dim/essayforum_raw_writing_10k huggingface dataset:
**Topic:  
## Governments should spend money on railways rather than roads.

  
*To what extend do you agree or disagree with this statement?***  
  
Traffic infrastructures are essential parts in the development of countries. It is often argued that governments should invest more money in building railways instead of roads. In my opinion, improving the railroads system will bring a great deal of benefits to the countries because of three main reasons.  
  
Firstly, trains are very efficient mediums of transportation for both goods and people. Trains can pull many carriages that can be used for delivering goods or carrying people. In addition, they run on rail tracks with little or no traffic jams. As a result, the fuel or energy is used efficiently and ultimately led to a reduction in cost for businesses and passengers.  
  
Furthermore, trains can be advantageous to tourism. In some countries, railways can be built through forests or mountains. These rail tracks are hidden gems to the eyes of travelers. Not only do they provide breath-taking scenery but also peaceful moments. For instance, in Vietnam, there is a railroad that goes up to high mountains where passengers can touch the clouds and see the mountains.  
  
Finally, trains can reduce the air pollution and prevent climate changes. It is estimated that cars and personal vehicles are responsible for one-fifth of greenhouse gas emission. Therefore, improving railways infrastructures and systems will encourage people to move over to trains as their main transportation method, thus reducing the CO2 emission.  
  
In conclusion, I strongly believe that building and upgrading railroads are beneficial to the development of nations, because not only do they ensure a better and cleaner environment but also boost the growth of economics and tourism.
On the contrary, you did not do a very good job on this essay because you did not immediately address the task requirement. The discussion requirement indicates that you must discuss the topic based on:  
  
*To what extend do you agree or disagree with this statement?*  
  
Your response to the question was:  
  
*In my opinion, improving the railroads system will bring a great deal of benefits to the countries because of three main reasons.*  
  
While the essay does require you to use your personal opinion to justify your reasons, you must first give a direct measured response to the question provided. That response is never placed in the concluding paragraph because the whole basis of the discussion relies on your direct response to the question. The TA score, which is based heavily on your response to the question, is judged in the prompt paraphrase with response section. It is never judged as the conclusion of the essay.  
  
Rather than using conjunctions in the essay, it is better to offer topic sentences. That is because the conjunctions are only word fillers that do not add anything to the overall scoring consideration of your essay. However, immediate topic sentences work very well. A direct conversation is necessary because of the time limit on the writing task. These conjunctions are just word fillers that do not help to move your discussion along. There is no need to count out the reasons once you have stated it as part of the introduction / paraphrase. There is after all a 3 maximum body for the paragraphs anyway.  
  
What will happen now is that you will receive TA deductions based on the improper response to the prompt. Since the response is only partially related to the task, you will receive a TA score of around 5 because you only partially addressed the task. Like I mentioned before, the direct measured response is required.  
  
In addition to that, you gave your measured response in the conclusion of the essay. This is an improper action to take because the conclusion is always used as a summary of the body of paragraphs discussion. It is also known as a reverse paraphrase because of this. This is an open ended essay, which means there is no true conclusion and as such, it will again receive a mark down due to it being an incomplete presentation.
## being honest with each other

  
  
What is the truth? The broad definition of the truth is to be honest and to not lie. Some people believe that not telling the truth can be an easy way to strength your friendship, marriage, or partnership. The both side can lie sometimes to complete their relationships and to stay together. However, this is not true. When one person starts to be dishonest, he or she will destroy any bonds with the other side. They cannot establish any conversation and have any agreement. Therefore, telling the truth can be hard sometimes, but it will help to have a strong relationship. This essay will explain why I hold this opinion.  
  
The confidence can help to build a strong relationship between two people. When they trust each other, they will have a strong bind and they will be closer. This type of tie between them can be stronger and more powerful, when they are telling the truth and they do not lie to each other. In contrary, when the both sides are dishonest to each other, they will face many problems and they will have a weak relationship. The lack of truth will destroy and ruin their life. For example, my friend Jon had a very nice and beautiful relationship with his ex-wife. They were living together and they were working together. They had a successful life until Jon decided to not tell his wife about his bankruptcy. He thought that if she did not know about his financial problems, she would be better and she would not get angry. However, he was wrong because his wife was spending money like a crazy and she borrowed many loans from the bank. After one year, they had big problems with the bank and they went to gail because they could not pay their mortgages.  
  
Truth is the platform to build a strong relationship between people. When people are honest, it will be easy for them to communicate. This honest relationship will open the door for a deep conversation and they will solve their problems easier because they trust each other. As a result, they will feel happy and satisfied about their life and relationships.  
  
In conclusion, we have to consider that telling the truth is very important in any relationships. Even though some people believe that lying can be a good solution to be close to our beloveds, I highly recommend my friends and my family to be honest and to not lie on each other.
While there are some incorrect vocabulary uses in the essay, this did not diminish the clarity of the written presentation. Your stance as to why honesty is important in a relationship is very clear. Though there are grammar issues in the presentation, you still managed to remain coherent and cohesive in terms of your discussion. However, you need to learn when to place a break in a paragraph to create a new but connected paragraph. This was the situation for your second paragraph.  
  
The example discussion should have been presented as a separate paragraph since it was discussing an example of the importance of honesty in a relationship. The paragraph, in the current form is difficult to read and track on the page. By separating the topic discussions into 2 paragraphs, the ease of reading could have been helped.  
  
Errors in spelling tend to make the reader question what you mean. For example, did you mean to use the term "gail" which is not a real word, instead of "jail"? Gail is actually the name of a woman, not a reference to a place. Grammar errors include the failure to use a comma after a conjunction, using the plural form of the word side (sides),
Some grammatical and spelling mistakes:  
  
-... the truth is**,** to be honest**,** and **DO** not lie.  
-... easy way to **STRENGTHEN** your friendship,...  
-**~~The~~** both **SIDES** can lie sometimes ...  
-... and more powerful~~**,**~~ when ...  
  
-In contrary, when **~~the~~** both sides ...  
-... they went to **JAIL** because ...  
-... and satisfied **WITH** their ...
## using the internet in teaching and learning

  
  
Now during our time in isolation to battle the novel coronavirus pneumonia, many small schools, middle schools, high schools and universities attempt actively the online courses learning. Personally, I support strongly using the internet to teaching and learning.  
  
Before, I just experienced the online courses of Super Star Erya Learning to design a course. It felt good. You can use the platform to upload the coursewares, record web courses, broadcast live, assign homework and answer questions. The platform is just like MOOC.  
  
Thses days there are some funny stories about teachers in live broadcast. In my view, I don't recommend live broadcast, because it needs high quality of the circumstance, network speed and equipments. Teachers need not to be anchors. It can be a good ideal to record web courses and live Q&A sessions.  
  
News reported that some teachers specially came back to classroom to record courses using the blackboard, which is commendable. But I think it isn't necessary to come back to school. Maybe teachers can put white paper on the table at home, and use white paper as the blackboard to write notes, as well as speak, record the video.  
  
If it needs long time to use the online courses, it's worthy to take advantage of some developed platform to make more delicate contents and forms of these courses. However, for only short time like one or two months, teach and learn as simple and convenient as possible The more toss, the more trouble.
It appears that you are working on a Task 2 essay here but you forgot to include the original prompt in your posting. So I can only give you a general review of your work. I can't base the review on the scoring elements because I am not sure if you have written this essay for the IELTS task 2 or not. You have several grammar errors in this essay that I feel need to be pointed out.  
  
With regards to spelling, courseware and equipment are both the singular and plural form of the word. No need to add an S at the end. That is, unless you want to show ownership by using an apostrophe S. You misspelled the word Thses = These. You capitalized a word which is not a proper noun in the middle of the sentence. Both these errors will result in GRA reductions. Further LR and GRA problems have shown up in the way that you used the wrong verb form for the word "teaching" at the start of the essay. It should have been "teach" instead.  
  
In formal academic writing, contractions need to be avoided. You have several contractions in the essay (don't = do not, isn't = is not). You also need to learn to identify when you use a comma in your presentation (high schools, and universities). The third paragraph seems to disconnect from the topic of discussion. Teachers do not need to use papers to teach online. They use chat, PowerPoint presentations, and online video presentations. Just a slight error with regards to information inclusion. Your discussion was good just the same.
**Some grammatical and spelling mistakes:**  
  
-**THESE** days there are ...  
-... network speed and **EQUIPMENT OR PIECES OF EQUIPMENT**.  
  
-Teachers need not **~~to~~** be anchors. It can be a good **IDEA** to ...  
-... back to **THE** classroom ...  
-... put **A** white paper on ...  
  
-If it needs **A** long time to ...  
  
-However, for only **A** short time ...  
  
I recommend you studying the use of the article because I saw some mistakes related to it.
## Competition or Cooperation?

  
  
**Some people think that a sense of competition in children should be encouraged. Others believe that children who are taught to cooperate rather than compete to become more useful adults.**  
  
*Give reasons to support your opinion or include any relevant examples from your own experiences or knowledge.*  
  
In this day and age, while there is a growing belief encouraging a sense of competition in children is highly recommended, others voice their contrasting opinions expressing cooperation should be taught for them to become useful in the near future. To me, I prefer competition to cooperation as the benefit of competition in shaping a person to the best overweighs the point of learning from others in cooperation.  
  
It is understandable that increasing cooperation among children can open their minds to approach others' sharing. As each individual is the unique one, cooperating is a good way to learn new things from others. Take myself as an example; last year, I had a chance to participate in HVIET, one of the most well-known summer camp in Vietnam. There I met a great number of excellent students from all over the country as well as gifted Harvard students. Though we divided into big groups in order to partake in mini-games, I did not feel competitive at all. Whatever the results of such games were, we created strong bonds in a team to do all tasks given together and made long-lasting friendships in order to exchange useful information and help each other to successfully achieve universities' targets.  
  
However, I agree with the idea that a sense of competition prompts school children to develop to be better. In fact, being competed means having comparison with others and it is the sheer consequence that motivates a person to try their best to get perfection. My younger sister, for instance, has become a hard-working student thanks to competition she has experienced. When she attended primary school, her teacher awarded valuable books to whom attained mark 10 at three main subjects. At first, it was not straight-forward for her at all. However, when her friends made it, she was willing to concentrate on her study more than ever, which then not only brought her worthwhile rewards but also changed her characteristics positively in school work.  
  
In conclusion, the feeling of competitive should be spread in children's learning environments more than cooperation for the aforementioned reasons.  
(348 words)  
I will be grateful to all of your remarks.Thank you. I am self-learning to get 6.5 or above in IELTS writing.
Since you are self studying, the first thing I want to call attention to is your word count. Always, practice using a timer so that you can find out if you write 275 or 300 words because, believe me, there is no way you can write 348 words during the actual test. Just remember this advice: Write 5 sentences per paragraph. You can't go wrong. That is the magic number of sentences you have to write if you are pursuing the highest possible score for your work. If you use a timer, you will notice that you will always be writing well within this sentence count. Anything more and you go overtime. You won't be able to double check the work for mistakes.  
  
Your first paragraph, the prompt paraphrase should not contain the start of the discussion. This paragraph only focuses on the prompt restatement because of the 5 sentence requirement per paragraph. A more appropriate paraphrase for this statement is:  
  
*There is a discussion these days regarding whether or not children should be prodded to compete with one another. While some believe that kids should be inspired to compete, others think that lessons in collaboration between adolescents would offer better lessons that they can apply to their lives when they become grownups. I believe that rivalries offer more lessons to juveniles for several reasons.*  
  
My version provides a different version of the prompt discussion and requirements while changing the total presentation. That is the aim of the first paragraph, to show the examiner that you have a sufficient understanding of the English language and a wide enough vocabulary to state the original discussion in your own way. This is where the reading and comprehension skills come into play with the TA score. So you have to make sure to develop a good paraphrase in this paragraph.  
  
Your second paragraph does not support your stance that competition teaches better lessons. The sense of competition in this discussion pertains to single person activities. In your example, you used a group competition example. This runs counter to your position because you had to cooperate within your team to win the game. This was a team competition, which does not function on the same requirements as single person competitions. So this reasoning is not very strong and the example, does not support the correct stance due to the team set up.  
  
The example using your sister is more aligned with the competition point of view because of the way that she was driven to compete by her friend's success. However, it does not show a lesson that would serve her well or provide benefits when she becomes and adult. Therefore, the total body of paragraph discussion does not properly provide the requested information by the prompt.  
  
Based on these observations, and owing to the language errors in the essay, I believe that your essay would get a score of around 4. Don't worry, you are just getting started. If you review the other practice essays at this forum and put the advice given to the other users into practice with your own work, you should get better at responding to the Task 2 essays.
## travellers destinations in scotland

  
  
The graph illustrates the changes in proportion of visitors to Scotland who went to four different destinations between 1980 and 2010.  
Overall, it is clear that the percentage of visitors to the Castle and Zoo increased, while the figures for the Aquarium and Festival decreased over the period. In addition, the proportion visiting the Castle was by far the most popular of four destinations.  
  
It can be seen that the Zoo was the least commonly chosen attraction, with only 10% of visitors in 1980. After some fluctuations, this figure increased gradually to 20% in 2010. By contrast, the Festival was the most favored place for visitors to Scotland. Starting with 30% in 1980, but then this percentage saw a steady decline, reaching a final figure of just under 20% in 2010.  
  
In 1980, the figure for travellers to Aquarium was 20%. There was a rapid growth to a peak of 35% in 1985 before decreasing sharply to less than 10% in 2010. The percentage visiting the Castle also increased significantly in over the period of 15 years. It roses from 22% in 1980 to reach a peak of 45% in 1995. However, this figure then declined, to below 35% in the end of period.
You haven't included the picture for this essay.  
  
Para 1:"In addition, ~~the proportion visiting~~  the Castle ..."  
  
Para 2:  
"By contrast, the Festival was the most favored place for visitors to Scotland." - this implies that festival remained favored place throughout the years which is wrong.Specify the year.  
  
"~~but then~~ this percentage saw ..."  
  
Para 3:  
" There was a rapid growth to a peak of 35% in 1985 before decreasing sharply to less than 10% in 2010." - it seems as if after reaching peak in 1985, there was a steady decline and no fluctuation which isn't true.So, this is incorrect information.  
  
"  ~~in~~ over the period of 15 years"  
" It rose~~s~~ from 22%"
While the general review that you did in the second version is acceptable, you should also be looking for areas where you can increase the data information aside from the basic increase/decrease rates. Look for the extra information in the essay that might help increase your GRA and LR scores. In this charts where the information just touches one another, without actually overlapping. Or, there are overlapping measures indicated.  
  
By including a reference to these data, regardless of whether you refer to just one or both, you will be giving your score a boost in the aforementioned sections. Remember, the more analytical the presentation, the better the TA score. The more informative the sentence presentation and structure, the better the LR, GRA, plus C&C scores. It just gives you an overall boost to write more information in relation to the illustration analysis.
## Enjoyment Of Life nowadays and in the past

  
  
It is generally said that our current lives is much more better than ours in the old day. Personally, I totally agree with this opinion.  
  
Firstly, in terms of health, in the past, the were a lot of diseases we couldn't cure, not to mention didn't know the name of some. Nowadays ,however, because of the development of medicine, even some serious illness, we still can see to. Therefore, our life expectancy is more and more longer than before. In addition, we can easily have our health cheched by the doctor thank to the development of health-care services.  
  
Secondly, the entertaining business is expanding widely more than ever. With the development of technology, we have a variety of choices to entertain ourselves. For instance, we have a range of songs which are not only ear-catching but also fun to listen to or we can watch a number of TV's programmes, more interestingly is joining in some reality shows which will definitely give us both the enjoyment and valued experiences.  
  
Finally, big changes in education is the thing we can not mention. Hardly did people have a chance to go to school in the past 100 years ago, yet today everyone has the right to be educated, at least primary school. That did have an positive effect on the rate of illiteracy as it is becoming more and more small.  
  
In conclusion, I believe there are so much more things for us to enjoy ourselves today than before.
This essay cannot be properly reviewed based on the scoring rubic criteria due to lack of word count. The essay does not meet the minimum 250 word requirement. Due to the missing word count, deductions will be applied in a manner that can affect the overall scoring consideration. The opening paraphrase and the concluding paraphrase are incomplete. These do not fully reflect the discussion requirements.  
  
It is better if you do not use a counting system to represent your discussion. Using a clear topic sentence at the start of every paragraph would better assist your C&C score since you will immediately start with a clear topic reference in each body paragraph.  
  
Please remember that there is a minimum 3 sentence requirement per paragraph. When you have only 2 sentences, you fall under the required paragraph number and will get a lower score in terms of GRA considerations.  
  
Overall, while the essay has an acceptable discussion, the existing forced errors, based on the rubic, will bring the score of this essay to less than a 5. Maybe a 4 or 4.5. You are close to getting a passing score. You just need to work a little harder to provide an improved discussion presentation in your next practice exercise.
1, I think your word count will be not enough so you need to improve.  
2, For the first argument, you mention 'health'. I think it is a good factor to write about. However, to make your essay persuasive, there is no other option better than including factual numbers or events. In this case, you can search figures related to Corona virus and Sars to compare how better the medical systems work in this day and age to save people from outbreaks.  
  
3, For the second argument of entertainment, it will be helpful if you can compare with your parents' time when they often lacked interesting tools of today entertainment to make it more exact with the question essay and to lengthen your writing.