Band 9 model answer
English now functions as the default medium of cross-border commerce, research and popular culture. While critics lament its homogenising effect, I believe the practical advantages of a shared global language comfortably outweigh the drawbacks.
The most compelling benefit is frictionless communication. When a Brazilian engineer, a Korean investor and a German scientist can confer in a single tongue, projects advance more quickly and misunderstandings diminish. Crucially, English also democratises access to knowledge: the overwhelming majority of academic journals and online tutorials are published in it, allowing a self-taught student in Nairobi to study the same material as a graduate at Oxford. This levelling of opportunity, which spares millions the expense of translation, would be almost unimaginable in a linguistically fragmented world.
The principal disadvantage is the threat that English poses to linguistic diversity and to native equity. Smaller languages may wither as parents prioritise English for their children, and non-native speakers are frequently disadvantaged in negotiations or interviews simply because the playing field is tilted towards fluency. There is also a subtler cost: the worldview embedded in dominant English texts can quietly crowd out local perspectives. Nevertheless, these costs are partly avoidable. Bilingualism, rather than wholesale abandonment, is increasingly the norm, and many societies preserve their heritage tongue at home while deploying English at work.
On balance, the gains in connectivity and shared knowledge are too substantial to dismiss. The disadvantages, though genuine, can be mitigated through deliberate policies that protect minority languages and fund translation, whereas the advantages flow almost automatically from having a common code. A doctor reading the latest research, an exporter reaching new markets and a student watching a foreign lecture all benefit instantly. For this reason, I am convinced that the worldwide spread of English, provided it is managed thoughtfully, is ultimately a net benefit to humanity.
Examiner’s notes
- Task Response: the introduction stakes out an unambiguous position ('comfortably outweigh the drawbacks') and the conclusion reinforces it with a weighed judgement, fully satisfying the advantage-disadvantage question type.
- Cohesion: ideas are linked with sophisticated discourse markers such as 'Crucially', 'Nevertheless' and 'On balance', and referencing ('these costs', 'This levelling') avoids repetition while signalling logical relationships.
- Lexical Resource: precise collocations like 'frictionless communication', 'democratises access' and 'linguistically fragmented' demonstrate a wide, topic-specific vocabulary used naturally.