Gifted people in sports and music Being a good sports person or musician is very difficult and in most cases requires years of training. Some people believe that good sports person and musicians are born with these talents, while others believe that these skills can be learnt. A reason to support the vision that people can born with specific talents is that some children show in early ages more advanced skills than their peers. They also can learn and develop faster than other children. It's quite common to see these gifted children in TV shows or in internet videos. Nevertheless, we can't deny that even these children need to work hard to achieve a high quality performance in sports or music. Sports, just as music, requires a lot of practice in order to develop skills, so it's natural to believe that the harder you work on it, the best will be your results. So, through this point of view, anyone can be taught to become a high-performance athlete or a spectacular musician. These two views, however, simplify too much the situation. It's impossible to argue that anyone can be good in sports or in music, because you have to take into account features like the child's personality and temperament. Some children don't have the discipline needed to learn sports or music and it can be very difficult to develop this skill. Others just will find it boring and uninteresting. Similarly, when you talk about being good in sports and music, it's impossible to rely only on natural talents. Even these gifted children that we see in TV shows need to work hard to improve, because sports and music are based in techniques that must be learnt, no one born with that technical knowledge.

IELTS Task 1 - Table The table shows the percentage of national consume expenditure of five countries in three different categories in 2002. In all countries, the spendings with food, drinks and tobacco were the most relevants. Italy, Spain and Sweden showed very similar figures, all of them between 15% and 19%. Ireland's spendings in this category were almost double: 28.91%. But Turkey is the country with the highest figure. People there spent over 32% of their money with foods, drinks and tobacco. In regard to spendings with clothing and footwear, all the figures kept within a range of 5% and 7%, except Italy, which presented a spending of 9%. Finally, the smallest spendings' figures were these related to leisure and education. SPain showed the smaller figure, under 2%, while Turkey presented the biggest spendings in this category, with 4.35%. Italy and Sweden had almost the same figure: 3.20% and 3.22%, respectively.

Are these phrases correct? I moved to my current house two months ago. It’s near the University, so I don’t have to walk so much either take a bus. (or should I use neither?) I didn’t move to an apartment because it’s more expensive than a house and I couldn’t be able to cover its costs. I’m trying to eat healthy and avoid carbohydrates, so in the morning I have a fruit with some yogurt and oatmeal, which are more nutritious than bread. To dessert the restaurant offers fruits, but I rarely eat it. I would like to have more time to cook, but it’s very difficult because I spend more than 10 hours each day in the University and I’m always tired. (which word could I use to replace "because"?)

My first tattoo I got my first tattoo in february of this year. It is a tiny phrase on my forearm, which says "be kind." in typewriter letters. In the beginning I wanted to write it on my wrist, but this part of the body has much movement, so it could harm the tattoo in some years. The tattoo process wasn't so painful. I was very afraid about it, but I could stand the pain without any difficulty. I choose to tattoo this in a very reflexive moment of my life, when I was wondering about my personality and what I could improve in my own temperament. I decided to tattoo "be kind" because I think this is a strong point of my personality, even though sometimes I can be the extremely opposite and feel very upset after acting this way. So I made this tattoo to remember me what I like the most in myself and to ensure that I will be kind whenever possible. Another meaning to this tattoo is that I would like that everyone was kind to each other. I usually feel upset all day when someone is rude with me and keep wondering how good would be the world if people were more kind and more polite.

Children's education Children education is a theme that can give rise to long discussions. While parents can transmit to children their personal beliefs, such as religion, school must be more generic, because there are all sort of children. Which one is the most appropriate to teach children how to be a good member of society: parents or school? Parents are supposed to be the main source of children’s education, regarding the fact that they are responsible for nurture children since their birth. The strong relationship between parents and children creates a good environment to transmit moral values, so it can be absorbed by the children in a more effective way than the values learnt in the school. Nevertheless, school represents an important place for social development in the early ages. It’s expected that moral and ethical questions rise and they must be discussed in the school. The diversity of individuals in the school results in the teach of values as equality, respect and human rights, which are essential in the formation of a good member of a democratic society. These values can be discussed more effectively in school than in home, mainly because there children will be immerse in a social environment. Personally, I agree that parents are essential in children education, and it includes learning how to act in society, but for me school is the best place to learn it. The school has more resources to teach ethic values to children, because there is an environment that stimulates discussion and respect for other people, while parents sometimes teach bad values, such as racial prejudice or religious intolerance, to their children. To sum, school and parents are important in teaching children how to be a good citizen, so both must be careful in what they teach.

Health and weight It’s well-known that weight and health are strongly linked. These features are following opposite trends in some countries: while the average weight of people is increasing, their levels of health and fitness are dropping. The main cause of these trends seems to be the modern urban lifestyle. People don’t have time in their routine to care about their health. The time spent in traffic and in the work journey represents almost half of the day, so there is no time enough to cook or to go to the gym. The alternatives for cooking are not so good. In some countries, fast foods are cheaper than healthy and well cooked food, what makes people choice them instead of a nutritious meal. A way to solve this problem could be increase prices of fast food and make healthy foods cheaper. Sometimes, when I go to the supermarket, I buy cookies and other industrialized supplies because they are cheaper than fruits and other types of nutritious food. If the prices were reduced I would prefer to buy fruits and include them in my daily diet. Of course there are lots of possible measures that could solve this problem, but I believe that all of them regards to helping people add good habits in their routines, like changing the type of food they eat. Caring about the diet affects not only the weight, but also the health and, consequently, the quality of life. We should be more careful about it.

IELTS Writing Task 1 [5] The two diagrams represent the production process of cement and the subsequent production of concrete used for building purposes. The production of cement is divided in three main parts: the crush and mix of basic materials, the heat and finally the grind. The concrete production is less complex and consists of mix different materials. The cement production begins with limestone and clay passing through a clusher. Then the powder generated in this step is put into a mixer and, after it, lead through a pipe to a rotating heater that is maintained by an external source of heat. The mix obtained pass through a grinder in order to become the cement we know. This final product then is put into bags. The concrete production is simpler and doesn’t involve neither heat nor different steps. It consists in mix materials. The quantity of each material is well definite: half of it must be composed by small stones (gravel), while the other half is divided in 25% of concrete, 10% of water and, finally, 15% of concrete. All these substances are put into a concrete mixer that rotates until the concrete become ready to be used.

"Simpler" - is it right? I didn't find this word in Cambridge dictionary

IELTS Task 2 - Solving traffic growing Traffic is a problem that is increasing in almost every city around the world. The same can be said about pollution problems. How could governments solve this problems? Would be the rise of petrol price the best way to solve them? I desagree, because this is an emergential attitude, rather than a solution. Increasing the petrol price don't solve the main causes of traffic, so it can't be a effective solution. If people don't have another way to move in a city they will sacrifice their salaries to maintain the car spending. In addition, increase petrol price will affect the cost of a lot of different things, because petrol is largely used in industries. Not only gasoline price will increase, but also food (because the crops depend on vehicles to be maintained), plastic products, etc. Therefore, increase the petrol price will increase the cost of living and it can cause deep economic problems. Instead of force people to abandon their cars, it's need to offer different options of transportation. A way to do it is to be sure that public transport is effective. If people have access to good lines of subway and a sufficient number of buses by a cheap price, obviously they will prefer them rather to be stuckle on traffic by a large amount of time. Public transport also reduces the air pollution, because with just one bus it's possible to transport a large quantity of people. If everyone was driving a car, it would represents almost 30 cars in the street. Another main cause of traffic is that cities aren't well planned. People usually live far from their job and from the interesting points of the city, like cultural centers. It's important to plan cities that don't concentrate all important activities in central area, in order to avoid the necessary that people move through the city. If people's jobs were near their homes, it would be posible to use more enviromentally-friendly ways of transportation, like cycles.