Writing IELTS: Adolescents have fewer responsibilites, is this a good thing or a bad thing?

more time for kids' leisure and play

In the present era, children are found to have fewer responsibilities than they were in the past. Some people consider this a positive development, however, others believe this to be a negative trend.

Discuss both views and give your opinion.

Writing

There is a contentious debate among the public about whether youngsters nowadays giving fewer duties is a bright side or a negativity. This essay will reveal both views of this statement and I shall give my own opinion later.

To begin with, fewer responsibilities on the shoulder of teenagers helps them have more times to develop themselves. In the past, making ends meet was really a struggle, so besides academic path, adolescents had to take on various tasks given by their parents, such as taking care of younger children and supporting their family financially. As a result, they barely had free time for themselves. In contrast, teenage children these days are more advantageous as some of the obligation burdens on them has been reduced, therefore they will have more leisure time to focus on studying, as well as playing. All in all, teenagers in the present own more time for their personal desires.

However, when juveniles are given fewer obligations, there causes a negative inclination. There is a term "entitled generation" used by adults to refer current teenagers are too lazy and dependent. Some wealthy family does hire housewives to do all the household chores, and this act totally hinders the independent ability of a teenage child. Consequently, those granted children are more likely to have trouble with dealing up social circumstances in their adult life.

Personally, despite the aforementioned shortcomings of this tendency, I still believe it as positive. Because adolescents at the moment do not have to worry much, it is beneficial for them to explore more hidden potentials inside in order to be a comprehensive individual.

In conclusion, it can be seen that there are pros and cons when juveniles are less responsible currently. Nevertheless, my firm conviction is that this trend is a good thing, as youngsters do not need to be concerned much about other aspects of life.

I really have limited ideas about paraphrasing the term "responsibilities" (only duties and obligations in the essay). Can somebody have any ideas about this?
What are the other ways to express "positive trend" and "negative trend"?

Hoang, stop over writing in your essays. Your work still suffers from lack of clarity and coherence in the paragraph presentations. Don't say it the long way when you can say it in a simpler, clearer manner. You won't be graded for writing short sentences, you could lose points for writing run-on, unclear, and incoherent paragraphs as you are constantly doing in your essays. You are not practicing using a timer and you are not proof reading your essay. If you did, you would know that you are taking too much time to write these essays and you are not reviewing it for presentation problems. Which is why the essays are unclear in its idea presentations per paragraph.

Since you lack familiarity with English word usage and its synonyms and antonyms, I urge you to download a thesaurus app and try to memorize the synonyms and antonyms for various English words as listed in the app. For responsibilities, some synonyms are : burden, liability, obligation, answerability, culpability, and so on and so forth. Positive = clear, conclusive, specific, absolute, etc. Negative = adverse, unfavorable. Remember, the synonym you use must also correspond to the meaning of the sentence as you want the word to indicate. So just knowing another term for the word does not mean you will be using it properly. You need to understand the meaning of the word before you use it otherwise it will confuse the reader if the word you use has a different meaning from your intended one.

You can only increase your English language vocabulary if you build on your vocabulary. Read in English, watch movies in English, speak in English as much as possible, surround yourself with English 24/7. That's the only way to build your vocabulary skills.

Hi, in my opinion, I believe that the main problem of your written essay is your structure. This is a discursive essay, in which you are required to state your ideas in a balanced way. Your opinion must be stated in the introduction paragraph (thesis statement) and restated in the conclusion paragraph.

Back to your body paragraphs, it seems to me that you did not have any relevant opening statement, which the examiners will consider as an interpretation for entire of paragraph. You have to know that each paragraph only focus on one main point. Therefore, always remember to mention your opening statement in your body paragraphs. Never state new ideas or irrelevant supporting sentences to that opening statement. That would make you lose score in Coherence and Cohesion criteria.

@Holt
Thanks for the feedback. That's really helpful!
And by the way, lexical resources are not really a problem to me, since I think I work on it pretty well, I know quite a lot of vocabs (There are no boundaries in the number of vocabs to learn obviously so I simply estimate to some extent). But I have trouble with applying all of them and therefore overall, my overall ability is just equal to normal people who don't acquire much vocabs but know how to use them properly.

I have a question: How to learn vocabulary effectively? How to absorb after learning a new word or a phrase?

You have a problem with vocabulary usage and therefore, lexical resources because even though you understand the meaning of the word, you are unable to apply it to your own English grammar requirements in various settings. There are times when you misuse an English word because of what you "think" it means as opposed to what the word "actually" means. Knowing the English words and knowing how to sometimes use it is different from the English fluency of a native speaker who knows how to properly use the word, along with the synonyms and antonyms of the word(s) all the time. Your English vocabulary is only of the beginner kind, not intermediate, not advanced.

If you want to continue to build your vocabulary, then read more advanced English reading materials. These would include text or ebooks of anything of interest to you such as a hobby or any anything. Documentary and historical books written by American and British authors would be your best bet for improving your lexical resources from your current basic English word skills to intermediate or advanced. This will also give you a template from which you can learn how to write complex sentences. Watch English documentary films so that you will be exposed to advanced academic English words and complicated sentence structures. By learning more complicated English words, you will improve your LR and GRA scores.

Take note of words you do not understand the meaning of then look it up in the dictionary, then do a search for the same word in a thesaurus. Note the different words for the positive and negative representations, look up the meaning, note and remember the meaning, then practice writing sentences that use the same word(s) until using the word becomes natural to you, making sure the words are always used in the appropriate reference format (vocabulary meaning, definition) in your writing. Do the same when speaking English as part of your regular English usage practice.

Hi, I have just read your essay. I will take some note from my point of view here:
First, I assume that you should re-manage the structure of your essay. You ought to consider the number of sentences in each paragraph equally. It is probably seen that you put more concentration in the first paragraph than the other two main paragraphs.

Second, I could not see the topic sentences. Your supporting sentences and word collocations made me confused. Thus, I could not fully get what ideas you wanted to express. I suggest you do more grammar exercises and train yourself to use the word right.

I wish this could help you. I am not really good at vocabulary but I just only use the words that I know them best.

Hi there,

Despite all the suggestions mentioned above, there are several things you need to pay attention as well.

Do not give your opinion later, give it at the introduction right away.

For your second paragraph, if you want to compare the difference between the past and the current, make sure you put the ' children these days' sentence behind your thesis statement. Your point was fewer responsibilities benefit children on their individual growth, so you needed to explain why your statement was true then used a comparison to make it persuasive. It helps meet the CC requirements.

Have a good day.

In my opinion, you have tried to use structures, but you used the form of it, not real logical related. And there also many sentences we could not understand. I think in the exam, logical and readability is more important than complex sentences, especially when you can not use them in a right way.