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IELTS Writing Task 2 Sport Essay Topics

Sport essays are pulled towards heroism. The prompt is usually about an arrangement that has a bill and a loser: a school team that publishes a ranking, an athlete whose contract rewards the picture more than the game, a city that builds a stadium it must fill in November, a club that sells its best player because the wage bill does not add up, a Saturday spent watching other people move. "Sport brings people together" is true often enough to be useless.

  • 6 practice questions
  • 6 question types
  • Original questions
Inside this topic
  • School competition
  • Role models
  • Hosting events

Before you pick a question

How this topic works

Say which people, what they pay, and who is left off the team sheet.

  1. 01

    The useful detail is the selection and the calendar

    The useful detail is the selection and the calendar. Competitive school sport helps the child who is already coordinated and can humiliate the one who is not, if the lesson is a public trial rather than a period of teaching. A mega-event brings a deadline for a railway and a debt for a venue. A transfer fee is a sum that lets a smaller club pay its groundskeeper and tells the supporter that loyalty is a one-way sentiment. Write the sum or the selection. Leave the inspiration for the sentence where you have already shown the mechanism.

  2. 02

    Do not invent medal tables or the cost of a real Games unless you are sure

    Do not invent medal tables or the cost of a real Games unless you are sure. A muddy pitch, a season ticket, a vacant stadium, a substitute who never gets on: those are enough. These questions are original practice, not past papers. Use an outline for the paragraph jobs. Do not drag a phrase about doping into an essay about a school pitch, or a phrase about the pitch into an essay about a transfer.

A question sheet with the instruction line highlightedQtype

6 original practice questions

Practice questions

Showing 6 of 6 questions

Opinion01

Original practice question

Some people think competitive sport in schools does more harm than good. To what extent do you agree or disagree?

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Discussion02

Original practice question

Some people think successful athletes are good role models for young people. Others think their private conduct makes them poor examples. Discuss both these views and give your own opinion.

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Advantages and disadvantages03

Original practice question

What are the advantages and disadvantages of a city hosting a major international sports event?

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Problem and solution04

Original practice question

Fewer teenagers are taking part in organised sport outside school. What are the causes of this problem, and what solutions can you suggest?

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Two-part question05

Original practice question

Professional clubs often sell their best players to richer teams in other countries. Why do they do this? How does the sale affect local supporters?

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Positive or negative development06

Original practice question

More people now watch sport on screens than play it themselves. Is this a positive or a negative development?

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6 question types on this topic

Question types

The sport questions above use these instructions. The guide names the paragraph jobs. You still choose the arguments.

Both sides of the debate

Common arguments

In favour

4 arguments
  1. 1

    A score gives practice a consequence that a pupil can understand without a lecture. The case for competitive school sport, kept small, is that consequence. Minutes played, a point lost, a team that still has to shake hands: these are lessons in staying with a task. They are cheaper and clearer than a talk about resilience. The defence collapses when the score becomes a public sorting of bodies in September. Defend the fixture. Do not defend the cull.

  2. 2

    Elite athletes make repetition visible. Most skilled work is hidden in offices. A session, an injury, an ordinary Tuesday are, at least sometimes, on camera. That visibility is a public good if schools use it as a film of method. Young people are not wrong to look for evidence that effort changes a result. Sport is one of the few places the evidence is legible. The argument for attention to elite sport is an argument for that legibility, not for the moral character of whoever is fastest this year.

  3. 3

    An immovable date can finish public works. Cities delay rail and sewage because the benefit is dispersed and the disruption is immediate. A major event concentrates the embarrassment of being late. Used coldly — only for projects already justified — the event is a project-management tool with a mascot. Residents inherit the line. The fortnight is the excuse that unlocked the contract. That is a serious advantage and it should be stated without the language of glory.

  4. 4

    Watching is not idleness by definition. A replay is a text. People learn structure from it, and people who cannot play remain part of a common object. The positive case for spectating is social and technical. It becomes indefensible only when it is offered as a full substitute for moving. Keep the two claims apart and the essay can praise a broadcast without pretending a sofa is a training session.

Against

4 arguments
  1. 1

    School sport that selects in public spends the subject on the children who need it least. The squad receives the coach, the pitch and the identity. The others receive a reason to avoid the changing room. The critical case is about allocation of periods, not about whether games are virtuous. A school that boasts of fixtures and cannot say what the non-squad do on Thursday afternoon has answered the question. The harm is on the timetable.

  2. 2

    Role-model talk is a sponsorship format. It asks children to copy a life they cannot see and would not want: the diet, the press, the temper, the entourage. A medal does not certify kindness. When private harm is documented, continuing to put the face on a classroom wall teaches that performance cancels conduct. The argument against athlete-worship is an argument about what a school is willing to pretend. Clubs and sponsors have a commercial reason to pretend. Teachers do not.

  3. 3

    Host cities are left with bowls and debts because the design brief is the final, not the following March. A club with a small gate cannot heat a 60,000-seat ground on moral grounds. The sceptical account of mega-events follows the maintenance line and the hotel prices, not the opening speech. If the railway was needed anyway, say so and support that project. If the legacy is a venue in search of a tenant, the advantage was a month of trade for the sponsors and a generation of costs for the residents.

  4. 4

    Selling the best player tells the crowd that the club is a trading desk. Survival may require the sale. The effect on supporters is still a broken reason to buy the ticket. Children learn not to attach. The argument against the pattern is not that accountants are villains. It is that a sport which talks about community and operates as a market in people will be believed on the operation, not on the talk. Empty seats in August are a rational reading of August’s business.

15 phrases for these ideas

Vocabulary in context

PhraseIn a sentence
a fixtureA fixture at the end of the month gave the drill a consequence, and the score was wiped so the fixture did not become a ranking.
a squadThe squad took the pitch after the beep test, and the rest of the year group lost the period.
a public rankingA public ranking in September taught the pupils who missed the cut that the subject had finished with them.
a role modelA role model of method was available in the description of an ordinary Tuesday. A role model of character was not on offer.
a sponsored posterThe sponsored poster asked the class to be like the player. The lesson on positioning did not.
a host cityThe host city inherited an electrified line and a ground its club could not fill in November.
a legacy venueThe legacy venue needed floodlights the local gate receipts could not pay for.
a gateThe average gate was under 12,000 in a ground built for a final, so most of the seats were a maintenance problem.
a transfer feeThe transfer fee cleared the arrears on the training-ground lease and the wages of the players who stayed.
a season ticketHe did not renew the season ticket after a second captain was sold before the August fixtures.
a training sessionThe training session was the part worth showing to pupils. The victory speech was not.
a leisure centreThe leisure centre cut the five-a-side on the same evening the pub showed two live matches.
a part-time jobA part-time job until half past seven made the club’s start time a reason to quit, not a detail.
kitKit lent at the door removed a cost that had quietly selected who could attend.
a volunteerA volunteer to put the nets up disappeared when the hour moved from the pitch to the broadcast.

Marked in red pen

A teaching paragraph

One paragraph written to the question below. It shows how a point, an explanation and an example can sit in the same paragraph. It is not an essay.

The question

Some people think competitive sport in schools does more harm than good. To what extent do you agree or disagree?

A score is not the harm. A beep test in front of a year group is. When every pupil plays the same number of minutes and the league resets each week, a child learns to lose a point and stay in the drill, and a pupil who struggles in the classroom has a period where practice shows. When thirty children watch the trial and fifteen inherit the pitch for the rest of the year, the others learn that sport is a verdict on their bodies. I would keep the fixture and ban the public cull. Schools that abolish the game to avoid the humiliation have deleted the useful half and left the changing-room memory untouched.

Why this works

The extent of agreement is stated as a distinction between two school practices, not as a tribute to sport. On the criteria, Task Response is served because an agree-or-disagree prompt receives a limited position and two reasons that match it, and Coherence is served because the second half answers the first by changing one feature — who is watched, and what they inherit — rather than starting a new essay about professional clubs.

Questions about sport

No. You have to be interested in the arrangement: who is picked, who pays for the empty seats, why a fee changes a supporter’s ticket. If you do not follow a league, do not invent one. A school pitch and a ground that is too big are enough scenery.

Hosting asks for an advantage and a disadvantage of one decision a city makes. A railway dated by a ceremony is an advantage only if the city needed the railway. A bowl nobody can fill is a disadvantage even if the fortnight felt exciting. Weigh those. Do not spend the essay on whether exercise is healthy.

A time, a price, a number of seats you are using as an illustration of scale rather than as a fake statistic from a named Games, a bus that no longer runs, a season ticket that was not renewed. Avoid medal counts you are unsure of. The marker cannot reward a precise error.

Not if you want the essay to fit. Each question on this page asks for a different job. A stored opening about unity will not introduce a transfer fee or a school trial. These are practice questions. Build the opening from the instruction in front of you.

Write the essay on the question you chose

Aim for Band 7+. Treat the Grade Report as practice.

Task 2 checker