IELTS WRITING TASK 2: School teaching should focus on success on the workforce

Topic:
Schools should focus more on teaching students how to be successful in the workforce and less on helping them to achieve academic success.

To what extent do you agree or disagree?

In this day and age, we are living in a world where issues of education-related is a heated topic and often discussed. It is commonly believed that school education should focus more on the skills which lead to the success of the students rather than only improving their academic performance. In my opinion, both success-oriented teaching and academic achievements could go together to help students be more successful in the future.

Today's world is a very competitive place. Everyone is in the race to get prosperous by either getting a highly paid job or by starting their own successful business. For example, a person cannot become a good designer by reading textbooks and applying theoretical knowledge such as formulas and equations. So, they should get taught about vocational skills like painting, crafting, visual elements, and principles. Also, regular workshops should be organized at school to teach them the value of team bonding, cooperation, and effective communication skills. In other words, a lot of things are required to be successful in life apart from books.

On the other hand, we cannot underestimate the role of academic courses. Such courses lay a solid foundation for their knowledge and they can understand basic things in life with ease. For instance, school subjects help in enhancing their aptitude and verbal abilities. Moreover, recruiters always look for outstanding academic records while hiring employees. Hence, school studies also contribute in a positive manner.

In conclusion, a person's future career success, to a certain extent, is still influenced by his or her academic performance at school so it is rather reckless to jump to an absolute conclusion on which educational philosophy should be consistently held.

The opening paraphrase has a confusing opening sentence. It is structurally incorrect and refers to sensationalist descriptions (heated topic) that is more often than not, frowned upon by examiners when presented in essays. You see, these are all discussions, never debates, never hotly discussed, never a heated topic. I understand that you are trying to go for word play in this case, but do not exaggerate the replacement words. These do not help your task accuracy consideration. The opinion is asking you for an extent response to the question, do you agree or disagree? There are only two choices, there is no third choice representing, "do you agree with both sides?" As such, you have created a totally different, unrelated discussion requirement for this essay, showing that you did not understand the discussion instructions. As such, you TA score will be based upon a totally unrelated response to the given discussion question / instruction. Stick to the choices you have been provided, nothing more, nothing less.

This is not a comparative discussion. You have failed to prove that you are actually supporting one of the two given sides in the presentation. I do not believe that this presentation, being comparative in discussion when it was not required, will help you get a high score. It may not even make it to the passing mark due to the error in discussion format. Your use of a comparative discussion where one was not indicated will leave your scoring on the lower end of the consideration scale.

You are making a conclusive opinion in the concluding paragraph. Since you were not asked to come to a conclusion in the instructions, this additional error will reduce your already low score. Resulting quite possibly in a failing score overall. The concluding paragraph is not the place to present an unnecessary opinion. Rather, you should merely reflect your ability to be able to summarize your own discussion presentation as a final consideration for the overall essay.