Is the Internet good for reaching information? IELTS Task2 #173 It is generally believed that the Internet is an excellent means of searching information but some people suggest that it may not be the best place to find information. Discuss both these views and give your own opinion. Using the internet in order to find information has become more popular. I personally use the internet for finding a good place to eat while outing or traveling as it is time saving and can be done with my mobile phone. Furthermore, I can get to know what kind of food a restaurant has or if it takes credit card in prior to my actual visit. By using the internet to find information, I can travel light and can get to know some related information I was not initially looking for but would need later on. On the other hand, some incorrect information can be out there on the internet because it’s easy to access. Plus, some websites do not have a regulation to make sure the individual content is accurate. For example, some people who are not trained in medicine can make a false statement about a symptom on their blog, which can mislead the readers to treating their symptom with the false cure explained on the blog entries. Users of the internet need to have the internet literacy in order not to believe everything on the internet. For example, the Internet users should make sure the source of information. As for the example of the Internet medical advice previously described, they can conclude that it is trustworthy if the advice is written on a hospital’s official website. Making sure the source of the information is a good way to eliminate doubtful information. In conclusion, using the internet to find information is useful but has a risk of believing some incorrect information. We can avoid trusting wrong information by checking where the information comes from. (276) (The example is from IELTS-exam.net with some modification)

IELTS writing task1 #173 The bar charts below show the percentages of men and women in employment in three countries in 2005 and 2015. Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features, and make comparisons where relevant. The graphs below indicate the rate of employed male and female in three countries in 2005 and 2015. Overall, the employed rates of male were higher than those of female in all the countries in both 2005 and 2015. The percentage of employment was higher in 2015 than in 2005 in both genders and in all the countries. All of them experienced the growth of female employment rates from 2005 to 2015. Sweden had the highest employment ratio in both genders in 2005 compared to other countries. Its employment rate was nearly 80% for male workers and about 45% for female workers in 2005. Yet, Sweden’s percentage of male employment shrank to 70% in 2015 though the percentage of female employment showed slight growth to reach 50% in 2015. South Korea went through a slight improvement of employment rates in both genders. For male, it extended from 70% to just under 80%, for female from 30% to 35%. Canada achieved the largest positive change in the employment rates in both genders over the 10 years. For male, it reached 70% from 60%, for female to approximately 55% from slightly under 40%. Practice example is from ielts-exam.net

The Obon Holiday in Japan The Obon holiday takes three days from the 13th of August to the 15th of August. It is a shinto and buddhism mixed based custom widely practiced among Japanese nationwide. It is said that ancestors' spirits come visit their descendants living today during the holiday. What Japanese normally do for the holiday is to clean their family graves, to make a set of miniature horse and caw with a cucumber and an eggplant respectively, and to decorate their Butsudan with some flowers which is a household buddhist shrine. It is said that ancestors come by riding a horse because they want to see their relatives as quickly as possible and they return to their world by riding a caw because they do not want to go back to where they belong with their descendants behind. If there is a local festival around the Obon holiday, bon dance is performed by locals and visitors of the festival. There are some other traditions related to the Obon festival that are only found in some local areas, but these are some examples of what Japanese do in the Obon holiday.