Advantages and disadvantages of great amount of time spent in sports by children

Some young children spend a great amount of their time practicing sports.
Discuss advantages and disadvantages of this.
Use specific reasons and examples to support your response.

Sports are necessary for children in their busy schedule to have some relaxation. Sports are good for children to build physical and mental health, and to enhance intellectual skills. However, as we know, every coin has two side; if children spend a great time practicing sports then it might be harmful for them many ways such as impact on grades, negative impacts on developing brains.

To begin with, outdoor games are good for children to increase their physical and mental health. Sports such as soccer, basketball encourage children to be physically fit. Games relax children from stressful study and tight schedules and improves their mental health. Many indoor game such chess sharpens the children’s mind. On the other hand, if children spend too much time behind the sports, they may not focus on study. Their grade may decline. Eventually, lower grade may give them stress. Excessive time behind indoor games have negative impacts such as children become introversive or selfishness. Therefore, time balance should be maintain in their schedule to avoid such issue.

Along with health, sports also enhances the social intellectual skills. Children become more interactive, cooperative and extrovertive. They perform many group tasks which may give them good experiences about how to deal with different kind of people. On the contrary, if they spend a long time for games, they will not enough time to spend with family. Their interaction will be ceased with their parents and siblings. So they lose attachment with their family members. Secondly, they will start imitating their friends with whom they spend a long time during their activities such as sports. We find many children start smoking and drinking at early age under influence of peers. This may be the dark side of excessively spent hours behind sports.

In conclusion, time should be limited by caregivers or parents in order to negotiate disadvantages. However, sports have many positive influences on individual’s life. Therefore, by balancing a schedule will be helpful to flourish children as an adult.

TOEFL listening lectures: What does DNA analysis reveal about the domestication of horses?

Hi Kattie, I thought this was one of your best essays. I think your structure was effective for this type of prompt and your ideas were very clear. I think the content deserves at least a 4, but you still have a lot of problems with grammar and your incorrect use of “behind sports”, which I think might keep this at the 3.5 level.