In many countries today, people in cities either live alone or in small family units, rather than in large, extended family groups.
Is this a positive or negative trend?
These days, living alone or in small family units, compared to in large or extended groups, is more enjoyed by people. Personally, this is a negative tendency to me for three key reasons.
Firstly, while a standard family containing two or more generations is more likely to bring the sense of family spirit, living in small families or alone may decrease this. The reason is that it prevents people from having strong connections with other members. As a result, they will lack an invaluable part of life, leading to unfulfillment. For example, people who work away from their families could lead a less happy life, as they do not have a chance to meet their beloved ones frequently whom they can share and express themselves comfortably.
Second, people living with few members in their family may suffer from financial pressure. This is because they are less likely to share the bills and expenses with other ones, especially those living alone. This, in the long term, would result in more serious effects, such as bad debt or even crime involvement. For instance, youngsters who do not have financial share within their family may commit robbing, when they have to deal with stacks of expenditure lists waiting for them.
Thirdly, the more people live separately, the higher the need for shelters is. Consequently, there would be land and space shortages, as constructing houses or apartments require a lot of resources. If this continues to happen at a rapid pace, the government would run out of land to construct social architectures such as hospitals or schools to benefit the public.
To sum up, even though there is an increasing number of people who prefer to live on their own or in small family capacity, it seems to me that this is nothing but a negative trend.
(303 words)Hi! Your reasons and examples are persuasive. Here is my suggestions. Hope this helps:
... to bring a sense of family spirit
Also, it seems that this essay is a bit too long, you might not have enough time to review your answer in the real test.
Holt Educational Consultant - / 14,835 
4783 The paraphrase you created is missing one sentence to meet the minimum paragraph requirement. You did not paraphrase the original topic sentence. You basically did a cut and paste, which will indicate that you can only write in memorized phrases or cut and paste versions to a certain extent. You need to completely change that topic sentence. Do not leave any original words in it. So it should read like this:
Urban dwellers live in 2 different nuclear units. Either solo or with minimal number of relatives. This is the emerging trend these days as opposed to the time when people lived with large household members.
Also, this is a 2 paragraph essay, there is no need to waste time and word count on 3 reasons when the rest of the time during the test should be spent cleaning up your draft writing mistakes. Your third paragraph is actually a solution response, not a reasoning response along the lines of the negative trend discussion you presented. So, since that is not relevant to the discussion, word deductions will be applied, which means, your essay will go down to 243 words. You will be under the word count. As such, percentage deductions will be applied to the TA score due to the essay not being minimum word compliant.
