Please evaluate my writing. 2nd Essay

[Prams]

Topic: It is said that day-by-day people’s lives are becoming increasingly stressful. What are the reasons behind that? What can be done to solve this problem?

Essay

In today’s era, struggle for existence is the key to one’s success. Apparently this has made the life of every individual a highly stressful one. There are many aspects attributing to this struggle, namely - health reasons, financial insecurity etc. Serious majors need to be taken to overcome this stress. Today those areas will be discussed in details.
Firstly, a healthy life is the precursor to happiness. So, the major contributor towards the stress in a normal person’s life is their unhealthy condition. For instance, an employee who due to health reasons takes a week off from work, get a lot of work pressure when rejoins the organization. Hence leading toward an enormous stress. Moreover, studies all around the world has proved that individuals in poor financial condition leads a more stressful life when compared to the wealthy one. For example, a daily worker who just manages to earn enough for his/her daily meals, always have a tension of missing one day’s wage. Thus, after analyzing the above points we are in a position to state that poor health and wealth condition catalyzes to the stress of a person.
After have discovered the reasons leading to stress, it’s time to discuss the preventive majors for it. The entity playing the key role in stress control is the government. If the government is well managed and they have proper plans in place to overcome the health and wealth uncertainty of every individual, then the stress does automatically reduces. For instance, if poor workers don’t have to worry about their one day’s wage loss then they can lead their life more peacefully. Hence, we can say that primarily the government needs to implement policies which will be attributing towards financial securities and in turn reduces stress.
After analyzing the reasons to stress and ways to overcome it, we can safely conclude that the health and wealth are the most important reasons attributing towards stress and the same can be solved by the few changes in the government policies. It is also believed that in future government will make a note and work towards this very critical issue.

[Dr.Matthew]

Dear Pramod, here's my quick (sorry!) revision:

In today’s era, struggle for existence is the key to one’s success. Apparently this has made the life of every individual a highly stressful one. There are many aspects attributing to this struggle, namely - health reasons, financial insecurity etc. Serious majors need to be taken to overcome this stress. Today those areas will be discussed in details.
Firstly, a healthy life is the precursor to happiness. So, the major contributor towards the stress in a normal person’s life is their unhealthy condition. For instance, an employee who due to health reasons takes a week off from work, get a lot of work pressure when rejoins the organization. Hence leading toward an enormous stress. Moreover, studies all around the world has proved that individuals in poor financial condition leads a more stressful life when compared to the wealthy one. For example, a daily worker who just manages to earn enough for his/her daily meals, always have a tension of missing one day’s wage. Thus, after analyzing the above points we are in a position to state that poor health and wealth condition catalyzes to the stress of a person.
After have discovered the reasons leading to stress, it’s time to discuss the preventive majors for it. The entity playing the key role in stress control is the government. If the government is well managed and they have proper plans in place to overcome the health and wealth uncertainty of every individual, then the stress does automatically reduces. For instance, if poor workers don’t have to worry about their one day’s wage loss then they can lead their life more peacefully. Hence, we can say that primarily the government needs to implement policies which will be attributing towards financial securities and in turn reduces stress.
After analyzing the reasons to stress and ways to overcome it, we can safely conclude that the health and wealth are the most important reasons attributing towards stress and the same can be solved by the few changes in the government policies. It is also believed that in future government will make a note and work towards this very critical issue.

COMMENTS: overall, a good and coherent discussion. Your diction (word choice) is appropriate and your sentence construction -- overall --- is also very good. I am a technician/formalist in terms of writing and so I won't pay TOO much attention to the quality of your content (which is pretty good here!). As my highlights indicate, there are a couple of typical problems apparent:

1. some subject/verb agreement issues (a singular subject MUST take a singular verb)
2. COMMAS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! As a very GOOD general rule, everytime you commence a sentence with ANYTHING other than the subject of the main clause, this introductory element (adverb, transition, phrase, subordinate clause) MUST be separated from what follows with a COMMA In your essay [comma!!!!], there are several instances where you omit this important comma.
3. To end on a positive note [comma!!!!], your use of apostrophes of possession and for contraction (eg: it's = it is] is Very good

To sum up, well, again, if you wrote a good task 1, then this effort would put you in the running for a 7 overall. Certainly not guaranteed, BUT very very close imo.

hope this helps,

[Prams]

Hi Matthew,

Thanks a lot for you valuable comments. Will keep those in mind and will try to incorporate them in my next writing.
there is one more essay posted by me few days back. It would be great if you could just evaluate that also.

Thanks once again!

[Dr.Matthew]

That's a pleasure Prams...will see what I can do later today...in terms of this:

>and will try to incorporate them in my next writing.

with those I work with in Australia, I don't allow my students to write another practice task 2 writing UNTIL they have rewritten the essay we have just revised And, I mean 'rewritten' as in by hand. Hahaha That's the ONLY way the comments/revisions have any chance of being absorbed. Again, as I explain in my guidelines for successful IELTS preparation, two of the main problems in students' test prep are,

1. too short a lead in/prep time to the test
2. taking one practice test after another (especially writing and especially listening) without adequate review of each practice test

anyway, what would I know...I have only been teaching IELTS prep for almost 20 years lol. Take care and all best, MP

[Prams]

Hi Matthews Sir,

I couldn't agree more! I too am a firm believer of your theory of teaching. Before stepping any further, we should always correct the mistakes made by us. And trust me, I have not written any new piece since you evaluated my work(the one for which I requested your evaluation was an old one). Right now I am busy with studying the areas which you suggested. Once I am clear with the basic concepts, I would definitely re-write this one more time, by correcting the previous mistakes.

One quick question, How do you suggest your students to re-write? Is it writing this same piece word-by-word (obviously correcting the previous mistakes) or writing on the same topic again by changing the actual content, and try not to repeat the previous mistakes?

And sir once again, I seriously thank you for your time and kind guidance. I deeply appreciate it.

[Dr.Matthew]

Dear Prams, well, to borrow a cliché: "Success is 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration". I am a firm believer in the value of HARDWORK...so, Do BOTH.

Yes, rewrite and make sure of the initial revisions (this way you will absorb the revisions); next, rewrite (again making sure of the technical revisions) but improving the content now...here's what I ask my students to do in such a scenario:

1. Identify the 10 or so well establish 'hot topics' for writing (I think we all know them...)
2. Locate good sample topics for these essays tasks.
3. NOT under test conditions, write up essays for these 10 topics..take your time...even do a little research.
4. Submit your essays for expert revision.
5. On the basis of this expert revision, rewrite the essay and submit again for revision...IN OTHER WORDS, get these 10 model essays as perfect as possible
6. NOW, on the basis of all this HARDWORK, you are ready to start writing practice essays under test conditions (eg. 40 mins).

The model I continually use for my students is this,

YOU are similar to an elite athlete in training for competition AT THE HIGHEST LEVEL (a swimmer or 100 m track runner etc etc). Does any athlete in preparation start his/her preparation by trying to run or swim as fast as possible (i.e: under competition conditions)?

NO. Of course not. They build up their skills and knowledge and their resilience until in the final phase before the competition they let loose and see just how good they are

Finally my friend, the other technique I urge my students to adopt (because I see myself more as a COACH than anything else...) is the COPY technique.

If a student has a number of basic grammatical problems in his/her writing, I advise they select paragraphs from the Reading Test (or from excellent IELTS essay samples) and they COPY (by hand) these paragraphs...at least 2 a day of about 150-200 words each. Again, this is BASIC training. One of my most pleasing IELTS successes was a young Chinese guy who was stuck on 6.5 for Writing and needed a 7 to get into University. After a week of the COPY practice, HE DID IT.

How does it work? Well, think of learning a musical instrument and practising your scales...over and over again. the COPY texts need to be appropriate (NOT newspaper articles) that's why I suggest the readings from the practice IELTS exam itself....every day, COPY at least 2 paragraphs from these texts (more if possible)...after about 2 weeks certain aspects of your writing (eg: articles and preposition collocation will have started to become almost AUTOMATIC!).

So, there you have it....take care and best of luck,

[Prams]

Thanks Matthews Sir for your time and guiding me.
Your comments are invaluable for me!
I will certainly do as suggested. Will post few more writings, by keeping a note of all your comments.
Please evaluate them and let me know whether I have done some progress.

Thanks again!

[Johnson zhang]

Those are great points made by Mat.