IELTS with Mujahid · Academic Writing
Sending your writing to your instructor for review...
Compare your response against a high-band sample — don't aim to copy it, use it to see how ideas are organised and supported.
The chart compares how families in one country allocated their weekly income across eight categories of spending in 1968 and in 2018, with figures expressed as percentages.
Overall, spending on necessities such as food and clothing fell markedly over the fifty-year period, while spending on housing, leisure and transport rose considerably. Food remained the single largest expense in 1968 but had dropped well below housing and leisure by 2018.
In 1968, food accounted for by far the largest share of weekly income, at 35%, more than three times the proportion spent on housing or clothing and footwear, both of which stood at around 10%. By 2018, however, food's share had fallen sharply to just 17%, while housing had almost doubled to 19%, making the two categories nearly equal.
The most striking increases were in leisure and transport: leisure spending more than doubled, from 9% to 22%, becoming the second-largest category by 2018, while transport rose from 8% to 14%. In contrast, personal goods and clothing and footwear both roughly halved over the period, and fuel and power spending also declined slightly, from 6% to 4%.
There is ongoing debate about whether professionals such as doctors and engineers should be obligated to work in the country where they trained, or whether they should be free to seek employment abroad. This essay will examine both perspectives before presenting my own view.
Those who favour compulsory domestic service argue that training such professionals is heavily subsidised by taxpayers in their home country, particularly in nations where medical or engineering education is state-funded. It seems reasonable, in this view, that the public who financed that training should benefit from the resulting expertise, especially in countries suffering from severe shortages of doctors or engineers. Requiring a period of domestic service, proponents suggest, would help address chronic staffing shortages in rural or underserved regions.
On the other hand, those who support freedom of movement contend that restricting skilled professionals to a single country infringes on their personal and economic rights. Doctors and engineers often pursue overseas positions for better pay, research opportunities, or career development, and denying them this choice could discourage talented individuals from entering these professions in the first place. Furthermore, international mobility allows valuable knowledge and skills to be exchanged across borders, which can ultimately benefit global development rather than any single nation alone.
In my opinion, while it is understandable that governments want a return on their investment in training, an outright requirement to remain would likely prove counterproductive, driving talented professionals to train elsewhere from the outset. A more effective approach would be offering incentives, such as competitive salaries or loan forgiveness, to encourage skilled professionals to stay voluntarily rather than compelling them to do so.