With the pressures on today’s young people to succeed Academically, some people believe that non-academic subjects at school (eg: physical education and cookery) should be removed from the syllabus so that children can concentrate wholly on a cademic subjects. To what extent do you agree or disagree?
Sample Response
What young people should study at school has long been the subject of intense debate, and thisintense debate and this is a question that certainly does not have one correct answer.
We need to provide young people with the best possible chanceprovide young people the best possible chance of doing well at school. In a traditional curriculum, there is a wide variety of subjects including both academic and non-academic subjectswith a mix of academic and non-academic subjects. In this way, a young person is formed with a rounded education. Non- academic subjects would include sports, cooking, woodwork, and metalwork. I believe this is the best educational approachthe best form of education. A young person should learn things other than academic subjects.
Sport is particularly important. Young people have to learn to enjoy sportlearn to love the sport so that they can be fit and healthy later in life. If not, weIf not we will be raising an obese and unfit generation. I fullytotally understand the point of view that education is so important that students must be pushed as hard as possible to achieve their best. It sounds like a good ideasounds a good idea to expose students only toonly expose the students to academic subjects because theysubjects as then they can spend all their school hours studying subjectsall of their school hours on studying areas that will get them into university and good jobs later in life. I just feel a more rounded education would produce a better individual. We must also remember thatWe must remember too that many peoplea lot of people, maybe even most people, aren’t academically minded and would benefit more from a more vocational educationmore vocationally based education. Forcing them to pursue academic studiesForcing academic studies onto them would lead to failure and students leaving school too earlythe student leaving school too early.
Therefore I agree that although a wholly academic curriculum would suit and benefit some young people, I believe that for most students non-academic subjects are still important components of today’s syllabusesimportant inclusions still in today’s syllabuses.
Why this response received Band 7.0
The response maintains a clear preference for a rounded curriculum and offers relevant reasons involving health, university preparation, and vocational aptitude. Its main limitation is that several ideas are asserted briefly or repeated instead of being developed with specific explanation, while some awkward phrasing reduces precision. Build one or two central arguments more deeply and express them through more natural collocations.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Response
A clear position is presented and supported by several relevant reasons, though development is sometimes general or repetitive.
Develop fewer main reasons in greater depth with specific consequences or examples rather than adding brief assertions.
Coherence and Cohesion
The essay follows a logical overall progression, although the long third paragraph combines several distinct ideas and some points recur.
Separate the health and vocational arguments into clearly focused units and streamline repeated references to a rounded education.
Lexical Resource
The vocabulary is sufficient and sometimes varied, but recurring awkward collocations and article choices limit precision and naturalness.
Use more idiomatic combinations for education and sport, and avoid phrases such as forcing studies onto students or important inclusions still.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
A useful mix of simple and complex sentences is generally controlled, with errors remaining minor and meaning consistently clear.
Improve punctuation after introductory clauses and check articles, agreement, and comparative forms in complex sentences.
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IELTS Writing Task 2
With the pressures on today’s young people to succeed Academically, some people believe that non-academic subjects at school (eg: physical education and cookery) should be removed from the syllabus so that children can concentrate wholly on a cademic subjects. To what extent do you agree or disagree?
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.