Writing Task 2: Advantages & Disadvantages Essay: Question 5
Syllabus W.task2
Many large supermarkets have replaced a considerable proportion of their staffed tills with self-service checkouts, where customers scan and pay for their own items without the assistance of a cashier.
Do the advantages of this outweigh the disadvantages?
Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience. Write at least 250 words.
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Worked solution
Examiner notes: why this is a band 9 response
Task Response
The introduction states a clear, qualified position (“once its wider costs are considered, the disadvantages… outweigh their advantages”) that is sustained through to the conclusion’s explicit verdict. Both sides are developed with specific detail (the small-basket shopper for the advantage, and both the job losses and the recurring technical friction for the disadvantage) giving the disadvantage genuinely fuller treatment before the final judgement is drawn.
Coherence & Cohesion
Topic sentences clearly flag each side of the argument (“The clearest advantage is…”, “Set against this, however, is…”), and “Weighed together” in the final paragraph signals the shift from evidence to verdict. Reference chains such as “this shift” and “the technology itself” tie ideas back to earlier points without relying on a mechanical string of linking words.
Lexical Resource
Vocabulary is precise and topic-appropriate throughout: “entry-level jobs”, “stable, accessible employment”, “malfunctioning terminal”, “defeating its intended purpose”. Near-synonyms avoid repetition (e.g. “self-service checkouts”, “these machines”, “self-service”), and collocations are accurate (“loss of… jobs”, “bring… to a standstill”).
Grammatical Range & Accuracy
The response shows confident control of complex structures: a fronted concessive clause (“Although this shift brings some genuine convenience…”), a colon introducing a supporting list, and a non-defining relative clause implied through apposition (“a supermarket that once employed twenty cashiers… might now employ only two or three staff”). There are no errors of tense, agreement or word form anywhere in the response.
Common pitfalls specific to this task
See commonMistakes above: the most damaging is praising the speed of self-service checkouts without acknowledging that this only benefits shoppers with few items. A band 9 outweigh essay must weigh the advantage’s real scope against the disadvantage’s real scope before reaching its verdict.