Task 2 · Two-part question · Community
Why local charities struggle to find volunteers
A two-part essay on the shortage of volunteers, where the band 9 answer argues that people have not stopped helping, only stopped promising the same evening every week.
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.
In many communities, local charities and clubs are finding it increasingly difficult to recruit volunteers. Why is this happening? What could be done to encourage more people to give their time?
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 blames busy lives and social media and offers certificates; the 7.5 identifies unpredictable hours and asks organisations to adapt, but leaves one cause without a remedy; the 9 argues that generosity has not fallen at all, only the weekly commitment, and fits a remedy to every cause it names.
The three answers
Band 6.5
274 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
Nowadays, many local charities and clubs cannot find enough volunteers to help them. In the past, a lot of people were doing the voluntary work in their free time, but today it is not so common. This essay will discuss the reasons of this situation and some solutions to it.
There are several reasons why people do not volunteer anymore. Firstly, people are more busy than before. Most of the adults are working full time and many of them have long working hours, so when they come home they are too tired to help others. Secondly, the young generation is more interested in the social media and the computer games than helping in their community2. Thirdly, people move to other cities very often for the job, so they do not feel that the local area is their home and they do not want to spend time for it3.
However, there are some ways to encourage more people to volunteer. First of all, the government can give some reward to volunteers, for example a certificate or a discount on the public transport1. This will motivate them to join. In addition, the schools should teach the students about the importance of helping others, and they can make the volunteering a part of the school programme. Also, the charities can use social media to advertise their activities, because this is the best way to reach the young people.
In conclusion, people do not volunteer because they are busy, they prefer the technology and they move often.4 The government, schools and charities should work together to solve this problem, so that the local communities can become strong again.
What an examiner notices
1. Task response
“the government can give some reward to volunteers, for example a certificate or a discount on the public transport”
The essay's main cause was that people are too busy and too tired. A certificate does not give anyone an evening back, so the two halves of the answer never meet.
2. Grammatical range and accuracy
“the young generation is more interested in the social media and the computer games than helping in their community”
The comparison sets two noun phrases against a verb phrase ('than in helping' is needed), and generic nouns take articles they do not need. The claim itself is asserted rather than supported.
3. Lexical resource
“they do not want to spend time for it”
'Spend time on' is the collocation. The idea — that people who expect to move feel no stake in a place — is a good one, but it is expressed too loosely to carry weight.
4. Coherence and cohesion
“In conclusion, people do not volunteer because they are busy, they prefer the technology and they move often.”
The conclusion re-lists the body paragraph in its original order. Restating is not concluding, and the solutions are summarised in the next sentence in the same way.
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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