dim/essayforum_raw_writing_10k huggingface dataset:
In conclusion, I would like ...  
  
This conclusion is too short, it should be around 3 to 4 sentences.  
I would like to also point out that there are several grammatical errors and typos. For example,  
  
... spoils the student as they are incapable of searching for required information or improvising their ...  
  
career. space?This explains  
  
Obviously, This could ...  
  
In general, your vocabulary and sentence structures are excellent
*You should spend about 20 minutes on this task.  
A friend of yours is going on holiday soon and has asked you to recommend a destination.  
Write a letter to your friend and recommend a good place for a holiday that you have visited before. Say where you went, where you stayed, what you can do there and what the food was like.  
  
You should write at least 150 words.  
You do NOT need to write your own address. Begin your letter as follows:  
  
## Dear Sarah

,*  
  
Dear Sarah,  
I just received your letter regarding your plan for your next holiday. While I am not an expert in recommending a good place to go to, I have visited multiple places throughout my life, where I believe you should visit, but if I had to choose one of them, that would be Ha Long - a place in Vietnam.  
  
Ha long was the place that I travelled to several months ago, and I still remember how it looks like and how the food tastes. When I first arrived, I took a taxi and asked him to bring me to the nearest hotel, which turned out to be the hotel that I stayed throughout my stay in Ha Long. Since Ha Long is close to the sea, there are different kinds of water activities that you can do such as diving, surfing, or swimming. As for the food, as you may guess, comes mostly from the sea, and their seafood tends to be overly spicy, which I believe is your style.  
  
All in all, it is definitely a worthwhile place to visit, considering that you love the sea and the delicacies that it offers.  
  
Regards,  
  
Peter
I'm assuming that you are referring to Ha Long Bay or Vinh Ha Long (in Vietnamese). Although I've never been there, I know that is a beautiful tourist spot with many activities (many of which you already mentioned).  
  
Your second sentence is very unnecessarily long and run-on. You should either separate them into two sentences or just simply state that Ha Long is where you recommend that Sarah goes. I'm not sure of how tough the grading or reviewing would be but I feel like your recommendation is unconvincing as is. Maybe use more sensory words to illustrate how wonderful it is so that Sarah would want to go. What hotel did you go to? What did the ocean look like? Was there a hustle and bustle of people/activity. Was the food savory, sweet? Any lingering aromas or specific foods that make you salivate that would make you (or Sarah) want to go? If you loved the seafood, maybe emphasize how sweet the fresh seafood is (as compared to rubbery freezer seafood you can sometimes get in the US). When naming activities, maybe choose one to elaborate on. What did you do? What was it like? Rush of excitement? Thrill? It doesn't have to be a huge explanation, you can be succinct.
Peter, I believe that you won't learn how to write this type of letter properly unless you are shown an example of how to write it. So let me do that for you now. This can be your sample for all similarly themed letter.  
  
*Dear Sarah,  
  
I am thrilled that you asked for my advice regarding your possible vacation destination. While I am not a travel blogger, I think I can help you out here. Have you heard of Ha Long, in Vietnam? I visited this place several months ago and truly enjoyed my stay in the area. It is a nature and food lovers paradise that you should not miss. Even if you have not been to the place before, you won't find it difficult to access the place.  
  
The taxi drivers from the airport are highly familiar with the place. If you really want to rough it, you can ask them for a hotel referral. When I went there though, I stayed at the local Hai Long Inn where I also sampled some of the best local delicacies. If you decide to eat at the hotel, I recommend that you order the Hai Long Special. It's a seafood noodle dish that looks like the Chinese Chow Mein but tastes a hundred times better.  
  
After you eat, you can hit the shopping areas as the local night market, book a nature hiking tour that includes a swim at a local waterfall where you can also dine within the waterfall waters when the hunger pangs strike. If in doubt or at a loss, don't forget that the hotel clerk and the taxi drivers can be very helpful in creating your memorable vacation. If you have the time after your trip there, I hope you can come visit me for an extended vacation. I'll be your host for as long as you want.  
  
Let me know how things go.  
  
Talk later,  
Peter*
CHILDREN SHOULD ALWAYS FOLLOW THEIR PARENTS' ADVICES. TO WHAT EXTEND DO YOU AGREE OR DISAGREE WITH THIS IDEA ?  
  
## parents' commandments for kids

  
  
Please give me advices on this essay.  
When it comes to the relationship between children and parents , some argue that children should always follow their parents'counsels. In my perspective, I partly agree with this idea.  
  
To begin with, children need to obey their parents' commandments especially young children. The reason is parents are more mature and have more experiences in life so that they can teach their children to do good things as well as abstain from bad ones. Moreover, parents are the ones who always want the best things to come to their beloved kids. So their advices are extremely reliable.  
  
I agree that children need to obey their parents' counsels, but not under all circumstances. Though parents have more experiences in life, there are times when their advices are not proper. Besides, Offspring also need to make decision on their own as well as learn to be responsible for what they do. If children do something themselves and it goes wrong, they can't blame anyone for having messed things up. Hence, they will understand that they have to consider everything carefully before doing anything.  
  
To recapitulate, Obeying parents' commandments is good but children should only take it as a source of references and make their own decisions.  
#IELTS #Writing
Tat, while you did a very good job in the 2 body paragraphs that you wrote, your opening paragraph and closing summary are both faulty. These 2 areas did not comply with the minimum 3 sentence requirement for a higher C&C scoring consideration. The maximum sentence number per paragraph is 5. You also require one more line of reasoning in the body paragraphs to complete the 3 reasons requirement. The 5 paragraph presentation is always the best method by which you maximize your scoring potential in the overall considerations. This allows you to make more sentence variations in the complex sentence structure manner as opposed to your simple sentence structure at the moment. Your vocabulary is simple which will not get you a very high LR score but it is enough to help you make sure that people understand what you are trying to say. Here is a word of advice regarding the opening and closing statements, avoid run on sentences by using commas. Instead present complete sentences with a period. That way you meet the minimum sentence requirement every time. Just remember that every sentence in the same paragraph needs to interconnect, use only one reason per paragraph, and try to insert a transition sentence to introduce the next paragraph at the end of the present paragraph whenever possible.
Can you guys check out my recent essay ? Thanks in advance! Here is the topic:  
Source: "Test for the gifted students in Hai Duong, Vietnam."  
  
Topic: *That many students are far too dependent on computers for their study may have some negative effects. To what extent do you agree or disagree with this statement. In about 180-220 words, write an essay to support your opinion.*  
  
## overdependence on computers

  
  
It is observed that the abuse of computers for academic work may have some detrimental impacts on learners. In my opinion, I agree with this viewpoint to a large extent for two following reasons.  
  
The first reason is that, without strict parental supervision, regular exposure to computer screens can cause tremendous harm to students' health. For example, students who are spending an excessive amount of time searching information on the Internet, are likely to suffer from short eye-sight and obesity due to a sendentary lifestyle. Therefore, physical development of the these students is negatively affected in terms of health.  
  
The second reason to support this idea is that using computers unreasonably sometimes leads to plagiarism and lack of creativity among students. In fact, most students of all ages have admitted copying essays or lectures from various online websites, which makes them less enthusiastic in finishing homework on their own and in coming up with new ideas and solutions in real life. In this sense, computers are believed to worsen learners' cognitive development.  
  
In conclusion, it seems to me that, the overdependence on computers for studies presents some disadvantages based on these above explanations. It is therefore advisable that students be alert to potential dangers of computers abuse.
## Crime rate in urban areas

  
  
**Prompt: Crime rate, in most countries, is often higher in urban areas than in rural areas. Why do you think that is? What can be done to reduce crime rate? Any advice or feedback would be appreciated.**  
  
In recent decades, escalating crime rate in many places, especially in metropolitan areas, has been receiving a great deal of media attention, causing public controversy. Although there are many reasons leading to the increase of criminals in these areas compared with the rural ones, some plausible solutions are there to tackle this headache-provoking problem.  
  
Of many main causes of crime in urbanized areas, poverty and addiction are basically what to blame. First, it has long been asserted that crime is an evitable product of poverty. In fact, in order to make ends meet under tremendous pressure of urban markets, many people will, by hook or by crook, do whatever it takes to earn their living even committing crimes. Second, big cities are often full of people who are addicted to either alcohol or drugs. When these people are on their way to chase high feelings, the likelihood of them committing crimes, such as robbery or even murder, is very high, and virtually nothing could hold their steps.  
  
However, by adopting cutting-edge technologies and building DNA databases, the governments could reduce substantially crime rate in urban areas. First, deterrent technologies are proven effective in decreasing urban thefts. For example, robbery in California has become less severe after the local authority installed more police cameras throughout the state. In addition, DNA databases also do the governments a great favor in combating criminals in metropolitan areas. Statistically speaking, by building labs which can add DNA of offenders, Malaysian governments are able to find criminals faster and more cost-efficiently than they did in the past.  
  
In conclusion, although there are many reasons that result in higher crime rate in urban areas than in the countryside, governments can invest in state-of the-art technologies to ultimately maintain security in big cities.
Le, your opening paragraph is good but is hindered by your lack of proper sentence development. You have two run-on sentences, as indicated by your constant use of a comma to separate your discussion ideas, when you should have used periods at the end of every discussion topic change in order to meet the minimum 3 sentence requirement. Additionally, you are supposed to present a 5 paragraph essay for the Task 2 discussion. These are the reasons why, even though you present some pretty good ideas in this essay, you will most likely not get an impressive passing score in an actual setting.  
  
Your opening paragraph is exaggerated. It is important for you to understand that the TA section of the scores are based upon the method by which you present your opening paraphrase. Therefore, your representation of the original discussion must be accurate and without additional information that is not included in the original prompt. In this instance, you said that the problem is a "headache proving" one. That is never implied in the original prompt and therefore, should not be present in your paraphrase. You also indicated that this problem is causing a "controversy" when what is presented in the essay is a simple discussion and not a controversial presentation. Based upon these two exaggerations, you can bet that you will lose major points in the prompt paraphrase section. Accuracy is important because this indicates that you totally understood the original presentation and that you are capable of accurately restating the facts as delivered to you in order to avoid confusion or exaggeration.  
  
Now, you have 3 body paragraphs with which to present your discussion of facts. Each paragraph is allotted only one topic for presentation in a maximum of 5 paragraphs. This is so that you can fully explain your reasons in a manner that will not confuse the reader or leave the presentation of your ideas under developed. So, instead of trying to tackle 2 topics in one paragraph like you did now, you should have used 2 paragraphs for each topic and then used the 3 paragraph to present a solution that could collectively be applied to both situations as you stated them. Deterrent devices would have been the way to go instead of adding the DNA explanation which was not really effective in presentation and lessened the impact of your deterrent discussion as well.  
  
Your concluding paragraph is nothing but a long run-on sentence again. That means, you failed to properly represent the summarized discussion points of your essay. For every error that you made in your presentation and discussion development, you have lost major points in the overall scoring for the essay. It would be a stretch for this essay to gain an acceptable passing score based on the mistakes you made within the 4 criteria for scoring.
Hi could you help me what is my score of this IELTS essay?  
  
*More and more people are migrating to cities in search of a better life, but city life can be extremely difficult.Explain some of the difficulties of living in a city. How can governments make urban life better for everyone?*  
  
## problems in the cities

  
  
In recent years, many numbers of people move to cities in terms of better living. Since cities are more crowded, some problems will be accorded. Thus, there are the needs of governments to improve the quilty of life.  
  
People who migrate to cities may have faced with a variety difficulties. The cost of living and another thing like food and clothes in big cities are usually higher than they are in small towns. Another issue is that while big cities are always crowded, the air is polluted continuously by private cars and transportation system. For instance, in Tehran, many people suffer from this problem, and most of them have respiratory disease. As a result, city life can be unhealthy and costly.  
  
However, there are various steps that governments should do to tackle these problems. Firstly, they should build affordable apartments for middle-income families because of reducing the cost of housing. Secondly, they should improve the transportation system especially metro system and encourage people to use it for routine works to decrease air pollution. For example, for a while, the mayor of Shiraz (a populous city in Iran) has reduced the cost of metro tickets for encouraging citizens using metro instead of using cars for going around. Thirdly, they must create green space as much as they can because parks are known as a place for releasing stress. Furthermore, its trees can help to reduce fume gas.  
  
In conclusion, cities are always are growing because of increasing population. Therefore, there will be happening some problems and government should do things to solve those to improve the quality of life for citizens.
@layeghi  
  
First there are grammatical errors which you can enhance with the help of some online grammar checks to understand and correct your errors.  
Starting your essay with paraphrasing is a good thing but still there exists a room for improvement on that. Be sure about the necessity of your sentence which says "for instance in Tehran" and "For example, for a while, the mayor of Shiraz (a populous city in Iran) ", I think it will be best to give a generalized example rather than specific one and try to review your conclusion in a better way in the form like "Even if the life in cities would be difficult, peoples will still migrate to the cities in the search of a better life ...".
Amin, the overall score for this essay will not be higher than a 5 because of a number of shortcomings in your presentation. The first, is that your opening paraphrase is complete in terms of the thought process and idea presentation. The problem is that you did not accurately develop the sentences in a manner that would have allowed the reader to understand what you were trying to say during the first pass reading. The sentence structure needs work in terms of presenting coherent sentences using appropriate vocabulary.  
  
Rather than discussing two ideas per paragraph, it would be better if you opted to pick your strongest discussion point, in terms of reasons, supporting data, and relevant examples. The second paragraph would have been effectively presented if you decided to discuss the situation in Tehran instead of the economic problem then the air pollution. Or, you could have discussed the tough financial situation that comes with living in an urbanized setting with relevant examples instead. Both could have worked well, provided you focused on developing only one discussion point for the paragraph.  
  
The same problem exists in your third paragraph, you needed to choose only one solution as it applies to the situation you presented earlier. That way you could have presented a fully developed solution instead of the current "implied" and little developed solutions to the problem.  
  
The essay lacks a 3rd paragraph in the body section which would have helped to effectively strengthen your discussion. You could have placed the second solution in this section, provided it remained relevant to the problem you presented in the previous paragraphs.  
  
Your concluding paragraph needs to be better developed by presenting a summary of the solutions you provided. That way you would have properly summarized the discussion that you presented in the essay. By accomplishing these tasks in the essay, you will be able to increase your scoring potential in the end. Remember, 5 paragraphs will help you to increase your score and also increase all your scoring considerations across all the criteria.
IELTS WRITING TASK 2  
  
*Some people think that social networking sites have a huge negative impact on both individuals and society. To what extent do you agree or disagree?*  
  
## social media influence on people

  
  
In this generation using social networking sites have been part of our daily lives. It has positive and negative effects at the same time. Still it depends on how they are being used for us that what kind of effects we should get from this existing forms of media. In my humble opinion, I disagree that it has huge negative impact on both individuals and society.  
  
I am not into an idea that social media have a huge negative effect to us. Actually, these have been very useful since they exist. We could use an application as a term of communication if we want to talk to our relatives anytime and anywhere. In addition, social media such as Facebook, Intagram and Twitter, have been very effective in spreading news updates and interesting articles. Also, I noticed some of us make used social media to grow businesses like online selling and purchasing. Personally, I find it more advantageous in my daily life. As well as, society could benefit from it depending on how it is being utilized.  
  
Sometimes social media are abused by some us. Cyberbullying through internet is one of the examples. We cannot deny that some of us have experienced it. Moreover, spreading fake news could directly affect the society if the netizens keep on believing and sharing all of these. Another concern was, many of us considered scrolling social media as part of their normal life to the point that it takes much of their time of the day.  
  
Taking all into considerations, I disagree with the fact that social networking sites have a huge negative impact. It is a matter of using them in the right way so us to have a positive effect on us and in our society  
  
Thank you guys for your assessments: ).
bobbie, your essay falls short of the required elements of an effective IELTS Task 2 essay. This is always a 5 paragraph essay composed of the following representations:  
  
1. Opening paraphrase  
2. Reason 1 with supporting example  
3. Reason 2 with supporting example  
4. Reasons 3 or personal opinion (whichever is required by the discussion instruction)  
5. Concluding summary  
  
All of these essays are composed of a minimum of 3 sentences, maximum of 5 sentences. Each paragraph must contain only one fully developed explanation. That is why you have 3 body paragraphs with which to discuss your reasons and opinions. Do not go over 5 sentences with 1 topic per paragraph because that will result in an incoherent and non-cohesive paragraph presentation which will definitely lower your score.  
  
Going back to the opening paraphrase. You must familiarize yourself with the way this is written as well. You need to rephrase the original prompt in your own words with a thesis sentence that responds to the discussion instruction. In this essay, the discussion instruction is for an "emotional" essay so a simple agreement is not the type of response you should be giving. The "emotional" essay relies on a degree of agreement or disagreement represented by the terms fully, partially, strongly, completely, and other similar terms.  
  
By the way, please do not post a short cut version of the prompt requirements when you post your next essay. I need the complete prompt for the review of your opening statement. In this instance, I can tell you that, even with the incomplete prompt, your presentation will get an extremely low task accuracy score because you began discussing the essay in the opening statement, which is a no-no in a Task 2 essay due to discussion development issues. The opening paraphrase is exactly that. Do not try to discuss an opinion there because of the limited sentence count. A more appropriate representation is :  
  
*There is a growing negative belief regarding the impact of social networking sites on the common public these days. It is said that these virtual places have an unfavorable influence upon society. I am in strong disagreement with that statement and I will explain the reasons I oppose this statement below.*  
  
In the opening paraphrase, you need to explain the original prompt content and discussion instruction in your own words, using enough original words to help boost your LR score immediately. If you do not do a good job in the TA section, you will find it difficult to pull up your scores in the other sections. Specially when you do not follow the proper discussion development format.