IELTS task 2: The advantages and disadvantages of the current population structure

Question:
At the present time, the population of some countries includes a relatively large number of young adults, compared with the number of older people. Do the advantages of this situation outweigh the disadvantages?

Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your knowledge or experience.

proportion of elder and younger people in society

Answer:
It is commonly known that the total population of the youngsters are more than that of the elderly in a large number of countries. My personal opinion is that the benefits of the current situation outweigh its drawbacks.

On the one hand, the elderly have more experience and are wiser than the young generation. Their experience helps them develop more strategies and can easily resolve problems when facing difficulties so they are more suitable for ruling corporations and leading the public. Nevertheless, the youngsters are more likely to feel panic or nervous towards tough situations and eventually fail to go over difficulties. For instance, the qualified candidates of presidents of the majority of countries must be over a certain age because the elderly are regarded as truth-worthy leaders.

On the other hand, young people can create more economic progress than the older generation. Firstly, the youngsters are physically stronger than their counterparts. They are more energetic and their physical condition allows them to work for long hours, which results in better work performance and higher productivity. Secondly, young workers can come up with innovative ideas to create more profit for the company. Compared to the elderly, young adults tend to be more interested in the new trend and technology, this helps them to think outside the box and encourage them to integrate the current model with their extraordinary ideas. For example, Steve Jobs created the first smartphone in his 40's, which was totally different from the original cell phone and has brought significant impact on modern peoples' lifestyle.

In conclusion, although the elderly play an important role in problem-solving, I believe that the young people can bring more positive effects to the society.

Please score my article, thank you.

Irene, your score for this essay will be a 4. My opinion of your score is based on the reason that you had a slight misunderstanding of the prompt requirement which asked you to consider if the given discussion has more advantages than disadvantages. You should have only chosen one side to defend in the essay. You should have discussed only one side, not both sides in your response. Your discussion should only say that you believe the advantages of the situation are more than the disadvantages in the essay. Or, you take the opposing side to discuss, which is that the disadvantages are more and write about that. You should not have written about both topics in a single essay.

It is because of the discussion style that you presented that I came to the conclusion that you attempted to address the task, did well enough in the discussion, but ended up with an inappropriate format for the discussion because of your lack of a singular opinion discussion. This error could have immediately been corrected or avoided if you had only developed the proper prompt paraphrase for the essay. An example of an applicable paraphrase would be:

These days, it is not uncommon for the young adults to outnumber the older adults in some countries. Some people believe that this situation has created a situation where the existence of more young adults has created more advantages than disadvantages when compared with the existence of the older adults. In this essay, I will be presenting my response to this belief and supporting it with evidence from my personal observations and experience as a young adult myself.

As you can see from my example, your opening statement was flawed from the beginning because of your lack of proper prompt representation. It is even short on the required number of sentences. Hence, your work shows that you are not yet at an advanced level of English understanding. The misunderstanding of the prompt requirements becomes highly pronounced when compared side by side with the one I created.

Your concluding paragraph is also faulty for the same reasons indicated above. You also continue to discuss new information in the concluding sentence when you are not allowed to do that anymore because the concluding paragraph can only summarize the already presented discussion in a similar format to the prompt paraphrase. These are the reasons why your score cannot be higher than a 4.

I think you are beating about the bush. You seem to be so far from what the essay requires to present. As a result, you perform a totally different problem from the topic. My advice is that you need to understand the topic more thoroughly before writing as well as boost your vocabulary to achieve the best results. Good luck to you!

Helllooo there, thank you for sending your essay here. Two reviewers have given their insights towards your essay. Now, it is my time to share my valuable feedback.

Paragraph 1:
- The first sentence of the paragraph has been covered, although some keywords are too close to the original ones, such as population, countries and large number.

- The second sentence thoroughly fails to present a strong thesis statement, as you did not outline the main ideas.

Paragraph 2:
- The first sentence is supposed to be a clear topic sentence derived from the thesis statement. Since you did not outline any main ideas in the thesis, then this part is lack of coherence.

- The second sentence of this paragraph should discuss your claims (elderly have more experience and are wiser than the young generation) from the aforementioned sentence.

- Some details of situations and eventually fail to go over difficulties are needed. Remember, In-depth explanations as to support your topic sentence should be there. Such explanations can be gained if only you use journalistic questions: 5W/ 1H.

Paragraph 3:
- you cannot use this---> On the other hand as no contrasting idea(s) there.


These two sentences are not linked. I cannot even find how the second sentence supports the idea from the former one.


Again, the second sentence did not support the the previous one. If I were you, then I'd discuss which certain ideas can create extra profit for a company.

Paragraph 4:
A good paragraph consists at least three sentences in a row. Although some suggest that IELTS concluding paragraph can be simply ended with one sentence, this way tends to be repetitive," which means that the structure constantly says the same ideas over and over, and therefore your score hovers at 6.0 for Task Response.

Hope this helps :D
-Eddy Suaib.

@monopolymi
Hi. I think your paraphrase of the prompt is good enough. I'd like to give you another example.

At the present time, the population ...
=> These years, there are more young adults than older ones in some countries.

Isn't it simple and clear? :D