Technology reducing family time
This is a model answer written to show what a Band 8 response looks like against the marking criteria. It is a worked example, not a graded submission. To see your own band, paste your writing into the free checker.
The prompt
In many households, family members spend more time on their personal devices than talking to one another. What problems does this cause, and what can be done to address them?
Band 8 model answer (268 words)
Walk into many living rooms in the evening and you will find a family together in body only: each member absorbed in a separate screen, sharing a sofa but not a conversation. This quiet fragmentation causes real damage, though deliberate, realistic habits can repair it.
The most serious consequence falls on children. Language, empathy and the ability to read a face are learned largely through unhurried conversation with adults, and when that conversation is displaced by devices, development is measurably slower. The damage is doubled because parents model the behaviour: a child who grows up watching adults reach for a phone at every silent moment learns that attention is something you give a screen, not a person.
Adults lose something subtler. Marriages and family bonds are maintained not by scheduled discussions but by incidental talk, the passing comments from which closeness is actually built. Devices consume precisely those in-between moments, so families share a home for years while their knowledge of one another quietly thins.
The solutions that work are structural, not heroic. Families who keep devices out of two territories, the dinner table and bedrooms, restore both conversation and sleep with a single rule that children accept because it visibly binds the parents too. Replacing screen time matters as much as removing it: a weekly game night or shared cooking gives the family something to do together, where a bare ban merely creates boredom.
In conclusion, device-dominated households erode children's development and adult intimacy alike, but a few firm shared rules, applied to parents as much as children, can return attention to the people in the room.
Why this reaches Band 8
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Task Response
Problems and solutions are not just listed but analysed: the essay distinguishes harm to children from the "subtler" harm to adults, and its solutions ("structural, not heroic") explicitly answer the mechanism of each problem. This depth of development is what pushes it past 7.
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Coherence and Cohesion
The progression is seamless, from image to problems to solutions, and cohesion is carried almost entirely by meaning: "The damage is doubled", "Adults lose something subtler", "The solutions that work are structural". No mechanical linkers at all.
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Lexical Resource
Precise, flexible and often striking language: "together in body only", "quiet fragmentation", "incidental talk", "their knowledge of one another quietly thins". Word choice consistently sharpens the argument, which is the mark of Band 8 rather than 7.
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Grammatical Range and Accuracy
A full range of structures, including long noun phrases, appositives and balanced clauses ("applied to parents as much as children"), handled with essentially error-free control.
The one fix to reach Band 8
What separates this from a strong Band 7 is not bigger words but tighter logic: every solution names the exact mechanism it repairs, and every sentence advances the argument. A 7 that explains its problems and then offers general good advice becomes an 8 when the solutions engage the causes this directly.
Now check your own answer.
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