IELTS TASK 2: go straight to university or take a year off traveling

Thank you for your attention.

In some countries young people are encouraged to work and travel for a year between finishing high school and starting university studies. Discuss the advantages and disadvantages for young people who decide to do this.

Essay:
Many adolescents are in two minds of whether they should take one year off after leaving schools before going to university. If I had had to make such a decision, perhaps I would have chosen to spend a year working or traveling on account of two following causes.

Firstly, young people would learn more about the world while they were working or traveling, which they might never be taught in both high schools and colleges. In fact, they must continually discipline themselves and make the best of every opportunity to develop their own life skills so as to adjust to a completely new environment. Thanks to such hard work, adolescents are going to become more and more self-assured, which is extremely useful not only for their university studies but also for their career later.

Secondly, no one can deny that people at the age of around 18 might not be mature enough to determine into which occupation they are. As a result, having a year off in order to meet a large variety of people and observe a wide range of real jobs is likely to contribute to shaping their own future career. It is true that universities have seen several cases in which their students either was not properly interested in studying or accepted to abandon one or two years in college just because of wrong decisions at the beginning.

In brief, I support the idea of taking one year off based on its two advantages including learning a lot of real knowledge and skills as well as clarifying their desirable job in the future.

I like your essay. But it seems to me that you are trying to show that it is better to travel and work during that particular year. The topic of this essay requires you to discuss both advantages and disadvantages.For example:

An adolescent abroad would not have enough experience or knowledge to deal with a very serious situation, specially if it happens while he or she travels.

If I were you, I would choose one of the body paragraphs discussing the disadvantages of working and travelling for young adolescents and maybe combine your two advantages into one paragraph. :)

Thanks for your comment. I almost forgot it. In an attempt of controlling the time, I paid too attention to limit the length of my essay with the aim of 275 at most. I hope you will keep giving me a hand in my next outputs.

Working and traveling give them practical exposure and knowledge that cannot be taught in the classroom setup. So it is good if you touched that aspect too, rather than saying that they would learn more by working and traveling.

Also, you need to include specific examples to support these reasons. It's important for you to earn marks in this writing task. So make sure you have examples included for every reason you highlight. My advice is to limit just one reason to one para, and support it with an example in order to manage time effectively.

It is prime time of their life when young students finish their school education and are ready to embark on to higher level and look forward to go to university.In that respect however, there are different viewpoints.One opinion is that these adolescents should be given some breathing space by taking a year gap from academic studies.The other group do not support this idea. in this essay i am going to discuss both sides of the argument.

First of all the negative aspects of this 'gap time' idea are not ignorable. As it is exclaimed that this free time could apparently make these young birds lazy and indolent.It is evident that they are not involved in any academic activity. So they most probably loose their focus from studies. For instance when they learn some practical skills or start earning a reasonable amount of money, it is practically difficult for them to take a new start in their educational and academic career. Same applies to other activities like travelling. They might possibly get distracted and perhaps get occupied with some sort of personal or social issues.Taking these facts into consideration it is not in favour of students to take break from studies.

Whereas ,there is other group who strongly favour's this idea. According to them , these young adults are genuinely tired and exhausted after spending whole 13+ years of their precious life,working hard ,going through all the exams . They now deserve a break, they should be therefore given a breathing space in that particular time period.They should be allowed to learn to face the harsh realities of life .They can learn new skills ,interact with communities ,do a job ,earn money and get to learn money management.This could make them feel accomplished,and give them confidence.

Moreover ,it could be essentially beneficial for these young people to travel around the world, to get knowledge, to see the colours of universe.They can plan a journey to a destination of their choice.For instance many students from my country prefer to travel to Europe, to interact with people from a different culture. similarly from UK and Europe, young students travel to India and China to explore, their history and culture.

To conclude, it is evident that these arguments are undoubtedly valid. However i do not hesitate to admit that. i am more in favour of 'gap year' for all the reasons given in last two paragraphs.In addition to that it also depends on the individuals how they take advantage of this time.

Note ; when you use ''look forward'', the verb ends with ''ing''.... Many people make this mistake : )
Example;
I look forward to meeting him;
We are looking forward to receiving them.


Instead, state your opinion on this. It is always recommended that you state your opinion in the introduction. It helps the reader to follow you in your desired direction. What you have said above does not add much value to your essay because the reader already knows about it. But he is waiting to know your opinion : )

please check my essay on the above topic. need a feedback.
many thanks