IELTS Writing Task 2: Video Games and Children Nowadays

In modern times, a majority of kids are indulged in playing computer games for long hours and dedicated less time for playing out of door activities (1). This trend is the result of reduced social interaction, and I believe this tendency has a negative impact, in terms of children lacking the behaviour of socialization (2).

The main reason for children being too much involved in video games is not having supporting environment that can help kids to play with other children. This can be attributed to the fast phase of urban life where most of the people are completely involved in a day to day activities and does not have time to spare for interaction with others (3). As a result, almost all families are leading an isolated life. Thus kids growing in these families have rare interaction with their neighbours and this promotes them to spend most of their time in the home (4). All these factors lead to children investing more time in video games which can be played alone and in fact looks very attractive to kids (5).

In my view, the trend of kids getting immersed in computer game leads to adverse ramifications. This is because kids who start playing video games get addicted to it and rarely show interest in other activities. This kind of behaviour and attitude gradually leads to children lacking interest in activities played in open space. In addition, due to limited interaction with the society, kids are even showing a lack of involvement in community functions.

In conclusion, modern society has witnessed a change in the pattern of activities played by kids (6). This is purely a matter of change in the lifestyle of the whole society which has an adverse effect on children in terms of lacking social behaviour.

297 words

The commentaries are marked in brackets with number (*). The numbered commentaries are found below. The part in italics is taken from the text, the word underlined is the suggested correction. Words in (brackets) are the suggested addition to the original phrase or sentence.

1. In modern times, a majority of kids are indulged in playing computer games for long hours and dedicate less time to out-of-door activities — ‘out-of-door’ is spelled using dashes, it is also somewhat old-fashioned, maybe the more-widely accepted ‘outdoor’ would be better; you don’t “play” an activity (this mistake will repeat itself in the last paragraph).
2. This trend is the result of reduced social interaction, and I believe this tendency has a negative impact, in terms of children lacking social skills — normally, complex constructions seem more favourable from a student’s perspective — an examiner ought to get impressed with the verbal intricacy. However, I’d take a simple and clear ‘social skills’ over a more sophisticated ‘behaviour of socialization’ any day.
3. This can be attributed to the fast phase of urban life where most of the people are completely involved in a day-to-day activities and do not have time to spare for interaction with others. — ‘Day-to-day’ is an adjective here so it should be hyphenated. The verb ‘to do’ refers to ‘people’ and therefore should be plural.
4. this encourages them to spend most of their time at home (or inside) — you can’t use ‘promote’ in the sense ‘make do something’. Secondly, if you mean the opposite of ‘out-of-doors’, then stick to two suggested words.
5. All these factors lead to children investing more time in video games which can be played alone and in fact looks very attractive to kids — consider rephrasing the second part of the sentence after ‘and’ (e.g. All these factors lead children to invest more time in video games, which are fun to play even alone).
6. In conclusion, modern society has witnessed a change in the pattern of activities chosen/favoured by kids — this inaccuracy was explained in #1.

This text could use a more diverse vocabulary: word ‘activity’ was used 6 times, ‘interaction’ and ‘lack’ – 4 times each, ‘children’ – 8 times. As some words can be problematic to paraphrase, try building your sentences with verbal variety in mind. You might want to try

Another issue is use of Continuous Tense — there are 15 verbs that use this tense in the text. The author has to make sure to use it with a purpose in mind. I didn’t correct any of it assuming (sic!) that the tenses are used intentionally.