Essay by 謝振禮老師 Jeenn Lee Hsieh

TWE Topic>

真題還原

Do you agree or disagree with the following statement? Parents should help children to do their work or encourage children to do their work independently? Use specific reasons and relevant examples to support your opinion.

范文：

While helping children with homework is understandable, especially those kids who are struggling with assignments, actually doing their homework is parental involvement gone bad. Nowadays, many well-meaning but misguided parents not only demonstrate unethical cheating to children, but also deny their chances to master the material being taught by teachers. For parents, the right thing to do is to encourage school kids to do their homework independently and monitor progress accordingly.

It is crucial for parents to show an interest in communicating the fact that school work matters and needs to be taken seriously. In this respect, children should be advised to complete homework on their own to the best of their ability. This means urging children to watch less television and spend more time studying and reading. Indirect family involvement in education, merely through "supervising," leads children to develop wholesome habits and attitudes that will benefit them throughout life. From an early age, children are able to make sense of doing homework in response to their parents' high expectations. Hence, it is clear enough that homework is the duty of children to succeed in school, and all parents have to do is no more than to limit screen time at home.

Parents who are doing assignments for their children are doing them no favors. To begin with, children feel inadequate when a parent finishes homework. Thus, they are likely to face a vision of failure. Likewise, they feel a sense of incompetence since they can never hope to do the work as well as mommy or daddy. This can only foster increased dependency plus sensation of helplessness on the part of the children. What is more, it is nothing short of an act like cheating that will eventually come to light at test time, which is not in the best interest of either children or parents.

Getting kids to do homework is one of the challenges of raising children, but this must be done in such a responsible way as only to remind them of what is important to them. As far as assignments are concerned, it is not the business of parents to be directly engaged in children's business. Besides, more often than not, parents are the worst teachers at home.