From egg to butterfly, and the screens our children grow up with
A Task 1 life-cycle diagram of a butterfly and a Task 2 effects-and-evaluation essay on young children and screen time, written, self-assessed, and shown beside the Band 7.5+ models, with the moves that earn the marks.
How to use this. Write both tasks in the boxes below, Task 1 in twenty minutes, Task 2 in forty, as in the real test. When you have finished, open Self-assessment to mark your own work against the four criteria, then compare it with the Band 7.5+ models and the notes on exactly what lifts a response up a band. You can download a copy of everything to keep. For a person to mark your writing against the criteria, the first lesson includes one marked Task 2.
Describe the life cycle.
Recommended 20 minutes · at least 150 words
The diagram below illustrates the four main stages in the life cycle of a typical butterfly, a process known as complete metamorphosis.
Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features of the process.
Write the essay.
Recommended 40 minutes · at least 250 words · carries twice the marks
In many countries, young children now spend a substantial amount of their daily time using smartphones, tablets and other personal screen devices, often before they learn to read. Parents and educators are divided over what this means for the way children grow up, and paediatricians have begun to weigh in on both sides of the debate.
How is this affecting children's development, and is it a positive or negative trend overall?
Mark your own work.
Be honest with yourself against the four criteria, the same four an examiner uses. Then read the model answers and the notes on exactly what moves a response up a band.
Task Response
Coherence & Cohesion
Lexical Resource
Grammatical Range & Accuracy
The Band 7.5+ models, and what earns the marks
What the task wants. A life-cycle diagram, so this is description in sequence, with one extra demand: it is a cycle, so the overview should say so. The biggest trap is listing the four stages as separate facts and missing that the adult lays the eggs that start the process again. A Band 7.5 opens with an overview (a continuous four-stage process), then walks through egg, caterpillar, chrysalis and adult in order, using the present simple and the passive, and closes the loop.
The target · Band 7.5+ · modelThe diagram illustrates the life cycle of a butterfly, a four-stage process known as complete metamorphosis. Overall, the cycle is continuous, since each adult produces the eggs from which the next generation begins, and the most dramatic change is concentrated in a single, hidden stage. The process starts when an adult female lays tiny eggs on the leaves of a host plant. After a short period, each egg hatches into a caterpillar, or larva, which feeds steadily on the surrounding foliage and grows rapidly. Once it has reached its full size, the caterpillar attaches itself to a stem and forms a chrysalis, also called a pupa. It is inside this protective case that metamorphosis takes place, as the larval body is reorganised entirely into that of an adult. Finally, a fully formed butterfly emerges from the chrysalis; once its wings have hardened, it is able to fly, feed on nectar and reproduce. In laying its own eggs, it returns the cycle to its starting point. Notably, the first three stages are largely stationary, whereas only the adult is able to move freely.
Why it scores. An overview that captures the key idea, a continuous cycle, before any stage is named; the four stages then traced in order with sequence markers (after a short period, once, finally) and the passive used naturally (are laid, is reorganised); the loop explicitly closed (returns the cycle to its starting point); and a neat closing contrast (stationary stages versus the mobile adult).
Where weaker responses lose marks. Listing the four stages as separate facts with no overview and no sense that it loops; over-using and then… and then; and tense slips into the past (the caterpillar formed a chrysalis) where the present simple and present passive are wanted for a general process.
What the task wants. This is an effects-and-evaluation question, so it needs two things: a description of the effects (cognitive, social, physical) and a clear evaluation of whether, on balance, the trend is positive or negative. The commonest trap is to list effects and then dodge the verdict, or to deliver a verdict that is not grounded in the effects, either of which is penalised under Task Response. A strong answer commits to a position, qualifies it sensibly (here, by the child's age), and grounds it in the effects described.
The target · Band 7.5+ · model paragraphsIntroduction. Young children today are exposed to screens earlier and more intensively than any previous generation, and opinion is sharply divided over the consequences. While these devices undeniably bring some benefits, I would argue that, for the very youngest children in particular, the developmental costs currently outweigh them.
Effects. The effects are both cognitive and social. On the positive side, well-designed educational apps can introduce letters, numbers and simple problem-solving in an engaging way, and a child who handles a tablet confidently is acquiring a kind of literacy the modern world increasingly demands. The negative effects, however, are harder to dismiss. Time spent in front of a screen is time not spent in the unstructured play, conversation and physical activity through which young children build language, motor skills and emotional control, and paediatricians have linked heavy early use to shortened attention spans and disrupted sleep.
Evaluation. Weighing these against one another, the decisive factor is age. For school-age children, a moderate and supervised amount of screen time is probably harmless and can even be enriching. For toddlers and pre-schoolers, though, whose brains are developing at their fastest, the displacement of real-world interaction seems to me the greater risk, and the evidence that very early exposure can delay speech is especially troubling.
Conclusion. In conclusion, while screens are neither wholly good nor wholly bad, their overall effect on the youngest children is, in my view, a negative one. The sensible response is not prohibition but proportion: firm limits on screen time, a clear preference for interactive over passive content, and the protection of the play and conversation on which healthy development still depends.
Why it scores. A clear, qualified position stated up front and reaffirmed at the close; effects given across more than one domain (cognitive and social) before the verdict; the judgement hinged on a sensible variable (the child's age) rather than left absolute; and accurate topic lexis (developmental, attention span, the displacement of, paediatricians) used without strain.
Where weaker responses lose marks. Listing effects and then dodging the verdict, or asserting a verdict that is not grounded in any effect, which caps Task Response; treating all ages as one undifferentiated group; and the recurring Task 2 ceiling, comma splices joining two full sentences with only a comma, which holds an otherwise strong essay at 6.5 on accuracy.
These are model answers I wrote for this paper, shown with the criterion marks they would earn and the reasons. The first lesson includes one of your own Task 2s, marked the same way against the four criteria and returned annotated, line by line.
Take your work with you.
Download your two answers alongside the target models, so you can revise them later or bring them to a lesson.
Earlier, online: Paper 09, a hydroelectric-dam diagram and a causes-and-solutions essay · Paper 08, population pyramids and a discuss-both-views essay · Paper 04, a process diagram and an advantages-and-disadvantages essay · Paper 01.
Send a task. Get it back marked.
A paper tells you the question. It can’t tell you why your answer sits at 6.5.
Write your response to the Task 2 above and send it to me. I’ll mark it in detail against the four assessment criteria and return it to you annotated, line by line, so you can see exactly where the band is sitting and what is holding it down. Written work is handled this way around the lessons, sent over and returned marked between sessions, which keeps the fifty minutes themselves free for speaking. The first lesson is a full assessment. Regular lessons are £20 for fifty minutes, one to one, in proper British English.