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IELTS Writing Task 2/ IELTS Essay:

You should spend about 40 minutes on this task.

Do you agree or disagree with the following statement?

Watching television is bad for children.

You should write at least 250 words.

Use your own knowledge and experience and support your arguments with examples and relevant evidence.

Model Answer 1:
Television is ubiquitous these days; I have not come across single household where there is no TV. But is watching TV good for children? Well, I am a strong believer that anything done in moderation is good and same goes with children watching TV.

Firstly, with the omnipresence of TV, it is impossible to keep children away from it. Moreover, TV provides an efficient source of learning for children if right channels are watched. We generally are able to grasp and remember more things when we see and hear rather than read it and here is where TV is really useful. These days we have different channels focusing only on children like cartoons or more educational channels like animal planet, discovery channel etc. All these channels help in educating children in an effective manner. It is often seen when the children are really young around 1-2 years, they react to TV; whenever a song is being played, they start dancing, and they often listen to songs and starts singing. This definitely suggests that TV helps children in their development and make them active.

Admittedly, TV also has some negative impacts on children. Sometimes, they squander too much time in watching TV and watching wrong channels can also have a negative influence on them. Therefore it is of utmost importance that parents keep a close eye on their children. With the advent of technology, we now have televisions with child lock system in place, which could prevent children from watching irrelevant and adult channels. Parents should extol the importance of watching news channels to develop overall general knowledge of children. When I was growing up, my parents made sure that I watch the news for at least half an hour in a day. This really helped me in improving my General Knowledge and I gradually developed the interest in politics and also watching different debates and group discussions helped me improving my speaking skill and as a result, I won several prizes in debates and quizzes at school and college level.

In a nutshell, I think as every coin as two sides, so does television. Watching TV in moderation and under parents’ guidance is good for children entertainment and learning but it is important that parents keep a check on the channels that their children watch and the amount of time being spent on watching TV.

Preeti Ghuraiya

Some parents believe that watching television is bad for their children. So, they try to restrict their children from watching TV. However, other parents think that there is nothing bad in watching TV programmes. Personally, I think that watching TV brings tremendous benefits to the children unless they spend a lot of their valuable time in front of a TV set daily. It is recommended that children should spend less than a couple of hours daily for watching TV programmes and those programmes should be suitable for them. For the following reasons, which I will mention bellow, I believe that television plays an essential role in a child's development.

First of all, television helps a child to extend his or her range of interests. Children can find out many new things and make many exciting discoveries for themselves. In addition to this practical benefit, television improves children's vocabulary, their memory and gives them the opportunity to gain more knowledge. I think it is essential for a child's growth. Of cause, someone can say that there are plenty of different resources of information such as books and teachers. But, I think, in our modern world children must learn faster and use all contemporary technology in order to succeed. Secondly, watching cognitive programs helps children to learn more about wildlife, our environment and about the importance of preserving our forest and wild animals that live there.

Scientists say that a child should not watch TV more than 40 minutes successively and not more than 2-3 hours per day. For example, my mother always made us have a break after watching TV more than half an hour and let our eyes rest for several minutes before turning on the TV again. She did not let us watch the TV all day long as well. I think it is the best solution.

To sum up, I believe that television gives children and all people the opportunity to learn what can not be learnt from books. Television and movies, in particular, allow people to feel the reality and see what they will most likely not be able to see in their lives. Personally, when I was a child I liked to watch cognitive programs about wild animals. Unfortunately, my family had only one TV, but these programs were the only ones we all wanted to watch. So, we gathered in our living room and watched them in complete silence and I always remember those moments with a smile on my face.

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