dim/essayforum_raw_writing_10k huggingface dataset:
Linh, your possible score for this essay will be a 4. There are problems with your essay based on the overall scoring considerations. Your TA score is definitely what pulled down your score because you did not properly format your response in the expected manner.  
  
For the TA, you should have given a direct response in your opening paraphrase. The direct response is a requirement for these direct question essays. So your last 3 sentences should have indicated 2 problems and one solution in order to have gotten a better TA score. The response should have been similar to:  
  
*People use cars in all aspects of transportation. The problem is that the constant use of cars cause health problems due to the aggravated air pollution problem stemming from the unlimited use of gasoline powered cars. As such, I believe that the use of cars should not be fully discouraged but rather, curbed among its regular users.*  
  
You will notice that I presented 2 connected problems in the prompt paraphrase. I did that because for the body of paragraphs, there should be a representation of 3 discussion points based on the 2 related problems:  
  
1. Health problem caused in humans such as Asthma (breathing problems)  
2. Pointing out that the main cause of Asthma is the increasing air pollution coming from unlimited car usage.  
3. Explanation why my belief that limiting car usage to a certain extent will help reduce the 2 problems indicated.  
  
By presenting supporting discussions in a 5 paragraph format, I will have completely and clearly addressed all of the prompt requirements which include a possible solution to the problem through the limitation of car usage.  
  
You have an acceptable approach to the discussion but you lack clear explanations and examples that can fully support your stance. Your language becomes a bit unclear because you use terms such as "impregnate" which is not usually used to describe air pollution or its effects. While the other meaning of the term is to soak or saturate using a substance, the succeeding explanation in your paragraph was insufficient so it did not really explain why you used that term to describe a health issue related to pollution.  
  
Word choice matters in these essays. Do not use terms such as "etc." because that connotes an informal discussion. End the sentence with a period instead and work on developing your supporting explanations in a clear manner.  
  
Remember, the concluding summary should close the discussion by recapping the previous body of information. You should not continue to address solutions to the problem in that paragraph because you will create an open ended essay and lose more TA points.
## making a concrete and cement

  
  
**The diagrams below show the stages and equipment used in the cement-making process, and how cement is used to produce concrete for building purposes**  
  
The illustrations demonstrate processes of how a cement is made (on the left side) and how a concrete is made.  
Limestone and clay, essential materials, are used for a making process of cement.  
  
First of all, a limestone and a clay are crushed into powder, then the powders are put to the mixer and mixed together.  
In the next stage, the powder is directly put into large cylindrical rotate heater, then the dry powder is grind to the soft powder - cement.  
  
After all, the cement is packed into bags and is ready to be delivered to customers.  
  
The process of making a concrete is much simpler then cement, only one mechanical device is used - a concrete mixer.  
A concrete is mixture of four materials a cement, a water, a sand and a gravel.  
The materials are put to the mixer in appropriate ratio. In our case the ratio is following 15% cement, 10% water, one quarter a sand and rest of is a gravel.  
  
*   
*cement-concrete*
RCH, you are taking too many liberties with your report. Remember that the assumption for the Task 1 essay is that you have to report the full procedure to the reader, who will not have any access to the illustrations you were provided with. Therefore, you should be writing an informative essay that does not hold back on representing actual measurements and procedures in the presentation. Doing so means you are delivering incomplete an inaccurate information which can affect your C&C score negatively.  
  
There should have been a transition sentence at the end of the cement creation process that led into the concrete production discussion. Such transition sentences are important when you are reporting on two related procedures. In this case, from cement to concrete since cement is one of the primary requirements for the creation of concrete.  
  
Always indicate the actual measurements needed in the procedure when you are given actual data in the illustration. Estimates such as "a quarter" and "the rest" will only be somewhat acceptable when actual measurements are not involved in the presentation or are merely estimated in the given illustration. The illustration indicates precise measurements which need to be represented in the actual report. Otherwise, the measurement of ingredients in relation to the procedure becomes incomplete. The reader, should he follow your instructions for the creation of concrete will not be able to do so because of the missing measurements for 2 materials in the creation process.  
  
Look out for those tricky past tense words. In this case, the dry powder was "ground" to a soft powder that created cement. In your presentation, you merely said: "soft powder - cement". You need to indicate that the soft powder created is cement. That is not clear in your presentation so the reader doesn't have any idea what cement has to do with the presentation. However, the same style can work for the concrete mixer reference as you explained beforehand that this was a mechanical device used in the process.
## I want to become a member of your organization

  
  
**What do you want to learn and develop for yourself? And how can we support that?**  
What I want to learn and develop for myself is how to communicate with other people and how to work effectively. I prefer hanging out to talk to friends than chatting through social network or message. However, I often fall into the awkard case. I don't know what I could say to strengthen the conversations. Even sometimes, the conversation will not be amazing as I imagine. I need to focus on goals I would like to achieve and how I can use my time in the possible way. As I can see from booklet, I think your organization have the versatile environment I desire to become a different person I used to be. What is more, I also can expand relationships and have friends who are fully experienced and kind. Although I also have some shortcomings, I believe your organization will help me be more active, more mature and have many factors of global citizen.  
  
**Which field do you want to work in the future? And why**  
I would like to join in working the field "project management". Because I like organizing events, programs. I usually watch some variety shows especially Korea, China or America shows and I'm into that producers create their shows and bring audiences about relaxing and entertainment. So if I become a member of your organization, I think I will have a chance to learn about building a project or an event or running programs and know how to plan amazing and atractive contents for everybody as well.  
  
**Share with us your strengths and weaknesses**  
My strength is give respectfulness for everyone. I'm trying to listen to their opinion and lend an ear for their difficulties they have to face.  
  
I am honesty in all my relationships. Honesty is essential to make the community become better. I think we can do this through truth telling, truth speaking, truth living, and truth loving. . If you are, you will reap benefits by doing so. Everybody will respect you and willing to help you anytime when you need.  
  
I'm a shy person, which prevents me from public speaking. At that time, I also feel nervous and my voice seems to be getting softer and softer. Maybe because a part I lack confidence.  
  
**Please tell us about your biggest failure in the past and how you overcame it?**  
Honesty, my biggest failure in my life is not trying for something. When I had to make my own decision for study program: normal or all subject in English. Actually, I knew that an international environment would be a perfect opportunity with many benefits for me and I also wanted. But I thought it was too difficult and full of stress to persue this with the fear of English. I'm not good at English enough to get on this program. So I did not choose it and gave up a better chance. After all, I'm trying to change the way of my thinking, myself as well. Learning to think positively and taking small step by step will help build my confidence. I will move forward to achieve my goals because if you do not try, you will never know.
1. You need to shorten this response to indicate what you want to learn, one simple reason why you want to learn how to do it, and how the organization can help you achieve that. You do not really address that in your response. The point of the question is to receive a response that shows how familiar you are with the helpful programs of the organization. Be specific with your plans for improvement through their help. Right now, you could be talking about any similar organization and not this one specifically.  
  
2. Use a comma between the words management and because. Then replace the word "because" with "since" to connect the two ideas leading into "I like organizing events..."  
  
3. Your strengths and weaknesses should reflect abilities that can be useful to the organization you are looking to become a part of. What you describe here are character traits that do not necessarily translate into a strength nor a weakness. Think about what the organization objectives are and what aspects you can help strengthen in the group and what aspects you can help in but are not very skilled in accomplishing. Those are actual strengths and weaknesses. It is all about explaining how you can help enhance the experience of being a member of the organization.  
  
4. Your response is not really considered a failure. What you indicated is more of an apprehension. A failure is something that you actually did which did not turn out to have a positive result. How you overcame that failure explains how you turned the negative result or experience into a positive one. You should change your response to this question to a more relevant one.
**Throughout history, male leaders always lead us to violence and conflict. If a society is governed by female leaders, it will be more peaceful. To what extent do you agree or disagree with this opinion? Give reasons for your answer and give any relevant example or experience you have to support your answer.**  
  
## too few women in charge on public positions

  
  
It will lead to less struggled if countries could be run by womanly presidents as opposed to being led by male ones. I quite agree with this opinion as the world would be in balance in a lot of aspects.  
  
Firstly, women do not prefer to live in war because of their harmonic instincts. The internal maternal instinct of female hardly constitutes by competed preference or dictatorial psychology. Moreover, their leading styles will be influenced by what they think, so one female leader's policy can be less strict than that of a man, which minimizes the risk of war, conflicted religions, and so on. As a result, they will reduce serious consequences for countries like deficient budget, mortality and tumbled economy. Elizabeth I is one typical example of the wise orientation as her prevention decree to Christianity and rejection to be at war with Scotland to reduce wasteful loss for England.  
  
Secondly, women who do not vie for personal benefits will spend time and budget improving citizens' living standard and tackling eternal problems. Furthermore, they willing to shoulder responsibility with conscious attitude and well-prepared strategies to man's little-concerned problems with women and children such as sexual discrimination, familial violence, etc. This method will make women's policies receive much public approval and connect citizens' expectation to their leaders.  
  
In conclusion, the women's rule will be more beneficial and democratic than that of men, which followed concord tendency and needed taking into account for many countries.
Linh, your opening paraphrase is too short because you forgot to include an explanation of what the original prompt is all about. A more appropriate opening paraphrase for this topic is as follows:  
  
*History has shown us that the male leaders of countries tend to lean towards the side of war when resolving conflicts. Women are seen as the more peaceful alternative when it comes to leadership. I agree with this point of view based upon two highly specific reasons.  
  
The first reason I agree with this statement is ...  
  
The second reasons is...  
  
That is why I conclude that ...*  
  
By the way, I could not make much sense out of what you were trying to say in the second paragraph. I had a particularly hard time trying to figure out, to no avail, what you meant by:  
  
The internal maternal instinct of female hardly constitutes by competed preference or dictatorial psychology.  
Where you trying to say that "women have a maternal instinct that prevents them from taking a hardline stance as men are opt to do" ? That means that men have a different tendency to make decisions when compared to women. I think your original sentence made more sense in your native tongue than it did in English.  
  
You may want to use more modern examples for your essay. Elizabeth I is a historical figure who is not known to many outside of Britain. BTW, she also had bloody long wars that she personally led due to power struggles in her country that led to an increased tax collection for her people in order to finance the wars. Try to pick more recent role models so that your essay will have a more up to date and current events led discussion to it.
## working as a group

  
  
Do you agree or disagree with the following statement?  
When people solve problems as a group, they come up with better solutions that if they were to try to solve the problem individually. Use specific reasons and examples to support your answer.  
  
Teresa said that "There is nothing more terrible than to be alone among human beings". It is clear that when we have a problem in the life if we become a solitary person, we will face difficulty to find solutions in any situation. From my perspective, I agree that working as a group not only results in better solutions than individually but also carry an efficient and progressive process.  
  
Firstly, working as a group can finish their tasks in more efficient manner. As a person not always has a suitable competency to solve or analyze the problem. Therefore, the knowledge and skills of each member a group can also be used to strengthen a solution. For example, in many sports such as football, a player would not scorer if not helps from the team. Moreover, working with a team will help people save time, solve complex problems and to complete a difficult task faster. In addition, working in a group may bring responsibility for team member because they know that their work will directly result in whole group.  
  
Secondly, working as a group help people become more creative. Teamwork helps in increasing collaboration and has a scope for brainstorming which results in getting more ideas. As a result of the exchange of ideas can act as a stimulus to the imagination, encouraging individuals to explore ideas they would not otherwise consider. Moreover, the people can improve their skills while working as a group. For example, a team will be having people with different skill and abilities such as communication, presentation or leadership so that working closely with others, the people will have more chances to share various work experiences, educational background.  
  
From the reasons mentioned above, I believe that working as a group brought advantages to people not only solution efficient but alo necessary skills in work as well as life.
Hi  
I think your essay has quite adequate explanations for your opinion but you have failed in using tense, verbs and grammar pretty much:  
~~if not helps from the team~~ => not be helped or gets help  
*problems and to complete* => complete  
Teamwork helps people increase both collaboration and brainstorming ability  
Shorten this one: **It is clear that when we have a problem ...**  
  
and so on  
Hope that helps
Jerry, quick question, who is Teresa and why should I care about her quotation in the essay? How does that relate to the prompt paraphrase? Don't use unnecessary quotes or any quotes for that matter in a TOEFL essay. Just respond directly to the question in a manner that appropriately paraphrases the original topic. Actually, without the quotation, your response to the given prompt is actually very good and offers an insight into the succeeding discussion.  
  
However, your essay is not helped by your multiple examples in paragraph 2. Use only one example that you can fully explain or support in relation to your prompt agreement. That way you end up with a cohesive and coherent paragraph rather than an under developed and little discussed reasoning as you currently have in your presentation.  
  
It would have been better if you fully summarized the presentation using the 3 sentence presentation instead of a run-on sentence that actually changes the prompt discussion because the focus went from agree/disagree to advantage/disadvantage in your closing paragraph.
## helping beggars on street?

  
  
*Direction: For this task, you will write an essay in response to a question that asks you to state, explain, and support your opinion on an issue. Typically, an effective essay will contain a minimum of 300 words. The quality of your writing includes the development of your ideas, the organization of your essay, and the quality and accuracy of the language you use to express your ideas. You have 30 minutes to plan and complete your essay.  
  
Topic: Some people suggest that it is wrong to give money to beggars asking for money on the street, while others think that it is the right thing to do. Which point of view do you think is correct, and why?  
  
Kindly rate me in between 0 -5. My response is given below:*  
  
No doubt that helping people is a great virtue and it is appreciated by almost everyone. Helping people, those are really in need of help, will be more fruitful than people who does not really need assistance from others to survive. Forwarding a helping hand to the beggars on the street who are asking for money might seem logical to some people but personally, I, think it is not a right thing to do.  
  
Helplessness could be of many types: some people really need it and others just fake mass people by acting being helpless in order to take advantages of peoples' compassion. For example, in a survey, conducted in South Asian countries, it was reported that majority of the street beggars are not that much helpless as s/he depicts on the street. The reason they say that is a good portion of the beggars are actually wealthy enough, some of them even have enough land property and houses in the capital cities, but they take this begging as a profession. These beggars actually don't want to work hard but to earn easy money by faking mass people. So, when someone is giving money to a street beggar thinking that she or he is actually helping a helpless person, it might not be a case as she or he thinks.  
  
Fraud peoples are present almost everywhere. Some of them take this begging as a tool to earn money in such a extent that one may not think of it. Crime investigatiors in different parts of the world found that various gangs are kidnapping childrens and making them physically disabled so that they can use these childrens in begging and earn cheap money. Now, giving money to this beggars is actually synonumus to assisting those notorious criminals.  
  
Moreover, whenever these beggars, especially who are physically normal but take it as profession are earning money by begging they get motivated to continue it. Thus, a person, who even doesn't know to whom she or he is giving money, may influence those beggars indirectly to continue a task which is ethically unacceptable.  
  
In conclusion, giving money to the beggars on street may not be counted as a simple help always but this act of charity, sometimes, might influence others to continue begging or even might helping criminals to survive through this begging.
James, the score of this essay cannot be more than a 3 due to several problems with your work. These problems relate to how well you understood the prompt instructions, your paragraph development problems, and vocabulary shortcomings.  
  
For starters, the essay asks you to explain your personal point of view regarding one of the two opinions. In your presentation, you veer from a personal point of view and opinion because you start to mention that a survey was conducted in an Asian country, which means you did research for the paper rather than simply using a personal opinion based on personal experience or knowledge. FYI, you won't have access to the internet at the testing center so don't mention researched sources. You won't be able to do that at the center.  
  
Next, even though your paragraphs make sense, you are not in the habit of using transition sentences or connecting explanations which sometimes lead to a confusing take on your essay. When there is a lack of transition phrases or sentences, the reader tends to get confused and finds it difficult to keep track of the presentation.  
  
Finally we come to the problem of your sentence formation and lack of proper sentence structuring and vocabulary usage. While the examiner will give you some leeway with regards to these problems, you should strive to present sentences that are properly developed and have accurate vocabulary usage. While these problems abound within your essay, which is why I cannot point these out one by one in this post, you have a chance to fix this problem if you just work on doing more English language exercises and further immerse yourself in the language through listening and reading exercises. The reading exercises will help you tremendously in learning how to properly format your sentences and will also help you develop your English vocabulary as you can look up the meaning of words you are not really familiar with but hope to use in your essays in the future.
James, based on my experience as a TOEFL topnotcher (I got a perfect score in every aspect of the test) I speak from experience. Using the personal point of view in the TOEFL test tells the examiner one thing alone, you understood the question and are able to present your response based on a personal insight on the matter.  
  
Remember, the prompt indicates:  
  
*Which point of view do **you** think is correct, and **why**?*  
  
The word "YOU" is the keyword here that indicates the need to use personal insight, knowledge, and examples The reasoning for "Why" comes from "YOU". Where else will you get your reasoning aside from personal discussion. It is not informal at all. The informality of a presentation comes from your word usage. Do no use slang English terms and do not use a casual tone for the discussion. Use an academic tone and the personal discussion automatically carries a formal tone. For example, if I said:  
  
*I don't wanna do nuthin.*  
  
I would be speaking in a non formal and non academic manner as opposed to:  
  
*I do not want to do that*  
  
which is the formal way of saying the slang version. It is personal, academic, and formal in presentation.  
  
You have to learn to look for keywords or phrases that indicate the need for a personal discussion in a formal tone as opposed to public discussion. I gave you an example of they keywords that indicate this scenario above.