Today, the majority of children are raised by their grandparents due to the fact that their parents are busy working. To what extent do you think it affects the whole family?
Sample Response
In the past, one of the parents, usually the motherusually mother, stayedstay at home to look afterfor looking after their children. However, as career-focused lifestyles became more commonwith the increase in the career-oriented lifestyle, children had to stay with their grandparents. I believe that this arrangement has more negative effects than positive ones. In this essay, the manner in which the parent-child relationshipparent-child relationship and the health of the young people is affected will be analysed.
To begin with, children spending most of their timespending maximum time with their grandparents can damage their relationship with their parentscan afflict the relationship with their parent. A good illustration for this are the young people for various countries, particularly, India is being looked after by their grandparents while parents continue to focus on their career. Because of this, they do not have enough time to know their parents and fail to develop the loving bondbond of love with them. The negative implications of the childrenpupils cared for byhave been taken care by their grandparents are thus clear.
Most of the timetimes, children lose their grandparents when they are growing upthere are growing and thishence can result in health problemsthe health problems. The reason for believing this is that losing their grandparentsthey loose their grandparents can make them feel lonely and they can find it difficult to connect with their parents. As a result, they can experience mental health issuesface the issues related to mental health such as depression at anthe early age. Thus, the link between the degradation of young children's health and the close relationshiprelation with their grandparents is clear.
From the above discussion, it is difficult to denydebunk that the bonding and the fitness of the child could be hampered if they have to spend an inordinate amount of timespend an inordinate time with ageing grandparents. Therefore, it is expected that parents will prefer to stay with their child in the foreseeable future.
Why this response received Band 5.5
The response presents a clear negative view and organises the discussion around weakened parent-child bonds and possible mental-health effects. Its main limitation is that it considers the effects on children and parents only narrowly, while the second argument is speculative and insufficiently supported; frequent language errors also blur several points. Address the wider family more directly and develop each effect through a plausible causal explanation and specific evidence.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Response
The response maintains a clear negative position and presents two relevant effects, but family-wide coverage and support are limited.
Explain distinct effects on children, parents, and grandparents, using plausible causes and specific examples for each.
Coherence and Cohesion
The four-paragraph structure gives the response a generally clear progression, although some links are mechanical and the second body argument is not fully coherent.
Use a clear topic sentence and a step-by-step causal chain in each body paragraph instead of formulaic closing statements.
Lexical Resource
There is enough topic vocabulary to discuss relationships and health, but frequent inaccurate choices and collocations reduce precision.
Use natural expressions for childcare, parent-child bonds, bereavement, and mental health, and check confusing verb choices.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
A range of sentence forms is attempted, but frequent errors in agreement, clauses, articles, pronouns, and verb forms are noticeable.
Prioritise complete clause structure and check subject-verb agreement and pronoun reference in every sentence.
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IELTS Writing Task 2
Today, the majority of children are raised by their grandparents due to the fact that their parents are busy working. To what extent do you think it affects the whole family?
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.