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 advantagesbenefits 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 to primary school students is that it helps them become bilingual at an early age. Being bilingual at such an early agesuch a tender age improves their cognitive flexibility, problem-solving capacity, and academic performance. They tend to outperform monolingual learners in academic and extracurricular activities. To 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 than those of their monolingual peerscompared to their monolingual peers.
A significant drawback of teaching elementary school pupilsyoung elementary school learners a foreign language is that it places an extra burden onputs extra burdens on young learners who are already overwhelmed bydazzled with other academic subjects like mathematics, science, artarts, literature and so on. This extra pressure may be a leading cause them to developcause for them to develop apathy towards schoolschools and learning as a whole. For instance, my seven-year-old sisterseven years old sister liked school so much that she never wanted to miss it. Lately, she was coming up with every single excuse her young mind could fathom to avoid school. After several counselling sessionsAfter some successful counselling sessions, it was revealed that she lost interest in goinglost her interest to go to school because of academic pressure coupled with two foreign-language classestwo language learning classes. This event illustrates howhas opened my eyes to how pressuring children to learn 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 has a clear position and develops both an advantage and a disadvantage with concrete support, especially in the detailed account of academic pressure. Its main limitation is that the comparison is somewhat unbalanced and relies heavily on one personal anecdote to justify the conclusion. The highest-priority improvement is to compare the relative significance of the two sides more explicitly using broader reasoning and evidence.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Response
The essay answers the comparative question clearly and supports both sides, although the case that disadvantages outweigh advantages is only partly evaluated.
Make the outweigh judgement more convincing by directly comparing the scale and likelihood of the stated benefit and drawback.
Coherence and Cohesion
Paragraphing is clear and the argument progresses logically from the advantage to the disadvantage and conclusion.
Strengthen the link between the personal example and the wider claim rather than allowing the anecdote to dominate the paragraph.
Lexical Resource
The response demonstrates a broad vocabulary, but several awkward or inaccurate collocations reduce precision and naturalness.
Use more idiomatic combinations, such as 'place an extra burden on learners' and 'lose interest in attending school.'
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
A range of simple and complex structures is used successfully, though recurring errors in agreement, possessives, articles, and complementation are evident.
Review noun phrases and verb patterns carefully, especially forms such as 'seven-year-old sister' and 'pressure from extra language classes.'
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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.