dim/essayforum_raw_writing_10k huggingface dataset:
Zhiyuan, you did not accurately paraphrase the prompt requirement and you totally misunderstood the discussion consideration as well. The correct paraphrase for your essay is as follows:  
  
*International fast food is believed to be speedily replacing traditional foods in most countries. There is a public believe that this steady increase in the popularity of fast food will result in a negative effect on families and societies. I totally disagree with this statement due to some factors that need to be considered in terms of food preferences of countries. Specifically, the food preferences of my own people in (name of your country).*  
  
This type of opening paraphrase shows that an analysis of the topic presented was done and that you considered all angles when it came to the food preference discussion in relation to traditional and fast foods. Your essay is nowhere near this required discussion, which is the required discussion because you made a mistake in your paraphrasing and as such, did not accurately represent the expected essay response. You presented an opinion essay based on a prompt discussion that you developed for yourself, which is not based on the original instructions provided. The important missing element in your opening statement that changed your discussion was "I totally disagree..." Keywords taken from the original prompt and used in the paraphrase will always help guide and outline your discussion. I hope you remember to do that with your next test.  
  
The conclusion is also faulty as you were not able to properly sum up the given discussion by restating the prompt, stating a summary of facts from the discussion, and then repeating your disagreement in the end. That is all that is required in the concluding statement. Never give an additional discussion as it will not be considered a concluding statement and you will lose points for it.
**Topic: Countries are becoming more and more similar because people are able to buy the same products anywhere in the world. Do you think this is a positive or negative development?**  
  
## uniformity of goods in the world

  
  
It is no doubt true that countries are becoming similar to each other due to the global spread of the same products, which are now available for purchase almost anywhere. In my view, I consider it to be a positive development.  
  
Similar products the world over have some drawbacks for various reasons. Many items are considered as special things in a country, and the globalization of products can lead to the loss of uniqueness in each nation. To give one example, tokbokki is a well-known traditional Korean dish. However, today, rice cake, which is a main raw material in this meal is ubiquitous in Korean marts from every corner of the world. One possible consequence of this trend would be that tourists become disillusioned with travelling to Korea just the same as the place where they are living.  
  
Despite the negatives mentioned above, I believe that the spread of multinational products can be seen as progress. To begin with, consumers would feel more comfortable and convenient as they can easily purchase something in foreign countries. Furthermore, this development contributes significantly to a thriving economy in the countries. People turn to buying the new brand from overseas nations, perhaps thinking it more glamorous than the one they are used to. As a result, local companies are likely to maximize their profits as they import foreign products.  
  
On the whole, while there are largely detrimental effects resulting from the uniformity of objects in the world, it seems to me that these developments are desirable, and all people are entitled to have access to the same products.  
  
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Thank you very much for your help!
Trinh, you still have not learned how to analyze the discussion requirements of the essay. In an "or" essay, only one side of the issue to be discussed. That is the side that you support or do not support. This is not a comparison essay, this is a single opinion essay discussion. Another problem with your essay is the wrong formatting of your opening statement. You are not allowed to present your opinion in the opening statement because that is only the summary and outline of the discussion. It is not the discussion itself. Since you cannot develop your explanations within the opening statement, it is best to save that for the body of the essay. An example of the correct prompt paraphrase is:  
  
*Globalization is allowing people to buy the same products regardless of where they are in the world. The trend has seen people of the world becoming far too similar in many ways due to the ready availability of similar goods. While others think this is a negative thing, this essay will look into the positive effects of this trend.  
  
I believe that this is a positive development because...*  
  
Remember, all opening and closing paragraphs need to have at least 3 sentences and represent a presentation of the discussion in paraphrased form each time. Your conclusion did not accomplish this properly. The conclusion should have just offered a summary of the discussion, data, and your opinion.  
  
Basically, your essay should have indicated only the positive aspects because that is what you are supporting. The negatives should have only been mentioned if you were supporting the negative side. This is a one opinion essay. You can justify your opinion using one or 2 paragraphs of reasons to strengthen your discussion.
**Women and men are commonly seen as having different strengths and weakness. Is it right to exclude males or females from certain professions because of their gender?**  
  
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Please give me advices and score. Really appreciate!!!  
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## Men and women right to the same job

  
  
There is no doubt that males and females have differences in individual characters due to the genetic inheritance and socio-demographic components. Some argue for setting up mono-sexual occupations, which is attacked by the concern for gender quality. In my opinion, this idea merits more careful consideration.  
  
It is undoubtedly that man and women are good at different field, which enables them to perform well in certain tasks. For example, males are considered comparatively good at physical works such as driving taxis and decorating houses because they are physically strong. Similarly, taking care of the household activities and bringing up the children are deemed to be women's duty because most of them are kind, loving and caring. By keeping men or women out of certain occupations, it is more efficient that people can accomplish the duty.  
  
However, even though both genders are extremely suited for the jobs above, there is a changing trend which are taking place in modern world. Because the growing opportunities of higher education and the stronger sense of equal rights, a considerable number of women are breaking the barriers in order to fulfill their ambitions. They can be seen at various important positions, such as politicians and doctors, where they are also performing beyond the expectations of public. In the same way, men are wild about taking care of children and doing chores as well. Therefore, it is inaccurate to say that both genders are suitable to do exclusive types of job.  
  
In brief, men and women have their own rights to select specific profession. Preserving the gender quality in workplace is a socially meaningful behavior.
Sebastian, because you misunderstood, misrepresented, and did not correctly discuss the original prompt statement, your essay cannot score higher than a 3. While you were asked if you believed that it was right to exclude certain genders from jobs because of their gender, you were discussing equality in the workplace. Which is nowhere near what the original prompt required you to discuss. Hence the failing score. You cannot pass any aspect of the test because you already failed the task accuracy portion. As such, it shows that you lack the English comprehension skills to be able to participate in an English discussion on a given topic. Therefore, the rest of the rating criteria no longer applies. It won't matter how good your grammar is when your English comprehension skills are not at an acceptable level for an English speaker / student. In order to pass this test, you must do the following:  
  
1. Learn to look for keywords that can help you understand the meaning of the essay. Keywords such as "women, men, common strengths and weaknesses,exclude, due to gender", if you understood these words, would have helped you to better respond to the essay prompt  
  
2. Practice your English comprehension skills by not doing the actual essay tests yet but rather, allowing yourself to read any English material and then simply have you restate what you read in a manner that your friends and relatives can understand. Once you are comfortable with that and you successfully explain the topics you have read about, then you may proceed with the actual practice tests.  
  
As of now, this essay will not receive a passing score. You need to work on developing your lexical resources and task accuracy representations in order to increase your chances of getting a passing score in the actual test.
Hi, Everyone.  
This is my writing practice for the TOEFL exam. I will greatly appreciate your help if you could help me correct my mistakes in the article.  
  
TOEFL writing questions:  
**Some adults want independence from their parents as soon as possible. Other young adults prefer to live with their families for a longer time. Which of these situations do you think is better?**  
  
## young adults bind to their parents

  
  
Currently, there is a widely observed phenomenon that some young adults choose to live with their families for a longer time. However, in my opinion, young adults should seek independence from their families as soon as possible.  
  
First of all, being independent as early as possible can equip young adults with the ability to survive in the world. The world is becoming more and more competitive so that one cannot totally rely on his family because he will work and live independently sooner or later. The ability to survive in the world is an essential as a working man. The example of my cousin, Tom can buttress this point. He rented an apartment to live off campus and constantly sought for high paid jobs since entering college at the age of eighteen. He completely lived on his feet and never asked a penny from his family. After graduation, he was really good at dealing with all kinds of affairs, no matter how big or small. His independence from the family enables him a capacity that other young adults may not have.  
  
Furthermore, living with the family for too long can add burden to the family. Parents ought to not guarantee their children a high level of living standards when they become adults. Staying in the family for too long can bring conflicts to the family, Let's suppose a hypothetical situation that one child stays at home with nothing to do but playing computer games all day long. His parents will be very annoyed at him because the family has to feed him while he makes no contribution to the family. It is unfair for other family members who work hard to support the family. This added burden is a disadvantage of living with the family for a long period.  
  
In conclusion, young adults should get independence from their parents as soon as possible so that they can learn how to survive in the world and avoid adding burden to the family, which is not only good for the development of the individual but also beneficial to the family.
Wang, try to develop at least 3 sentences per paragraph in your essay. For this essay, I would like to specifically call your attention to your opening statement that does not have this required number of sentences. The reason you need to write at least 3 sentences is because you need to properly paraphrase the prompt, the instructions, and state your opinion in the opening salvo of the paper. You were supposed to present both sides of the discussion as individual sentences in order to meet this requirement. So this should have read as:  
  
*There are two types of adults in this world. The first kind, are the adults who want to live independently of their parents as soon as they are capable of doing so. The other, represents the young adults who wish to live with their family longer. In this essay, I will discuss which of the two types of situations would be better for an adult such as I.  
  
In my opinion, it would be best if adults lived independently of their parents as soon as possible. That is because...*  
  
Since this is an opinion paper, you need to present at least 2 paragraphs that support your opinion, 3 would be best. In any case, your information should only be supportive of your personal opinion because you were asked to make a choice between two options. This is therefore an opinion essay, not a compare and contrast essay.  
  
Your conclusion is faulty because it continues the discussion of facts for the essay instead of simply ending the discussion with a recap of the previous discussion within 3 sentences. That is all that is required of the TOEFL conclusion paragraph.
**"We should introduce laws to make businesses and state services employ equal numbers of male and female workers in every department or area of the company." How far do you support this idea?**  
  
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Give me advice and score for me. Sincerely thanks!!!  
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## Equal on number of male and female workers

  
  
An unbalance in labor source is the controversial topic for many decades. Many lawmakers proposed that we should impose a legislation forcing businesses and government departments balancing the number of employees in sexuality. In my personal opinion, I profoundly oppose this idea and provide some pieces of evidence to prove my individual thought in the following essay.  
  
First at all, in the viewpoint of an employer, forcing the equal number of male and female workers creates exponentially serious trouble for businesses. For instance, to meet this legislation, they have to conduct some personnel change and this process costs a large amount of money. For example, the employer has to investigate workers if who deserve to keep and vice versa; the next step is compensating for the unfortunate people - who are fired; finally and most difficult step is how to recruiting the appropriate employees who meet both of job requirements and sexual legislation without impacting the recent works.  
  
On the other hand, in the employee's perspective, this law creates a hardship for a significant number of workers. The most evident example is some particular fields, such as nuclear industry and prison department, which are almost suitable for males and attracted a mere number of females are facing greatly serious dilemma - how to balance the employees? More seriously, this legislation will make the topically social trouble - unemployment - more and more solemn. The toughest consequence is creating the new crisis in the national economy.  
  
By way of conclusion, this legislation just solving only one trouble - the unbalance of sexuality in workforce - however, creating many social issues and negative influent for the national economy. In my personal thought, without partial in any aspect, I completely refute operating that law because we can solve the problem of sexual balance by other methods such as public education and long-term training.
Nguyet, in response to your inquiry in your previous post, you just need to write in your normal style. Just make sure that you are clear with what you are saying. That means, that when you write, make sure people will understand your discussion. It does not need to have complex sentences if you cannot develop them effectively. What is more important is that you are clearly understood. The examiner will make allowances for any shortcomings that you have in sentence development but will not forgive you for confusing them with your lexical resources that confuse the presentation. Each essay is special in its own way. There is no such thing as one essay being better than the other. There is also no perfect formula for the highest score. You just need to do your best and make sure that the essay can be understood. You will be scored based on your existing and appropriate abilities. Don't let people tell you how to write. There is no right or wrong way of doing that. As long as you follow the instructions, you will be fine in terms of scoring.  
  
Now, with regards to this essay, the prompt clearly indicates the type of discussion that you are to be presenting. That is, the extent of your agreement with the idea. Therefore, you are not to oppose or discuss the negative side in your essay. When they say "To what extent" your response should be "I support this idea to the extent that it will help both genders gain equal employment in a workplace." or something similar and then defend the stance of "equal employment in the workplace" in the succeeding discussions. You did not totally understand the prompt requirements when it came to the instructions as to how to discuss the essay. You did however, understand the topic presented. So, between that confusion in your opening statement and the misrepresentation of the discussion in the body of the essay, the breakdown for your score is as follows:  
  
TA - 4  
C&C- 4  
LR - 5  
GRA - 6  
  
I have to remind you again that your personal statement in this type of essay must be seen throughout. You must take ownership by constantly indicating "I believe, my opinion, I assume, etc." in each paragraph since this is not a compare and contrast essay. You made a severe error by indicating another personal opinion in the conclusion. As I told you before, that is not allowed and you were marked down for it in this practice test.
**"Tourism is always a force for good which enables people of different countries to understand each other." To what extent do you agree with this idea?**  
  
Please give me score in the following essay. Thanks, Holt, I try to focus just 1 main reason for one paragraph and analyze it like your advice. Hope your advice.  
  
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## international tourism benefits

  
  
In recent decades, we have seen a dramatic increase in the tourism, even so, the international understanding. That is why many people laud the role of the tourism in the universal compassion. However, I absolutely refute that the tourism is always a force good things and give some pieces of evidence to prove my personal ideal in the following essay.  
  
First at all, it is an undeniable fact that traveling helped many tourists explore distinguished cultures in various regions. Nevertheless, it also creates many erroneous preconceptions among different countries. One of particular good example is some Western people travel to undeveloped countries and be a victim of a tourist trap; then they have the bad perspective about local citizen and widespread disappointing experience for other people in their country. Invisibly, exploring new cultures without going into a detail creates the big hole in universal understanding.  
  
Further and even more importantly, though tourism is one of the most potential motivation to developing economies of poverty countries such as Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, it also brings many great issues for those countries like prostitute, alcoholism, and drug. The finance which should help to develop the national economy and improve the quality lives of impoverished; however, unfortunately, making the affluent (travel agencies, large tourist corporations) get more benefit, and bringing the seriously social trouble for poverty. Tourism invisibly creates the wealth gap larger.  
  
Even more worrying, the tourist flow destroys the natural environment. The most obvious instance is the Great Barrier Reef in Australia slowly dying because of pollution and tourist overload. In the most recent information of BBC, nearly one fourth of this famous destination is impossible to revise, and many undersea ecosystems have been instinct.  
  
By way of conclusion, I think the detriment of international tourist incredibly overweighs the benefit. Besides encouraging traveling, we should impose some solutions and legislation prevents the negative impacts such as intensively defended the badly social issues and public education campaign in local areas where have attracted many international tourists.
Nguyet, your essay has some good points and some bad points. So to be fair, I will score you on an individual level of your presented essay. Based on the 4 criteria, I believe that you will score as follows:  
  
Task Accuracy - 6  
Coehsiveness and Coherence - 5  
Lexical Resource - 3  
Grammar Range and Accuracy - 3  
  
While you did understand the prompt requirements. You presented the discussion in reverse. You should have presented the negative and then disagreed with it by presenting your positive view of tourism. This would have shown a clear "extent" of your agreement because you have referred to phrases like " while some people that tourism negatively affects,,, I believe that tourism is good in this instance because..." The prompt requires you to only agree with the idea presented so the opposing idea has to come from somewhere else, not you. That turns it into a comparison essay instead of an opinion essay.  
  
There were problems with your lexical use such as "instinct" when you meant to say "extinct" and "invisibly" when it should have been "inevitably" and so on and so forth. Make sure you use the correct English word by first understanding its meaning. Otherwise, you distort the message of the paragraph you are writing and the essay becomes difficult to understand. That is why I had to score you so low in the last 2 criteria, the message of the essay became hard to follow as I had to try to figure out what you said when you were using the wrong word choices in the sentences. Good work in keeping on one topic along per paragraph though. Keep that up. It at least helped me to figure out what the total essence of the paragraph was.
@Holt  
Thanks, I totally appreciate your advice. I have already seen my mistake. I received some pieces of advice that I should make my essay more complicated and different others. However, I realize the more using academic words (which I haven't got acquaintance yet) and cliched, the worse score I get. I will write by the way I feel the most comfortable =)).  
  
I want to ask you another question. Is it right if our writing style is normal and non-special (comparing to other people), we will get the low score? Because my target is band 7.0 at writing. Is it ok if I just complete IELTS's criteria but my essay is no special? My friend's advice confused me too much >"<
@nguyen\_nguyen: In fact, 7.0 IELTS writing is difficult now as you can do a difficult task. British Council marks strictly the IELTS writing, and you know you only have 60 minutes. If a task 1 essay is hard, you are definitely unable to get a high overall score. 6.5 may be an easier target!  
  
Your writing style is quite illogical. Quite frankly, I also prefer a free style (may be like you), but unfortunately examiners will be hard to follow it. You know they read your essay very fast, so no...I advice you to choose a traditional style. Sometime a simple thing is the best