13597 Future
TOEFL iBT Independent Writing: An Opinion Essay
Essay Question: Should parents determine their children's futures?
Sample Answer by Jeenn Lee Hsieh
ielts360toefl@hotmail.com
TOEFL Essay Prompt: (20130720 20101114)
>Do you agree or disagree with the following statement? "Parents now spend too much time on determining the future things of their children; children should be allowed to make their own choices."
>Should parents allow their children to make their own choices rather than determine their children's futures for them?
Use specific reasons and examples from your knowledge or experience to support your answer.
Example Writing (Jeenn Lee Hsieh):
It is arguable that children should be allowed to make their own choices as they grow up, and it is doubtful the wisdom of parents spending too much time on determining the uncertain future of their children. More wisely, parents are responsible for preparing their children for the future rather than preparing the future for their children. For that matter, what is important is to allow children to have a good education and not to handicap children by making their lives seem easy.
Providing children with a good educational environment to learn life skills is preparing them to meet the challenges in the new world to come. In this changing society beyond prediction, children need to acquire ways and means through education to survive and thrive in the future. Nowadays, to pave the way for their children to have a rosier future, many parents are inclined to have their children go through higher education. The decision being the same, the reason behind may be either that parents did go to college themselves or that they did not. Whatever, what matters is preparing children for the future but not the reverse. Just because parents have great influence on their children, it does not mean that the older generation must determine the younger generation's future things.
To prevent children from being lazy in making career choices, it is advisable to encourage them to find their own career paths. In some cases, setting the future ready for their children is like making children's lives seem easy, without having to think and to work on their own terms. Given that following in parents' footprints is understandable, not all doctors should expect their children to become doctors as well, being completely indifferent to their children's own choices that may better fit. Often, the idea is to allow their children freedom to choose other work which they consider as more worth doing. It is because only when children begin knowing where their different passions lie can they make self-motivated efforts to achieve their professional goals. In other words, determining children's futures at an early stage may be wishful thinking since not every child wants to become a future doctor, or lawyer, or scientist, artist, musician, or whatever.
In conclusion, it is better to give children an education as the best way to prepare them for a future, and as well to avoid children from feeling easy for a parents-determined future. Parents should let children have no illusion of easy success in a world that is in constant change and increasingly becoming competitive. Therefore, enough is enough; spending too much time on determining children's futures is not as realistic as allowing them to make their own choices. (Essay created by Jeenn Lee Hsieh, ielts30toefl@hotmail.com pigai zuowen)
Notes from Jeenn Lee Hsieh:
>Opinion essays are very common in the Test of Written English (TOEFL Independent Writing). An opinion is not a fact. Your opinion is arguable. A fact is not arguable.
Typically, each essay question asks for your opinion, and you are required to use specific reasons and include any relevant examples and/or explanations from your knowledge or experience to support your opinion.
It can be a bit confusing to work out different types of essay, so it is usually not necessary to know this. The important thing is to analyze each question as you see it and answer it. (The question=the topic+the task.)
>Though test takers are asked to write on a specific topic, parts of the topic may be treated by implication. Raters (readers) should focus on what the test taker does well. An essay at the top level (30) largely accomplishes all of the following: (demonstrating clear competence in writing on both the rhetorical and syntactic levels)
effectively addresses the topic and task
is well organized and well developed, using clearly appropriate explanations, exemplifications, and.or details
displays unity, progression, and cohesion
displays consistent facility in the use of language, demonstrating syntactic variety, appropriate word choice and indiomaticity, though it may have minor lexical or grammatical errors
>An essay (English composition) at the top level: (logical composition+grammatical English)
Logical Composition
Thesis--well focused
Structure--well organized
Content--well supported
Grammatical English
Rhetoric--language effectiveness
Syntax--sentence variety
Lexicon--word choice
