Some people say that success is ‘10 percent talent and 90 percent hard work’.

Is hard work the key to success, or

is talent also important?
Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience.

Sample Answer 1:
When it comes to the issue of success, a myriad of perspectives has been put forth. Some stick to the idea that
hard work plays a key role in success whereas others are on the view that talent is an inseparable part of success.
I personally state that the viewpoint put forward by the first group is more logical. In the following paragraphs, I will
shed light on my reasons for this viewpoint.
The price of success is hard work. Perseverance gives rise to success. Individuals, who always succeed, try all
times and never give up. It does not matter how many times they fail, they do not give up and stop their attempt till
they reach their goal. They never call themselves failure! They really subscribe to the idea that the greatest
accomplishment is not in falling down but in rising again and again after falling hard which sets the stage for
success. With regard to the issue of gaining success, they really believe that winners never quit and quitters never
win.
On the other hand, just hard work without believing in ourselves and certain talents does not serve to achieve
success. What is in our mind and how positive we think prepares the ground for physical action and eventually
gives rise to hard work and gaining success. If we believe that we can achieve to whatever we want and we
remove the negative thoughts which serve as mental barriers, we certainly succeed in gaining our goals. Having
purpose is also important to work hard. If we know what we really want and why we need it clarifies our purpose
which has beneficial effects on hard working. So, besides being hard working person it is essential to be hard
planning person too.
In my view, I really concede that success is 10 percent talent and 90 percent hard work hard. Hard work and self-
disciplined perform a pivotal role in gaining success, having a purpose and believe in ourselves are also required
along with the hard work.
[ Written by - Zeini Zade, Elham ]
It's generally believed that some people are born with certain talents, for instance for music and sport, and
others are not. However, it's sometimes claimed that any child can be taught to become a good sports
person or musician.
Discuss both ideas by giving your opinion.
Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience.
Model Answer 1:
Many artists or football players claim that their talent is of genetic origin. They did not have to learn music or sport
to become that talented. Having said that, a growing number of people believe they any child can be the best chess
player or the fastest swimmer in the world as long as he receives the right teaching and proper direction. In this
essay, I will look at both sides of the argument and give my opinion.
First and foremost, many believe that any child can be a genius one. It is only about how much his parents are
paying attention to his needs and what do they do to develop these hobbies. For example, a psychology professor
agreed with his wife to raise their children as the books of development and psychology say, and now their
daughter is the second best chess player in the world.
In my view, it all starts from home when a mother tries to show her baby various options and different areas of play.
Therefore, he will identify the available components around him and try to discover his own interests. As the
children grow up, they need continuous support and encouragement to keep his certain hobby, such as music,
more developed. This will not happen without professional help to have the famous talented artist at the end. On
the contrary, there is a common belief that many celebrities are famous because they were born with specific
talents not because they were taught to practice these talents.
To sum up, I strongly believe that either born talented or not, any person can be whatever he wants only by the
continuous hard work and practice, not by genetics.
[ by Hooba Essayed ]
Sample Answer 2:
People have various opinions regarding what truly makes a person a good performer or a talented individual. Some
people contend that the talent is a natural gift, whilst others, including myself, have a different opinion since we
believe that any person can become an excellent achiever by guidance, dedication and hard work.
On the one hand, it is believed that some people are gifted and they naturally master musical instruments or sports
as if they had been taught for years. For instance, my son, who is a big fan of football, was admitted to a higher
level on his first training session because he could easily perform all the required skills of the previous levels. Had
he been trained earlier, he would have joined the club official team.. Therefore, it can be deduced that some people
are more talented than others.
On the other hand, it can be argued that some people have a passion for a certain leisure activity and it is
beneficial that educational institutions and family members exert effort to realize this. An example for this is a
questionnaire administered to an American elementary school where the results revealed that around 75% of the
students master playing different musical devices after rigorous training by their music teachers. Accordingly, it can
be argued that hobbies can be taught as well as being a natural talent.
Having manifested the aforementioned points of view and examples, it can be recapitulated that people can either
learn to play music or sports, or they can be naturally talented. However, in my humble opinion, both cases should
receive guided training, encouragement and an appropriate environment to perform efficiently. It is recommended
that the governments should invest more to add extra skills to the students apart from education.
The statement states the old discussion of the role of nature and nurture. The first group believes that the innate
capacities, inherited genes, or born talent play a key role in the professions like sports and performing arts such as
music. It’s true that there are people who born with certain talents can perform exceptionally well in their fields. It’s
also a general belief that musicians and artists are born with the ability of music and arts or sports.
The other groups of people have confidence in the learning. For them, any talent can be acquired be it a music or
sports and any person can achieve anything through hard work and determination. They believe that the man is an
architect of his own fate.
In my opinion, I support the second statement, though no one can rule out the role of natural talents. A person can
be born with good voice tone and quality but he cannot achieve harmony, scale and rhythm without learning. And
beyond one’s primitive ability, every innate talent is basic in nature and for its development, it requires
encouragement and teaching. The consistency and hard work can then make you perfect. The poets and writers,
though born with the talent, do not let out their work before making it perfect through several alterations. For
example, William Wordsworth, the famous poet, revised and amended his poem daffodils. As it is said, “draft while
drunk, but revise when sober.”
On the whole, innate abilities do provide an aptitude for art and sports but success and perfection require trial and
error method.
[ by - Amna Arshad ]
Model Answer 6:
People have differing opinions as to what makes a high achiever. Some believe that a person has got to possess
certain innate traits to become an excellent performer while the other school of thought is that anyone can become
an excellent performer if being taught in a right way. I tend to gravitate towards the latter school of thought.
Firstly, we have to admit that in certain realms in life, to achieve greatness, you have got to have the right genetics,
to illustrate; a shorter person will always be at a disadvantage against a taller person in basketball. Secondly, many
children display phenomenal qualities at sports and music that it wouldn’t be irrational to believe that they were
born with these characteristics, enabling them to excel in their chosen fields.
However, I strongly believe that talent is massively overhyped in our culture. If we examine the lives of top
performers in any field such as Tiger Woods in Golf or Mozart in music, we would realise that these people didn’t
have any inborn attributes that we normally associate with geniuses. What in fact happens is that such people
normally are exposed to the areas that they would grow up to excel in, later in their lives, from a very tender age.
There is indeed no such thing as a child prodigy which is evident from biographies of almost all of highly
recognised top performers. In addition, these people spend a painstaking amount of time perfecting their acts
whether be it symphonies or a particular kind of move in sports.
To conclude, in spite of the fact that most people believe that talent is inborn, I beg to differ with this notion and
believe that as long as the trait in question is not purely physical, like height, any child or person can become a top
performer in their chosen domain with enough time spent in practice.
[ by - Sameed ]

Model Answer 7:
'Talent' as defined by many scientists, is a gift and inherent ability that enables someone to be special than others
in a particular area, while many people believe in that others argue that talent could be achieved, learnt or could be
gained with practice. I agree that talent is a gift but could be strayed without continuous practice.
On one hand, the proof of that talent or being good in certain aspect is something came spontaneously as many
famous talented celebrities, whether they are a musician or professional sportsmen, never had any teaching or any
special teaching when they were young. Moreover, many of them were raised in a poor environment with very
limited resources, in contrast, there are many sports teams which had a huge budget for the best training facilities
and they are still losing whereby the team with low budget and even poor training sessions are winning! If talent
had nothing to do with our success, then rich students with better facilities would always have performed better
than the poor students who study all by themselves. If practice could have done everything, we would definitely
have many Einstein, Leonardo da Vinci, Newton, Pele and Shakespeare in every country. The reality is, they are
born with talents and their dedication makes them unique.
On the other side talent alone is not enough without practice and hard work. The talented persons need to
replenish his/her talent every now and then and try to improve it with practice and learning. The personality like
Leonardo da Vinci and Einstein have not achieved their success without sacrifice and hard work.
Many famous and talented singers and famous musicians make hours of daily certain voice exercise for their vocal
cords for maintaining the nice voice quality they have and get the maximum benefit of his talent for his community.
Furthermore, the government and community associations should contribute in discovering new talents and
promote it, facilitate the training for talented persons and sponsor them from their youngest age and make them
stars.
In conclusion, talents always play a key role in our success but self-development, commitments, hard work and
tender care are also required to maintain the inherent talent and through practice, we can make impossible into
possible.

[ by - Nehal Touski ]
Model Answer 8:
It is said that ‘nothing is impossible ' in this world. To make every impossible thing possible, lots of hard work,
sacrifice, determination, and good health are required. In an exception, some people confront to failure despite
performing their duties sincerely.
I believe that those unsuccessful people were deprived of inborn talent. Sometimes, it may happen that luck does
not favour them. For instance, a highly talented athlete who was preparing for competition breaks his leg. Provided
that he had not broken his leg, he would have at least won the bronze medal but luck did not favour him.
Furthermore, there was another athlete who never won any medal in his career despite his sincere endeavour. It
means that he was not gifted to become a professional athlete. So, it would better if he brings down the curtain as
an athlete.
On the contrary, there are some people in the world who fail to realise their interest. Certainly, one can have a
rewarding career if one's talent is deduced on time. Otherwise, life becomes far worse than expectations. Let's
imagine, what will happen if Pele had pursued his career other than football? Surely, other people might have been
filled up the shoe as 'a king of football'. But, this did not happen as football passionate Pele transformed gifted
talent into a reality. So, natural talent cannot be fostered unless one interests in it.
It is the obligation of parents and teacher to motivate, care and assist in making their children's future prosperous.
Otherwise, children have to lead the life beyond their acumen and capacity. Neither does it any good to children
themselves nor to the parents and the country if the natural talents of a particular field get spoiled.

In conclusion, one can learn whatever they are taught but to become the master of it, one should be born with the
talent for it.

[ Written by - Abhiyan basnet ]

Model Answer 9:
Each child in this world comes with a great potential and different children have different talents for various
activities. One child may have fantastic talents for sports and someone may have more potential to become a
mathematician, musician or an artist. It’s a quite interesting natural phenomenon that we face within the children.
To make the world more beautiful and enriched, we should nurture the different thoughts and different innate
abilities of children. In my opinion nature and nurture both have the equal role to play for a child to become a
successful professional.
To begin with, every child reflects his/her abilities at the infant stage and parents can decide their life path. Those
children come with natural talents and outshine others. For instance, a child shows more promising performance
among the siblings in mathematics even though all of them have got same care and environment. This proves that
people have inborn talents that we cannot deny. No doubt proper care and effective teaching method can hone
someone's performance but this is not always the case. If training and teaching would have been everything we
would certainly recreate great minds like Newton, Einstein, Mozart and Shakespeare every year.
From a neutral point of view, it depends on the brain capacity and also with the parent’s care. If the parents are
wiser and more talented, we can see their children become more talented. Sometimes it gives a broader outlook of
a child's life. They easily absorb the things what they learn from the school as well as from the society. Genetic
engineering also confirms that talented parents usually give birth of talented children. However, this does not
guarantee that a child of talented a successful parents will always be talented and successful. For this, an
outstanding amount of effort and dedication would be required both from the parents and the child.
On the contrary, most of the children do not have outstanding inborn talents. They might have some potentials but
that cannot be explored until they are engaged in a certain field. Without practice and commitment, many talented
individuals do not even explore their potential in their entire life. Thus practice, excellent teaching method and
dedication can bring out the best of a child and guide him for the rest of the life. Consequently, children become
more talented and experts only if they are engaged in a certain field. For an instance, well-known football player
Ronaldo had has his own talents, but he has improved this skill only by proper guidelines and practice.

To conclude, talent makes many people stand out of the crowd and helps to perform extraordinary things. However
proper care, environment and dedication are also required to create professionals with expertise and kill.

[ by - Dulanjana ]