Alternative Medicine Instead of Usual Doctors

Nowadays, a growing number of people with health problems are trying alternative medicines and treatments instead of visiting their usual doctor. Do you think this is a positive or a negative development?

Annotated response

8 correction notes

Showing 8 correction notes.

It has been claimed that more people are now using alternative medical practices rather than using . This essay will argue that it is a dangerous development.

To begin with, there is simply no good argument for using alternative medicines. Any alternative treatment that works will be incorporated into conventional medicine, so to go is to take a pointless risk. The vast majority of alternative medical practices, no matter how they are marketed, are at best useless and at worst highly dangerous.

Using any alternative treatment has two potential outcomes. The first is that nothing will happen because most of them are in fact fake. Take acupuncture, homeopathy, or folk medicine, for example. These are simply archaic or idealistic ideas that mostly rely upon the placebo effect. In most cases, they do nothing and any genuine use that they could into conventional medicine through the scientific method and peer review. In such cases, a patient with an illness will not recover and will . In severe cases, these fraudulent practitioners will actually harm their patients because their treatments are dangerous. These alternative medicines are unregulated and who have no proper training, which means that they will not only fail to help but may even introduce new health problems.

In conclusion, the trend of people seeking alternative forms of medicine is massively problematic and puts people at serious risk of illness and death.

Overall assessment

Why this response received Band 7.0

The response presents a clear and consistently maintained position with well-developed supporting arguments, showing strong control of vocabulary and sentence structure. Its main limitation is some uneven development, as the discussion of the two potential outcomes is somewhat repetitive and the second paragraph's progression occasionally overlaps. The argument is convincing but relies more on assertion than on concrete supporting evidence.

IELTS criteria

How each score was decided

Task Response

7.0

The response directly answers the question with a clear negative position, develops main ideas relevantly across paragraphs, and offers a conclusion, though development of the two-outcome argument is somewhat repetitive and lightly evidenced.

Coherence and Cohesion

7.0

Ideas progress logically with clear paragraphing and a range of cohesive devices used naturally, although the link between the second and third paragraphs is slightly loose and some argumentative transitions are repetitive.

Lexical Resource

7.0

Vocabulary is flexible and precise, including items such as peer review, placebo effect, and fraudulent practitioners, with only occasional informality or overstatement like massively problematic.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy

7.0

A wide range of complex structures is used with generally good control and punctuation, with only occasional awkward constructions such as any genuine use that they could pose.