Some parents buy their children a large number of toys to play with. What are the advantages and disadvantages for the child of having a large number of toys?
Sample Response
These days, a growing number of parents spend money purchasingspend money on purchasing a lot of toys for their children. Some do so because they want to make their children happy, while others believe that this supports their child's intellectual developmentit helps their child's intellectual development. Despite good intentions, this trend can have both advantages and drawbacks. The following paragraphs are going to discuss the benefits and drawbacks of children who have a large number of toyschildren having a large number of toys.
One of the major advantages of giving young children a wider range of toys lies in the intellectual benefits they offeris the intellectual benefits it offers. Good toys engage a child's senses, spark a child's imaginationspark their imaginations and encourage them to interact with others. For example, LEGOlego blocks can help preschoolers learn letters, numbers and language skills, while also developing their intellectual abilities. Many toys are made for children's educational and development purposes. For example, blocks, educational computer games, puzzles etc. and they ignite the creativity of children and let them find out their interests. Moreover, these toys can improve children's communication skillsit can improve their communication skill by encouraging them to use those toys with other childrenuse those playthings and play with other children. Communication plays an essential role in our liveslife and the toys can help them have playmates with whom they communicate a lot.
HoweverOn the contrary, children having too many playthings may experience some detrimental effectsbe affected by some detrimental effects. First, having too many toys can make children greedyit can make them greedy. For instance, many parents spoil their children by purchasing every toy the children want. This can give them thean impression that they can have anything they wish and their desire to own more toys grows over time. When children get every toy they want, they will not value most of the toys and lose interest easily. This will not offer them any benefits of playing with good toys. Furthermore, too many toys may fostergrow a conformist mentality in a child as their immature minds blindly follow other children's styles of play, activities and behaviourplaying styles, activities and characters. It may prevent a child from developingdoes not let a child develop his or her personality and character.
In conclusion, toys play an important role in helping a child's growth, but too many toys may negatively affect children's psychological developmentmay affect children's psychological development negatively. Therefore, parents should choose useful toys and purchase a reasonable number of toys that they feel are right for their children.
Why this response received Band 7.0
The essay addresses both sides directly and develops relevant ideas about learning, creativity, communication, greed, appreciation, and personal development. Its main limitation is that some claims are repetitive or only partly convincing, especially the link between many toys and a conformist mentality, while several grammatical and collocational errors reduce precision. The highest-priority improvement is to select the strongest advantage and disadvantage and support each with a clear, credible cause-and-effect example.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Response
Both advantages and disadvantages are substantially developed with relevant examples, although one or two claims are not fully convincing or clearly supported.
Explain more plausibly how toy abundance affects a child's behaviour, or replace the conformity point with a stronger disadvantage such as reduced concentration.
Coherence and Cohesion
The four-paragraph structure creates clear progression and each body paragraph has a distinct purpose, despite some repetitive development and imperfect sentence links.
Remove repeated discussion of intellectual benefits and use one complete example sentence rather than the fragment listing toys.
Lexical Resource
The essay uses a sufficient range for education, creativity, interaction, and psychology, but awkward collocations and repetition are noticeable.
Use natural expressions such as 'support development', 'discover their interests', 'develop communication skills', and 'foster a sense of entitlement'.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
A range of simple and complex structures communicates the ideas clearly, though agreement, pronoun reference, fragments, and singular-plural control are inconsistent.
Maintain plural reference to children and toys, and revise fragments such as the sentence beginning 'For example, blocks'.
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IELTS Writing Task 2
Some parents buy their children a large number of toys to play with. What are the advantages and disadvantages for the child of having a large number of toys?
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.