Task 2 · Two-part question · Health
Why patients ignore their doctors
A causes-and-consequences essay whose band 9 version traces the consequences outwards until they arrive back at the cause.
The question
You should spend about 40 minutes on this task. Write about the following topic. Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience. Write at least 250 words.
Many patients do not follow the advice they are given by their doctors. Why does this happen? What are the consequences of this behaviour?
A 250-word discursive essay — the half of the paper that carries two thirds of the marks. This prompt is original, written in the standard format for teaching purposes — it is not taken from any past paper.
What separates the three answers
The 6.5 explains why patients stop and then spends fifty words on what follows; the 9 follows the consequences outwards until the last of them turns out to be the first cause.
The three answers
Band 6.5
253 words (the task asks for at least 250)The answer works. It addresses the task, the reader follows it, and the meaning survives — but ideas stay general, linking is mechanical, wording repeats, and small errors are visible throughout.
The answer
It is a fact that a lot of patients do not follow what their doctor tell them4. This is a big problem in many countries today. There are many reasons for this behaviour and it can bring serious consequences for the patient and for the health system.
One of the main reason is that the doctors do not have enough time. In the public hospitals a doctor sees maybe fifty patients in one day, so he only gives a prescription in five minutes and he does not explain why the medicine is necessary. If the patient does not understand the reason, he will stop to take the pills when he feels better3. Another reason is the side effects. Some medicines make people feel tired or sick, so the patients decide by themselves to stop the treatment. Moreover, changing the life style is very hard. The doctor can say 'do more sport and eat less sugar', but this means the person must change all his habits, and this is not easy for the most of people2.
The consequences are very bad.1 The illness can come back stronger and the patient must go to the hospital again, which costs a lot of money for the government. Also, if many patients do this, the waiting list becomes longer for everybody.
In conclusion, patients do not follow the medical advice because they do not understand it, because of the side effects and because it is difficult to change the habits, and this causes serious problems for everybody.
What an examiner notices
1. Task response
“The consequences are very bad.”
The topic sentence for half the question, and it evaluates without explaining. Everything that follows it fits in three sentences.
2. Lexical resource
“this is not easy for the most of people”
'The most of people' for 'most people', in a paragraph that has already used 'very hard' and 'very bad'. The evaluative vocabulary is a handful of words reused.
3. Grammatical range and accuracy
“he will stop to take the pills when he feels better”
'Stop to take' means pausing in order to take them — the opposite of the intended sense. One of the few errors here that genuinely risks the meaning.
4. Grammatical range and accuracy
“a lot of patients do not follow what their doctor tell them”
Singular subject, uninflected verb, in the opening sentence — followed immediately by 'One of the main reason' without the plural.
One honest caveat
Band labels here describe what each piece of writing demonstrates against the four published assessment areas, paraphrased in plain language. They are teaching illustrations produced for this site, not official material, and no sample has been marked by a test provider. Real scripts are marked whole; two answers with the same label can still look quite different from each other, and nothing on this page can promise anyone a particular result.
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