High Salaries of Sports Professionals vs Other Jobs

Successful sports professionals can earn a great deal more money than people in other important professions. Some people think this is fully justified while others think it is unfair. Discuss both these views and give your own opinion. Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience.

Annotated response

10 correction notes

Showing 10 correction notes.

Star athletes like LeBron James, Tiger Woods, and Manny Pacquiao receive multi-million dollar contracts which are than what other important professionals are paid. This has led to controversy over whether this is justified and fair. Although I can understand why some people feel this is unfair, I feel professional athletes are justified in receiving this pay.

No one can deny that there are many people who provide much more meaningful services that directly help or impact individuals and communities. People such as teachers, caregivers and healthcare workers affect so many people by making their lives . Despite their hard work and valuable service, they unfortunately paid the same exorbitant wages as , which seems unfair.

On the other hand, salary unfortunately does not always reflect the importance, need or value of a job. In fact, salary more often reflects how much money the employer or the business can pay. Professional athletes are part of the billion-dollar sports and entertainment industry that plays a large part in the economy. A lot of consumers choose to pay money for and related products, so the team owners have the money to pay these players huge sums. Therefore, justified that these players get their share of the profits. To put this in perspective, elderly adults who need caregivers do not have to pay their caregivers, and so caregivers earn little.

In short, the large sums of because they are earning that money from their employers by doing their jobs of entertaining and raising profits for their employers.

Overall assessment

Why this response received Band 7.0

The response clearly addresses both views and maintains a consistent personal position supported by a relevant economic argument and a concrete contrast with caregivers. The strongest aspect is the coherent reasoning about market-driven salaries, while the main limitation is the somewhat brief development, particularly of the fairness view and the concluding paragraph.

IELTS criteria

How each score was decided

Task Response

7.0

The response addresses all parts of the task, presenting both views and a clear opinion, though the fairness argument receives slightly less development and the conclusion is compact.

Coherence and Cohesion

7.0

Ideas progress logically across clear paragraphs with effective linking devices such as 'On the other hand' and 'Therefore', with only mildly mechanical transitions.

Lexical Resource

7.0

Vocabulary is sufficiently flexible and precise, including phrases like 'exorbitant wages' and 'share of the profits', with occasional informal choices such as 'pro sports'.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy

7.0

A range of complex structures is used with generally good control, and errors such as subject-verb disagreement in 'large sums... is justified' are minor and non-impeding.