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
Nowadays, it is all but impossible to open a newspaper without articles on juvenile crimearticles on adolescent crimes. There has been a dramatic increase in the number and severity of these crimestheir number and brutality. Some psychologists claim that this increase is a consequenceit is the consequence of insufficient emotional and social teaching from parents and teachers, with which I strongly agree. It is a fact that emotional and social teaching plays a large part in the psychological development of young peoplea youngster. As a result, any education that leaves it out will result in emotionally insecure students who are likely to be wrongdoers. Halfway through the process of growing up, virtually every adolescent endures deep psychological changes which may cause depression and rebelliousnessdepression, rebelliousness, etc. In some cases which those negative feelings are not sensitively handled, then comes a time when adolescents starts to feel disaffected to the society and resort to violating social principles, sowing the seeds of crimes. Teaching abouton emotions and social relationships will help young citizens be less likely to commit such actsimmune to such deeds by helping them control feelings and keeping them in touch with the community. At the same time, many peoplemany a people argue that the causes of the growing number of youngyoungster criminals are much more complicated as many factors are to blame: violent TV programs, harmful contentbad materials on the Internet or even adolescents’ personalitiesthe adolescent’s personalities. Be that as it may, emotional and social teaching is intendedmeaned to help adolescents be immune to criminality. Will a bad-tempered boy kill someone in a fit of anger if he knows how to control his temper or it is a terrible thing to do? One example fromof IVS is included to support my point. IVS is a boarding school which has a reputation for helping many troubled studentsmaking many bad students, potential criminals, turn over a new leaf. Its teachers give a simple explanation for its success: bad behaviourbehaviours stem from ignorance of other people’s feelingsthe ignorance of surrounding people’s feelings and lack of care and eliminating these problemswhose elimination will put an end to the students’ wrong attitudes and that is what the teachers give them through this teachingby means of the teaching. All in all, the lack of emotional and social teaching explains the present wave of adolescent crimes. Let us hope that whenLet us hope when educational reforms with emphasis on educating good, rather than knowledgeable, students and parents are more aware of the needs of such teaching, crime will decreasecrimes will reduce and our society will become safer.
Why this response received Band 6.5
The response maintains a clear position and develops a convincing link between inadequate social-emotional education and youth crime, supported by explanation and an illustrative school example. Its main weakness is control: the absence of paragraphing and recurrent awkward grammar and collocations make a generally logical argument less polished. Prioritise dividing the reasoning into purposeful paragraphs and revising sentence structures for accuracy and clarity.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Response
A clear agreement position is sustained and supported with relevant causal explanation and an example, although some claims are broad or insufficiently substantiated.
Qualify absolute claims and explain the evidence behind the school example more precisely to make the argument more convincing.
Coherence and Cohesion
Ideas progress logically through causes, counterarguments, and an example, but presenting the entire response as one paragraph weakens organisation and readability.
Separate the introduction, main arguments, counterargument, example, and conclusion into purposeful paragraphs with clearer internal topic focus.
Lexical Resource
A good range of topic-specific and less common vocabulary conveys the argument clearly, despite recurring awkward collocations and word-form choices.
Replace inaccurate combinations such as social teaching and youngster criminals with natural academic collocations, and check word forms carefully.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
The response uses varied complex structures, but frequent agreement, relative-clause, article, and sentence-construction errors reduce control without usually obscuring meaning.
Edit each complex sentence for subject-verb agreement and clause structure, especially sentences containing relative clauses or multiple linked ideas.
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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
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