dim/essayforum_raw_writing_10k huggingface dataset:
**Some people think that children should learn to compete, but others think they should be taught to co-operate so they could become more useful adults. Give your opinion**  
  
## Competing or co-operating?

  
  
With the advancement of the technology, everything, as well as our way of lives, has changed. In retrospect, we can see our ancestry co-operated for surviving, whilst the people are prone to reveal to be successful as there is no apparent danger for people's life. Whether children should be taught to compete or co-operate is a heated topic and people take different attitudes. As far as I am concerned, I believe that living in a competitive environment has benefits neither to individuals nor to the society at large.  
  
As the proverb goes "Union is strength", we owe to co-operating for our existence. İf our ancestries opted for rivalling rather than working together, probably, the human beings would not be alive today. There is no doubt that we can achieve good results as individuals, but the perfectness requires working in a team. As a result, we often see successful people associate their achievements with team-work.  
  
Secondly, in a competitive environment, people are likely to see each other as enemies, while they have a tendency to make friends in a team work. That is why parents should teach their offspring how to be helpful to each other for warranting their happiness. Because, maybe they can be prosperous, but contentment really needs friends.  
  
On the other hand, there are some who strongly states that the people around them just can bring drawbacks. As for them, life is based on competition, and to be the first person does not need any friends, even be able to leave everybody behind. More disturbingly, they teach their standpoints to their children for ensuring their success. These kinds of children do everything for their benefits, and some divine values such as friendship, help other people does not exist for them in later life.  
  
By way of conclusion, I reaffirm my position that parents should their children how to work together, as advantages of co-operating definitely overshadow that of rivalling.
Adam, the overall score for your essay will only fall in the band score of 4 at the most. At least that is my opinion. The reason that I believe you cannot score higher than that is because, while your task accuracy is acceptable, the method of your discussion causes confusion and stress for the reader. While you do present some good points for discussion your written work, the faulty construction of your sentences, limited lexical resource, and grammar problems totally dragged down the potential of your essay to become a well written and coherently developed essay with a cohesive presentation. I am guessing that this is your first attempt at writing a Task 2 essay right? Therefore, I am confident that, with the proper guidance and encouragement, you will be able to show improvement in your written work with your future essays. Just keep writing, don't stop or lose heart. You will get better at this. We will help you do that.
Hai adam.  
  
The main point of the question is about children. Yet, your idea in the first and second paragraph is too general. You responds to the task only in a  
  
minimal way and your format is inappropriate. You even only explain about children in small portion in the 3rd paragraph. You should directly explain about which methods are better to make children become more useful adult in the future instead of wasting your space to talk about general thing in your first and second paragraph.  
  
Thankyou, I hope it useful for you!
Prompt:  
  
***Do governments have a legitimate role to legislate to protect citizens from the harmful effects of their own decision to smoke, or are such decisions up to the individuals.***  
  
## harmful effect of tobacco

  
  
My essay:  
  
Tobacco is a popular drug attracting over a billion adults every day, mainly in the form of cigarettes. However, long-term consuming tobacco will harm our health, what is worse, will have negative effect on wider society in terms of health care and lost productivity. Some people argue that smokers should take responsibility to quit smoking in order to protect people from the harmful effects of smoke. In my opinion, it is more of governments' responsibility to legislate to restrict the spread of tobacco use.  
  
Some people believe that smoking is a personal decision, and as long as people are educated and aware of tobacco's harmful effects they will choose to quit smoking. However most smokers are addicted to the smoking habit, and tobacco has become a vital food for them both physically and mentally. Also they doubt the harmful effects as there is no obvious impact can be seen shortly. So it is usually too challenge for people to quit smoking by themselves.  
  
On the other hand, the governments can use legal power to legislate through a range of measures and educate public. Comprehensive tobacco control policies should be established, smoking in public area including workspace should be forbidden, selling to children should be banned, effective health warning on all tobacco products should be a must. At meantime, campaigns to promote healthy life and awareness of tobacco's harmful effects should be run regularly, and keep young generation away from smoking.  
  
In conclusion, harmful effects of tobacco can be eliminated when both the governments and smokers take action immediately. The governments legislate to protect public from smoking damage. and educate people about the negative impact of tobacco, the smokers use will-power to quit smoking more actively.
Hi. I'm not sure about your word limit, but if you don't have one, I think you could develop your essay a bit more.  
  
At the moment, you just have paragraphs detailing ***how*** the government can legislate. However, the question asks whether the government has a role in legislating, which really asks two questions: ***can*** the government legislate & ***should*** the government legislate? I think your argument would be a bit more nuanced if you tackled both perspectives.  
  
Discuss the role of the government with regards to the health of its constituents. Talk about the idea of public vs. private space, and what rights citizens are entitled to in each area. Talk about how smoking/tobacco use is currently framed; is it a choice or an addiction? Wether its the former or the latter, what is the responsibility of the government in addressing the issue? For example, if its a choice, who makes the choice and who is affected by it? the smoker chooses to smoke, but the people he comes in contact with face the repercussions of his smoking through second/third hand smoke, even though they didn't sign up for it. How can the government deal with that conception of choice, that extends beyond the smoker? etc, etc.
Ethan, if I were the examiner scoring this test, the overall score would be 0. Why do I believe that you would fail the test? While it may be open to interpretation, it is my opinion that the prompt was asking you to choose one side of the issue presented for complete discussion, with evidence, in the response essay. What you did was a compare and contrast discussion instead. If you review the prompt, the keyword that tells you that you should be presenting only one side for discussion in the essay is the word "or". Therefore, you were being asked to make a decision and discuss that decision in the essay. Since you did not discuss the essay properly, the response had to be scored 0 in all 7 aspects of scoring.
Hi @reapernanashi , @Polt , Thank you for the helpful comments. The word limit is 200-300. Would you please help review updated one?  
  
It has often been a debate whether it is the responsibility of the governments to protect citizens from the consumption of harmful tobacco or it should be left to the individual to decide by themselves. As far as I am concerned, the governments do have the duty to legislate to protect public from tobacco's harmful effects.  
  
Although smoking is a personal choice, the long term consumption of tobacco is damaging health of not only smokers but also non-smokers who get in contact with them. It is unfair for non-smokers to bear the risk of lung diseases or even cancer caused by second hand smoke. Also in certain places smoking is dangerous and can cause fire disaster, like gas station or forest, people shall not danger public's life by their own habit.  
  
On the other hand, the governments, elected by the people, are granted right and responsibility to guarantee general health of the public and good of the society, and keep people safe. So the governments do have the right to legislate and must legislate in a range of measures, for example, ban smoking in public areas, forbid young people from smoking, enforce health warning on tobacco products, and what else relevant. By doing so, it can not only benefits individual's health and productivity, and also reduces the governments' health cost.  
  
In conclusion, for the good of the society and people's health, the governments do have the legitimate role and must legislate in order to restrict tobacco usage.
I can see that the revised essay is better than the previous one. You have chosen one particular side in order to answer the prompt of the essay. This is what you should do for the next essay practice or the real examination. However, there are some points that need to be revised in order to improve the quality of your essay, particularly in the introduction part. It is much better if you can outline the details of your thesis statement in the introduction paragraph. At least you can mention the general ideas that you are going to explain in the body paragraphs. Therefore, your introduction will not be lack of sentences. As we all know, a strong and well-developed paragraph should consist of at least more than two sentences.  
  
The conclusion part is quite the same. You are not supposed to write only a single sentence like what you've done in the essay. You need to at least paraphrase your introduction paragraph. This would help you create more appropriate conclusion. Also, do not forget to add a recommendation / hope / suggestion in the very last sentence of your conclusion to indicate that you are aware of what would happen in the future.  
  
Hope this helps :)
This is an unbelievable improvement over your first essay Ethan. You definitely showed a clear understanding of the prompt requirement. There was also a clear sense of logical discussion, based on facts and evidence within your line of discussion. While your lexical resource and grammar accuracy has some problems, the paragraphs were still understandable. This in turn, made the essay effective enough to support your stance. My scoring per criteria would be as follows:  
  
Content - 3  
Formal Requirement - 2  
Development, Structure, and Coherence - 2  
Grammar - 1  
General Linguistic Range - 0  
Vocabulary Range - 1  
Spelling - 2  
  
Total Score: 11  
  
Good work so far. You need to work on developing your sentence structures in order to create sentences that follow grammatical rules in a more accurate manner. That should help to further improve your score in the Linguistic range.
**The charts below show the proportion of British students at one university in England who were able to speak other languages in addition to English, in 2000 and 2010.**  
  
**Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features, and make comparison where relevant.**  
  
*Write at least 150 words.*  
  
## Foreign languages knowledge among UK students

  
  
The charts illustrate the percentage of students who were capable to speak other languages aside from English in 2000 and 2010, at one University in England. During the time, students became more interested in other languages than them past generations. The only language that maintained the percentage of 10 during 10 years was German language only.  
  
In 2000, the predominant languages was Spanish and French with 20% and 15% respectively, whilst 2010 brought a slight decreas in the interest of students to focus on Spanish and French language, leveling them at 10% with German language.  
  
However, two other languages and other languages gradually increased from 10% and 15% to 15% and 20% respectively, in 10 years.  
  
It is also noticeable that the choice of students of not speaking any other languages slightly increased by 5 % too, as in 2000 counted 30% but in 2010 reached 35%. Despite passing times it is very significant that the generations and times change very fast.  
  
From moderator = one more useless comment = suspension.  
  
*
***Hi Mariana***, I am gonna try reviewing your writing. Hopefully, these can finalize yours.  
  
Firstly, Be careful of deciding an overview. You have presented the overview, but your interpretation was inappropriate.  
During the time, students became more interested in other languages than them past generations  
  
You said that the students tended to learn the other language in 2010 although the percentage of the category "no other language" increased in 2010. You have to analyze the data better so that you can obtain a higher score. The overview is a point for assessing your writing. Besides that, you avoid mentioning the percentage because it will seem as the detailed information. You can pour the detailed data in the body paragraph, not in the introduction.  
  
Secondly, you should remember that the good paragraph consists of more than 2 sentences. Actually, you don't need to separate the information into 3 paragraphs of body. We should admit that systematic can affect the coherence and cohesion in the writing. Apart from all, I only remind you that your job in the writing task 1 of IELTS is to compare figures each other, not to describe separately. It is sense of the writing task. I suggest you read many examples of writing task 1 to get the points which you should include.  
  
I really believe you can master this section on condition that you wanna practice again and again. Happy writing  
GOOD LUCK
Ana, please remember to double check your spelling before you submit your essay for scoring. Keep in mind that points will be deducted for misspelled words, even if it is only because your finger did not hit the key hard enough on the keyboard. The main problem that I see with your current essay is that you do not always meet the minimum sentence requirements in the paragraphs. Take for example paragraph 2 in this essay. You should have included the stand alone sentence, that supposedly created your third paragraph with the second paragraph since that paragraph lacks the sentence requirement. These summary reports can usually be completed in 3 paragraphs. You had the ability to do that with this essay. Somehow you forgot the requirements of the essay and that would definitely affect your final score, even though you included all of the related information in your summary.
Hello, here's my advice for your writing  
  
1. It is important to paraphrase your first sentence in your introductory paragraph because it seems quite same as the question. Ex: cahnge students = pupils  
  
2. During ~~the~~ these time (mention 2 years, 2000 and 2010), .....  
  
3. ~~German language~~ Germany only.  
  
4. the predominant language~~s~~ was Spanish and French at ~~with~~ 20% and 15% respectively,  
  
5. whilst in 2010 brought a slight decrease....  
  
6. However, two other languages ~~and other languages~~ increased gradually from 10% and 15% to ...  
  
I think that's all, keep writing
## English is my challenge

  
  
I'm feel so difficult to learn english, i was doing most ways and i'm still can't speaking english. I've more power to learn and never give up of my challenge because i knew english is very important of my life. Almost around the world used english for communicate, so if i want to expand a knowledge i should understand an english for catch every information that's going on. Basically english is a tool of a communication, doing an interaction and being information, also receive anything else. Communication is efforts to convey a meaning like a happy and sad. As important thing, english role for build interactions with most a wider range.
Miftah, are you writing this as a practice statement for one of your English classes? While I am sure that the grammar is not as good as it can be, your bigger problem is that you do not understand or remember the writing rules. Rules such as the pronoun "I" is always written in a capital letter and that names of persons, places, or things are to be capitalized as well. So the word "English" should always have a capital first letter. You show a manner of clear thought in English though. That means that people can understand what you are trying to say in English even though the sentence structure is not proper. So that is an accomplishment for you in itself.  
  
Attention should be paid to your writing skill in terms of meeting the academic writing requirements. You have the potential to improve your English skills, both written and spoken if you constantly practice and apply the lessons you will be learning both from your teacher and the people here at the forum. Participate as often as you can so that you can practice writing in English. Post your English writing practice exercises here so that you can gain more experience and get additional advice regarding how to improve your written skills. I will be more than excited to help you do that.
Hello! I am practicing to take IELTS test and I am of necessity for any helps related to writing. Please take a look and I really appreciate any of your comments  
  
Topic: **"It is more important for schoolchildren to learn about local history than world history. To what extent do you agree or disagree?"**  
  
## Local history vs world history

  
  
People have valued role of local history than that of the world; therefore, it is argued to be taught predominantly at school. In my opinion, I disagree with this statement and advocate for the same importance between them.  
  
Studying the local history is surely indispensable part of school curriculum. The reason is that historical knowledge paves a way to patriotism, which must be established from little understanding of what happened in the past, how hometown changed over time and so on. Since then, people's hearts have blossomed with their pride of origin and desire of sovereignty protection. Additionally, domestic historical acquisition may serve as a middle man to call for people's contribution. Hardy people does build up their hometown when they have no local sympathetic. Once people heartedly know about where they were born, they get ready to invest to develop their motherland at any costs.  
  
From another angle, world history should share the same significance with the former. Knowledge about world equips people with more well-rounded perspectives of life. For example, lessons of World War explicitly reminds us of peace's value and understanding of Feminism encourages people to protest against Gender discrimination and abuse. By and large, these kinds of knowledge would enhance people's mind related to various corners of life. Furthermore, looking at the world historically benefits people in their integration process. There is no doubt that future enrolers prefer those who get themselves ready with world background. Hence, students who accumulate a particular field at early age would possess a golden selling point to turn themselves an internationally integrated citizen.  
  
In conclusion, I believe both domestic and international history are undoubtedly important. They are seemingly treated unfair when being brought into comparison because both have distinctively equal meanings not only to children but also to every single human being around the Earth
Jane, when you are asked to take a solid position in the essay, such as whether you agree or disagree, you should never take a middle position that has you agreeing to both sides to a certain extent. The strength of your essay will lie in the way that you are able to accurately defend one side of the opinion being presented. Note that the essay prompt asks you "to what extent do you agree OR disagree", so you have to pick only one side of the issue to discuss. Pick the side that you feel you can best defend over the course of the essay and build your paragraphs around that. While this essay discussion makes sense, it doesn't really fall within the specific prompt requirement. So the score for this essay will not be a passing one. It will not pass because you did not fulfill the requirements of the task accuracy portion, which asks you to pick only one side to discuss, so the rest of your scores will also be affected.
As an additional feedback to improve your band score later on, you can write a more appropriate introduction paragraph. If you take a closer look on IELTS band descriptors of writing task 2, you can see that 'overall progression' is needed to achieve band 6 or above. Thus, you are suggested to write 'overall progression' in the introduction by outlining the thesis statement. The idea is to have you explain in brief what would be elaborated in the first body and second body paragraph. Let me show you how to do that in the detailed descriptions below:  
  
~~People have valued role of local history (...) for the same importance between them.~~  
  
"It is more important for schoolchildren to learn about local history than world history. To what extent do you agree or disagree?"  
  
*These days, it is argued that local history is more essential to be learned by schoolchildren than world history. However, I would agree that local history bring more advantages than world history. It is due to the possibility of increasing nationalism and uniting new generation to love their own country.*  
  
As you can see, the ideas that should be elaborated in body paragraphs are crystal clear since the very beginning part of the essay (introduction). This is what is called 'overall progression' and quite possible to improve your band score to 6 or above.
**Why happiness is difficult to define? What factors are important in achieving happiness?**  
  
## The way to happiness

  
  
It is clear that happiness is the everyone's ultimate goal. But it seems like people have their own versions when it comes to defining happiness and determining the main factors needed to acquire happiness.  
  
Happiness is an abstract, subjective concept and its definition varies according to culture, religion and personal background. While Buddhists believe that by detaching oneself from all passions, needs and wants of life, people can achieve happiness; Christians are taught that dedicating one's life to helping people with pure altruism is the way to obtain eternal happiness. Generally, it is assumed that chasing your dream and getting what you want will bring you pleasure. But does it, or it is just a temporary state of satisfaction and then you still find yourself struggling every day to be happy? To sum up, happiness is something that you will have to define on your own, it is not what other people said it is.  
  
In my opinion, the key factor when it comes to happiness is your mind. The human brain is such a powerful system that it can even bring more joyfulness to people who have nothing than those who have everything. Every day, people can choose either talking and smiling to their friends or wandering around with an angry face, either being an optimistic or pessimistic about what is coming. Happiness is a combination of simple choices that can make a huge impact on how you see the world.  
  
In conclusion, happiness is hard to define as it is diverse and I believe that the crucial part of being happy lies in one's everyday attitude towards life.