You should spend about 40 minutes on this task.

In future nobody will buy printed newspapers or books because they will be able to read everything they want online without paying.

To what extent do you agree or disagree with this statement?

Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge and experience.  Write at least 250 words. 

MODEL ANSWER:

It is argued that with the increasing popularity of e-reading, reading printed media like books and newspapers would become obsolete. Although I too assume that e-reading will overshadow traditional reading, I cannot completely agree the latter would disappear from the society.

The primary reason why I think newspaper and book reading would get faded off is because of the fact that the print media is not as fast as the online media. For example, a person can get the latest updates within a fraction of second of its online posting on his smartphones rather than waiting for a day’s morning. Free access to read would be another advantage of online reading over traditional reading in future. On the other hand, the expense of raw materials for printing is anticipated to rise further, and this would make traditional reading more expensive.

In addition to the aforementioned advantages of online reading over the traditional reading, I can point at the safe and bulk storage of data in digital form. To be precise, everything what is currently printed is going to get transformed to digital data because it can be stored and retrieved easily when compared to printed books. For example, technology has already given the common man enough space to store the entire books of a local library. He can also sort these materials within seconds by entering key words on the computer’s search engine.

I admit that there are a sizeable proportion of people who still read printed versions, and I feel it might be because of their personal preferences and convenience. However, one needs to admit that this population is shrinking in size.

To conclude, albeit it is clear that the online reading is going to overshadow the traditional reading, there will be some who still need to access print media like newspapers in future.