The Pros and Cons of Parents Educating Children at Home

As everyone is aware, the law in most countries nowadays demands that all children receive an education. However, did you know that a number of parents make special arrangements to educate their children at home? This happens mainly in cases where the child has serious health problems or learning difficulties, or is especially gifted.

Whatever the reason, there are certainly some advantages to educating children at home. First, they can learn at their own speed, spending more time on the subjects which they find difficult. What is more, it is easier for them to concentrate since they don’t have the distraction of noisy classmates. Finally, they learn more in a one-to-one situation, as they get the full attention of the teacher.

On the other hand, learning at home is not without major drawbacks. For one thing, children who do not go to school lack experience at making friends with other children. As a result, they do not learn the social skills needed in later life. Moreover, they are less motivated to work hard, because they have no one to compare their progress with and to compete against.

All things considered, I firmly believe children should go to school. Education is not only a matter of learning facts and figures – children also need to learn how to get along with others, and to develop their personalities. I feel they can only do this by mixing with other children in a school environment.

Writing assignment:

Pre-writing task 1

Read the article. Make up the plan, marking introductory, main body, conclusion. Make notes under these headings:

Topic sentence Supporting arguments Reasons/Justifications

The pros and cons of using the Internet

Advertisements for the Internet promise you a world of information, entertainment, on-line shopping and e-mail services. However, the real world of the Internet may not be as perfect the advertisements suggest.

Using the Internet offers many advantages. For example, all the latest information is available to you, in your home, at any hour of the day or night. It is much faster and easier to surf the net in search of information from all over the world than to travel to libraries in dozens of countries. Also, on-line shopping makes it possible to search through catalogues to find exactly what you want at the best price, saving both time and money. By joining a newsgroup or chat group, you can share your hobbies and special interests, and perhaps make friends all over the world. Finally, e-mail is popular because it is faster than sending a letter and cheaper than a telephone conversation.

On the other hand, the Internet has several disadvantages. Firstly, with so much information available, finding what you want can take you hours. Multimedia web pages with photographs, music and video are attractive, but they make downloading slow and boring. What is more, there is too much advertising instead of real information. As for Internet friendships, sitting at home in front of a computer making “chat friends” is not the same as actually meeting people.

In conclusion, the Internet obviously has both good and bad points. Fortunately, the system is improving all the time, and any problems which still exist can be solved. Whether we like it or not, the Internet is here to stay, so we have to make the best possible use of it.

Pre-writing task 2.

Read the extract from the text. Use the words and phrases in bold as key words to write about benefits and disadvantages of new ID technologies.