More and more students are choosing to study at colleges and universities in a foreign country. Do the benefits of studying abroad outweigh the drawbacks?
Sample Response
Nowadays, more students choose to study abroad than ever before. While there are clear benefits to studyinggood benefits in studying in a foreign country, I believe that the drawbacks outweigh the positive effects of this trendpositive impacts this trend has. On the one hand, there are many benefits of studying abroad. Firstly, overseas students become more independent by living alone in a foreign countryin foreign country. For instance, they are responsible for cleaning, cooking, and paying bills. Secondly, moving to other countries can broaden students’ horizons. They get exposed to different cultures and customs and gain knowledge about them. Also, overseas students learn foreign languages to adapt to the new culture in which they are immersedcope with the new culture they involved in. Finally, foreign institutions offer better courses for students.students.The qualificationsqualification gained open the door to better job opportunitiesopen the door to get better job opportunities with high salaries. On the other hand, I would argue that studying abroad has more negative effects than positive onesmore negative impacts than the positive one. One problem is that it can affect students psychologically. Studying alone in an unfamiliar culture can lead to homesickness or even depression. Also, this unfamiliardifferent culture may lead to culture shock which may affect students’ performancethe student’s performance. Another drawback of studying overseas is that students can experience some problems with paperwork such as visa permitspaperwork like visa permit and may struggle to find suitable accommodation and paypaying their bills. This may add more pressure on studentspressure on the students and disrupt their studiesinterrupt their studying. Furthermore, the language barrier may exacerbate the situation. Studying in a foreign language is a difficult task forto many students and if they failfailed to master the language and communication skillsskill, this may lead to isolation from the communitythe isolation from the community and might result in academic failuremight cause a failure in studying. In conclusion, the drawbacks of studying abroad outweigh the benefitsthe drawback of studying abroad outweighs the benefit and students need to assess this decision more carefullythis decision needs more assessment from the students.
Why this response received Band 6.0
The response maintains a clear judgement and develops a broad range of relevant benefits and drawbacks, with the psychological, administrative, and language difficulties receiving the strongest explanation. Its main weaknesses are the single-paragraph presentation and recurrent grammatical and collocational errors, while the comparative weighting remains more asserted than demonstrated. Prioritise separating the two sides into distinct paragraphs and explaining why the negative effects are more severe or less manageable than the benefits.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Response
Both sides are addressed with relevant development and a consistent position, but the reasons that the drawbacks outweigh the benefits are not compared explicitly enough.
Compare the duration, severity, and manageability of the strongest benefit and drawback before reaching the final judgement.
Coherence and Cohesion
The argument follows a clear benefits-to-drawbacks sequence with useful signposting, but the entire response is one paragraph and some ideas become crowded.
Use separate introduction, benefits, drawbacks, and conclusion paragraphs, with one central theme in each body paragraph.
Lexical Resource
Vocabulary is adequate for independence, culture, education, and psychological pressure, though frequent awkward collocations and word-form choices reduce precision.
Use natural phrases such as live independently, adapt to a new culture, earn a recognised qualification, visa requirements, and academic isolation.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
A mix of sentence structures conveys the argument, but agreement, article, infinitive, parallelism, tense, and punctuation errors recur frequently.
Check noun-verb agreement and parallel structures, especially in sentences listing benefits, practical problems, and possible consequences.
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IELTS Writing Task 2
More and more students are choosing to study at colleges and universities in a foreign country. Do the benefits of studying abroad outweigh the drawbacks?
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.