Topic: Some people think that all young people have full time education until they are 18 years-old. Do you agree or disagree?

Hung_Hoang_Mai · December 7, 2018, 1:07pm

Please give me some comments about my writing exercises. Tks a lot

Some people believe that full - time education should be offered to students who are under 18 years old. I completely disagree with this view.

Firstly, it is common knowledge that studying at school in many hours would put the incredible pressure on students, which would lead to mental breakdown and sleep deprivation. The plausible explanation for this is that spending too much time on learning would make students be bombarded with not only much difficult knowledge about different fields but also demanding assignments. As a result, these students would gradually become out of their depth and fall behind their peers. For example, according to a survey conducted by erudite experts in this field, Korea has reached the highest rate of high school students who commit suicide in 2018, at 5% due to heavy work.

Lacking practical skills is another key component of the case against full time teaching for those under 18. Since the incredible pressure of studying at school accounts for a great deal of how teenagers’ spend their time, they are incapable of taking part in extra–curricular activities besides compulsory lessons, which would serve as a big deterrent to an improvement in many necessary skills. Take the Vietnamese educational program as an example. Many top-tier high schools in Viet Nam like Nam Dinh - Le Hong Phong high school, Ha Noi – Amsterdam High School have tailored traditional teaching styles by founding many various student clubs in which students can have countless opportunities to nurture soft skills like team- working, problem-solving and communication skills.

In conclusion, I believe that causing serious mental health problems and the lack of soft skills are the two biggest drawbacks of full – time education for students under 18. Therefore, it should have been abundantly demonstrated that children under 18 should not attend full – time courses.

Luschen · December 7, 2018, 3:23pm

Hi Hung Hoang Mai, welcome to the forum. Your writing is very good with excellent vocabulary and only a few errors. But I don’t really understand what you are arguing. Are you saying that no kids should go to school?
You did not paraphrase or define the prompt in your introduction, so I don’t really understand what you mean by “full-time education”. And when you talk about “students under 18”, this means 6 year olds as well as 17 year olds.
Are you saying all children should only attend school one or two hours a day?
It is extremely important to clarify exactly what you are arguing for in the introduction.

Here i think the prompt is asking whether it is ok for 16 or 17 year olds to drop out of school before graduation in order to get a job. Or maybe it means that these teenagers should be allowed to study on their own and pass a high school equivalency test instead of going to school. Or maybe you could understand the prompt as saying that “full-time” would mean attending school from 8AM to 7PM as I understand is often the custom in East Asian schools. That is ok, but you need to explicitly state that and define how you interpret “full time education”. Here are some other suggestions:

Hung_Hoang_Mai:

Some people believe that full-time education should be offered to students who are under 18 years old. {“offered to students” is quite a bit different than “required of all students”, which is what I think the prompt is asking. Here you are basically saying that you completely disagree that children should be allowed to go to school} I completely disagree with this view.

Firstly, it is common knowledge that studying at school in many hours would put ~~the~~ incredible pressure on students, which would {I think “could” is better - surely not all students have mental breakdowns. This whole sentence seems too strong and therefore unrealistic} lead to mental breakdown and sleep deprivation. The plausible explanation for this is that spending too much time on learning would make students be bombarded with not only much difficult knowledge about different fields but also demanding assignments. As a result, these students would gradually become {“move” is better here} out of their depth and fall behind their peers. For example, according to a survey conducted by erudite experts in this field, Korea has reached the highest rate of high school students who commit suicide in 2018, at 5%[,] due to heavy [workloads].

Lacking practical skills is another key component of the case against full time teaching for those under 18. {this sounds somewhat like you are saying that those under eighteen should not teach - I know this is not what you intend to say} Since the incredible pressure of studying at school accounts for a great deal of how teenagers’{no apostrophe here} spend their time, they are incapable of taking part in extra–curricular activities besides compulsory lessons, which would serve as a big deterrent to an improvement in many necessary skills. Take the Vietnamese educational program as an example. Many top-tier high schools in Viet Nam like Nam Dinh - Le Hong Phong [High School] [and] {make sure not to replace “and” or “or” with commas} Ha Noi – Amsterdam High School have tailored traditional teaching styles by founding many various student clubs in which students can have countless opportunities to nurture soft skills like [teamwork], problem-solving and communication skills.

In conclusion, I believe that causing serious mental health problems and the lack of soft skills {try to make this more parallel - you have a verb and a noun - maybe “believe that serious mental … and the lack of …” or “believe that causing serious … and interfering with soft skill development …”} are the two biggest drawbacks of [full–time] education for students under [eighteen] {write out numbers under twenty} Therefore, it should have been abundantly demonstrated that children under 18 should not attend [full–time] courses.