You should spend about 40 minutes on this task.
Over the past 50 years, young people have gained status and power but old people have lost. What is the cause and is it a good development or bad development? What is your viewpoint on this?
You should use your own ideas, knowledge and experience and support your arguments with examples and relevant evidence.
You should write at least 250 words.
Sample Answer 1
The knowledge-based society witnessed significant changes over the past decades. Many young people have taken the place of the old ones and gained political and financial power worldwide. Bill Gates, the director of Microsoft, Tony Blaire, Prime Minister of Britain, and Bush, President of the USA, give us a vivid illustration. From my point of view, the trend is natural and inevitable.
Young people are energetic and vigorous. Most of them have received formal education in university, where they acquired abundant knowledge and experience, which are essential to their future career. Compared with young people, old people’s knowledge is outdated, which does not fit in with the development of the current society. Old people react more slowly than young people, who can always make quick judgments and prompt decisions. Furthermore, young people are more open-minded than old people, who tend to conserve. Therefore, young people can adapt themselves to the changeable world more easily.
This trend brings about both advantages and disadvantages. On the one hand, young leaders and powers can inject vigor and new hopes into the world, which not only benefits the development of the global economy but also establishes multilateral relations among the countries in the world. On the other hand, young people still lack adequate experience and skills to deal with complex national problems and international relations. As a result, many young leaders are often criticized for the lack of tactics for old people. Some young people are very radical when faced with trouble. They still have a lot of things to learn.
Generally, old people should offer young guys opportunities to practice their abilities and talents. At the same time, young people should learn from old ones modestly and make themselves more admirable.
Sample Answer 2
After the end of the Cold War and the starting of modern society, many situations around our society have rapidly changed. With the collapse of the traditional society, the young have obtained rich power and high status. In contrast, the old have lost their properties, especially in intangibles. I will explain why this circumstance happened and the effects of these results.
To begin with, the advent of modern technology in our society has turned social environments from mass production into information or computerized. The gap in technological knowledge has widened more between the old and the young. According to a recent survey conducted by Korean Technology Association, illiteracies of computers under thirty-five years old are only 14 percent, but those over forty years old are over 70 percent. This considerable gap in the ability to use modern technology has influenced gaining status and power in modern society.
Moreover, this trend that the status of old generations is getting lower made them lose their courage to improve their conditions and passion for life with enthusiasm. Therefore the position of the aged groups has continuously fallen, and jobs that they can be hired are generally decreased, which has affected less productivity of society. Worse, the cost of supporting old people to their sons and daughters has risen.
In conclusion, the old still has an essential role in many aspects of modern society, particularly in their expert experiences that they have gone long through. However, the treatment of young people toward our old generations is not enough on comparison with the efforts that the old have attained a prosperous present. To reduce the gap between these two groups, our government should provide training skill programs for the old and increase their jobs and social positions.