20140510 China IELTS
IELTS Essay Question: An Opinion Essay
讨论上班的夫妻是不是应该共同做家务事
杨振礼
Men and Women Share Household Chores
As the saying goes, "A man's work is from sun to sun, but a woman's work is never done."
》雅思大作文考试真题：
Men and women employed in full-time jobs have to share evenly household chores and caring for children at home. Do you agree or disagree? Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience.
》谢振礼 Jeenn Lee Hsieh 原创范文：
Given that males and females are created equal, the two genders do not have to play similar roles at home. Even when men and women are employed in full-time jobs, the domestic duties, such as household chores and childcare, are not meant to be shared evenly. The idea of equal amount of work at home sounds ideal; however, the truth is that, although men may want to have their fair share of the responsibilities, actually women at heart may not expect this to happen.
With dual-income families, it seems reasonable that the domestic burdens should be equally shouldered. These days, there is evidence to show that the gender gap in housework and caring for children across the developed world has been narrowing gradually. As well, it appears that greater numbers of men are getting involved as parents--and wanting to. In some families, there are at least symbolic signs that men are doing some sort of household duties. For example, a man takes out the thrash and tries to give the impression as if he cleaned the whole house, when it was undoubtedly his woman who did the work. Usually what a typical man does is to sweep the room with nothing more than a glance. It is not to say that men are lazy by nature, but that some domestic chores are not their piece of cake.
The main reason for the persistence of inequities at home may ironically be women themselves. Even in relationships in which the duel-earner couple aims to share the burdens, most women keep their partners away from traditional tasks and care-giving activities, or set impossible standards. So despite the best intentions of men, as husbands or partners, who agree to equally do the domestic work from cooking to cleaning to washing and to looking after kids, the zero gender gap at this point cannot be a reality. This may explain to some extent why in traditional families women almost always have the lion's share, being more responsible for that matter. As the saying goes, "A man's work is from sun to sun, but a woman's work is never done." So long as they feel happy, the majority of family women like to live their life this way and do not expect things to change.
Many women employed in full-time jobs would agree that some domestic duties are not comfortably suitable for men but are more naturally suitable for women. Evenly sharing household chores and caring for children does no harm, of course; but it may contribute little to harmonious and happy relationships. On this issue, there may be no need to seek 50/50 gender equality because men will always be men and women will always be women. (购买谢振礼写作讲义人民币60元 Jeenn Lee Hsieh ielts360toefl@hotmail.com )
#TIPS:
>Opinion essays are very common in the IELTS Writing Task 2 exam. An opinion is not a fact. Your opinion is arguable. A fact is a fact.
Typically, each essay question asks for your opinion, and you are required to give reasons and include any relevant examples and/or explanations from your knowledge or experience to support your opinion.
It can be a bit confusing to work out different types of essay, so it is usually not necessary to know this. The important thing is to analyze each question as you see it and answer it. (The question=the topic+the task)
>IELTS Task 2 Writing band descriptors: (an essay at the level of Band 9)
Task Response (TR)
--fully addresses all parts of the task
--presents a fully developed position in answer to the question with relevant, fully extended and well supported ideas
Coherence and Cohesion (CC)
--uses cohesion effectively
--skilfully manages paragraphing
Lexical Resource (LR)
--uses a wide range of vocabulary with very natural and sophisticated control of lexical features; rare minor errors occur only as 'slips'
Grammatical Range and Accuracy (GRA)
--uses a wide range of (sentence) structures with full flexibility and accuracy; rare minor errors occur only as 'slips'
>An essay (English composition) at the top level: (logical composition+grammatical English)
Logical Composition
Thesis--well focused
Structure--well organized
Content--well supported
Grammatical English
Rhetoric--language effectiveness
Syntax--sentence variety
Lexicon--word choice