Schools should focus on academic success and passing examinations. Skills such as cookery, dressmaking and woodwork should not be taught at school as it is better to learn these from family and friends. To that extent do you agree or disagree?
Sample Response
It is believed that schools should prioritize academic education, leaving practical skills including cookery, dressmaking, and woodwork to be learned from family and friends. This essay strongly agrees with this suggestion for several reasons.
Undoubtedly, acquiring life skills such as cooking and woodworking can be invaluable for personal growth and self-reliance. These skills empower individuals to handle everyday challenges with confidence. However, incorporating such a diverse range of skills into the school curriculum presents significant challenges. Chief among these is that each student has unique interests and strengths, making it impractical to enforce compulsory courses for all. Instead, parents can play a pivotal role in identifying their children's inclinations and providing tailored opportunities for skill development.
Another compelling argument against integrating life skills into the school curriculum is the already overwhelming academic workload. Indeed, students are confronted with a multitude of subjects, encompassing the sciences, humanities, and more. Their educational journey entails acquiring knowledge across various fields, completing assignments, and preparing for examinations. The addition of skill-based courses could exacerbate the burden and lead to heightened stress levels. Furthermore, it may divert precious time and energy away from academic endeavors, potentially affecting students' academic performance.
In conclusion, I firmly believe that the acquisition of practical skills, such as cooking or woodworking, should be viewed as leisure activities that students can pursue at home rather than obligatory subjects within the school curriculum. By maintaining a focus on academic success, schools can better prepare students for a broader range of future opportunities.
IELTS Writing Correction
- 1. Name the viewpoint holder Original: It is believed that Suggested revision: Some people believe that Why it matters: Naming a general group makes the attribution clearer than the impersonal passive.
- 2. Set off the examples Original: practical skills including Suggested revision: practical skills, including Why it matters: A comma clearly marks the following list as supplementary examples.
- 3. State the view directly Original: This essay strongly agrees with this suggestion Suggested revision: I strongly agree with this view Why it matters: A person, rather than an essay, holds an opinion, and view is more precise here.
- 4. Use natural collocation Original: enforce compulsory courses for all Suggested revision: make such courses compulsory for all Why it matters: Make a course compulsory is more idiomatic than enforce a course.
- 5. Prefer direct wording Original: inclinations Suggested revision: interests Why it matters: Interests conveys the intended meaning more directly in an education context.
- 6. Temper the wording Original: overwhelming Suggested revision: heavy Why it matters: Heavy is the conventional adjective for workload and avoids an unnecessarily absolute description.
- 7. Use concise wording Original: confronted with a multitude of subjects Suggested revision: required to study many subjects Why it matters: The revision states the academic demand more directly and precisely.
- 8. Clarify the subject Original: educational journey entails acquiring Suggested revision: education requires them to acquire Why it matters: The revision supplies a clear human object for the actions that follow.
- 9. Use precise reference Original: exacerbate the burden Suggested revision: increase this burden Why it matters: This explicitly links the added courses to the workload burden just described.
- 10. Use neutral register Original: precious Suggested revision: valuable Why it matters: Valuable conveys importance in a more neutral academic register.
Suggested Rewrites
- It is believed that Some people believe that
- practical skills including practical skills, including
- This essay strongly agrees with this suggestion I strongly agree with this view
- enforce compulsory courses for all make such courses compulsory for all
- inclinations interests
- overwhelming heavy
Why this response received Band 8.0
The essay presents a clear, consistent position and organizes two well-developed reasons into a polished, easy-to-follow argument. Its main limitation is that parts of the discussion remain somewhat general, particularly the claim that families can provide suitable practical-skills training. The best next step is to test that assumption with a specific example or qualification, which would make the reasoning more convincing while preserving the response's strong control and concision.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Response
The response fully addresses the opinion task with a clear position and two relevant, well-developed supporting arguments.
Strengthen the family-learning argument with a concrete example or qualification showing when home instruction is realistically available.
Coherence and Cohesion
Ideas progress logically through well-focused paragraphs, and cohesive devices guide the reader without becoming intrusive.
Make the transition from acknowledging the value of practical skills to rejecting school provision even more explicit.
Lexical Resource
Vocabulary is wide, precise, and appropriately formal, with strong control of topic-specific and evaluative language.
Refine occasional broad wording such as leisure activities so it captures the practical value of the skills more precisely.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
A wide range of complex structures is used accurately and flexibly, with consistently clear sentence control.
Continue varying emphasis and sentence openings while preserving the same high level of grammatical accuracy.
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IELTS Writing Task 2
Schools should focus on academic success and passing examinations. Skills such as cookery, dressmaking and woodwork should not be taught at school as it is better to learn these from family and friends. To that extent do you agree or disagree?
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.