Problems - New technologies have changes the way children spend their free time.

children spending time on electronic gadgets

Over the past decade, it is noticeable that the advent of modern technologies has led to changes in young children's recreational activities. While this tendency has several benefits, I strongly believe that they could never shadow the drawbacks for the following reasons.

On the one hand, it is undeniable that there are some advantages to children spending their spare time to improve their cognitive development. For example, solving the puzzles may enrich their lexical ranges; meanwhile, strategic games that enquire players to be good at problem-solving to deal with unexpected situations may enhance children's logical thinking and problem-solving skills. Secondly, young people might benefit from early exposure to the internet. For instance, it is widely acknowledged that watching foreign movies without subtitles can invisibly improve viewers' proficiency in foreign languages.

On the other hand, notwithstanding the above-mentioned benefits, I would argue that it will be a grave mistake to overlook some potential harms of excessive exposure to the latest technologies at an early age. One main drawback is that the addiction to the state-of-the-art may lead to a sedentary lifestyle. Scientific researchers have shown that children who spend successive hours on cable computers or smartphones are prone to lack physical activities, accountable for increasing the rate of overweight, obesity among children. In addition, another problem that should be taken into account is that unrestrained exposure to inappropriate information sources is likely to lead to the adoption of misguided beliefs. Statistics have pointed out that because of loose censorship, children who repeatedly exposed to violent content, brutal fighting scenes, obscene movies are inclined to be aggressive when solving conflicts with siblings or classmates and become juvenile delinquents later.

In conclusion, although there are advantages of children spending time on advanced technologies, it is immature to ignore intangible problems as discussed above

Okay, the original prompt asks you to consider if the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. That means that your approach to this essay should be a 4 paragraph essay of no more than 5 sentences maximum per paragraph, using the following format:

- Paraphrase
- Consider the disadvantages
- Refute the disadvantages as advantages
- Summarize the salient discussion points to close the essay

Your discussion does not properly develop the discussion topics for the essay. You do not provide coherent and cohesive discussion points because you are only discussing the advantages and disadvantages without properly developing the paragraph discussions. You have to learn how to use the discussion formats to your advantage.

Based on your stance in the paraphrase, you appear to support the idea that new technologies are advantageous to children based on how they spend their free time. So, the proper way to discuss this would have been to choose 2 connected disadvantages in one paragraph. They need to be related somehow because you need to focus on a cohesive and coherent discussion. 2 topics may be discussed in one paragraph, provided the reasons are related and can be supported by a single example in the same paragraph.

Now, after you have presented the disadvantages, reverse the discussion. Think of how the negatives you presented can actually be flipped to become positives for the discussion. Once you disprove the disadvantages in the next paragraph discussion, you will have created a fully discussed, coherent, and cohesive discussion presentation. Right now the essay does not meet the proper formatting requirements for clarity and cohesiveness. However, your TA approach is somewhat acceptable as it manages to respond to the question posed in the original prompt. While it could have been better presented, you were able to indicate a solid opinion on the matter and supported it, although in a not so well developed manner, within the reasoning paragraphs.

By the way, don't aim to write 300 words. Try to write between 275-290 words instead. That is the ideal number of words to write that will leave you with editing time for the essay. You actually over discussed the topic. You went over the maximum sentence count per paragraph which is 5. The general writing rule is Keep It Short Silly (KISS). Make sure you are understood by the examiner. The way that you explain yourself, how you are understood by the examiner is more important than the number of reasons you discuss. You are scored on your comprehension and clear explanation skills far more than your ability to discuss several reasons based on a given topic. Think of it this way:

Confuse the examiner by offering more reasons than explanations in one paragraph = Low Score

Give the examiner a clear explanation based on 2 related reasons in a single paragraph = High Score