IELTS WRITING TASK 2: FAMILY ROLE CHANGES (Causes and Positive/Negative)

Topic: These days more fathers stay at home and take care of their children while mothers go out to work. What could be the reasons for this? Do you think it is a positive or a negative development?

family model evolution

Traditional parental roles, in the few recent decades, have witnessed their own transformation with numerous women taking the role of the breadwinners and their spouses as stay-at-home dads. This phenomenon obviously takes root in several premises, some of which will be clarified hereinafter with particular emphasis on its positive impacts on blood-related relationships and the society at large.

The transforming roles can be substantially attributed to the current job market requirements and the mindset changes as well.The mentioned changes in commonly-posted job description mean, thanks to the accelerated technological advances, the contracted number of physical-challenging job positions and the ample chances for intellectual jobs, more available job opportunities for qualified women. The current working conditions, at the same time, favour women with the sufficient benefit packages such as extended maternal leaves and insurance to guarantee the productivity rates. The second worth-mentioning factor lies in the lessened stereotypes of fixed gender roles with a hard-working husband and a household wife. To be more specific, if the whole family is supported wholly by the mother, the 21-century husband need not suffer from the embarrassment or stressful judgements as those in the past. The modern open-minded society, in light of the women's empowerment success, also accepts women at higher positions not to mention the crucial political roles, for example, Theresa Mary May as the Prime Minister of the U.K.

This equal status of both genders in family, stemming from aforementioned causes, has been benefiting the family life and the society as well. Firstly, the trend yields the tremendous merits to the young generation with fairly balanced supports from their parents. To illustrate, the career-oriented fathers who, in the old days, often devoted his lifetime for career prospects now can allocate his time for child-rearing, thus developing the positive male traits, such as strength and determination for his children. At the same time, the caring mother can still play a undeniable role despite the tight working schedule. Secondly, on the society ground, with the best of both genders increasing their potential capacity at work, the workplace performance and the overall development would be heightened. The feasible creativity from the other half of the world could bring more life-changing innovations for business, with more attempts to contribute to gender equality campaigns.

In conclusion, several timely catalysts have been changing the family roles as analyzed above, with considerably advantageous influences on the family and also on the worldwide scale.

Nguyễn, your opening paraphrase is not as accurate as it should be. To say "in the recent few decades" is inappropriate as few means "little" but "decades" means at least 20 years, which is not little. Each decade is composed of 10 years. So to say "The correct term would have been "in the recent decades..." if you want to use the plural form of the time reference. This is one of the reasons why your prompt restatement is incorrect to a certain extent. The more appropriate paraphrase would have been:

There has been a recent development of stay at home dads in opposition to stay at home moms. These days, it is not uncommon to have mothers participating in the workplace. This essay will illustrate a few reasons as to why this has occurred. It will also present a discussion as to why this is a positive development.

Stick to just representing your understanding of the prompt without adding exaggerated information. You just need to state the facts, without adding information not in the original prompt. If it isn't in the original presentation, then don't mention it because it can change the slant and tone of discussion, which, in the scoring consideration, could be a negative for your TA score.

All of your discussions are not accurately developed. You have gone over the maximum 5 sentence word count throughout the body of your presentations because you tried to discuss 2 reasons per paragraph when the sentence allotment is only good for one fully explained and supported reason. When you try to discuss more than one topic per paragraph, you will end up adversely affecting your C&C score which requires a completely developed, and explained thought process. The score for the discussion will not come from the number of reasons but rather, the clarity and quality of your explanation.

Presenting less than 5 paragraphs will also reduce your score in the overall terms of TA, GRA, C&C, and LR considerations. Your aim in this essay is to prove that you can appropriately discuss a topic within a given paragraph requirement, based on specific directions, and in proper English. You have some good discussions in this essay but you are not appropriately presenting it to the reader. Just remember the basic rules for the format:

1. Don't include information in the paraphrase that isn't in the original prompt
2. 5 paragraphs
3. 3-5 sentences per paragraph
4. Make sure you write in coherent English
5. Avoid run-on sentences

I made a reference to run on sentences because your body paragraphs are overly long and separated by commas when your separate sentence ideas should have been presented in individual sentences within the paragraph. All connected information should be in single sentence presentations that represent either simple or complex sentences. Don't confuse complex sentences with run on sentences because they are not the same. Run ons just string together a series of ideas that eventually stop making sense. That is not how you develop a complex sentence. A complex sentence is composed of an independent and dependent clause. Just one of each, not a series of separate ideas that are forcing themselves to be connected when they should not be connected in the presentation.

This is a good start. You have room for improvement. I believe that you can do it provided you always apply the corrections that you will be given during your practice tests.