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Written by IELTS Mentor

IELTS Writing Task 2/ IELTS Essay:

You should spend about 40 minutes on this task.

Do you think that modern technology, such as the internet and computers will ever replace the book or the written word as the main source of information?

Give reasons for your answer using your own ideas and experience.

Write at least 250 words.

Sample Answer 1:
It is true that information technology has grown rapidly in the past few years, and many people predict that it will develop faster in the future. Some people believe that print out books and articles will be replaced by computer devices in the future. To a certain extent, I would agree that the number of printed books will decrease significantly in the future, but I do believe that hardcopy books will continue to exist in the future.

On one hand, it is a fact that with the existence of the computer and the internet technology, people can obtain a lot of information. People would just open the device, connect it to a network and they could search all articles that they need. There are tens of thousands of websites which provide valuable information such as www.national geographic.com or www.discovery.com. Besides that, many news corporations also provide electronic newspapers these days like CNN or BBC, which can be read in the notebook, tab or smartphone. As a result, many people prefer to read the information from the electronic devices rather than to purchase the print out one.

On the other hand, it is predicted that print out books, newspapers or magazines will continue to exist in future, though the number will decrease drastically. Firstly, not everyone likes to read an article through the gadget directly, since they think it is uncomfortable. They believe that the radiation of computer screen would cause eyes irritation, and give a negative effect on their eyes' health. Secondly, it is undeniable that the development of internet technology is not equally spread all over the world. The online services would only be available in advance countries and in some major cities of developing and poor countries. As a consequence, people who live in the rural or remote areas will still need the print out version.

In conclusion, although it is true that the number of electronic books and news has increased considerably in the recent years, but the existence of the hardcopy version will be irreplaceable. As some people do not feel comfortable in reading an article directly from the computer screen, and others who live in the countryside might not have the access to the technology.

[ Written by - Darwin Lesmana ]

Sample Answer 2:
It is certainly true that these days, as technology advances, we are definitely drifting further towards the internet for our research needs. But I think that computer technology will never ever be a replacement of books and written information because they are the main tools used for our reference purposes and education.

It is true that as technology advances and the net becomes more and more efficient; it is gaining a reputation for being the first and sometimes the only source to go when we need to search a subject. However, as the web has a large base of information, locating exactly what we need is sometimes quite a trying task. In some instances, we find that it probably would have been easier to have gone to the library and used a book. Another problem we are faced with while searching online is whether or not the information is correct. We sometimes can be deceived by information on a website and be unaware that what we are writing down is incorrect.

So books will never ever be replaced even if there are lots of people using the cyberspace. This is due to the fact that books are the main tool of education and are commonly used for our leisure time. In fact, books have been with us for many thousands of years and usually used for our enjoyment purposes. For instance, reading stories in books is an ancient pastime, and although the variety of activities can undertake in our spare time has increased dramatically over the years, it is still quite common to read books. Of course, they are not only used for our pastimes, but for our studies too. They play a major part in our primary, secondary and in tertiary education.

In conclusion, I think that as computer age takes over, we may use books less, especially for information purposes. However, books as we know them will not disappear; they will never ever be replaced by the information in the screen because they are used in our leisure time and the main tool for our education.

[ Written by - Rona Lyn Olivar ]

Sample Answer 3:
As the word is moving towards the modern technology and the era of advancement day-by-day and modern technology has occupied every bit of our life as we have everything available on the internet or we can say that now a day things are just on the distance of one click.

the internet and modern technology make most of the things easy for us and due to this, a person can save his precious time. We can connect ourselves with the entire world via the internet. Nowadays everything can easily be searched on the internet including books, movies, games, news, weather news etc. so the person does not need to worry about anything because through modern technology like internet and computers they make everything so easy for us.

Before the induction of the internet and computers in our daily life, we did not have that many benefits as we are having nowadays so in the past people used to give more importance to the written source of information and mostly people preferred those sources. But as we all know after that much enhancement of modern technology has been done and our life has changed dramatically and it leaves a huge impact on our lifestyle.

I personally believe that modern technology like computers and the internet will totally replace the book or written word as a source of information. Because every single thing is easily available on the internet and people mostly go with the trends of modern technology because it gives us a huge amount of benefits and saves our precious time and makes our life easier to live.

[ Written by - Bilawal ]

Sample Answer 4:
Technology and technological inventions appear in different forms. Some parts of it affect the entire human lives and some parts of it function just for a short period of time for some selected part of the world or population. One of the distinctive shapes of technology is the Internet and computers by which our lifestyle is altered every year. Furthermore, it effectuates our source of knowledge. In centuries we just read books to obtain knowledge but computers, especially in recent years, have changed our viewpoints.

As a direct result of advanced technology, our life became more comfortable than ever before. It is true for every aspect; even reading books and articles and gathering knowledge. Different capabilities of electronic books and websites are tempting enough to commence utilising this technology as soon as possible. For example, the ability to search online and getting necessary information promptly has revolutionised the way we look for something and the way we find the sources of information.

Furthermore, the capacity of storing a great number of books just on the nail-sized chip has replaced the multistoried library into their online edition. In addition, the cost of reading will reduce due to not making use of physical paper. Along those benefits, we are capable of bringing e-books everywhere we go and this opportunity of portability is unique throughout the history of mankind.

However, there is a widespread belief that making use of computers in every part of our life is abominable and leads to alienation. Also sometimes the cost of generating e-books is higher than physical books. Moreover, the wasting of energy for storing virtual books on servers is noticeable.

To sum up, it can be argued that the merits of e-books outweigh its drawbacks and yet we should consider negative aspects and attempt to eliminate them.

Sample Answer 5:
Technology has a great impact on our lives. Advancement in technology makes our lives easier than ever before. Internet; the most powerful source of information, is an extreme example for the advancement in technology. It helps us in many ways and in different fields. Moreover, our lives are completely dependent on it now.

Advancement in technology resulted in inventing computers smaller in size and bigger in their storage capacity. Computers now can do a lot of tasks that were not possible 20 years back due to continuous development in their technology. Among these tasks that related to books and writing, computers can store a lot of books in a small file instead of keeping them on shelves. Furthermore, one can reach the needed information easily through simple computer's find function rather than keep searching for a large collection of books for several hours.

I tend to see that it is the age of technology and we should gain its benefits four our sake. I believe that the internet has already replaced written books and newspapers as sources of information. Many people prefer to read electronic newspapers rather than buying them as well as they prefer internet search engines like Google and Yahoo! to obtain their information more than any other written source. In addition, many schools now are using laptops, iPads, tablets in their educational regimens. Students are encouraged to send their homework electronically to their teachers to be assessed rather than doing by classical method. Besides of that, computers' software provides spelling check and grammatical structures correction options that will aid people to write in different languages in an accurate way.

Finally, in my opinion, countries should try to introduce computers more in their people's life due to its significant positive effects.

[ by - Amira Hassan ]

Sample Answer 6:
The popularity of modern gadgets is increasing day by day all over the world. In my opinion, e-books and news websites will replace printed books and newspaper.

Firstly, many publishing companies began to sell e-books instead of printed ones. Moreover, especially young people prefer reading e-books instead of reading printed books. They think it is easier and more entertaining compared to reading printed books. Furthermore, many people believe that news on the website is more reliable and speedy updating than newspaper because news can change in a minute but newspaper could not update news every second.

Secondly, technology is improving amazingly. Therefore, modern gizmos are being updated almost every day. Many technophiles are keeping up with this improvement. Hence, companies are obliged to change their goods. For example, Radical was the most popular newspaper in Turkey, but the publishing company had to switch their marketing strategies. As a result, it decided not to publish the newspaper on paper based last year and embarked on publishing news on the website which is required to pay money in order to read the news.

The technological advancement in internet and communication technology is offering so much convenient that people are switching their habit to adopt the technology. There are very few young people who would buy a hard copy of a paper or magazine and take all the hassle of going to the store and then purchase it. They are taking advantages of technology and getting these things from their laptop, smartphones and other handheld devices. The popularity of e-book is increasing and more and more people are reading e-books than ever.  

In conclusion, as it is known, people spend most of their time on the internet. For this reason, they would like to read books, newspapers even play cards on it. Thus, they demand e-books instead of printed ones. In my view, in the future, printed books will be rarely bought and only found in the libraries.

[ by - Ahmet Tekin ]

Sample Answer 7:
Modern life has brought new tendencies to our lives and one of them is replacing books and papers by files and e-books. It seems that traditional libraries are changing to new digital ones and people are more interested in downloading books and magazines from the internet as digital files instead of purchasing them from a bookstore.

This is a reality that the mentioned trend is raising in each corner of the world and certainly, IT would be the main resource of information in the future but such as any other phenomena, it is necessary to find the reasons of using the internet more than books as a source of information in many societies.

Perhaps the most important reason is the price. In other words, when we are purchasing a book or magazine through the internet, we don't pay for papers. By contrast, we would be cost more for papers purchasing from a bookstore. Also, the availability is another reason as we can search the name or the topic of a specific book through some websites such as Google or Yahoo and would find thousands results for that as opposite to spend time and money for finding the book in the market.

However, some people worry about the effects of reading through computers on eyes health, I think this is less likely these days when the laptop and computer manufacturers are producing new healthy LEDs. But overall, this trend has helped human to save more energy sources and has had a critical role to prevent from deforestation as the wood has been the basic material for producing papers.

I think, therefore, technology has come to existence to help people have a better life and IT has been one of the best aspects of technology which makes our lives speedy, cheaper and easier to obtain information.

[ by -  Milad Rahimi  ]

Sample Answer 8:
From many years, people have been preserving information in written form whether it was written in leather with the help of quill or on paper. But with the modernization and innovation, people are more engaged in getting information from internet and computer. Therefore, with the access of internet and technology, there is always a treat of replacing the book or the written words. I also believe that use of technology will someday replace the written words.

Firstly, human beings can adapt to changes. In ancient time people used to write on walls and create murals for information then they gradually adopted with writing on leather and then on paper. Nowadays, nobody writes on leathers and walls for daily purpose. Like this, if everyone has access to the internet and computer then the trend of writing information on books and paper will also slowly vanish.

Secondly, people are more concerned about saving the environment and using paper means cutting trees. Therefore, for preserving environment people are using less paper and printed materials and more relies on soft copies such as word document and computer software which gives them opportunities to correct and re-correct their works without using papers. Besides saving papers, technologies are also cost effective.

Thirdly, individuals, organisations and companies are preparing reports in the computer and emails are used instead of paper mail. So the use of papers and written words have drastically decreased in last few decades. Similarly, people have also access to tablets, kindles, handy computer and laptop due to which magazine, novel, books and newspapers are now uploaded in electronic form.

In short, if we see the trends then the use of books has dramatically decreased and if it continues, one day the modern technology will certainly replace the book or the written words.

[ by -  Sajeeta Thapa ] 

Sample Answer 9:
The developments in computers and the internet have created an impeccable impact on electronic content people produce and consume. The interesting question to address is the capability of digital content to replace the physical books. I strongly believe that technology advancements in web and computers have good chances of replacing written text as the primary source of knowledge leading to better individual and social benefits.

Firstly, accessibility to knowledge is the main advantage of digital content. For example, any challenged individual has access to electronic content easily in the form of the digital music player like iPod listening to podcasts. In addition, there has been a recent development in the mobile phones with multiple language supports that in combination with the social networking sites like Facebook facilitates the generation of online content in their native languages. Language developments have improved since the invention of speech to text converter software that converts the person's voice into text. Additionally, several people have taken blogging as a hobby that generates a huge amount of electronic content for others to consume.

Secondly, there has been a change in the teaching methodology giving more importance to the electronic assignments and online lectures. During olden days, students have to attend classroom lectures to understand the subject area but now several university lectures are given online and available to students throughout the day. Buying a physical story book or education related books are becoming outdated, as everyone prefers to buy an electronic version of the book and load it on their e-book readers or tablet computers.

In conclusion, based on the individual and social benefits created by the digital content and internet, I strongly believe that electronic content with World Wide Web will replace physical books as the primary source of knowledge. 

[ by - Raja Ganapathy ]

Sample Answer 10:
Undoubtedly, through the last few years, there is a revolutionary progress in technology while the use of computers is getting more and more spread. the internet gets an important role in everyday life by easing the communication between people and countries. As a result, the news spread rapidly throughout the world defeating the borders of distance. For instance, an airplane crushed in Asia is getting known in minutes from people all over the world. Getting information from the internet is not only fast but cost effective as well. For more internet sites it is not necessary to get a subscription to be able to use their services, but even if it required the alternatives are countless.

On the other hand, books exist for hundreds of years and in my opinion, they are not going to be completely replaced anytime soon. Although the information delivered by them could be anachronistic, there is a certain validation of their content which couldn't be guaranteed by internet sites. Books like encyclopaedia are comprehensive and accessible anytime. Moreover, the cost of a book is generally lower than this of a computer, so it's ideal for less privileged people. For thousands of years, books and written words were the main source of knowledge and it will continue next few hundred years.

To conclude, from my point of view both technology and traditional books are required for getting full information. Books are more suitable for the fundamental knowledge and internet for the most recent one. Although computers and the internet are getting more and more popular, books are going to keep expanding our knowledge for years to come.

[ by - Maria Zafeiropoulou ]

Sample Answer 11:
“Books are the best teachers”. This line still holds the truth in current era but with some changes in the way we access the books. With the advancement of technology, internet and computers have become the main source of information and have put in front a very important question. Whether computer and the internet will totally replace books as the form of information?

From my point of view, it already has replaced books thanks to the benefits it poses over the traditional hand written text. Computers in the form of tablet and phones are more portable and carry loads of information which on paper requires humungous size. Data on computers also gets updated with the help of internet which in the case of books can be done only by purchasing new ones.

Live instances of this can be found around easily. To illustrate, in schools more emphasis now being put on teaching via computer and internet which is more interactive for students and also does not require them to carry heavy books and notes. Also devices like kindle which is an e-book reader helps people to read for long hours without straining eyes and to carry unlimited number of books at the same point of time which in the case of traditional textbooks required behemoth effort.

Again, all the renowned publishers all around the world now release the soft copy of their books, magazines and other publications that show the dominance of e-version of print media. The day is not far when people will carry technological device instead of carrying a large number of books with them.

To conclude, technology has already replaced traditional books and there is nothing wrong in this as technology is an ever changing concept which meant to help us.

[ by - Bhakuni ]

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