Some university students want to learn about other subjects in addition to their main subjects. Others believe it is more important to give all their time and attention to studying for a qualification. Discuss both views and give your opinion.

2023/08/30

Cambridge 18 – ACADEMIC TEST 2
Some university students want to learn about other subjects in addition to their main subjects. Others believe it is more important to give all their time and attention to studying for a qualification.
Discuss both views and give your opinion.

To write a good essay, it is essential to analyze the task first.

The task introduces two views. The first one is a fact about the choices made by some university students. However, the second view is not a fact. It is a claim (an unsupported idea). It compares itself with the first view (more important).

The task is about choosing a minor in addition to a major. All college students must choose a major, study, and graduate. However, some universities also offer minors. A minor can be thought of as a secondary field of study.

Many students choose a minor in addition to their major for various reasons. They might choose a minor because they are aware of the marketplace’s needs and know that their major will not equip them for the future. That is why a student majoring in politics might minor in linguistics to learn how politicians use language. Moreover, some students might choose a minor just because they might have (or think they have) multiple talents. As a result, they might find their major limited in scope, so they choose a minor to allow their other talents to thrive (or so they think). That is why a student majoring in psychology might choose to minor in theater.

How do we know the first view is about choosing a minor in addition to a major? Two keywords can guide us to this conclusion. One is the word “main” in the phrase “their main subjects.” The second is the wording in the second view: “all their time and attention to studying for a qualification.” Did you notice the words “all” and “a” in “a qualification”?
 I had my students write a response to this task, and I read the essays. I noticed some of them did not understand the task quite well. For instance, some of them changed the task entirely and wrote about this new task:

Some people think students should study many subjects, while others believe that students should choose one major only.

Some other students misinterpreted the task in various ways. The list below shows these misinterpretations and misunderstandings. Some of the essays were about:

Extracurricular activities, such as sports, art, and music
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Having fun by having a variety in education (this might not seem irrelevant, but still, the task is not about fun)
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Studying to gain many degrees (which is about double-majoring – this is quite different; you can google it).
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Learning styles (with no focus on the university – the ideas in the essay could be applied to all people, not just university students).
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Changing a field of study and choosing another one (which is about changing majors)
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Many of these misinterpretations might not produce irrelevant ideas and supporting ideas, but they can produce essays that might not “appropriately” address the task, which is required to achieve band 7 in TR.

As for the conclusion paragraph, it is common for many students to select one view and reject another (Apparently, this is a common way of teaching discussion tasks in many IELTS courses). Rejecting one view and accepting another can only be applied to some discussion tasks, for instance, those in which we have to choose between fair and unfair. However, how can we reject view 1 in the task here? Can we say that “students do not want to choose a minor, and the task is a lie; IELTS is lying to you, people”? Or can we say that “students should not choose a minor in addition to a major?”

A discussion task is not a boutique where we choose a favorite dress. We are supposed to present our opinion about a two-headed issue: Is educational convergence really more important than educational divergence? That is why some of the conclusion paragraphs that I read were confusing because students merely selected one view and discarded another.


For instance, one of them wrote that “students must focus all their energy and time on one qualification.” Really? How about a major that is incomplete without a minor?

And here is a final point that I must make. Some of the essays that I read drew my attention to something important. In two or three of the essays I read on this task, the candidates tried to refute the first view in body paragraph 1. Two questions I must ask:

First, can a fact be refuted in this test? For God’s sake, refutation is not for every task.

And second, refuting an argument immediately after discussing it in one paragraph is something a trained essayist might be able to do. But are we all good at writing essays? I can drive a car. That’s it! I cannot drive a Formula 1 —my driving ability is limited to a regular car. My point is that just because we saw an examiner present an argument and refute it in one paragraph, it does not mean we can and should do it now. We might be able to pull this off once we have become good at writing and can build an argument with a clear central idea, but not before.

So, perhaps we should stick to a standard format for discussion essays: Discussing views 1 and 2 in separate paragraphs and presenting our opinion about both views at the end. If you look at the sample at the end of Cambridge 18 on this task, the examiner also used the same format. In body paragraphs 1 and 2, you can see clear comparisons of the views. Comparison is one powerful tool to explain an idea or argue for or against an idea. And finally, in the conclusion paragraph, the examiner relates the choice to time, energy, and headspace.