dim/essayforum_raw_writing_10k huggingface dataset:
Topic 4: **Some people think that it is best to save money, for example in a bank or savings scheme. Other people feel that money should be spent whenever it is available. Discuss these views and reach an opinion on this debate.**  
  
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Please give me comment and score this essay. Sincerely thanks  
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## Spend money now or keep it for the future needs

  
  
Spending in the present or saving money for future has been a topical debate for a long time. I will discuss some valid arguments and give a personal opinion in the following essay.  
  
On the first perspective, spending money, the supporters presume that, in the present society, we have to pay a lot of daily costs such as food, drinks, house renting and consumer items, so spending is inevitable. Moreover, when we spend money, we also help the cash in economy flows influent; by that way, we increase the economy, create more jobs for the job market and currently solve one of the most serious dilemmas in the world - unemployed issue. Besides, we only live once and if we ponder too much about future and forget to enjoy a flavor of present life, this is a bad idea. If spending money can make our life easier and bring happiness for us, why don't we use it like tools to develop our life?  
  
However, in the other school of thought, people who advocate saving money acclaim because money is the tool to get the easier life, we have to exploit it efficiently. We live in the turmoil world and everything will happen such as getting fired, having a disease or relating financial crisis; in those urgent circumstances, the saving money is essential. Turning to the daily unavoidable costs, we can't refute those; however, we can control how to spend money and saving is the greatest method to teach youngsters about financial management skill. That skill is the predominant key to help them get the success in future. Finally, in macroeconomic aspect, the most fundamental reason for the crisis in 2007 is personal individuals, corporators and governments can't control their spending and exceed the real budget; this creates the big hole in the currency economic.  
  
Overall, in my personal opinion, I extremely agree that we should save money for rainy day because of some unpredictable issues in future. Besides, the small reservation is the good start for some long-term schemes such as start-up, buying a house.
@nguyet\_nguyen  
I don't recommend putting your personal opinion into the conclusion paragraph, because it cannot be laid out in one or two sentences. It deserves a well-developed paragraph of three to five sentences. And then a conclusion is written to summarize all the information and restate your opinion.  
  
Personally, I think "money should be spent whenever it is available" is different from the necessary spending you listed in the second paragraph. You simply cannot buy food and drinks or pay housing rents. The money cannot be saved. I think "money should be spent whenever it is available" is more about how to deal with your disposable income.
@LadyOfClockwork  
Thanks for your advice and I will try to improve my essays better. However, I have some things which make me extremely confusing. These are the advice in Simon website - 4 paragraphs, 13 sentences and limited on 300 words. When I write, the greatest problem is how to delete my sentences (within 250 - 300 words) and ideas and not deeply concentrate on small details (this totally differences from TOEFL). In fact, I write just 15 minutes and I spend almost 20 minutes just to count the words and delete them but most of my essays exceed the limited.  
  
Is it ok if I write 1 introduce paragraph, 2 paragraph for 2 aspects of IELTS in the discussion topic, 1 for my personal opinion and 1 for my conclusion? Because currently practice for IELTS essay, I have to practice for ACT writing and ACT test requires discuss 3 perspectives and give the personal opinion (total 6 paragraphs within 40 minutes and give obvious examples to prove ideas). In brief, my question is how to control and limit the words and paragraphs in IELTS? Hope you and Holt can give me advice.
Nguye, let me help you out with your formatting here since you posted a series of questions relating to it. There is a standard format to the IELTS task 2 essay depending upon the required elements for discussion. The required elements are represented as follows:  
  
1. Paraphrased opening statement  
2. body paragraph  
3. body paragraph  
4. body paragraph or personal opinion ( if required)  
5. concluding summary  
The best way for you to control your word and sentence limit is really simple. Don't try to discuss too much in a given paragraph. The aim of the test is to prove that you have the ability to understand English discussions and discuss the same. Therefore, you need not impress the examiner with too much information. One piece of properly developed and presented information will be the best way to meet the sentence and word requirement of the essay. Focus on one information to present in your outline. Not more than that. Control your desire to discuss too much because it is not required. A properly selected reason is better than 4 selected reasons that do not properly represent your coherence and cohesiveness abilities when it comes to writing.
**The diagram shows the life cycle of the honey bee.  
Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features, and make comparisons where relevant.  
Write at least 150 words.**  
  
## from an egg to the adult honey bee

  
  
The pictures demonstrate how the honey bee is born and grows. The entire process involves 7 stages which are from being laid as an egg to being mature. It takes 34 to 36 days.  
  
The first stage of the life cycle starts with laying egg by female adult honey bee. In every three days, she lays 1 or 2 eggs at a time. Next, the egg laid hatches 9 to 10 days later and the nymph appears.  
  
At the third stage, it moults 3 times as it grows in the 5th, 12th and 21st days respectively after the day it is out of the egg. It grows bigger as every time it removes its old skin. Having shed its skin 3 times, it becomes a young adult honey bee. At last, it spends 4 more days to be an adult honey bee. This sequence is repeated after it is complete. (150 words)  
  
Thank you for your time to read my essay and please feel free to comment on it.  
  
*
@hi021132  
In my opinion your argument is self-contradictory in one point: how many stages does the lifecycle involve?  
  
In your opening paragraph, the number is seven. But your third paragraph suggests you treat three molts as one stage. That means only four stages are involved.  
  
In addition, I think this sequence is NOT repeated after it is complete. Most of grown bees are infertile, since there is only one queen bee in each bee colony. That means the majority of adult bees are unable to lay eggs.
Peter, when the word minimum is 150, you should not just write 150 words. You wrote just enough to pass the test at the lowest possible passing score. You should write at least 200 words in order to give yourself an opportunity to properly represent your complex sentence structure abilities in the test. That means you need to go beyond just the obvious illustration in the diagram. This is done by further studying the illustration you were provided with. In your given statement, you said that the moulting period occurred within the 5th, 12, and 21st days of the development of the bee. The thing is, the moulting period is a separate part of the development of the bee because this is when the bee comes to maturity. As such, you should have indicated this as a separate part of the maturation cyle. Further analysis of the bee during this period shows that there is a physical development that occurs. It was not represented in your essay. That is why your presentation is very short. In a Task 1 essay, you need to give additional time to the illustration analysis before you write the essay. Make sure that you did not miss any development points in the illustration and always, decide upon a given development is a part of the cycle or a separate, but connected part of the cycle provided. Those are 2 different things.
***Today increasing number of people, in particular children and teenagers, play video games for fun. In your opinion, do the drawbacks of video games outweigh the benefits?***  
  
## **MY ANSWER**

  
  
Nowadays, more and more people, especially the younger generation tend to spend their leisure time on video games. My view is that this trend can bring more drawbacks than the benefits.  
  
First of all, playing video games makes people stay indoors for a longer time in their daily life. They prefer sitting in front of a screen rather to do sports outside, which is harmful for both their eyesight and physical posture. This unhealthy lifestyle also prevents people from going out with their friends and reduces their non-virtue communication, which is more likely to make people self-centered and lonely.  
  
For young students who are addicted to video games, there is another extreme drawback that it has an adverse impact on their study. Children and teenagers are thought to be less self-controlled, which means that they may spend too much time on the games after school instead of focusing on their homework. Consequently, there can be a drop of their grades. Some teenagers may even lose the opportunity to enter a better university for being distracted their attention by video games.  
  
However, it is true that video games can make people relax, particularly when they are under great pressure of work or study. Living in a modern society, many people have too limited time and energy to go for a concert or read a classical book to relax themselves. By contrast, video games can release their stress in a shorter time and easier way.  
  
Overall, although video games can be a good choice of entertainment, I believe that people are affected by its disadvantages more. They may form an unhealthy lifestyle or get distracted from study when they are young. It is suggested that people should pay more attention to manage their time and restrict which is spent on video games.
***Hi Yuan**, I have read your essay closely and will give you a few corrections for finalizing this essay. Please, meet my notes and deal with them.  
  
First, your paraphrase of the statement is good, but your thesis statement is weak. Its reason is that because you review what you would explain in the body paragraph. You said that this habit more negative effect, but you can present brief description. For your body paragraph, your idea is good. However, you explain deep. As we can know, this is an academic writing so that you have to prove your opinion such as showing the example. There are many ideas, but those seemed layman's opinions because it has not been strong.  
  
Your score can be reduced because readers get difficult to understand your logic flow. In the next term, please you pay attention to your flow. I suggest you review the example of writing task 2 so that you can recognize the basic pattern of writing task 2 better. In the concluding paragraph, you successfully present the good conclusion, but you have needed for strengthening that. I believe you can master this session if you wanna practice more and more.  
  
Happy writing, good luck*
**A lot of people want to get married at later ages.  
Why is this trend popular ?  
Is it a good development ?**  
  
## marriage among older couples

  
  
Marriage has long been viewed as one of the biggest decisions of life. However, marriage in the later ages seems to become a common phenomenon these days. The following essay will discuss the reasons and consider whether it is positive or not.  
  
To begin with, there are many reasons leading to the trend. First of all, it is obvious that discovering the self has become the number one priority of many people in the modern life. In other words, many people tend to spend most of their time to enjoy their personal life or pursue their own interests such as travelling, studying rather than taking a nuptial vow. On the other hand, the fast changing world creates many opportunities for people to establish their dream career. As a result, many people will make full use of the time before marriage to focusing on their goals in working. Hence, tying a knot becomes one of the barriers to gain their career achievements.  
  
As to the question of whether this trend is good or not. There is no doubt that this tendency is highly beneficial for people in many aspects. Firstly, we cannot deny the fact that when being mature, people develop better perspectives of everything and this means that it helps people deal with marriage in an efficient way. Besides, this trend also helps people create a strong bank balance for a stable future and ensure financial security for the rest of time. However, all things contain within them both merits and drawbacks and marriage in the middle ages is not the exception. Obviously, when getting married later, people have to live under enormous pressure coming from their parents and their surrounding environment. More seriously, it often becomes hard for couples in a later marriage to spend quality time together as job and career become more important to them.  
  
In conclusion, tying a knot later in life comes with both advantages and disadvantages.  
  
**P/s: I'm stuck at the conclusion. I really appreciate for any comments and clues.**
Tram, this is a good essay. The only problem that I see with it is a disconnection between your discussion as to why this is a popular trend these days and why it should be considered a good development. It is important that you learn to discuss two connecting reasons or thoughts within one paragraph in order to make it most effective in discussing the topic.  
  
Take for example your first example, you mentioned at the end of it that getting married is a barrier to career achievements. That would have been the best topic to focus the whole paragraph on instead of presenting separate reasons that don't really have a chance to be properly defended in your discussion. If you had opted instead to discuss why marriage is a barrier towards career opportunities, then you would have been able to effectively represent the reason the trend is popular and the positive side of that.  
  
Your second paragraph has the same problem. It has too much going on without really giving a strong impact as to the supporting discussion. Statements that only deliver half a reason is not as good as delivering one reason with a strong supporting statement. That is the kind of paragraph that allows for complex sentence development and an increased mark up in your final score.  
  
As for the conclusion, it seems like you did not even try to develop one on your own. You even deviated from the prompt requirement by indicating and advantage and disadvantage reference when only the advantage needed to be referenced. The final paragraph should be written in the same manner as your opening statement. The only difference being that in the conclusion, you can mention the reasons you stated in the body and then close by repeating the belief that *"marriage at a later age is a good development because of the preceding discussion"*. No need to mention the disadvantages because there is no mention of that in the original instructions.
***Hi Tram**, I have read your essay closely and try to give you a few suggestions for finalizing this. Please, meet my notes so that you can deal with them in the next term.  
  
First, you failed for impressing readers in the first glance because you made mistakes in the meaning and grammar. In the introductory paragraph, you are supposed to paraphrase the statement by using your own vocabulary in order to get a higher score in the lexical resource. For your thesis statement, you have needed strengthening your opinion. You present briefly what you would explain in the body paragraphs. I meant that you mention reasons of the issue and your view. You can display simple words to describe that.  
  
Turning to your body paragraphs, your ideas are good. However, you had to write systematically. This is an academic writing so that you have to display well. The supporting sentences should be included in your opinion. Then, you give relevant examples. I believe you can master this section if you wanna read the examples of writing task 2. You only need the basic pattern to make your explanation more systematic.  
  
For creating the good conclusion, you only paraphrase your thesis statement. In other words, you restate your opinion.  
Hopefully, these can help you. GOOD LUCK*
@Holt  
I really appreciate for your comments. This was the first essay I have written so I do not know the right way to connect two questions in the original instructions. You mean that I have to write the first paragraph with the topic sentence "getting married is a barrier to career achievements" and try to discuss it by using a strong supporting statement. Similarly, the second paragraph will be used to talk about positive aspects of this trend. But How many good sides should I mention to ?  
  
@akbarmappiare  
May you show me the mistakes I made in the meaning and grammar and give me some synonyms to paraphrase the statements used in the introductory paragraph, please ?
***The pie charts below show the comparison of different kinds of energy production of France in two years.  
Summarize the information by selecting and reporting the main features and make comparisons where relevant.***  
  
## most popular energy sources in France

  
  
The pie charts illustrate five sources of energy production in France. They are categorized as coal, gas, petrol, nuclear and other sources, with the years chosen for the comparative analysis being 1995 and 2005. The essay will summarize the change in the share of energy production from each source and make comparisons where necessary.  
  
Overall, in both years, the primary sources in France were coal and gas, which together made up over half the production of energy, while nuclear and other sources generated the least amount of energy. In almost all types of sources, there was just minimum change over the ten year period. However, the share of petrol underwent a modest drop.  
  
Coal provided 29.80% of energy production in the first year and the share increased to 30.93% ten years latter. Gas accounted for 29.63% and 30.31% of energy production in 1995 and 2005 respectively, placing it the second place behind coal. Petrol retained its position as the third largest source in 2005, though its share of energy production dwindled from 29.27% to 19.55%.  
  
With regard to nuclear, there was an approximate 5% growth in energy production from nuclear. Its share rose from 6.40% to 10.10%. Other sources followed a similar pattern, their share up from 4.90% to 9.10%. Nevertheless, their contributions to energy production in France were still smallest.  
  
**I would be more appreciate it if you score my essay.**  
  
*
Gang, I would like to applaud your analysis of this essay. Save for a very minor oversight in the second paragraph, where neglected to offer a subject for the sentence and as such did not really have a point to its structure and construction. It was supposed to say; "... the primary sources *OF ENERGY* in France.." That is a very minimal mistake that can easily be overlooked by the examiner with an analysis essay that has this sort of high quality to it. The observations went beyond the obvious and shows that you really examined the pie chart you were provided with and sought to find comparisons whenever necessary and relevant. In my opinion, this sort of handiwork will not score less than a 7. You have presented some pretty solid work here and I was hard pressed to find any marked errors in it. I am pleased to see that you have applied the lessons taught to you in such a manner. Keep writing like this and you will be sure to pass the test. Good job!
**Writing task 1: 2 charts Japanese tourists traveling abroad and Australia's share of tourist market**  
  
## Japanese travelers in foreign countries

  
  
The graphs below describe the number of Japanese people traveling oversea from 1985 to 1995 and the market share of Australia in Japanese tourism.  
According to the charts, there is an upward trend in the number of Japanese tourists traveling abroad and Australia held a large share in Japanese tourist market in over 10 years.  
  
From 1985 to 1990, the number of Japanese travelers globally increased dramatically from about 5 millions to roughly 11 millions before dipping to just over 10 millions in the next year. There was a slight growth from 10 millions to approximately 12 millions in the number of Japanese tourists traveling abroad between 1992 to 1993, followed by a rapid rise to just under 16 millions from 1994 to the end of the period. On the other hand, the proportion of Japanese people traveling to Australia rose considerably from about 2% to 5% between 1985 and 1989. The percentage of Australia's share of the Japanese tourist market experienced a slight decline from 1989 to 1990 before going up gradually to just over 6% in 1994. However, at the end of the period, the figure decreased moderately to 6 millions.
Phuong, kindly remember that we are unable to accurately review your essay when you do not upload the illustration that you based the summary analysis upon. It helps guide our review of your work and allows us to see the inaccuracies and deficiencies in your written work. I will only be able to give you a superficial assessment of your work since you failed to include the image for our reference. I will not review your summary overview because I do not have any material to base your claims upon.  
  
While you did write more than the minimum of 150 words, the formatting that you used is problematic. The Task 1 essay normally has 3 paragraphs at a minimum because the analysis is composed of an overview and at least 2 body paragraphs, plus an optional conclusion. You only have 2 paragraphs which means that this work has a number of items missing from the original illustration. I just cannot pinpoint it because of the lack of the image for comparison. It is always best to aim to write at least 3 paragraphs for this essay in order to prove your English comprehension skills and writing abilities.  
  
Your essay suffers from run on sentences. Your second paragraph is too long because you chose to use commas to separate the discussion instead of full stops using a period. The period is the more accurate method of writing this essay because it allows you to present short facts in complex sentences. In this case, there is a lack of proper paragraph development even though your GRA is acceptable. Using sentences allows the reader to pause and consider what you have just written. It is part of the summary presentation process so it should not be omitted in your presentations.  
  
I think that this is a good essay but I cannot be sure unless I can counter check it with the original. It's too late for that now because a contributor can only give one advice per thread. That is why I cannot score your work either. Please don't forget to upload the image with your next posting so that a better review of your essay can be made. As of now, this is as far as I can do with advising you.