Unemployment remains the biggest challenge to school-leavers in most countries. How far do you agree with this assessment? What other challenges face young people today?
Sample Response
Unemployment is a significant challenge in many parts of the world today, but it is not the biggest challenge to school-leavers in most countries. So, I disagree with the idea. I will also discussHere, I will also outline other serious challenges that are faced by young people today.
School-leavers are young people who are generally very optimistic and enthusiastic about entering the workforcejoining the professional world, but they are also generally inexperienced invery inexperienced at the same time about the realities of life Deleteas well as the professional world. In many cases, these school-leavers also do not havedo not also have the necessary skills, aptitude and acumen neededacumen, needed to enter or compete in the job market. But onceBut, once these school-leavers receive appropriate trainingsome proper training and experience related toexperience, related to the available jobs, getting a job suddenly is no longer such a major challengedoes not remain such a big challenge anymore.
A far bigger challenge for high school graduates is the dilemma of decidingthe dilemma to decide whether to take a gap yeartake a year break or continue their educationcontinue education, takedo a part-time job or take a skill development course, stay with the family or live alone, get into a relationship or focus on their future careersfocus on the future career and so on. Those decisions are crucial for their future and are quite challenging for young minds. For instance, more than 68% of school-leavers in our capital city find making the right decision far more challenging than getting a part-time job. Finally, avoiding bad company and harmful habitsstaying away from bad companies and bad habits seems like another challenge that young people find really hard. Some harmful peer groupsSome bad companies can ruin the life of a school graduate without him or her even realising it. So this is extremely challenging.
In conclusion, unemployment is a big challenge, but not the biggest challenge for school-leavers. Deciding on important directions in life and staying away from bad friends and bad habits are much more challenging for them.
Why this response received Band 7.0
The response presents a clear position and covers both parts of the task, with relevant discussion of employment readiness, life choices, and harmful influences. Its main limitation is that several claims are generalized or supported by an unsubstantiated statistic, which reduces the persuasiveness of otherwise coherent development. The priority is to develop fewer challenges more deeply with specific, credible explanation and examples.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Response
The response answers both questions directly, maintains a clear disagreement, and develops several relevant alternative challenges.
Develop each major challenge with more credible, specific support instead of relying on broad claims or an unexplained statistic.
Coherence and Cohesion
Ideas progress logically through a clear introduction, focused body paragraphs, and a consistent conclusion.
Reduce repetition of school-leavers and use referencing more naturally to make links between sentences less conspicuous.
Lexical Resource
A good range of topic vocabulary conveys ideas precisely, although several collocations sound awkward or imprecise.
Replace expressions such as bad companies and take a year break with more natural, context-appropriate collocations.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
The response uses varied complex structures with generally good control, despite occasional punctuation and phrasing errors.
Improve control of commas and prepositions, especially around embedded phrases and participial modifiers.
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IELTS Writing Task 2
Unemployment remains the biggest challenge to school-leavers in most countries. How far do you agree with this assessment? What other challenges face young people today?
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.