TOEFL iBT Independent Writing 1) Which famous person would you choose to commemorate as a statue? 2) What events (experiences or ceremonies) make a person an adult?

Writing Topic１
Your city has decided to build a statue or monument to honor a famous person in your country. Who would you choose? Use reasons and specific examples to support your choice.

☆Let’s Think

1.       Name statues you know.  
Note: Washington, Lincoln, and Martin Luther King Jr. are commemorated for their respectable lives and contribution to society. Also, nameless people have become statues such as South Korea’s ‘comfort women’ statues and Nagasaki Peace Statue for messages.

 

2.       Why did they become statues?

Note: They are special as well as famous. Washington was the first President of the United States. Lincoln helped end the slavery. Martin Luther King Jr. peacefully fought against discrimination and sacrificed his life for the purpose. We think these people were so important that we want to keep their statues, the most. South Korea’s ‘comfort women’ are victims of a war crime that inflicted them excruciating suffering throughout their lives, which should not be forgotten. Nagasaki Peace Statue is for those died because of atomic bombs dropped at the end of WWII and because of longing for peace.

 

3.       What effect do statues have on our society?

Statues send messages about what is important in society. They also work as an evidence of a historic incident even after the people involved in it are gone. Statues that remind people of racial discrimination are now being destroyed or removed because they distress the people who are discriminated against and send wrong messages that society permits discrimination that the statue represents.

 

4.       Who were/are famous and special in your country that contributed to your society so much as to be commemorated with a statue? Do research on the person, answering the following questions.

a.      What is the person famous for?

b.     What is the person’s background? e.g. The person’s birth place, family, childhood, etc.

c.      What exactly did the person do?

d.     In what way did the person affect society?

e.      How do people remember the person? e.g. in a song, in textbook, etc.

Notes: 1) Since the topic gives no definition about what kind of people are famous people, as long as a number of people know the person, and even if the person is not world-famous, you can say the person you chose is famous. 2) If you do not remember the name of the person, you could put it this way: I would choose the person who invented blue, green, and white LED (Light-Emitting Diode).

 

☆Ideas and Expressions

Famous but unsung heroes

-       Yamamoto Isoroku, a military man who was opposed to Japan joining WWII.

-       Sasaki Sadako, an atomic bomb victim who started origami crane.

-       The person who thought of using fire engines to stop Fukushima nuclear crisis.

-       Miwa Sado, a journalist who is one of the victims of karoshi, overwork death

-       Muraki Atsuko, a former administrative vice minister of the Welfare Ministry who faced a false accusation, won the law suit, and now working for young women suffering at the bottom of the Japanese society.

-       A mother who accused the government of not providing enough daycare centers on Twitter.

-       The person who invented karaoke

Industrialists
Son Masayoshi: (1957 - ) A businessman and the founder and chief executive officer of SoftBank, who introduced smartphones to Japan. He is also a philanthropist. He donated 10 billion yen to the victims of Great East Japan Earthquake and has promised to donate to them all of his income every year. In addition, he has taken initiatives of Japan’s shift to a society based on safe and sustainable energy sources.

Ando Momofuku: (1910 - 2007) A businessman who founded Nissin Food Products Co., Ltd. He is famed as the inventor of instant noodles and cup noodles. He invented Chiken Ramen to help people struggling to get food in the aftermath of WWII. He kept donating cup noodles to the people in poor countries and disaster-stricken areas.
Other names: Matsushita Konosuke, Honda Sōichirō

Political Figures
Fukuzawa Yukichi : (1834 - 1901) An author, writer, teacher, translator, entrepreneur and political theorist who founded Keio University. His ideas about government and social institutions made a lasting impression on a rapidly changing Japan during the Meiji Era. He is regarded as one of the founders of modern Japan.

Sakamoto Ryōma: (1836 - 1867) A charismatic leader of the movement to overthrow the Tokugawa shogunate at the end of Edo era.
Other names: Ito Hirobumi, Sugita Genpaku, Yoshida Shoin, Katsu Kaishu, Ino Tadataka,


Cultural Figures
Dr. Shinya Yamanaka: He is a Japanese medical researcher at Kyoto University who discovered iPS cells and won the Nobel Prize in medicine. His discovery opened a new way of treatment which enabled us to get stem cells without ethical problems and with fewer side effects. Thanks to his work, human-to-human organ transplrtation might be unnecessary in the future.

 

Miyazaki Hayao : (1941-) A Japanese manga artist and prominent film director and animator of many popular anime feature films. Miyazaki has attained international acclaim as a maker of anime. Miyazaki's films often incorporate recurrent themes like humanity's relationship to nature and technology, and the difficulty of maintaining a pacifist ethic. Miyazaki is a vocal critic of capitalism and globalization.

 

Mori Ogai, Natsume Soseki, Yosano Akiko, Akutagawa Ryunosuke, Miyazawa Kenji, Hori Tastsuo, Nakamura Shinichiro, Kato Shuichi, Oe Kenzaburo, and many other people of letters: They are authors between Meiji and Showa eras who built the foundation of the modern Japanese language and Japanese literature.

Other names:  Kurosawa Akira, Matsuo Basho, Kobo Daishi, Tachibana Takashi


Athletes
Suzuki Ichiro : (1973-) A Major League Baseball right fielder for the Seattle Mariners. Ichiro established a number of batting records, including the sport's single-season record for hits with 262. He had 10 consecutive 200-hit seasons, the longest streak by any player. He was voted onto ten All-Star teams by the fans. Ichiro won a Gold Glove award in each of his first ten years in the major leagues.

Uemura Naomi: (1941 - 1984) Ａ Japanese adventurer. He was particularly well known for accomplishing what had previously been achieved only with large teams alone. For example, he was the first person ever to reach the North Pole solo, the first ever to raft the Amazon solo, and the first ever to climb Mount McKinley solo.

Other names: Naomi Osaka, Ishikawa Ryo, Shimizu Hiroyasu, Arakawa Shizuka, Miura Kazu, Matsui Hideki, Rikidozan


☆Sample Essay Structures
Sample Essay Structure
【Introduction】I would like to choose Ryunosuke Akutagawa, a Japanese author, for the commemoration if my city has decided to build a statue of a famous person of my country.

【Point 1】A well-bred genius who grew up among the public in Tokyo at the end of the Meiji era that still maintained the traditional communities and cultures of the Edo era, Ryunosuke was a sensitive but worldly man who was very kind and pure-hearted. He committed suicide and died young saying that it was the first and last selfish act that he asked for pardon about. e.g. family, marriage, and the Japanese literary society.

【Point 2】Rynosuke left many good short stories, which are so popular that many people do not realize that they are written by him. By writing masterpieces one after another, he protected the pure literature in Japan while i-novels, Japanese novels of realism, became the major genre of literature in this country. e.g. Kumo-no-ito and Toshishun
【Point 3】Living about a century ago, Rynosuke depicted the same anxiety of life that individuals living today have and pointed out the hypocrisy of the developed society. e.g. Torokko and Kappa
【Conclusion】Although he did not make a mature author who left a great novel due to his premature death, he helped preserve the tradition of story-telling by passing down his sense of art with sensitive and gentle mentality to the generations that followed.

Your Sample Essay Structure
【Introduction = Outline】
【Point 1】

【Point 2】

【Point 3】

【Conclusion = Wrap-up】

 

Writing Topic 2
People recognize a difference between children and adults. What events (experiences or ceremonies) make a person an adult? Use specific reasons and examples to explain your answer.


☆Let’s Think

1.       If the status of being an adult is divided into legal, biological, economic or social aspects, how are they described? Which of these aspects is the best to use to answer the question of this writing topic?

Note: The Coming-of-Age Day marks your legal adulthood. Biological adulthood is having the ability to reproduce. Economic independence and becoming a new parent can be events that makes a person an adult. However, words like “adult children” or “man-child” show that even social adulthood is not enough to make someone an adult. Another expression “helicopter parents” describes parents who are not mentally independent from their children. Therefore, “mental independence” can be one condition for adulthood.

 

2.       What events make a person mentally independent and socialized, in other words mature?
Note: The question specifically says, “What events (experiences or ceremonies),” and so you are required to cite specific events that cause transformation from childhood to adulthood.

 

☆Hints for Points

Economic independence

Money is not everything, but money very often decides relationships. As long as your parents are paying for what is necessary for your survival, they treat you as such, someone in their custody. Also, until you have a job, you are not fully responsible for yourself and hence you are not full-fledged as a member of society.

 

Change of the position in the family

When a person has a child, the person becomes a parent, an adult. Now the person has to think and act like an adult to play a role of a care-giver, and over time, the person will become a real adult. Loss of parents can also have the same effect. The part of the person who was a child of the lost parent is lost and the person will act like a child less often than before.

 

Mental independence

Many people who are economically not independent are looked upon as adults. For example, a woman whose illness does not allow her to support herself can be mentally mature. She can be respected by others for her integrity, wisdom, and abundant love for others. Therefore, events that develop these qualities can make a person an adult. Experiencing love which is strong enough to set the beloved free or loss of your family member that makes you think what life and relationships are some of such events.

 

Mind development

Childish people are those who are selfish, impatient, and thoughtless. They do not understand that they are members of society, do not have respect for others, and cause trouble by following impulses without thinking of the results. Therefore, people who are less childish, who do these things less often, can be called adults. An event or events that intensively expose a child to the adult world might help this maturation, such as participating in community projects or joining the Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts.

 

Reliability

Parents stop, either consciously or unconsciously, giving directions to their children when they realize that their children know what to do, and so their directions are unnecessary and that they would probably get better results if they leave everything to their children. This usually happens after events like their children being assigned an important job in their community, school, or work place. Through taking responsibility, children become adults, who know what to do and are confident to take care of an unexpected situation.

 

Awareness of self-responsibility

A person becomes an adult when an event makes the person stop blaming others of his or her problem. If you are an adult, you know the fact that no one can fully take care of you and accept it. We help and love each other, but on the individual level, there is no one but yourself that you can rely on. Parents, even if they love their child, might not be able to give the child the best care. A wife cannot always watch her husband’s health no matter how much she loves him. When the child grows up to be physically or mentally weak, when the husband has a lifestyle-related disease, they have to face the problem by themselves. An adult is a person who takes personal responsibility for granted.

 

 

☆The Body Structure of Your Essay

【Point 1】

【Point 2】

【Point 3】