All School Subjects or Subjects of Interest - Ielts Task 2 Essay

learning all-round curriculum or concentrating on favourite subjects?

Hello everyone! I'm practicing IELTS writing and would like to hear any feedback or recommendations from the forum. Thank you in advance!

Topic: Some people believe that teenagers should concentrate on all school subjects. Others believe that teenagers should focus on the subject that they are best at or that they find the most interesting. Discuss both these views and give your own opinion.

It is very hard to say which is better for teenagers, learning an all-round curriculum or concentrating on their favourite subjects. I would say that balancing these two points is the best way.

Most schools tend to provide a broad education and produce well-rounded individuals. From a social point of view, the breadth of general knowledge is also a symbol of a well-educated person. But if teenagers are forced to learn a wide range of subjects, their energy will be limited, the result is that they cannot have a chance to develop their special talents. Meanwhile, they can hardly get ideal scores on those subjects which they are not interested in, it will undermine their confidence.

However, it still will cause some problems if teenagers are given too much freedom to decide the courses which they would like to learn by their own. Some courses are basic courses which should be learned by everyone, they are the basis for building logic and thinking patterns, and even the cornerstone of communication skills in life. For example, mathematics is related to logic, literature is associated with comprehension and writing skills.

My personal view is that teenagers should be allowed to choose their favourite subjects to learn such as geography, arts, the second language and so on, and at the same time, some core subjects like maths and literature will be compulsory subjects in the school.

In conclusion, with keeping essential subjects, teenagers can be encouraged to choose a part of subjects which they would like to study to improve their personalities and specialities.

Hi !

I am also an IELTS test taker and here is my humble opinion:

After reading the whole article, I'd shorten this sentence as below:

--> .... will be limited. This results in losing change to develop their special talents/ interests/ hobbies.

Good luck!

@Erica Atlas
When you're writing for IELTS, always be wary of having lengthy sentences. Because the nature of the test requires you to work with word counts, precision in your language is key. Once you have this in the picture, you will be able to implement more techniques that will teach you how to optimize your space.

I think your introductory paragraph is sufficient. However, looking at your second paragraph, I would opt to revise the third and last lines as:
If teenagers are forced to learn an array of subjects, they may lack energy; this can result to being unable to develop their special talents. If they are unable to get ideal scores in low-performing subjects, it might affect their confidence.

Notice how I had tried to omit or replace words that stretched the paragraph thin. I had also tried to incorporate a variety of transitions (semi-colons, for instance) to have more of an organic flow to the essay. I had also tried to change words to a more appropriate counterpart (ie. wide range to array, subjects they are not interested in [changed due to length] to low-performing subjects, and undermine [inappropriate in this context to use] to affect).

Lastly, I may suggest that you merge your last two paragraphs together as leaving the concluding paragraph like that appears to be out-of-place. Try to be more specific with your text.

Best of luck.

Thank you so much for your valuable advice, it's really helpful, I'll try to fix my essay.

Thanks again!