Some experts believe that it is better for children to begin learning a foreign language at primary school rather than secondary school. Do the advantages of this outweigh the disadvantages?
Sample Response
Many language specialists suggest that teaching a foreign language at elementary school is more effective and beneficial for learners than introducing it at secondary school. In this essay, the drawbacks and benefits of this method will be analysed first and then expressed that it has more significant drawbacks than benefits.
A major advantage of introducing foreign language classes forto primary school students is that it helps them become bilingual at an early age. Being bilingual at such a youngtender age improves their cognitive flexibility, problem-solving capacity, and academic performance. They tend to outperform monolingual learners in academic and extracurricular activities. For exampleTo cite an example, most bilingual primary school students, according to statistics published by the Language Learners Research Institute in Spain, demonstratedshowcased better cognitive abilities and academic performance compared to their monolingual peers.
A significant drawback of teaching primary school pupilsyoung elementary school learners a foreign language is that it placesputs extra burdens on young learners who are already overwhelmed by other academic subjectsdazzled with other academic subjects like mathematics, science, artarts, literature Deleteand so on. This extra pressure may be a major factor that leads them to developa leading cause for them to develop apathy towards schoolschools and learning as a whole. For instance, my seven-year-old sistermy seven years old sister liked school so much that she never wanted to miss it. Recently, she began coming upLately, she was coming up with every excuse she could think ofevery single excuse her young mind could fathom to avoid school. After some successful counselling sessions, it was revealed that she lost interest in going to schoollost her interest to go to school because of academic pressure coupled with two foreign-language classestwo language learning classes. This event has opened my eyes to how pressure from learning additional languagesputting pressure on teaching extra languages can be negative for children when they are already overwhelmed with their academic work.
To conclude, learning foreign languages and being bilingual areis important for learners. But when they are imposed on primary schoolgoers, they can apparently be more negative than useful.
Why this response received Band 7.0
The response answers the comparison directly, maintains a clear view that the disadvantages are greater, and develops both sides with specific support. Its main limitation is uneven language control: several awkward collocations and grammatical forms reduce precision despite generally fluent, logical organisation. The highest-priority improvement is to refine word choice and sentence accuracy while making the final weighing of the two sides more explicitly comparative.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Response
A clear position is maintained and both the principal advantage and disadvantage are relevant and well developed, although the comparative judgement could be more explicit.
Explain directly why the educational pressure carries more weight than the cognitive benefits instead of relying mainly on the conclusion to establish the comparison.
Coherence and Cohesion
Ideas progress logically through well-focused paragraphs, with clear sequencing and generally effective cohesive devices.
Make the transition from evidence to evaluation more explicit so each example more clearly advances the overall comparison.
Lexical Resource
The response uses a good range of topic-specific vocabulary, but several inaccurate or unnatural collocations reduce precision.
Choose more natural combinations for ideas such as academic burden, loss of interest, and language instruction, and avoid misused words such as dazzled.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
A variety of complex sentences is used successfully, though recurring errors in noun forms, prepositions, and tense control remain noticeable.
Proofread constructions such as seven-year-old sister and lost interest in going, while keeping narrative tenses consistent.
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IELTS Writing Task 2
Some experts believe that it is better for children to begin learning a foreign language at primary school rather than secondary school. Do the advantages of this outweigh the disadvantages?
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.