Many people find it difficult to balance their responsibilities at home and in the workplace. What, in your opinion, is the reason for this? How can this be balanced?
Sample Response
One of the most conspicuous trends in the 21st century is the difficulty of keeping a life-work balance. Some people find it hard to manage their time to be successful and fully responsible at their workplace and at the same time spend quality time with their families. This is certainly a problem faced by many. There is no doubt that in the highly competitive business environment, it is extremely difficult not to be competitive at work. Many workers are trying to survive and be successful and this forces them to spend more than eight hours per day at work. For example, an accountant not only uses to manage his responsibilities and duties but also does additional work. To manage that it is possible to limit employee’s responsibilities or share them with others. The next point that needs to be taken into consideration is that people should manage their responsibilities at home like washing, cleaning, ironing and also, communicate with other family members. To be able to do so, they must manage to not be overtired from their responsibilities at work. In this case, they will be able to spend quality time with their families and maintain their responsibilities. The competition at a workplace, increased population and our demand to do best in every sector is the main reason we are not being able to balance in our professional and personal life. The decreased family bonding and less time for socialising are two main reasons for this heinous trend. To tackle this we need to spend more time with our family members and contribute to household works. More time should be reserved for the dear and near one than spending those times in electronic devices. The value of family bonding should be taught from the early childhood and the parents should make examples through their works to teach children the importance of family value. To sum up, there are a lot of people who cannot successfully manage their responsibilities and keep work-home balance. I highly recommend people to limit their responsibilities or share them among other people or organisations as well as plan a timetable of time spend at work and at home.
IELTS Writing Correction
- 1. Use standard expression Original: life-work balance Suggested revision: work-life balance Why it matters: Work-life balance is the standard English collocation.
- 2. Clarify workplace duties Original: to be successful and fully responsible at their workplace Suggested revision: to succeed and fulfil their responsibilities at work Why it matters: The replacement expresses success and responsibility with natural verb-noun combinations.
- 3. Use natural frequency Original: per Suggested revision: a Why it matters: A day is the more natural frequency expression in this context.
- 4. Clarify the reference Original: To manage that Suggested revision: To address this pressure Why it matters: The revised reference clearly links the proposed solution to excessive workplace demands.
- 5. Use plural possessive Original: employee’s responsibilities Suggested revision: employees’ responsibilities Why it matters: The plural possessive is needed because the statement refers to workers generally.
- 6. Use direct transition Original: The next point that needs to be taken into consideration is that Suggested revision: At home, Why it matters: The concise transition moves directly from workplace pressure to domestic responsibilities.
- 7. Introduce examples correctly Original: at home like washing Suggested revision: at home, such as washing Why it matters: Such as correctly introduces examples of household responsibilities.
- 8. Fix list coordination Original: and also, communicate Suggested revision: and communicate Why it matters: Removing the unnecessary adverb and comma restores parallel coordination in the list.
- 9. Use natural phrasing Original: manage to not be overtired from Suggested revision: avoid becoming overtired by Why it matters: The replacement expresses prevention and the cause of tiredness naturally.
- 10. Correct the collocation Original: maintain Suggested revision: meet Why it matters: Meet responsibilities is the standard collocation for fulfilling duties.
- 11. Correct workplace phrase Original: The competition at a workplace Suggested revision: Competition in the workplace Why it matters: In the workplace is the natural prepositional phrase for this general context.
- 12. Add possessive determiner Original: our demand to do best Suggested revision: our desire to do our best Why it matters: The fixed expression requires a possessive determiner before best.
Suggested Rewrites
- life-work balance work-life balance
- to be successful and fully responsible at their workplace to succeed and fulfil their responsibilities at work
- per a
- To manage that To address this pressure
- employee’s responsibilities employees’ responsibilities
- The next point that needs to be taken into consideration is that At home,
Why this response received Band 5.5
The response recognises workplace competition as a cause of poor work-home balance and proposes several relevant measures, including sharing duties, planning time, and contributing at home. Its main limitation is scattered development: causes, effects, and solutions are sometimes confused or repeated, while frequent language errors weaken precision. The highest priority is to organise one paragraph around clearly explained causes and another around practical, directly matched solutions.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Response
Both questions are addressed with relevant causes and solutions, but development is uneven and some effects are presented as causes.
Explain two principal causes in depth and pair each with a specific solution showing how balance would improve.
Coherence and Cohesion
A basic progression from workplace pressure to home responsibilities and solutions is visible, but one-block presentation and repetition weaken organisation.
Create distinct introduction, causes, solutions, and conclusion paragraphs, removing repeated references to family time and responsibilities.
Lexical Resource
The response has enough vocabulary for the topic and attempts some less common language, but frequent inaccurate collocations reduce clarity and naturalness.
Use natural phrases such as work-life balance, household chores, loved ones, set an example, and time spent on electronic devices.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
A mixture of sentence forms is attempted, but frequent errors in agreement, verb patterns, articles, and noun forms remain noticeable.
Check every subject-verb pair and use correct complements, especially force someone to work, be unable to balance, and spend time doing something.
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IELTS Writing Task 2
Many people find it difficult to balance their responsibilities at home and in the workplace. What, in your opinion, is the reason for this? How can this be balanced?
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.