🦩 IELTS writing: clarity and development 🦩

We work on different things in my IELTS writing groups. One key focus is clarity - the clarity of why and how the ideas support the main point. It's not as simple as it sounds and it's something I have to fight for.

Look at the student's paragraph below.

🗒 Topic: "Because some children do not seem to have a natural ability to learn another language, schools should not force those children to study a foreign language. Do you agree or disagree?"

🗒 Student's original paragraph (opinion: disagree):

"Second, students without a talent for foreign languages can anyway benefit from learning them. Even basic knowledge may give them more opportunities in life such as being more confident while travelling abroad or getting better job positions in their future careers. Thus, instead of focusing only on gifted ones, schools should oblige all students to study languages."

In terms of clarity of ideas, the paragraph is excellent. That fight I have won. But we now face a different challenge - development. The paragraph is very short. So what could be add to further develop the main idea? 🦩

We could expand on "even basic knowledge." We could say that in order to benefit, students don’t need to acquire the C2 level. So even if they can only achieve level B1 (due to their lack of innate ability), they can still benefit when they travel or read some information online. Having no innate talent for languages does not mean a person is completely unable to acquire any language at all, right?

I like such paragraphs. If the ideas are clear, we can build on them. When a paragraph is a bunch of disconnected sentences, it's much harder to fix it.

So I suggested one possible extension. What else could we write to expand the student's paragraph above?❓