剑桥5 谢振礼 雅思范文: 儿童竞争
Cambridge English 5
IELTS Writing Task 2
Topic:
Some people think that a sense of competition in children should be encouraged. Others believe that children who are taught to cooperate rather than compete become more useful adults.
Discuss both these views and give your own opinion.
Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience.
Essay: ielts360toefl@hotmail.com
Educators often debate the merits of the cooperative classroom against those of the competitive classroom. These two teaching strategies are quite different, and even oppositional, and advocates on both sides defend the benefits of their preferred classroom style while finding faults with the other side. On balance, it could be said that the combination of cooperation and competition will result in greater satisfaction and often in high scores as well.
The cooperative classroom is recommended by some educators who believe that children should be taught to cooperate rather than compete so as to become more useful adults later in life. Students are usually divided into small groups and instructed to work together to maximize their own learning, as well as the others’ in the group. Children can learn important cooperative social skills that they will need later in their working lives. Further, children can really learn better when they also help teach other students. In addition, those children who might be left behind can be brought up to speed by their peers. However, in the cooperative classroom, it is hard to accurately evaluate the progress of individual students. Besides, students may not be motivated to excel if they know that their classmates will do whatever work is needed on a project. What is more, students can become frustrated when their individual efforts go unrecognized.
Other educators believe that a sense of competition in children should be encouraged, considering that there are more advantages than disadvantages. With the competitive classroom strategy, children study alone and complete their own assignments while trying to learn the presented subject matter. Tests and quizzes measure each student’s progress, and in this type of setting, students may become competitive with each other for the best grades and teacher recognition. Also, children can face the real-world challenge and so they do their best. Plus, children can still work in teams, but compete against other teams, which is a great way to enliven the classroom environment. That being said, one disadvantage is that some students may become apathetic if they fall too far behind the rest of their classmates. Another disadvantage is that earning high grades may come to be seen as more important than actual learning.
The debate is not a black and white issue. Given that both cooperative and competitive teaching strategies each has its merits, they could be combined as a joint strategy. Of course, trying to incorporate both strategies into a single class requires a lot of commitment and effort, but if that is best for children, schools should give it a go.
