IELTS Writing Task 2 with sample answer.
You should spend about 40 minutes on this task.
Present a written argument or case to an educated reader with no specialist knowledge of the following topic.
In many countries children are engaged in some kind of paid work. Some people regard this as completely wrong, while others consider it as valuable work experience, important for learning and taking responsibility.
What are your opinions on this?
You should use your own ideas, knowledge and experience and support your arguments with examples and relevant evidence.
You should write at least 250 words.
Idea Generation for this essay:
Why paid work is good for children:
- It can give valuable work experience to children, they learn many new things and take responsible for their life.
- Children can become more matured if they work in a good environment and can contribute to their family’s economic needs.
- They can learn some valuable lessons and skills that would benefit them in their future career.
- They can learn to manage their own expenses and thus can become prudent economically.
- Appreciation in work place can motivate them to do even better in their studies.
- They can use their practical experiences in life and can relate those experiences in their studies.
- They become more responsible and more social.
- Children who work can comprehend the difficulties their parents face to earn money and thus they feel more compassion for their parents.
- The extra earning can be helpful to support the family in needs.
- The money earned through jobs could be better utilized to travel, buy more books and supports their academic expenses.
Why children should not be engaged in paid work:
- Most children get poorly paid and they need to do manual jobs as they don’t have special skills to do a better job.
- The cheap and manual jobs that are assigned to children often lacks the opportunity to learn new things and skills.
- Earning money in an early age might be harmful for many children as they would try to lead an extravagant life with the extra money they have.
- They often can get distracted from their studies and that would have a very negative impact in their life.
- Many children often work in hazardous environment and that negatively affect them physically and psychologically.
- Since they are occupied in their work, they won’t have sufficient time for learning, making lessons and playing with other kids.
- Being around adults most of the time might hamper their proper psychological development.
Model Answer:
The question of whether or not children should be involved in some paid job is a very controversial issue. Some people deem it as worthwhile job experience. They claim that this work experience is conducive to a child’s learning and improvement. However, I believe that it would bring harm to the child in several ways.
First of all, a commonly held belief is that children can get useful job experiences from the work ambiance. This might be valid in few cases, yet what type of work they do and the experience they gather are worthless for the future, I think. The children are mostly employed in those sectors that require manual labor, such as cleaning floor, washing dishes, serving foods in the restaurants, and so on. Actually, this type of job’s experience cannot provide the children with that much useful competence so that they can apply it in the future trade.
This leads me to the second point. The advocates of child work argue that it is helpful for learning of the children. The reason is children will get the opportunity to apply what they have learned in practice. I believe there is a sheer chance distracting the children from classroom study. They may become so occupied with the temporal benefit in front of them like small wage, and this may provoke to leave school. Furthermore, most of the workplace is lack of sufficient support for children. Without adequate support, a child’s misunderstanding or improper communicating with adults would only frustrate him and prevent him active learning and interacting with other people.
Finally, it is also argued that it boosts their sense of responsibility. The logic is that they will feel earning money is not an easy task. So, they would spend every penny very carefully. But the reality says a different story. Most of the cases, they become spendthrift, because at this level they are not mature enough that they have sense where to spend and where not.
In conclusion, children paid job experience neither build valuable skills nor impart responsibility. In terms of learning and building responsibility, it is suitable for them to do some volunteer service where they can learn crucial skills used in workplace with enough care and support.