Advantage/Disadvantage

Writing styles ∞ Descriptive ∞ Opinion-based ∞ Creative ∞ Email communication

In advantage/disadvantage (مزايا وعيوب) style essays, you will need to consider:

The pros and cons (of something)
The costs and benefits (of something)
The negative and/or positive effects (of something)

Remember, the task is not the same as the subject area.

The following exam prompt, suggested structure and sample answer is targeted to those whose level of English is pre-intermediate:

Subject area = Environment/Transportation/Culture
Statement reworded = “The number of people traveling overseas for their holidays is increasing”
Opinion sentence = “Overall, I think international tourism has more advantages than disadvantages.”

The Introduction paragraph
Good introductions need to have three parts. This means they must have three or more sentences:

1.	General background information (on the subject)
2.	An opinion sentence (where you state your opinion on the specific subject of the prompt)
3.	Thesis statement (where you tell the reader what you are going to write about)
e.g.	These days, because of modern technology such as the internet and airlines more and more people are traveling overseas for their holidays. On balance, I think that international tourism has more benefits compared to costs. In this essay I will focus on a key advantage, it is positive for the economy, and a major disadvantage, it is negative for the economy.

The Body paragraphs
In advantage/disadvantage style opinion-based essays, you will need to focus on the advantages and/or disadvantages that result from the subject. For each advantage/disadvantage you write about, you will need a separate paragraph. Each body paragraph must have at least three parts (and therefore have three or more sentences):

1.	Topic sentence (summarise the advantage/disadvantage you will write about in this paragraph)
2.	Explanation; explain the advantage/disadvantage and give more details about it
3.	Example; provide one or more examples to illustrate the advantage/disadvantage
e.g.	Firstly I will discuss the main advantage of international tourism, it benefits the economy of the countries where tourists visit. I will explain, when tourists visit a foreign country, they stay in hotels and eat in restaurants and buy lots of things. This gives the country money and also creates jobs. For instance, many Egyptian people work in hotels and sell things to tourists, they would not have these jobs if tourists did not travel to Egypt.
	Now I will look at the main negative effect of international tourism. The disadvantage of this is for the environment. When people visit other countries they often go on airplanes and this leads to pollution and global warming. For example, these days millions of people travel by plane to another country. In the past people traveled by bus or train.

The Conclusion paragraph
The conclusion paragraph needs to summarise the subject of the essay, your opinion and, the the advantages/disadvantages you chose to write about. It also needs to provide some recommendations/suggestions. Therefore, it must have three (or more) sentences:

1.	Summarise what the essay was about
2.	Re-state your opinion and summarise the advantages/disadvantages you discussed (past tense)
3.	Provide some suggestions that are related to the subject/your opinion
e.g.	To sum up. this essay focused on the subject of wthe growing numbers of tourists travelling around the world. I think that overall there are more advantages of this compared to the disadvantages. I wrote about two effect of this, one advantage it benefits the economy and one disadvantage, it can be harmful for the environment. Therefore, I suggest that families continue to travel overseas, but not too many times each year, this will reduce the amount of pollution from airplanes.