It is suggested that primary school children should learn how to grow vegetables and keep animals. Do the advantages outweigh the disadvantages?
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Sample Response
In the age of technological dominance, some people, quite interestingly, propose a traditional teaching approachretro teaching style for primary children: teaching them to grow vegetables and care for animalsinstructing them on vegetable and animal caring.
From my perspective, despitealbeit some obvious advantages, these advantages will be eclipsedthey will be eclipsed by this educational method's considerable disadvantages.
On the bright side, lessons on growing vegetables and caring for animalslessons on vegetable and animal caring can bring certain benefits to primary students. The first reasonrationale is that this educational approach effectively teaches
them about essential life skills for self-sufficiency. Growing vegetables and raising animals are practical skills that can benefit students throughout their livesaccompany students throughout their life. Therefore, should
they learn these skills at a young age, self-sufficiency will be easier to achievewill become a simpler task for primary students inupon adulthood. Furthermore, learning these skills instils a sense of
responsibility among primary pupils. Taking care of vegetables and animals requires substantial agricultural knowledge and efforttremendous agriculture-related knowledge and efforts, which demand a genuine sense of responsibility from the person caring for themwhich can be done by a genuine sense of responsibility from the grower. Therefore, through this learning processupon the learning process, schoolchildren will be moulded intoin conscientious citizens for societyfor the society who readily take responsibility for their actionstake accountability for their works.
On the flip side, however, these merits will be significantly outweighed by the demerits, one of which is the hurdle in facility method provisions for this teaching Agriculture-related skills call for actual live animals and fertile land areas in order for students to truly understand what is entailed in the process of vegetable and animal caring. This poses a serious challenge for most primary schoolsan arduous predicament to most primary schools, especially in urban areas because such facilitiesthe above facilities are difficult to establish in city settings. What is an even more glaring drawback is the dubious application of these farming skills in real life. As the world progresses towards athe technology-driven era, most students will adopt a more technology-focused career patha more technology-related career orientation, which makes these skills appear to be of little useappear to little avail for their future. Also, vegetables and livestock products are easily available; therefore, primary students will consider learning to grow vegetables and keeping animals are dundant task or even a distractor to their study.
In conclusion, although learning to grow vegetables and keep animals may seem a novel idea with certain benefits, its drawbacks are so considerable that it is worth a second thought. Therefore, these skills should only be optional at primary schools since students' long-term personal development is still given precedence.
Why this response received Band 6.5
The response has a clear comparative position and develops both benefits and drawbacks through a logical discussion. Its main weakness is the repeated use of strained collocations and grammatically unstable sentences, especially in the disadvantages paragraph, which sometimes blurs otherwise relevant ideas. The highest priority is to express each argument in simpler, accurately controlled language and support the key drawbacks with more concrete explanation.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Response
The response answers the comparative question clearly and develops relevant benefits and drawbacks, though some claims remain general or questionable.
Support the decisive disadvantages with specific, credible consequences and explain more precisely why they outweigh the benefits.
Coherence and Cohesion
Ideas progress logically through a clear advantages-versus-disadvantages structure, but awkward paragraph breaks and heavy linking reduce fluency.
Keep each body paragraph intact and use fewer overt signposts so connections emerge more naturally from the reasoning.
Lexical Resource
The response shows a broad vocabulary, but frequent inaccurate collocations and word choices make several statements sound strained.
Prioritise natural combinations such as caring for animals, providing facilities, and becoming conscientious citizens over unnecessarily elaborate wording.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
A range of complex structures is attempted, but recurring agreement, clause-control, article, and sentence-boundary errors weaken accuracy.
Use shorter complex sentences and check that every clause has a clear subject, verb, and logical grammatical connection.