the bronze medal but luck did not favour him. Furthermore, there was another athlete who never won any medal in his career despite his sincere endeavour. It means that he was not gifted to become a professional athlete. So, it would better if he brings down the curtain as an athlete.

On the contrary, there are some people in the world who fail to realise their interest. Certainly, one can have a rewarding career if one's talent is deduced on time. Otherwise, life becomes far worse than expectations. Let's imagine, what will happen if Pele had pursued his career other than football? Surely, other people might have been filled up the shoe as 'a king of football'. But, this did not happen as football passionate Pele transformed gifted talent into a reality. So, natural talent cannot be fostered unless one interests in it.

It is the obligation of parents and teacher to motivate, care and assist in making their children's future prosperous. Otherwise, children have to lead the life beyond their acumen and capacity. Neither does it any good to children themselves nor to the parents and the country if the natural talents of a particular field get spoiled.

In conclusion, one can learn whatever they are taught but to become the master of it, one should be born with the talent for it.

[ Written by - Abhiyan basnet ]

Model Answer 9:
Each child in this world comes with a great potential and different children have different talents for various activities. One child may have fantastic talents for sports and someone may have more potential to become a mathematician, musician or an artist. It’s a quite interesting natural phenomenon that we face within the children. To make the world more beautiful and enriched, we should nurture the different thoughts and different innate abilities of children. In my opinion nature and nurture both have the equal role to play for a child to become a successful professional.

To begin with, every child reflects his/her abilities at the infant stage and parents can decide their life path. Those children come with natural talents and outshine others. For instance, a child shows more promising performance among the siblings in mathematics even though all of them have got same care and environment. This proves that people have inborn talents that we cannot deny. No doubt proper care and effective teaching method can hone someone's performance but this is not always the case. If training and teaching would have been everything we would certainly recreate great minds like Newton, Einstein, Mozart and Shakespeare every year.  

From a neutral point of view, it depends on the brain capacity and also with the parent’s care. If the parents are wiser and more talented, we can see their children become more talented. Sometimes it gives a broader outlook of a child's life. They easily absorb the things what they learn from the school as well as from the society. Genetic engineering also confirms that talented parents usually give birth of talented children. However, this does not guarantee that a child of talented a successful parents will always be talented and successful. For this, an outstanding amount of effort and dedication would be required both from the parents and the child. 

On the contrary, most of the children do not have outstanding inborn talents. They might have some potentials but that cannot be explored until they are engaged in a certain field. Without practice and commitment, many talented individuals do not even explore their potential in their entire life. Thus practice, excellent teaching method and dedication can bring out the best of a child and guide him for the rest of the life. Consequently, children become more talented and experts only if they are engaged in a certain field. For an instance, well-known football player Ronaldo had has his own talents, but he has improved this skill only by proper guidelines and practice. 

To conclude, talent makes many people stand out of the crowd and helps to perform extraordinary things. However proper care, environment and dedication are also required to create professionals with expertise and kill.

[ Written by - Dulanjana ]

• IELTS Essay
• Writing Task 2
• IELTS Writing Task 2

• Prev
• Next