Cambridge 11- GENERAL Test 4
Some people say that it is possible to tell a lot about a person's culture and character from their choice of clothes.
Do you agree or disagree?
This is an ‘agree/disagree’ task with a claim at its center. The claim focuses on the choice of clothes as a POSSIBLE way to tell A LOT about two things: personality and culture.
Note that ‘To what extent do you agree or disagree?’ tasks are somewhat different. We might need other strategies to approach them.
In 'agree/disagree' tasks, a straightforward strategy is to view the given claim from two perspectives, like this:
1) Why is it possible to tell a lot about a person's culture and character from their choice of clothes?
2) Why is it NOT possible to tell a lot about a person's culture and character from their choice of clothes?
We can finally offer our own perspective based on our answers to questions 1 and 2 at the end of the essay. This strategy might seem familiar because it is similar to a discussion task.
In the first body paragraph, we can say that clothes can tell us A LOT about culture and personality because our environment and internal drives impact us. We wear clothes our parents, grandparents, or ancestors wore—as do Hispanic people, Arabs, and Kurds. We also choose things that we find appealing and avoid anything that looks displeasing. That is why, based on our personality, we might select designer clothing, pink T-shirts, or suits.
We can then argue that globalization has greatly reduced our diversity in clothing—the evidence is all around us. We wear the same clothing items all over the world, making it much harder to recognize an individual’s cultural identity. We are also heavily influenced by the fashion industry, social media, and celebrities, causing our choices to reflect our tendency to imitate others rather than our personalities.
Based on this analysis, we can finally draw conclusions. For instance, we might say that it may be possible to tell A LITTLE about people’s personalities and cultures, especially on certain occasions such as festivals or when we know the person quite well. But clothing, in general, might no longer be a reliable predictor of people’s traditions and identity, as we live in a world where homogeneity is rising and diversity seems to be declining (Basically, we are saying that we disagree with the claim in the task. It is not possible to tell A LOT about a person's personality and culture based on their choice of clothes).
Note that we can draw any conclusions that we want. We just need to support our position with logical reasoning from our analyses in body paragraphs 1 and 2.
