Sample response & feedback

Telling Children They Can Achieve Anything

Question

In some cultures, children are often told that they can achieve anything if they try hard enough. What are the advantages and disadvantages of giving children this message? Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience.

Annotated response

10 correction notes

Showing 10 correction notes.

In some countries, children are taught that hard work will help them achieve their goals. In my opinion, this message can inspire and motivate them to overcome hardships, but at the same time, it can cause and disappointment.

On the one hand, teaching children that hard work can guarantee success has several advantages. To start with, this message can motivate children, especially those who believe that innate talents determine success. For example, when learning a second language, which is a challenging and process, children need to truly understand that hard work, , is conducive to enhancing proficiency. That way, they could stay motivated and keep on learning when they encounter setbacks. More importantly, the role of valuing hard work goes beyond being a mere source of motivation. It can also help children to develop a positive mentality and improve their all of which are necessary for their adult life.

On the other hand, the biggest disadvantage of the notion that diligence ensures success is that it may mislead children into spending too much time and effort on the tasks in which hard work plays little role. For example, a child wanting to be a professional singer may waste time on voice training without considering their lack of musical talents but still hope that they may achieve success one day. Similarly, most painters need to have a great and unique sense of aesthetics , which is considered as a rare talent and therefore cannot be acquired through hard work. Believing that hard work alone is enough can breed frustration, delusion, or even mental illness.

In conclusion, teaching children that hard work will always result in success is a great way to motivate them through hardships. Nevertheless, such teaching may produce undesirable outcomes in situations where hard work is not the key.

Overall assessment

Why this response received Band 7.5

The essay addresses both advantages and disadvantages with a clear position and relevant examples from language learning and the arts. Vocabulary and complex sentence structures are generally well controlled. The main weakness is the support for some claims: the discussion treats artistic aptitude as wholly innate and moves to mental illness without explaining the link. Developing resilience and qualifying these claims would strengthen the argument.

IELTS criteria

How each score was decided

TR Task Response

7.5

Both sides are clearly addressed with relevant examples, but the claim that artistic ability cannot be acquired through practice is too absolute, and the emotional consequences need fuller explanation.

CC Coherence and Cohesion

7.0

The two-sided paragraph structure is clear and ideas generally progress logically. The move from misdirected effort to emotional harm is abrupt, and the final reference to undesirable outcomes is vague.

LR Lexical Resource

8.0

Vocabulary is flexible and precise, with natural collocations such as innate talents, breed frustration, and undesirable outcomes, and only rare imprecision.

GRA Grammatical Range and Accuracy

8.0

A wide range of complex structures is used with strong control, and errors are rare and non-impeding.