🎄 IELTS Writing Task 2: a developed idea (another paragraph makeover, well almost) 🎄

The cornerstone of Task Response is the development of idea. But what is a developed idea? How do we know the difference?

🗒 Take a look at this paragraph written by a student and try to notice the development or lack thereof.

"Studying international news at school is considered unproductive by many, which is the position I agree with. Adding this subject will undeniably overload students: by doing so, schools will not only cause academic stress but also affect the students’ mental and physical health. In addition, teenagers in such a course would be more exposed to violence and biased media, dealing with which can increase anxiety, apathy, and the probability to develop depression in areas unrelated to the content being consumed. Thus, studying international news as an obligatory course at school is more of a liability than an asset."

We have a bunch of ideas, but most of them are not developed at all. Let's take the first part: "Adding this subject will undeniably overload students: by doing so, schools will not only cause academic stress but also affect the students’ mental and physical health." We have a mention of academic stress. But what exactly is it? How does it happen? What are the consequences? Let's use these questions to develop the idea.

🗒 Here is my development of "academic stress":

"Adding this subject will overload the students as they will have more hours of studies and more homework. This will inevitably cause them unnecessary academic stress, which can result in poor performance in other subjects, ones that students like more or hope to study in depth at university. It is thus more reasonable to keep the traditional subjects on the curriculum and let the students study international news in their free time if they wish to do so."

Now "academic stress" is better developed. And then we need to decide what to develop next. We have mental health and physical health in the same sentence as academic stress. The impact on physical health is not explained at all. The impact on mental health is somewhat explained in the next part, but it's not introduced as an explanation. It's introduced as an addition. Plus, I have a huge question here: why will students be necessarily exposed to violence in this class? International news can be about politics or finances, not necessarily violence.

Developing all of the original ideas would be too much. We could choose just one more to develop. Give it a shot in the comments. 🗒