Recent figures show an increase in violent crime among youngsters under the age of 18. Some psychologists claim that the basic reason for this is that children these days are not getting the social and emotional learning they need from parents and teachers. To what extend do you agree or disagree with this option?
Sample Response
There is no denying that the number of youngsters who commit crimescrime is increasing sharply all over the world. Some people believe that the lack of social and emotional learning from parents and teachers has ledlead to this phenomenon; meanwhile, others arguethe others argue that there are other factorsdifferent sides we need to take into consideration before blaming the problem on parents and teachers. In my opinion, I totally agree with the second viewidea because of the following reasons. To begin with, in a world full of modern and advanced technologymodern and advanced technologies like ours, children will have more opportunitieschances to be exposed to violent scenes. It can be said that TV and the Internet are the two most common channels through which children can view these scenes. For instance, wrestling shows on ESPN or Ten Sports as well as thriller and action films like the film “I know what you did last summer” can directly and negatively affect children’s behaviouraffect badly and directly children’s behaviours because they contain violent contentfactors such as beating each other, using guns or knives to kill rivals, etc. If children watch and mimic these actions, violent thoughts will be gradually shaped in their minds and they will inflict such violence on peopleapply such bad things on people around them, first against classmates and then against strangersstarting with classmates, then, strangers. As a consequence, the probability that they will commitprobability they commit a crime to satisfy themselves is no longer an unexpectedunpredicted outcome. Another reason is that peers may have a greater impact on the way a teenager thinks and behaves than their parents and teachers. YoungstersYoungster under 18 tend to play in groups because they find similarity and mutual understandingthe similarities and understanding when they spend time with those peerswhen staying with those peers. However, if they make friends with wrong people, they can easily be induced to do wrong thingscan be induced to do wrong things easily, for example, skipping class, fighting, stealingrobbing money, etc. As a studentstudents, I have witnessed many cases in which high school students leave school early and join gangs of young people who play violent games and fight against other gangs all the time. Therefore, we cannot attribute it to parents and teachers as they cannot entirely control whom their kids are playing with. In conclusion, I strongly believe that the increase in violent crime among youngstersyoungster does not totally come from the educational methodseducation method of their parents and teachers. This phenomenon can be explained partly by the advances in human science and technologydevelopment in science and technology of human and the influence of peers. However, parents, together with teachers, should spend more time on caring and listening to children’s confidences to contribute to protecting them from harmful things.
Why this response received Band 6.5
The response presents a clear disagreement and supports it with two relevant, well-explained alternative causes, giving the argument a strong sense of purpose. Its main limitation is that frequent awkward collocations and grammatical slips reduce precision, while the absence of clear paragraph breaks weakens the presentation of an otherwise logical progression. The highest priority is to organise the two causes into distinct body paragraphs and edit sentence structures and word combinations for natural accuracy.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Response
A clear position is maintained and supported through two relevant, substantially developed causes of youth violence.
Strengthen the argument by qualifying broad causal claims and explaining more precisely how each factor leads to violent crime.
Coherence and Cohesion
Ideas progress logically through the media and peer-influence arguments, but the single-block presentation and some mechanical linking weaken cohesion.
Use a clear introduction, two separate body paragraphs, and a conclusion, with fewer routine linking phrases.
Lexical Resource
The response uses a reasonably wide vocabulary, although recurring unnatural collocations and word-form choices reduce precision.
Replace expressions such as applying bad things on people and robbing money with natural, context-appropriate collocations.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
A range of complex structures is attempted successfully, but agreement, article, preposition, and sentence-construction errors recur.
Proofread systematically for singular-plural agreement, articles, and verb patterns while keeping complex sentences controlled.
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IELTS Writing Task 2
Recent figures show an increase in violent crime among youngsters under the age of 18. Some psychologists claim that the basic reason for this is that children these days are not getting the social and emotional learning they need from parents and teachers. To what extend do you agree or disagree with this option?
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.