dim/essayforum_raw_writing_10k huggingface dataset:
## information or misinformation over the web?

  
  
*The widespread use of the internet has given people access to information on a level never experienced before. How does this increase in the availability of information influence life in today's world?" (Taken from the Official Guide to the TOEFL)*  
  
Invention of the internet, or more concretely, the World Wide Web, has affected human lives in tremendous ways. One of them is how easily can one access any kind of information nowadays. With that, however, come both positives and negatives, of which some of them I will address in the following paragraphs.  
  
To begin with the upsides, thanks to the internet existing, people are able to follow, and be aware of vast amount of events and news all over the world on-demand. They don't have to buy tabloids every morning, or watch newsflashes at a given time on the television. Instead, they can simply open the website of their favorite news magazine anywhere and anytime, as long as they have an internet connection. Therefore, having this kind of opportunities certainly encourages political activism and involvement of citizens in the public matters which is almost undoubtedly a good thing. For instance, in Slovakia, recent murder of an investigative journalist Ján Kuciak and his fiancée stirred up the biggest public protests since decades, with people demanding transparent and thorough investigation, government resignation and passing of strict anti-corruption and anti-mafia laws by the parliament.  
  
In contrast, there are some downsides of widespread information availability as well. One of them, being unexpected growth of hoaxes and fake news spreading through the web. Large portions of internet users seem to fail to successfully distinguish actual facts and professional, sincere reporting from half-truths, propaganda or straight lies, which they encounter in the cyberspace. That may result into potentially harmful phenomena, such as current trend of parents refusing to vaccinate their children because of the belief that the vaccines do not work and cause autism, epilepsy and even death or recent rise in both on-line and off-line hatred towards individual ethnical groups as a whole based on exaggerating of isolated, anecdotal events and various conspiracy theories. Those can be nonetheless, at least partially dealt with by encouraging critical thinking and importance of facts and science in both child and adult population.  
  
To sum up, extensive expansion of using internet services among population comes as a mixed bag. Still, I believe that positives outweigh the negatives and the adverse effects of misinformation spreading over the web can be tackled rather effectively by the promotion of critical thinking and fact-checking in the educational process.
Peter, the essay you wrote remained on target throughout most of your presentation. The positive and negative effects of the internet on the lives of people, focusing solely on information dissemination is good. However, it created a one sided essay that did not look into the other aspects of the internet effects on the lives of the public. For example, you could have discussed how the internet connected people via social media, but disconnected them as well because they no longer need to physically interact with people. In essence, this sort of question begs the writer to use a compare and contrast essay writing style in order to create a more informative and balanced presentation.  
  
The paragraphs are within the allowable limits with regards to the sentences. However, you have presented run on sentences in every paragraph because you kept using commas to connect what should have been separate idea discussions by trying to merge them into one sentence. While this may have served your purpose, it created confusing presentations that were difficult to follow topic wise and prevented you from creating coherent sentences. This made the cohesiveness of your paragraphs an issue as well.  
  
There is a difference between showcasing your advanced sentence development abilities, showcasing proper and complex usage of sentence structures with an impressive vocabulary when compared to what you developed, which are simple sentence presentations and adequate vocabulary skills presented in a misguided attempt to show off your intermediate and little edited English writing skills.  
  
Your concluding statement, by indicating  
  
I believe that positives outweigh the negatives and the adverse effects of misinformation  
created a prompt deviation. That is because the original discussion instruction required you to explain  
  
How does this increase in the availability of information influence life in today's world?  
. When you create an altered prompt statement, you will find yourself getting major points deductions because you changed the discussion theme towards the end or sometimes, at the beginning of the essay.  
  
These are the reasons why, even though your essay is strong in terms of content and information, it failed to make the proper impression in terms of presentation and discussion clarity.
## human's destructive effect on eaRTH

  
  
In recent years, a multitude of individuals holds a belief that the adverse human effect on flora and fauna over the world cannot be changed. Nevertheless, opponents express that actions can be addressed this issue. Although I am more flavour in the latter opinion, this essay will discuss both views.  
  
To begin with, it is thought that the harmful effects of anthropogenic activities on wildlife cannot be tackled. This, in their opinion, is because green issues are long-term problems that require a lot of time and money and sometimes the results are the reverse to our expectation. For example, to save endangered species, it is believed that applying captive breeding programmes like building zoos, national parks... may troubleshoot this issue. In the fact that, these solutions tend to deplete the ecosystem maintenance due to changing plants and animals' habitat.  
  
I, nonetheless, believe that the bad impacts triggered by human activities on our planet can be changed if the vast majority of people implement environmental measures sternly. At the outset, upon banning law, raising awareness... people are able to assist in the effort to alleviate environmental problems step by step. For instance, by taking no longer dropping plastic bags in the ocean into consideration, people are likely to save many aquatic animals and maintain ecosystem on Earth. Planning trees, furthermore, help to decrease the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere as well as reduce the amount of Solar radiation. People, hence, are not at risk of skin cancer or breathing problems such as Asthma, Pneumonia...  
  
In conclusion, on the whole, based on the above discussion, I agree that the destructive effect that human activities have on our planet can be changed
*Can you mark this essay and give me some feedback?*  
  
## The gap between the rich and the poor

  
  
**Topic:** The gap between the rich and the poor is getting wider. The rich are getting richer but the poor are getting poorer. What is the reason for this situation and what actions should be taken to fix it.  
  
**Answer:**  
In recent years, currency has become a broad issue to the general public. As society advances, there exists a bigger gap between the rich and the poor. Although noticeable, the impact of this issue has not been realized by many residents. Discussed below are several reasons as well as solutions to this phenomenon.  
  
There are some main reasons for the fact that exists a gap between the rich and the poor. To begin with, globalization has affected the world economy. This means that some multi-nationals like McDonald, KFC, and Lotteria which have joined the trend, would earn much more income than others. Therefore, the poor would lag behind and the rich would earn more money. What is more, education is the second reason. This is because of the fact that rich people enjoy various levels of the taxonomy of thinking. They have good live conditions while the poor do not. For example, people live in many rural areas in Vietnam could not afford to go to school.  
  
In order to solve such problems, people should take some certain solutions. One of the most primary solutions is that governments should create job opportunities for poor people and teach them how to survive financially. Furthermore, they should receive some scholarships for empowering their capacities. Admittedly, such solutions would not be implemented in the near future. Yet, they at least deserve our consideration.  
  
In conclusion, the above-mentioned facts have outlined the reasons as well as the measures of this phenomenon. The given suggestions would be a good step towards solving them. Therefore, authorities should have further consideration on this issue.
Trung, I cannot mark this test because you did not indicate what kind of test you are taking. There are different kinds of scoring systems for each international English test. Mention the name of the test the next time you post an essay if you want to get a scoring guide for it. As for this particular essay, you have pretty much delivered a good discussion. However, you have a problem with the proper use of English vocabulary.  
  
Do not use "big" words without knowing the real meaning behind the word because using the wrong word in a sentence not only leaves the sentence without a clear meaning, but it also makes your essay difficult to assess and understand as it is being read by the examiner. Your score in relation to vocabulary use in any of the English tests will be severely affected by your desire to impress by using complex English words in the wrong context. You did this twice.  
  
You used the word "currency" when the actual word you should have been using was "financial status" or "financial ability". Currency refers to:  
  
*... money in any form when in actual use or circulation as a medium of exchange, especially circulating banknotes and coins. A more general definition is that a currency is a system of money (monetary units) in common use, especially in a nation.*  
  
Obviously, this is not what you meant as this is not what is referred to or implied in the original prompt.  
  
Another mistaken work usage on your part was Taxonomy. Taxonomy, is defined as a scientific term that refers to:  
  
*... the science of defining groups of biological organisms on the basis of shared characteristics and giving names to those groups. Organisms are grouped together into taxa (singular: taxon) and these groups are given a taxonomic rank; groups of a given rank can be aggregated to form a super group of higher rank, thus creating a taxonomic hierarchy.*  
  
Since you are talking about human beings and not undiscovered organisms, you can see why using this term to describe people and their financial difficulties or difference would be out of place or simply, wrong. Instead you should have inferred that people enjoy various "Taxation" levels. Taxation meaning:  
  
*the levying or application of taxes among various income brackets.*  
  
Let me just say that you have the right idea for the discussion but you implemented a flawed discussion method due to poor vocabulary choices. Please be more careful next time and refer to a dictionary before using a certain word to make sure you will be using the term in the proper written setting. Do this while you are still in the practice test mode. You won't have a chance to improve your vocabulary or check for meaning during the actual test.
*Do you agree or disagree with the following statement?  
Public libraries are no longer useful, since you can find many books online. Use specific details and examples to support your opinion.  
Use specific reasons and examples to support your answer.*  
  
## are books online a threat to the public libraries?

  
  
My answers:  
  
Public libraries are always important both in the universities and in the communities. Some people may argue that public libraries are no longer useful as we can find many books online. However, I strongly against this idea since the public libraries have great advantages on the scale of the people it can serve and the comfortable places it can offer. I will discuss the reasons as follows.  
  
First, public libraries can serve a great amount of people than online. We all noticed that internet emerge in to our life only within twenty years. There are still lots people have a hard time using the computer as well as the internet. For those people lack of computer skills, it is much simpler to just go around the book shelfs and find desirable books follow the simple instructions rather than using unfamiliar software and surfing websites to find a simple books. Besides, not all the people can afford the prices when by a book. A certain novel can costs up to 20 dollars which is really expensive for the poor. In this case, the public libraries offer them a opportunity to have the same right to reading what they like.  
  
Second, public libraries not only contain numerous books, it also provide a good environment for people to study or just relax. For instances, I often go to the library near my living place because if offer provides a nice condition for concentrating on my study. I can compare different research papers since it have big tables. And I do not need to worry about the weather condition since it the library have central air condition. In addition, the library also have a small coffee shop which people can have a nice afternoon time with a book and a cup of coffee to help them relax from their heavy work and enjoy the quietness and peacefulness during their weekend.  
  
I admit that using internet give us a lot convenient on finding a certain book or articles. By typing into a few words, the result will show on the screen automatically. But using the internet will limit our reading experiences. For me, I feel great discomfort when reading words on the screen. Also, when we in the libraries, we do not need a certain target book we need to find, public libraries will offer us great adventure of reading. We can just walking around the bookshelves and we may randomly pick up a book that catch our eyes. Then we may enter a whole new world inside the book. Obviously, we cannot obtain these experiences online.  
  
Conclusively, I firmly disagree with the statement that public will not be useful in the future.
Zheng, you must change all the wording of the first paragraph. You cannot borrow any portion from the original prompt as you did with " find many books online". Always use a different method of presenting the information. You have to prove your English comprehension skills and vocabulary usage in this portion, which is why you should not use any wording from the original presentation.  
  
Your essay suffers in in terms of sentence presentation because you have a problem with the use of connecting words such as "the" and "are. Take for example, the following presentation:  
  
For those people lack of computer skills  
- ... people**WHO** lack...  
  
There are still lots people  
- ... lots OF people...  
  
Those are just examples of your sentences that lack connecting descriptors in your essay. The is a very common for you in every paragraph.  
  
If you feel the need to discuss 2 different topics within the 3 body (reasoning) paragraphs. Separate them. You cannot discuss 2 topics in one paragraph due to the 5 sentence limitation, which prevents you from fully developing the discussion of each topic in the essay. So in paragraph 2, you should have separated the discussion of the book pricing from the library experience. Then, in the 3rd paragraph a separate discussion should have been made for the coffees shop reference. You constantly make this same mistake through out the essay.  
  
Your concluding statement is incorrect. A concluding statement should never be a run on sentence, neither should it be an uninformative single sentence either. It must instead, summarize the discussion points as a reminder for the reader instead. Use at least 3 but no more than 5 sentences in that instance to prove that you are capable of restating your own discussion in a different manner, thus proving a wide range of vocabulary and sentence structure knowledge on your part.
## Solutions for traffic congestion

  
  
Traffic congestion is becoming a huge problem for many major cities. Suggest some measures that could be taken to reduce traffic in big cities.  
  
Nowadays, it is obvious that traffic jam in most of countries is on the increase. it's a global issue, and inhabitant of cities are affected by traffic congestion. In my opinion, there is some several measures which could be implemented to tackle this problem.  
  
On the one hand, the traffic jam is attributable to the density of vehicles that exceed the capacity of current system. Increasing the size of roads and streets could alleviate the current travelling overload. It would allow higher volume of traffic and enable more vehicles, such as private cars or buses, to circulate smoothly. Also, the expansion of road systems, although expensive and time-consuming, is believed to be a permanent solution to the situation of traffic congestion. Private car owners are increasing in numbers owing to the enhancement of living standards. They are likely to resort their car instead of using public transport since it's much more convenient. Therefore, the expansion of road systems is an effective way to solve traffic problems.  
  
On the other hand, public transports are the other way to ease congestion. For instance, in Vietnam, Hanoi buses are the most convenient buses because the ticket is reasonably priced and it is very clean.This mode of transportations is able to carry hundreds of passengers at the same time, so it would help to relieve the density of commuters on roads and streets during rush hour. If there are comfortable and cheap public vehicles such as buses and trains, people will choose to use it rather than drive.  
  
In conclusion, traffic congestion could be tackled by expanding roads and streets and using public transports.  
  
Will appreciate all feedbacks.
Dao, this is a pretty good direct response essay. The prompt that you provided, along with the discussion instructions were well represented in your opening statement. However, your direct response was weakened because you did not indicate sample solutions to the problem immediately, which serve as the discussion outline in this instance (as required in the direct response essay) Had you indicated the 3 reasons (as per the 3 body paragraph requirement), you would have had an even stronger essay presentation that would have gotten a stronger score.  
  
You could have expanded the road widening discussion over 2 paragraphs to help meet the 3 paragraph requirement. The second paragraph would have discussed the road widening advantages and then, in the third paragraph, a sample could have been presented as to how road widening would benefit both the private car owners and public transportation riding public. Thus making the bus discussion in the end even more relevant and an effective final sample of why road widening would be a solid response to solving the traffic congestion problem. This would also have helped prevent you from going over the 5 sentence maximum per paragraph. The second paragraph has 6 instead of 5 sentences so points will be deducted accordingly in terms of Task Accuracy responsiveness. The concluding paragraph lacks a summary of the discussion so points for that will again be deducted in relation to TA scoring considerations.
Good day, please write your comments, corrections, and suggestions for my essay. Tips to get a 7.5 score would help.  
If you could also rate my essay below in terms of TA,CC,LR,G. Thank you.  
  
IELTS GT 04212018 INDIA  
*Nowadays, many movies and music are free to download online. Is it a negative or positive development?*  
  
## movies and music for free?

  
  
In the recent years, films and songs have been downloadable in the internet without charge. In my perspective, this action is gearing towards a negative development in the society. This essay will highlight the drawbacks of free online downloads of music and movies.  
  
One reason is that downloading these files online for free is a form of piracy. Movie actors, singers, production staffs and crews are not earning from these free downloads. Furthermore, this act is not helping the entertainment industry to grow or continue in the future. This could result into less movies and music being produced because the income does not surpass the production cost. for example, a lot of trilogy movies have failed to continue because it has been pirated online and the gross income could not budget the future movies.  
  
Another reason why it is a negative development is that a lot of these free files are not safe to download. In other words, these films and songs contains virus and malwares that could harm the security of the platform where it is being downloaded. These virus and malwares are usually made for identity theft of the person downloading. As a consequence, personal information or credit card numbers and passwords could be stolen without the owner knowing. For instance, there was one person in the UK who was stolen money on his bank account and police officers investigated it to be a case of identity theft online from a movie downloading site that he uses.  
  
To conclude, these free movies and music poses more harm than entertainment in our society. Free files online could weaken the entertainment industry and could be a way for hackers to steal a person's identity.
This is the first time I post my essay on this website, if I break some rules please point out! This essay is written for IELTS Academic Task 2. I look forward to your corrections!  
  
**Nowadays animal experiments are widely used to develop new medicines and to test the safety of other projects. Some people argue that these experiments should be banned because it is morally wrong to cause animals to suffer. While others are in favor of them because of the benefits to humanity. Discuss both views and give your opinion.**  
  
There is evidence that animal experiments are an essential part of scientific research. People supporting this idea claim that animal experimentation is beneficial in terms of medical safety. From my perspective, they should be limited and the method of experiments needs to be developed in order to reduce the pain and torture of animals.  
  
It is undeniable that experimentations on animals leads to a more efficient and truth-oriented result. Animals are similar to humans in many aspects because we both have complex internal structures. Scientists can test out the safety and effectiveness of medicines by observing animals' behaviors after experiments. From supporters perspective, animal experimentation is greatly needed before new medicines' promotion because the sacrifice of animals justifies the human lives saved by medicines.  
  
Nevertheless, performing experimentations on living animals seems to be a barbarous way to deprive animals of living right. Indeed, animals have their right and preference to live even if they cannot communicate in human language. It is ethically wrong to torture those animals for our own benefit. For instance, in some cases, laboratory mice are infected with a certain virus for testing out the effectiveness of medicines, most of them eventually end their lives with extreme sufferings. On the other hand, extreme use of experimentation on animals leads to the damage of biological diversity. The most common test animals such as mice are now facing a huge loss of quantity because of overuse experiments.  
  
In conclusion, subjecting animals to experiments is necessary but morally evil. Unless alternative targets are invented, animals' experiments are still needed for medical research, however it is crucial for scientists to develop methods to reduce the trauma caused to a large extent.