[IELTS writing task 2] Rising pressure on students, positive or negative?

In recent years, pressure on School and university students has been increased and they are pushed to work very hard from a young age. Do you think this is a positive or negative development?

Please help pointing out all the strengths and pweaknesses of my essay. Much appreciation!!!

Learning without pressure?

The ever-rising tension for modern students to excel in every aspect has sparked concern. I firmly believe that this trend is only riddled with problems, in a sense that it overrides the joy of learning and limit the potential of such young minds, as will be explained in this essay.

To begin with, education only achieves good outcome when learners are nurtured in a positive and encouraging environment, which is opposed the reality today. Some school systems are now obsessed with a narrow definition of success - with standardized testing, ranking, comparison and competition. This, not surprisingly, puts an unbearable burden on students, resulting in disinterest and misconception of learning as well as several mental illnesses such as anxiety, depression or even suicidal tendency. Such alarming pattern has been recorded in countries like Japan, Korea and possibly more in the upcoming time.

Furthermore, vast majority of young people do not yet gain enough experience to make a decision of their career paths. Restricted within the setting of parents, teachers and classmates, these minds are still being molded, their understanding of many other issues are inadequate. Narrowing down a person's focus and options is a way to steal from him or her the opportunity to be broad-minded and creative. Whereas, the opposite direction, which means allowing students to explore the world from various perspectives, can have a wonderful effect. This has been proved in Finland, where education system routinely ranks top worldwide and is famed for minimizing testing and homework.

In brief, despite the fact that pressurizing students may help them to be more ambitious, it seems to me that such pattern is rather problematic. Learning should be full of positivity instead of pressure. It is vital for schools, parents and students to be aware and cooperate to aim for a better education approac[h.

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Nguyen, the strength of your essay lies in the method by which you discuss the body of paragraphs. The reasons you gave are sound and relevant to the topic provided. It is analytical and offers the reader an insight into the life of a student who has experienced the reasons that has been presented as supporting evidence for your stance on the topic. While your body of paragraph has done an excellent job of defining the parameters of your belief, your opening statement and closing paragraph have created weak points in your essay.

The opening statement that you created does not follow the required parameters for the discussion. You mistakenly changed the prompt requirement from discussing the topic as a negative occurrence, you instead discussed the problems that stem from the tension the students undergo. This simple change in statement created a totally different essay discussion from the original which asked you to discuss the pressure on students as a negative or positive experience. The one thing that you have to remember about the opening statement is that, as a paraphrasing of the original instructions, you need to be very careful about your word choices. You should not choose to use words that will alter the original instruction in your restatement. That is because any prompt deviation will result in a failed TA score and as such, could affect the possibility of your passing or failing the essay test. In this case, although you did deviate from the prompt in the opening statement, your body of paragraphs still remained on track, explaining the topic as a negative. So your score will get some passing considerations. However, it will not score as highly in the overall sense because of the problematic TA presentation.

Here is a sample of a more appropriate opening statement:

School and university students have experienced a rise in the pressure for them to succeed in their studies. There is a tendency for the educational system to push them to achieve more in terms of their academic development from the beginning of their educational career. In this essay, I will be discussing the reasons why the pressure on the students has resulted in a negative development.

The concluding statement posed another problem for you because you did not use it to close the discussion you were provided. Instead of concluding the essay, you continued to quickly discuss a few more related topics. The concluding statement can never be used to continue the discussion because it does not allow for more comprehensive discussion development. As such, you would have been scored down in those aspects as well.

Now that you know where you made your mistakes, you can make an effort to not repeat the same in your next practice test. You have a good analytical approach to your discussion. Just make sure that you do not deviate from the prompt and that you close your essay instead of continuing the discussion so that you will be assured of a higher score in the next practice essay.