Children brought up in families with less money are better prepared for life than those from wealthy families. To what extent do you agree or disagree?
Sample Response
Money plays a pivotal role in people's social and family life, and it influences the way a child grows up and prepares to meet future challenges. Usually, rich families compensate better life for their children, but some people argue that children who are brought up in less wealthy families are often better prepared to face difficulties in life. However, I strongly believe that children from affluent families get better opportunities and better prepared for future challenges. On the one hand, many believe that families with less money prepare their children more realistically. Those children admittedly learn to face obstacles in their childhood that gives them an advantage when they grow up. They also learn to appreciate the value of money, savings, time and hard work, and the importance of family tie. They are not pampered for everything they want or need, rather they need to earn them through hard work. Therefore they automatically prepare for setting a target in life and make plans for pursuing them. On the other hand, children from wealthier families are sometimes a little behind in terms of learning many important lessons in childhood when compared with the mindset of their counterparts. However, they have all the facilities they need for their education and future career. For instance, they are well adorned to go to the best schools, have the best teachers to teach them, money and connections to start a business or join a job, and affluent family to support them whenever needed. Furthermore, those families build the foundation for their children to begin their life- a much-needed push to have a better career. These rich children eventually learn the most important aspects of life, maybe a little later than the poor children, but they have far greater facilities that ultimately give them advantages in life. To conclude, money and education build a better future life. Because of that, wealthier children have a much better and flexible life than poor children. Therefore, I believe children from wealthy families get a competitive advantage over children from poor families in terms of education and preparation for the future.
IELTS Writing Correction
- 1. Fix the verb phrase Original: compensate better life for their children Suggested revision: provide a better life for their children Why it matters: Provide a better life is the natural collocation for the intended meaning.
- 2. Add the missing verb Original: get better opportunities and better prepared Suggested revision: get better opportunities and are better prepared Why it matters: The second coordinated complement requires the verb are.
- 3. Clarify the preparation Original: prepare their children more realistically Suggested revision: prepare their children more effectively for reality Why it matters: The replacement makes the object of the preparation explicit.
- 4. Fix relative-clause agreement Original: obstacles in their childhood that gives Suggested revision: obstacles in childhood that give Why it matters: The plural antecedent obstacles requires the verb give.
- 5. Use the general plural Original: tie Suggested revision: ties Why it matters: The plural form is needed when referring generally to family relationships.
- 6. Use the intended expression Original: pampered for everything Suggested revision: given everything Why it matters: Pampered for is not a natural construction for receiving desired items.
- 7. Fix the clause boundary Original: rather they need Suggested revision: ; rather, they need Why it matters: A semicolon and comma correctly connect the contrasting independent clauses.
- 8. Clarify the pronoun reference Original: earn them through hard work Suggested revision: earn what they want through hard work Why it matters: The pronoun them does not clearly refer to the preceding wants or needs.
- 9. Fix verb complementation Original: prepare for setting a target in life Suggested revision: prepare to set goals in life Why it matters: Prepare to followed by a base verb is the natural structure here.
- 10. Use the infinitive form Original: make plans for pursuing them Suggested revision: make plans to pursue them Why it matters: Plan to pursue is the natural verb pattern.
- 11. Use concise wording Original: a little behind in terms of learning Suggested revision: slower to learn Why it matters: The replacement states the comparison more directly.
- 12. Compare equivalent groups Original: when compared with the mindset of their counterparts Suggested revision: than their less wealthy counterparts Why it matters: Children must be compared with other children rather than with their counterparts’ mindset.
Suggested Rewrites
- compensate better life for their children provide a better life for their children
- get better opportunities and better prepared get better opportunities and are better prepared
- prepare their children more realistically prepare their children more effectively for reality
- obstacles in their childhood that gives obstacles in childhood that give
- tie ties
- pampered for everything given everything
Why this response received Band 6.5
The response presents a clear disagreement and usefully compares the resilience learned in poorer families with the educational and financial advantages available to wealthier children. Its main weaknesses are the one-block organisation and several overgeneralised or awkwardly expressed claims, which make the comparison less precise. The highest priority is to define what being prepared for life means and evaluate both forms of preparation against that definition in clearly separated paragraphs.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Response
The essay addresses the claim directly, recognises advantages on both sides, and consistently concludes that wealthy children are better prepared, though the comparison rests on broad generalisations.
Define preparation through specific dimensions such as resilience, education, and independence, then explain why the wealthy-family advantages ultimately carry greater weight.
Coherence and Cohesion
The argument follows a recognisable contrast from poorer to wealthier families and reaches a consistent conclusion, but presenting the full essay as one paragraph obscures its major stages.
Separate the introduction, each side of the comparison, and the conclusion into distinct paragraphs, using one clear topic sentence for each body section.
Lexical Resource
The response uses a reasonably varied range for wealth, education, and life skills, but inaccurate collocations such as "compensate better life," "well adorned," and "join a job" reduce naturalness.
Prefer precise combinations such as "provide a better life," "well equipped," and "secure employment," and reduce repeated references to rich and poor children.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
A range of complex forms is attempted and the meaning remains clear, but agreement, article, pronoun-reference, and sentence-boundary errors recur throughout.
Check subject-verb agreement and reference carefully, for example "children ... are better prepared," "obstacles ... give them," and singular "a family" with appropriate pronouns.
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IELTS Writing Task 2
Children brought up in families with less money are better prepared for life than those from wealthy families. To what extent do you agree or disagree?
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.