IELTS Essay Bank · Task 2 Academic · Two-part question
Disappearing Minority Languages: Band 8 Sample Essay
308 words · Topic: Globalisation, Culture & arts ·
The question
Every year, a number of the world's smaller languages stop being spoken as their last remaining speakers pass away.
Why are so many minority languages dying out? Do you think efforts should be made to keep them alive?
Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience. Write at least 250 words.
Band 8 sample essay
Highlighted = useful vocabularyEvery language that falls silent takes with it a distinct way of describing the world, and the pace of this loss has accelerated in recent generations. The causes of this loss are largely economic and social, and while not every endangered language can realistically be rescued, I believe that serious efforts to sustain them are fully justified.
The underlying cause is that minority languages have lost their practical value in the eyes of their own speakers. As people migrate from villages to cities, fluency in a dominant language becomes the key to education, employment and social mobility. Parents understandably want to give their children every advantage, so many stop using the heritage language at home, and once a single generation grows up without it, intergenerational transmission is broken. In the past this shift was often forced: Indigenous children in Canada and Australia, for example, were punished for speaking their own languages at school. Today the pressure is subtler but just as powerful, since the vast majority of digital content exist in only a handful of languages.
Some argue that fewer languages simply mean easier communication. However, this view overlooks what is lost. Languages encode oral histories, place names and detailed knowledge of local ecosystems that is often recorded nowhere else, and for many communities their language is inseperable from their sense of identity. Moreover, revival is achievable. The Māori language nests in New Zealand, where young children are immersed in the language from infancy, and the revival of Hebrew as an everyday spoken language shows that determined community effort, backed by public funding, can reverse decline.
Ultimately, minority languages are disappearing because the modern world rewards linguistic conformity. That is precisely why deliberate support — bilingual schooling, broadcasting in minority languages and careful documentation — is needed, so that whether a language survives is not dictated by economic necessity alone.
Word count: 308
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The same question is ready on its practice page, with a Band 8–9 model answer to compare.
Why this is Band 8: criterion by criterion
Task Response
Band 8Both questions are sufficiently addressed and well developed. The causes are traced through a clear chain — economic value, parental choice, the break in transmission — and extended with historical and contemporary pressures, while the second question is answered with a clear position, a rebuttal of the opposing view and two well-chosen examples of revival. The conclusion draws the two parts together neatly ("That is precisely why…"). For Band 9, the practical limits of revival — which the introduction concedes — would need to be explored rather than only mentioned.
Coherence and Cohesion
Band 8The response sequences information logically, moving from cause to consequence and then to evaluation. Cohesion is managed well through reference and sentence structure rather than stock connectors: "this shift", "this view", "That is precisely why". The paragraph on whether to save languages opens by presenting the opposing view before answering it, which creates a natural progression. Paragraphing is sufficient and appropriate, meeting Band 8.
Lexical Resource
Band 8A wide range of vocabulary is used fluently and precisely, including "falls silent", "social mobility", "intergenerational transmission", "linguistic conformity" and "encode oral histories". Less common items are used skilfully and with awareness of collocation ("reverse decline", "dictated by economic necessity"). There is one spelling error — "inseperable" should be inseparable — which is the kind of rare slip that Band 8 allows.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
Band 7The essay uses a wide range of complex structures, including a relative clause of place ("where young children are immersed…"), a time clause ("once a single generation grows up without it") and a cleft sentence ("That is precisely why…"). However, there are two subject–verb agreement errors in otherwise sophisticated sentences: "the vast majority of digital content exist" (exists) and "The Māori language nests … and the revival of Hebrew … shows" (show). Because these errors occur in two of the more complex sentences, grammar is rated Band 7: good control with a few errors, rather than the near error-free accuracy that Band 8 requires.
Useful vocabulary and collocations
- social mobility
- the ability to move to a higher social or economic position; ideal for globalisation essays.
- heritage language
- a language connected to a person's family or cultural background rather than the language of the wider society.
- intergenerational transmission
- the passing of a language from parents to children; the key academic term for language survival.
- language nests
- early-years programmes that immerse young children in an endangered language.
- determined community effort
- sustained action by the people most affected; pairs well with backed by public funding.
How this essay could reach Band 9
- 1Check agreement carefully in long subjects: the verb must agree with the head noun (the majority of content exists) or with a compound subject (the language nests and the revival … show). These two errors are what keep grammar at Band 7.
- 2Develop the concession in the introduction — explain briefly why some languages realistically cannot be rescued (for example, when only a few elderly speakers remain) and what efforts are still worthwhile in that case, such as documentation.
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