Hi Lifei, Madinarafi5 and ChrisLuke!
Thanks for your essay, Lifei, and your great comments everyone.
Organization and Layout
ChrisLuke I saw your comment about the 35553 or 3773. Looking at Lifei's essay, however, I see how she has organized it. It's like this:
- an intro
- two 'cause' paragraphs:
- modern Chinese family size and its effects
- Online games and violence
- Two solution paragraphs:
- How families can solve the first problem
- How to solve the games problem
- Conclusion
So yes, it's unusual but it makes sense. Another way Lifei could have done it is to have four paragraphs,
- intro
- families cause/solution
- games cause/solution
- conclusion
But as long as it's organized, there's no need to follow any 'perfect' formula.
Introduction
As Madinarafi5 noticed, the introduction is just one sentence. It has to do a lot of work, and so it ends up being very long (29 words). However it does manage to both introduce the problem and give two causes. It would be waaaaaaay too much work to include ChrisLuke's good suggestion of adding the solutions as well.
Maybe something like this would work:
Poor student behavior seems to be an increasingly widespread problem. In this essay, I will discuss if family size and online games are partly responsible, and suggest that parents and teachers need to teach better behavior and manage children's leisure time. (41 words, 2 sentences, average 20.5)
Yes, the last sentence is a bit long, but thesis sentences often are. They will be balanced by lots of shorter sentences (4-8 words) so that the overall sentence length will be about 12-15 words.
Word Choice/Word Form/Usage
Some really great suggestions by ChrisLuke and Madinarafi5
- With the continuous acceleration of the life pace → with the accelerating pace of life
- Practical life → real life
- There is also some detrimental effects → And there are also some detrimental effects OR There are also a few detrimental effects
- no regard of the effects → no regard for the effects
Lifei is correct here with this very nice structure:
- teach them to be considerate and thoughtful of those around them.
Risk Tasking
Neither Madinarafi5 nor ChrisLuke really liked your 'walls of ego' sentence. It's very brave and poetic! IELTS calls this risk-taking, and it does allow writers to make some mistakes. I think the sentence works and I would keep it.
Coherence and Cohesion
One of the best things in the essay is cohesion and coherence: the essay and ideas flow well. Have a look at the official descriptors for IELTS Task 2 Writing (public version) here, under Coherence and Cohesion. The links between paragraphs are very smooth and although I usually recommend not having 'and' at the start of a sentence (Paragraph 3), you used it well here.
Long sentences
Lifei also used ‘and’ well in the conclusion to join two very long sentences. It’s nice and parallel and it works. But Madinarafi suggested breaking it up , and that’s good advice too. So how can both Madinarafi and Lifei be right?
Here’s the thing: sometimes my advice is aimed at different levels of writers.
Some people ( in fact most IELTS candidates) are simply not able to write long sentences, and I usually advise people on this forum to write shorter sentences.
However, if someone IS capable of writing long sentences without errors in agreement or reference or structure, then I would be lowering their potential IELTS score by insisting on short sentences.
You have to adjust the dosage depending on the patient.
So again a big thanks to everyone. I think the three of you could come up with some really excellent writing together!