IELTS task 2 Writing - About should Sports be compulsory at school?

I hope everyone give me a comment to amend that essay and score it for me. Besides, is it right about the length of task 2 should be within 250 to 300 words?

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Topic 1: Some people believe that sport is an essential part of school life for children, while others feel it should be purely optional. Discuss these opposing views and give your own opinions.

Essay:

"Should sport be a compulsory subject at school?"

has been a controversial topic for a long time. Some people assure that sport is unnecessary for the modern student. However, other agree that sport should be compulsory in school. In the following essay, I will clarify both of that views.

First, on the protest side who said a sport is unnecessary, their opinion is, in the present, children have to face a lot of stress in studying academic majors at schools such as Math, Physics, Chemistry and so on. Besides, they attend many other extra curricula in a society which take a lot of time resource. Is sport essential for them or it just bring more pressure for them? Furthermore, not many students willing to attend sport at school because of their limited physical ability. That is the reason why sport should be considered as an optional subject at modern school.

Contrasting with the preceded opinion, some people protect sports and presume that it should be compulsory. We can't refuse that modern students have to face much pressure from school and competitive society. In fact, besides studying, they spend almost time for other social activities such as volunteer and extra curricula to make the beautiful profile for a future plan, attending some entertainment activities with their friends and spending time for family. Therefore, they need a logical lifestyle which helps them healthy on both of physical and mental. Sports is the fundamental key to help children get the great healthy body. Furthermore, it also helps them increasing the cooperating, fair-play and competitive spirit which are appreciated in a modern job market. In addition, many colleges and companies evaluate candidates by not only the academic result but also physical activities because they want their potential members are not only bookworms.

Overall, I feel that sport is great important activities for students. It helps them more healthy on physical and mental. It is an enormous trouble if all of the students, because of concentrating on studying academic majors at school, reject attend sports. Moreover, sports is the great method to prevent obesity which is an urgent dilemma in Western now. That is the reasons why I think sport should be compulsory subject at school.

Nguyet, While the acceptable word count for task 2 is 250 words, it would help your score if you can write more than that. Say 300 words within 5 paragraphs, composed of 5 sentences (not six or more) each. So your essay is over the expected word count by 67 words. I think you did not accurately time yourself when writing this essay which is why you have more than the required words in your completed work. The practice of timing yourself during the mock tests is essential to your actual performance. Without the timer inclusion in your practice tests, you will find that you do not enough time to complete an accurate essay during the exam day itself. Make it a part of your regular routine to use a timer each time you practice essay writing.

The way that you paraphrased the essay shows that you have a good degree of English comprehension skills. However, the paraphrasing delivered an incomplete outline because you failed to address the action of presenting a personal opinion within the essay body itself. The last sentence should have read; "... clarify both views and offer my personal opinion at the end of the discussion."

After the almost impressive opening statement, your body of paragraphs representing the points of view in the essay gave me the impression of an analytical person who truly thinks before he writes. The problem is that you thought too much and ended up over discussing the topic paragraph in the 3rd body. With only 30 minutes to complete all the work involved in the writing of an essay it is important to keep the essay short but informative. Try to achieve that next time. Even writing only 3 sentences is acceptable provided those 3 sentences are useful and informative towards the discussion.

In the 2nd paragraph, it is important that you do not include any questions when writing a body paragraph. That is because posing a question requires you to deviate from the topic provided and will need a separate paragraph to discuss it completely. Just present facts and avoid using terms like "and so on" because those are word fillers that do not help to enhance the message of the paragraph.

The 3rd paragraph could have used more focus towards the discussion of the topic. While you did present enough explanations within, the discussion tended to run too long and lose the attention of the reader. That is why there is a sentence limitation in place. You need to learn how to express yourself with fewer words and sentences in a consistent manner. The consistency is required because you already showed that you are capable of discussing the paragraphs within 5 sentences. You somehow got carried away with the discussion in the third paragraph.

Unfortunately, your 4th paragraph is not acceptable as a concluding paragraph because this is the section of the essay that discusses your personal opinion. Therefore, you are not able to properly close the discussion. Your personal opinion is very well developed and helps to increase the overall impression of your work. I wish that you had taken the time to write a proper concluding statement that accurately summarizes and ends this discussion though.

Please take not of the suggested points for improvement. The most important being the word count in relation to the time allotted. Having mentioned the specific problems of this essay, I am going to be leaving you with a score of 6, even though there are a few marked problems with your essay. The examiner would probably score this less than 6 based on the problems but I am sure that it will not be less than a 5 as your work is extremely well done in this essay.

Hi Nguyet, i'm glad to have a chance in sharing with you about writing, especially academic writing. i suppose that your writing is quite good and your idea is suitable to be considered. But, in 1st paragraph, you wrote "...clarify both that views", i think you should use "those" because views are plural as well as you should give more attention concerning single and plural, for instance, "stress" in 1st line in 2nd paragraph. i think, that should be stresses. Also, in 3rd paragraph, in line 4, you used "is" after "sports" which is plural word. Then, i think, will be better to avoid using "to be" in opening a sentence.

Those all, i hope this will be a beginning for us to share and leaning together, and i hope you will give me some correction to my writing ahead. thank you very much.

Regards from Indonesia