In many countries, children are engaged in some kind of paid work. Some people regard this as completely wrong, while others consider it as valuable work experience, important for learning and taking responsibility. What are your opinions on this?
Sample Response
In the past few years, life has become really tough for many people and because of the ever increasing living expenses some people send their children to workearn to lessen the load. In some cases, children of fatherless families have no other choice but to start working for a living and supportsupporting the family.
In fact, children going to work has become a very common issue that has been discussed by many human rights organisations. In my opinion, young childrenthe young children must be brought up to be responsible and be able to face the difficulties of life and hence they should start working from an early agethey should start working from the early ages. I strongly recommend the practice of children workingtradition of working for children who do not intendwho are not intending to attend academic institutionsparticipate in academic institutions, those who want to work in trade and business, carpentry, blacksmithing or any other craft-related jobs. It's very useful to be engaged in paid work from anthe early age as it would increase the skillsskill and experience they need to run a successful business. Imagine that a young child whose parents want him to the run the family business as a blacksmith and send him to school to have a good education, and can’t support the expense, would actually do more harm than good to the children. Eventually, he would become more frustrated and won’t be able to run the business as well as he shouldthe way he should have been. So why go to school and university if your parents can’t afford it? In my viewbelief, it's less expensive and more effective to learn these craftsthis craft works from athe young age through practical learning and workby going to learn and work practically, and that, of course, will give him valuable experience. On the other hand, working from anthe early age teaches people to become more responsible and practical. We might go against the idea of child labour in first world country but the situation in a developing country isthe scenarios in a third world country are completely different. In those countries, there are thousands of families where children are the primary earnersearner. The country can’t ensure the education and living of these families and hence they do not have the right to abolish the early childhood working trends. In conclusion, I am not with the idea of children's work in all the circumstances, but in certain situations as I have illustrated. If the child is looking forward to having a good profession in a large organisation, I don't think that starting work earlygoing to early work is a good idea.
Why this response received Band 6.5
The response presents a clear, nuanced opinion that paid work can be valuable in particular vocational or economic circumstances, and it offers substantial supporting explanation. Its main limitation is uneven organisation and imprecise language, especially in the long central paragraph and the blacksmith example. The highest-priority improvement is to divide the argument into focused paragraphs and express the conditions for acceptable child work more accurately.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Response
The writer answers the question with a qualified position and develops relevant vocational and economic reasons, though some reasoning is overstated.
Define appropriate ages and safeguards, and examine the risks of paid work so the qualified position is more convincingly supported.
Coherence and Cohesion
The ideas generally follow a logical path, but almost the entire argument and conclusion appear in one oversized paragraph with some inaccurate linking.
Create separate paragraphs for vocational experience, economic necessity, and limitations, using each linker only for its exact relationship.
Lexical Resource
There is enough vocabulary to discuss work, education, and responsibility, but frequent awkward collocations and word-form choices reduce precision.
Use natural phrases such as at an early age, vocational training, develop skills, and enter employment consistently.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
The response shows a range of sentence forms, but recurring article, agreement, preposition, and clause-control errors weaken accuracy.
Rewrite overloaded sentences, particularly the blacksmith example, into shorter clauses with clear subjects and correct verb patterns.
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IELTS Writing Task 2
In many countries, children are engaged in some kind of paid work. Some people regard this as completely wrong, while others consider it as valuable work experience, important for learning and taking responsibility. What are your opinions on this?
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.