IELTS task 2 about "What are the changes of family structures and family roles"

In recent years, the family structure has changed, as well as family roles. What are the changes occurring? Do you think these changes are positive or negative?

today's phenomenon of the nuclerar family

In the past decade, there has been tremendous changes in the households worldwide, regarding to their structures and the distribution of family tasks. I think most of these changes are associated with adverse impacts on family.

To begin with, compared to the traditionally pervasive extended family structure, the majority of people now live in nuclear families, in which only parents and children live in one house or apartment. Children move out from their parents' home after 18 years old instead of staying with parents, and each single family normally lives independently with their cousins. In addition, rather than having multiple children in one family, children now rarely have siblings due to "one-child policy", and this is particularly the case in China. Meanwhile, unlike the previous period when it is the women who were responsible for taking care of their offspring, in modern family, there is a greater number of men who share this family role, and domestic status of two genders has become much more equal.

For the positive influences, firstly, thanks to the nuclear family structure and fewer children in one immediate family, the financial burden on families has been largely mitigated. This is because in this way current parents do not have to pay a high total tuition fee for several kids. Besides, women have earned more respect, because they play more social roles and make more contributions to the society.

However, there are also several potential risks stemming from these changes. Firstly, one-child family means that the child is likely to be spoiled, making them self-centred and less considerate, thereby impairing their personality goodness. In addition, considering that adults live far away from their parents or children, it is increasingly difficult for them to have family reunion, so they fail to bond with families, which leads to a weak feeling of belonging.

To conclude, I think although family can benefit from these changes financially, there are huge problems linked with this issue.

Yolanda, the main problem with this essay is that it focused itself on the "Once Child Policy" of China. This was a misunderstanding of the prompt on your part because the prompt did not indicate any particular reasons for the statement. Therefore, it is generalized statement that required a general, not country or policy specific discussion. By focusing your statement on the one child policy, you inadvertently changed the prompt discussion topic and by association, declared a totally different essay than what was originally instructed. Note that all IELTS essays, unless indicating the need for a personal opinion or experience, must be discussed in a general manner, not specific to any country or policy.

Another problem is the way that you delivered your opinion of the matter as single line sentence in the conclusion. This is a common mistake among the IELTS exam takers. The concluding statement can never contain your opinion or new information due to the lack of sentence space to defend the new idea. Your opinion should have been the 4th paragraph of the 5 paragraph essay. The conclusion should have merely wrapped up the discussion without presenting new ideas.

Due to the problems that exist in the presentation of your essay, I do not think that you can score higher than a 4 with this argument.