TOEFL iBT Wriging for an Academic Discussion Buying a House or Renting an Apartment? (Revised)

Should individuals prioritize buying a home or renting an apartment? (Economics)

 

 

☆Let’s Think

1.        What are the disadvantages of having a house?

2.        What are the disadvantages of renting an apartment?

3.        What is the decisive reason for choosing one over the other?

 

Note: If you pay $800 a month as a rent for an average apartment for 50 years, you’ll pay $480,000, which is a little more than the cost of an average house. If you buy a house and cannot pay for it in cash, you pay your monthly mortgage that lasts about 30 years. Sometimes, the mortgage rate rises. If you cannot pay for it, you will get evicted.

 

 

☆Hints for Points

Renting an apartment

・You have more usable money left in the bank as you don’t pay for the furniture and goods for the house.

・It provides mobility, or flexibility as Ben says.

・It is the best lifestyle for a minimalist, who tries to keep their possessions at a minimum.

・When we die, we can take nothing with us, so it is better for us to have as little property as possible while we are alive.

・You have to consider your neighbors more when in an apartment than when you are in a house.

・You cannot renovate your apartment. If you cause damage to it, you have to compensate for the damage.

・How comfortable the life living in an apartment depends much on the superintendent.

 

Buying a house

・Peace of mind is easier to get because you have autonomy and privacy, as well as a sense of permanence as Tamara points out.

・A house has a yard or a garden and can have a garage.

・Most people get married and have children, so a house is more preferable.

・Pet-owners would be happy to own a house as apartment tenants are usually not allowed to own a pet.

・Monthly mortgage payment can be a mental burden.

・House prices fluctuate, and it is often risky to own a house if your income is not high and stable. You may go bankrupt if you lose your job after you buy a house or if interest rate soars and your mortgage rate is variable.

 

 

☆Ideas and Expressions  

【Thesis】I believe individuals should prioritize living in an apartment unless they plan to have a family because it is better for mental health than living in a house.

【Supporting Details】First of all, unless you buy a house in cash, you will be burdened by the mortgage payment for the rest of your life and this will restrict your freedom because you cannot easily quit your job or move to a new place when you want to. The pressure can lead to alcoholism or depression. You may think you can sell your house if you want to, but real estate usually depreciates like any other tangible commodities unless it sits on land in a prestigious area. Also, living in a house tends to make you materialistic and possessed with consumerism, since few people can stand leaving extra rooms vacant. When you get in a house, you buy pieces of furniture to fit in the new rooms and fill the furniture with the content. You may also buy paintings and plants to decorate the rooms. As a result, homeowners spend money and time on the consumption of household goods, while they could spend that much for other purposes such as hobby, relationships, or traveling if they lived in an apartment.

【Counterargument-treatment】The stability of life and the abundance which living in a house provides cannot be expected in life in an apartment, However, stability will turn mannerism, and abundance is equal to consumerism and corruption. Apartment life is free from the cost of settlement.

【Conclusion】Whether to choose materialistic life or not depends on individual values in the end, but I think people will be happier when they are free from anxiety and greed, which follows the goal of economics. Therefore, individuals should choose to live in an apartment. (294 words)

 

Write your draft. Then read each other’s draft, asking questions and making counterarguments.

 

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TOEFL iBT Wriging for an Academic Discussion Should school prioritize teaching children how to be creative? (Revised)

The necessity of teaching creativity in schools is a topic of considerable debate, especially in our rapidly evolving world. Some argue that fostering creativity is essential for preparing children for future challenges and opportunities, while others believe that traditional academic subjects should take precedence to ensure a solid educational foundation. What is your opinion on this issue? Should schools prioritize teaching children how to be creative? Why or why not?

 

 

 

☆Let’s Read and Think

Read the following articles, underlined by yours truly Sasaki, to see what creativity is and how it can be learned.

 

Article 1 Medical students 'raised on screens lack skills for surgery'

Leading surgeon says lack of hobbies and creativity in schools has affected children’s practical abilities

Matthew Weaver  Oct 2018  The Guardian

   New medical students have spent so much time on screens that they lack vital practical skills necessary to conduct life-saving operations, a leading surgeon has warned.

   Roger Kneebone, professor of surgical education at Imperial College London, said that a decline in hands-on creative subjects at school and practical hobbies at home means that students often do not have a basic understanding of the physical world.

   Backing a campaign by educational thinktank the Edge Foundation to encourage more creative subjects in the national curriculum, Kneebone said spending hours engaged in virtual worlds was no substitute for experience in the real world.

   “Partly it stops [students] being aware in three dimensions of what’s going on around them, because their focus is much narrower, but also it takes away that physical understanding you get by actually doing things,” he told BBC Radio 5 Live. “That has to be done in the real world with real stuff.”

   Kneebone said there had been a “very serious knock-on effect” on practical skills among students since smartphones had become so popular.

   He said: “We have noticed that medical students and trainee surgeons often don’t seem as comfortable with doing things with their hands … than they used to even perhaps five or 10 years ago.

   “People are no longer getting the same exposure to making and doing [things] when they are at home, when they are school, as they used to.”

   He claimed that cutting back on creative subjects at school had a negative impact on the tactile skills necessary for a career in medicine or science.

   Kneebone said: “We are talking about the ability to do things with your hands, with tools, cutting things out and putting things together … which is really important in order to do the right thing either with operations, or with experiments. You need to understand how hard you can pull things before you do damage to them or how quickly you can do things with them before they change in some way.”

   Kneebone said that by spending time online children were missing out on practical skills acquired from hobbies such as cooking, woodwork, playing a musical instrument or model making. He endorsed making Halloween jack-o’-lanterns as a start for budding surgeons.

   He said: “Pumpkin carving is one example of using sharp instruments with great delicacy and precision on a hard surface with a soft inside to create something that you have got in your mind and then you have to make it happen.”

 

 

Article 2 The Guardian view on creativity in schools: a missing ingredient

Imagination should infuse teaching of science as well as the arts. Children are not pitchers to be filled with facts   Oct 2019

 

You can’t see it, smell it, hear it. People disagree on how, precisely, to define it, or where, exactly, it comes from. It isn’t a school subject or an academic discipline, but it can be learned. It is a quality that is required by artists. But it is also present in the lives of scientists and entrepreneurs. All of us benefit from it: we thrive mentally and spiritually when we are able to harness it. It is a delicate thing, easily stamped out; in fact, it flourishes most fully when people are playful and childlike. At the same time, it works best in tandem with deep knowledge and expertise.

   This mysterious – but teachable – quality is creativity, the subject of a report published this week by Durham Commission on Creativity and Education, a body chaired by Sir Nicholas Serota, the chair of Arts Council England, with input from figures including film director Beeban Kidron, architect Sir David Adjaye and choreographer Akram Khan. The report, put together in collaboration with academics from Durham University, concludes that creativity is not something that should inhabit the school curriculum only as it relates to drama, music, art and other obviously creative subjects, but that creative thinking ought to run through all of school life, infusing the way human and natural sciences are learned.

   The authors, who focus on education in England, offer a number of sensible recommendations, some of which are an attempt to alleviate the Gradgrindish turn in education policy of recent years. When children are regarded as pitchers to be filled with facts, creativity does not prosper; nor does it when teachers’ sole objective is, perforce, coaching children towards exams. One suggestion from the commission is a network of teacher-led “creativity collaboratives”, along the lines of existing maths hubs, with the aim of supporting teaching for creativity through the school curriculum.

   Nevertheless, it is arts subjects through which creativity can most obviously be fostered. The value placed on them by the independent education sector is clear. One only has to look at the remarkable arts facilities at Britain’s top public schools to comprehend this. But in the state sector the EBacc’s focus on English, maths and science threatens to crush arts subjects; meantime, reduced school budgets mean dwindling extracurricular activities. There has been a 28.1% decline in uptake of creative subjects at GCSE since 2014, though happily, art and design have seen a recent uptick.

   This disparity between state and private is a matter of social justice. It is simply wrong and unfair that most children have a fraction of the access to choirs, orchestras, art studios and drama that their most privileged peers enjoy. As lives are affected by any number of looming challenges – climate crisis, automation in the workplace – humans are going to need creative thinking more than ever. For all of our sakes, creativity in education, and for all, must become a priority.

 

 

☆Hints for Points

Creativity

1.       Whether one is creative or not will be crucial in the near future as it will be vital to cope with the impacts of climate change and more jobs will be taken care of by AI.

2.       Real creativity comes from real contact with nature, people, and society.

3.       Establishment of individuality is necessary for society to evolve.

 

Academic subjects

1.        Creativity requires solid foundation, essential knowledge and skills. To create something new, you need to know what has already been created. What you think is new might already exist.

2.        Breakthrough in science often comes from interdisciplinary studies, integration of academic studies.

3.        School is the place to teach academic subjects. Children learn creativity outside school, while school teaches academic subjects better than anything else.

 

 

☆Sample Responses

Disagree

【Thesis】Although I agree with Meg in that creativity is the inspiration that is the key to solve difficult problems and come up with new ideas, I don’t think school should prioritize teaching creativity because in my view, school cannot teach creativity. It is not a subject. Thus, I think school should prioritize providing quality education of academic subjects for children, while reducing school hours and homework, to help their natural development of creativity.

【Creativity】Creativity is not something that you learn from school education but something you forget in school. Children are naturally all creative. Yet, once they start school, they lose creativity. Studies to get good scores in examinations of subjects in which they have no interest stunts, I guess, the development of their neurons, which had been budding freely by then. Long school hours and tons of homework reduce their free time that would have helped them develop creativity through interaction with the real world in each individual’s environment.

【Academic Subjects】On the other hand, academic subjects are indispensable to develop and mature a creative mind. They provide knowledge and skills to understand and internalize nature, people, and society in detail and deeply. Teachers should be here to support children do these jobs by providing them with proper materials and assignment.

【Conclusion】What school can do is to teach traditional academic subjects well. Although it is paradoxical, school should not prioritize creativity so that children can grow up to be creative. (239 words)

 

Agree

【Thesis】I believe school should prioritize teaching children how to be creative.

【Supporting Details】School has long been dead and AI has already become smarter than many of us humans. I have no regret to say good-bye to conventional school where children write down what teachers write on the blackboard and cram for examinations, where social norms, or prejudices, of the region are instilled and unnecessary rules are forced to make children obedient and banal, and welcome a new type of school that support children to gain creativity by experiencing various things, such as nature, other cultures, and jobs, because AI cannot fully replicate human experiences and thus this is the area that future humans should explore to coexist with AI.

【Counterargument-treatment】Although conventional knowledge may be necessary for our creative activities, it is said that all the academic knowledge we need can be found online. As for the question whether school is necessary when creativity can be learned without school, at least public school should exist for equality and ensure that all children get as much experience as possible.

【Conclusion】Therefore, school should support children to get ready to be humans that can provide their personalized experiences, or individual data, for AI to use to make the world a better place to live, as well as enjoying sharing their precious memories with other humans through creative activities. (223 words)

TOEFL iBT Wriging for an Academic Discussion Rewarding Children to Study (Revised)

The effectiveness of using rewards to motivate children to study is a topic of much discussion. Some argue that providing incentives is a powerful tool to encourage academic effort, while others believe that reliance on rewards can undermine intrinsic motivation. What is your perspective on this issue? Is rewarding children to study a good idea, and why?

 

 

 

☆Let’s Think

1.        What kind of rewards do teachers give to their students?

2.        Do you agree with rewarding children for their efforts and achievements?

 

 

☆Hints for Points

Good

1.       Rewards make learning a game, which encourages children to do tasks and facilitates learning.

2.       Rewards visualize how much students have learned.

3.       Sophisticated teaching materials using rewards help students gain long-term memory. For example, a task to help a character fix an old boat to go home involves math problems and students learn the math concepts they use to solve the problems as they try to get the character to reach the goal.

 

Bad

1.        Rewards may help lose sight of the meaning of studies. Children will lose intrinsic motivation. They will not be motivated in tasks without rewards.

2.        Rewards lose effect soon as students get used to them.

3.        Struggling students would rather be discouraged with rewarding because they always lose.

 

 

☆Sample Response

Good

【Thesis】I think rewarding can be quite effective in learning something by heart not only with children but also with elder students.

【Supporting Details】People tend to remember peripheral information instead of the main subject. It is often the case that students remember trivial details of a class such as footnotes or a teacher’s joke that fell flat. Some people say that they try not to learn anything because that mindset helps them learn better. As more familiar example, it is a common experience that using the same sequence of numbers for a task helps learn it and seeing the same characters multiple times in a game makes the gamer memorize their names. The gamer’s reward is not learning the character names but winning the game, and they don’t necessarily have to know the name of the character in handling them, but their names stay in the gamer’s brain. Very often, the characters, the peripheral information, becomes the center of joy of gaming like PokéMon. Love of details helps people learn.

【Counterargument-treatment & Conclusion】Of course, intrinsic interest in a subject is the real driver of learning and it increases long term memory. However, few students have intrinsic interest in all subjects all the time, and thus we have ABC songs and AN OSUS COMP to make learning fun and easy. Rewards are a factor to motivate learners, and thus teachers use them when they are necessary. (230 words)

 

Bad

【Thesis】Praise from teachers and other students are rewards that correctly recognize the student’s effort in class, and so it is necessary. However, rewards in other forms would be useless.

【Supporting Details】Students should know why they are doing the task for effective learning. If they know the purpose of their studies, leaning itself will be the reward, and rewards like stickers will be like party gifts; it is nice to get them, but you wouldn’t care less even if you don’t as you have enjoyed the party,  learning.

【Counterargument-treatment】Jessica may be right that using rewards is effective with young children who cannot be aware that the study is good to them, and yet, I doubt the effect of teaching young children something that needs rewards to keep their attention or to make them concentrate. Subjects should be interesting to learn in the first place, and people can learn only what they believe they need in the end. If children find learning multiplication table by heart boring, it is because they haven’t been assigned tasks of adding the same number multiple times in 81 patterns. After the task, even the laziest child would find the multiplication table worth learning. Some children might think of using a calculator, but they would cram after experiencing how convenient it is to know the answer in simple multiplication for daily use such as estimating how many brownies are necessary for a gathering.

【Conclusion】In the end, classes that do not rely on rewards are based. (247 words)

TOEFL iBT Wriging for an Academic Discussion The Best Way to Learn about the Culture of a Foreign County (Revised)

Understanding the culture of a foreign county is essential for fostering global awareness and appreciation. There are various methods to learn about different cultures; in your opinion, what is the best way to learn about the culture of a foreign country?

 

 

☆Let’s think

Other than traveling and reading the literature, what are best ways to learn about the culture of a foreign country.

 

 

☆Hints for Points

1.       Living in the country makes the culture of the country part of your life.

2.       Doing business with the country necessitates you to learn the culture of the country.

3.       Traveling the country allows you to learn the culture through five senses.

4.       Making friends with the person from the country whose culture you are learning about helps you learn it.

5.       Using social media in major language like English places you in the international exchanges of ideas, and through the activity, knowledge about countries will accumulate.

6.       Learning the language of the culture helps you learn the values and world view of the culture and gives you insights of it.

7.       Learning about the art of the country is learning about the culture of the country.

8.       Watching movies of the country gives you a deep insight of a culture in it.

9.       By reading the literature of the country, you can see the culture through the writer’s eyes.

10.    Comics of a country show a lot about the culture of their country.

11.    Eating food of the country tells you a lot about the customs and history of the country.

12.    Dealing with haters from the country will train you to be equipped with detailed information about a culture.

 

 

☆Sample Answer

【Thesis】Both Aisha and Carlos make valid points in the senses as follows, but I think that watching movies is the best way to learn other cultures as it has both the advantages of traveling and reading literature and more.

【Literature】Literature shows what is in the people’s mind, that is, more fundamental, deeper layers of the culture, as Carlos points out. It allows you to learn not only the mentality of the people, their world views, and their values but also their roots, showing what was in the past and is affecting the current state of their mental world. You can trace the origin of the present culture by reading period novels, for instance. Moreover, the reader adapts it as part of their beings thanks to the power of simulated experience and the memory of the vicarious feelings the reader felt in the experience. This is the reason why a foreign researcher of a country’s literature often sounds more indigenous than the real indigenous people of the country.

【Travels】On the other hand, traveling makes you immersed in the whole environment the culture exists, which includes the geography, the history, the economy, the politics, the custom, and the characteristics of the nationals. The direct contact with them through all senses leaves an experience as a page in your journal of the journey of your life.

【Movies】Watching movies has the virtues of both traveling and reading literature, I think, as it shows both the surface and the deeper layers of a culture through visuals and sounds. It also takes you to the past. It gives you an experience of a culture in around 100 minutes with entertainment.

【Conclusion】While All traveling, reading literature, and watching movies compensate for each other in learning other cultures, the last is the most effective and the favored way to learn a culture, I believe.

(308 words)

 

TOEFL iBT Wriging for an Academic Discussion Fiction, Rather than Just Books about Facts at School? (Revised)

There is an ongoing debate about the balance between fiction and non-fiction in school curriculums. Some argue that students should spend more time reading fiction to foster skills such as empathy, while others believe that non-fiction is more important to learn essential facts about the world. In your opinion, should schools spend more time allowing students to read fiction rather than just books about facts?

 

 

☆Let’s Think

1.        What other benefits than strengthening empathy does reading fiction provides?

2.        Share your experience of learning from a non-fiction book.

 

 

☆Hints for Points

Fiction

1.       Stories and dramas are necessary to make life rich and enjoyable.

2.       Fiction is good for emotional education. Students get, at least partially, the brain wiring of the author, a great intellect, as well as the author’s vocabulary, world view, attitude, and other good properties.

3.       Good fiction reflects reality and tells the truth in the way non-fiction cannot and better than non-fiction does.

4.       A novel is in itself is a raw data of a period of history.

 

Non-fiction

1.        Non-fiction books have more information than fiction. It is good for students, who need to learn about the real world to make the most out of life, to avoid problems, and to help those who are in trouble.

2.        Students may not read non-fiction after graduation, so while at school they should be assigned to read as many non-fiction books related to their studies as possible.

3.        “In the end, fiction doesn’t go beyond the author’s world, while non-fiction does.” – Takashi Tachibana, an award-winning journalist, who kept reading fiction all day every day for 8 years when he was an undergraduate at Tokyo University

 

 

☆Sample Answer

【Thesis】I agree with Ella in that fiction provides insights into real events and real people. People tend to think that fiction is for emotional education for children, and that teens and young adults, whose mentality and personality are almost established, don’t need it in their curriculum. However, I think reading fiction is even more important in higher grades because of simulated experience it gives to the reader.

【Supporting Details】Students need the power of fiction to maintain their interest in the subjects that become increasingly complicated and layered as grades go up. Fiction helps relive the real events or issues effectively, and thus it makes students assimilate and feel related to them. Stories of victims of war or pollution, for instance, help students experience the tragedies vicariously and this leads them to understandings of and interest in the issue. In other words, students can acquire imagination and insights necessary to learn advanced level subjects by reading fiction.

【Counterargument-treatment】Certainly, fiction has its limits. It cannot beat the value of non-fiction as facts. However, good novels are neither fantasies nor delusions. They have models in the real world. The difference from non-fiction is that authors filter and process the reality into the truth just as artists filter the image a camera lens projects on the film to capture the intrinsic nature of the matter and process it into what is universal and eternal or something new. As a result, although fiction doesn’t have all the information non-fiction has and it contains the author’s imagination, it often comes closer to the reality than non-fiction does.

【Conclusion】Although the risks of confusion between facts and fantasy may exist, the tremendous power of fiction that helps students sympathize with those involved and reach insights of the issue cannot be ignored. If used carefully, it will boost the students’ studies. Therefore, I think fiction should be used more at school, especially in the advanced level. (316 words)