Class Supplement, TOEFL Essay, The reason why you think the actor/lawyer/tour guide is important to your society

Writing Topic:
Many different jobs are important to society for different reasons. Select one of these jobs and explain why you think that job is helpful to your society: 1) actor, 2) lawyer, 3) tour guide.

Let’s Think:
This topic has two directions. The first direction is “Select one of these jobs,” so you are supposed to choose one of the three jobs given at the end of the topic. The next direction is to explain how you think your society benefits from the job you have chosen. You are not required to compare the three jobs, and neither are you required to choose the most important. The topic just says, “Choose one and explain why it is important to your society?” Note the first sentence of this topic: Many different jobs are important to society for different reasons. This means that you cannot say a certain job is more important than another in many cases; each job has its own significance. From this, we can infer that comparing the importance of these three jobs is not the point of this topic.

☆The same types of questions:
The same type TOEFL Writing Topics as this one are as follows:

(1) Choose one of the following transportation vehicles and explain why you think it has changed people’s lives.
• automobiles • bicycles • airplanes

(2) Many parts of the world are losing important natural resources, such as forests, animals, or clean water. Choose one resource that is disappearing and explain why it needs to be saved.

☆Similar but different types of questions:
Now, here are question patterns that look similar to but different from that of today’s topic:

(3) A friend of yours has received some money and plans to use all of it either
• to go on vacation • to buy a car
Your friend has asked you for advice. Compare your friend’s two choices and explain which one you think your friend should choose.

(4) What do you want most in a friend — someone who is intelligent, or someone who has a sense of humor, or someone who is reliable? Which one of these characteristics is most important to you?

Question (3) requires you to compare the choices, and to answer question (4), you have to choose the one you think the most important.

The following type of question is also a different kind from the topic of this week:

(5) You have enough money to purchase either a house or a business. Which would you choose to buy?

To answer this question, you need to compare the choices even though you are not required to because of the given condition: to spend a large amount of money on either of the two choices. This automatically requires you to compare them before making your choice.


Hints for points:
☆An actor …
♦helps you learn about people, life, and the world.
-- by participating in a movie on something special like a historical incident or a personal event (e.g. the Vietnam War, patients and doctors fighting a formidable disease, etc.)

♦helps you live a life which is totally different from yours or a fictional life that are often more real than a real life.
-- by playing a role of a character in different times and places (e.g. a famous but solitary diver who feels at home in the deep sea, a man who was sentenced life in prison for the crime he did not commit, a hero who liberates people trapped in the cyberspace, etc.)

☆A lawyer …
♦protects one’s rights.
-- by giving advice on what claim one can make and preparing for the law suit (e.g. finding the evidence of the wrongdoing of someone’s former employer who dismissed him without any proper reason and representing him in filing a law suit against the company

♦can shed light on serious issues in society and help make a difference.
-- by taking up a case influential to society (e.g. deaths related to pollution, a murder case in which a minority person killed his employer who was rich, white, and abusive, etc.)

☆A tour guide …
♦helps people experience different places and cultures.
-- by assisting tourists make the most of their tour (e.g. giving information, translating languages, making arrangements for tourists, etc.)

♦works as a citizen diplomat.
-- by assisting in mutual understanding (e.g. helping tourists and the people in the place they are visiting communicate with each other, leaving good impression of the people and the country in tourists’ minds and vice versa, etc.)


Sample Paragraph:
【主張】Lawyers protect our rights. 【主張の説明】A lawyer can give advice on what claim one can make and will prepare for the law suit. 【具体例】For example, if there is an employee whose contract has been terminated for no reason, the lawyer will find the evidence of the wrongdoing of the client’s former employer and will represent him in filing a law suit against the company. 【結論】In this way, the lawyer helps one protect one’s fundamental human right, right to pursue happiness in this case, and helps one get one’s job back or get compensated for the damage caused by the dismissal.