Advertising campaigns on TV that are targeted at children should be banned. To what extent to you agree or disagree with this opinion?
Sample Response
We live in a world which is full of advertisingadvertisement and these adverts are consciously and subconsciously shaping our purchasing habits. Adverts that target children, be it on TV, billboards or the internet, should be completely banned as their marketing strategies to target children are totally unethical and have detrimental effects on our young generation. In the first place, children are neither decision-makers nor mature enoughnot decision makers and not matured enough to distinguish high-quality products from low-grade onesdifferentiate quality products from low-grade ones. Adverts that are primarily intended for young peopleintended for young fail to comply with the fundamental normthe very fundamental norm of ethical advertising—to informadvertising - to inform people. For instance, many chocolate companies make advertisements to enticeallure children and their adverts have more fantasy than factfacts. Though they know that parents would be the potential purchaserspurchaser, they try to exploit children's emotionsuse the sentiments of children and their desires to pressure parents into buyingtrap parents to buy their products. Since itthis is quite obvious that advertisements made for children have an immoral and unacceptable objective, these adverts should not be shownallowed to be shown in the mass mediaon mass media. Furthermore, children these days watch TV more than ever before. This is why allowing fabricated and immoral adverts would expose them to a artificial worldpseudo-real world where they would be brainwashed. Childhood is a crucial period for psychological developmentthe most precious time for the proper psychological development and that is why adverts that target children are detrimental to their cognitive development. To conclude, all campaigns and adverts that target children have only one thing in commonone thing common —to mislead the young- mislead the young, enticeallure them and force their parents to purchase products that they otherwise would not have purchased. Those unethical and heinous advertisementsadvertisement must be prohibited on TV by all means.
Why this response received Band 6.5
The essay takes an unequivocal position and supports it with a relevant example of child-targeted chocolate advertising, explaining both manipulation of purchasing decisions and possible developmental harm. Its main limitation is language control: repeated overstatement and several awkward word choices and grammatical forms reduce the authority of the argument, while no paragraph breaks are used. The priority is to organise the two reasons separately and express claims in more precise, measured language.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Response
A clear position is maintained and supported with relevant reasons about manipulation and cognitive development, although some claims are overstated or insufficiently evidenced.
Explain the developmental harm more specifically and distinguish why a complete ban is preferable to strict regulation.
Coherence and Cohesion
The argument progresses logically from children's limited judgment to manipulation and developmental harm, but the one-block presentation weakens organisation.
Separate the introduction, consumer manipulation, psychological effects, and conclusion into focused paragraphs with distinct topic sentences.
Lexical Resource
Vocabulary is sufficiently varied for advertising and child development, though several choices are unnatural, emotive, or imprecise.
Use measured phrases such as 'persuade children', 'influence parents', and 'misleading advertising' instead of 'allure', 'trap', and 'heinous'.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
A range of complex sentences is attempted with reasonable control, but article, agreement, parallelism, and noun-form errors recur.
Correct forms such as 'advertisements', 'mature enough', and 'one thing in common', and keep list structures grammatically parallel.
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IELTS Writing Task 2
Advertising campaigns on TV that are targeted at children should be banned. To what extent to you agree or disagree with this opinion?
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.