IELTS Writing Task 2: Society - Agree / Disagree Sample Answer

The accelerating disappearance of minority languages represents the permanent loss of irreplaceable intellectual and cultural heritage. I strongly agree that governments have a responsibility to invest in language preservation, both for the communities affected and for humanity as a whole.

Languages are not merely communication tools - they encode distinctive ways of categorising experience, understanding natural systems, and expressing cultural identity. When a language dies, these perspectives disappear irreversibly. Welsh and Hawaiian, both near extinction within living memory, demonstrate that revitalisation is possible when governments commit sustained resources: Welsh now has over 800,000 speakers partly due to compulsory Welsh-medium schooling in Wales, and Hawaiian immersion programmes have produced a generation of fluent young speakers for the first time in decades. These cases show that the cost of preservation is finite and achievable, while the cost of failure is permanent.

Critics argue that government resources are more urgently needed for healthcare, infrastructure, or poverty reduction, and that people should be free to choose which languages they teach their children without state intervention. These objections have merit in principle but underestimate the asymmetry involved: dominant languages need no subsidy to survive, while minority languages face extinction precisely because they cannot compete commercially. Without deliberate support, the market alone will always favour larger languages. Preservation does not require forcing anyone to abandon a dominant language - it requires creating conditions in which communities can choose to maintain theirs.

In conclusion, governments should treat minority language preservation as an investment in cultural diversity that, once lost, cannot be recovered. The practical costs are manageable; the consequences of inaction are not.