TOEFL iBT Writing for an Academic Discussion Working hours and the pays (revised )

Drill  Which of the two answers below is better as a response to the following question? How can it be improved?

Question: Would you like to stay in a foreign country for a year or travel around the world if it’s possible during your high-school sophomore year?

 

Answer A: I would like to stay in a foreign country for a year rather than travel around the world during my sophomore year in my high school. There are two reasons. First, I would like to learn English overseas so that I can get a higher score in the entrance examination of a university. To be fluent in a language, it takes time. Therefore, I need to stay in an English-speaking country for at least a year. Second, I want to make friends with people in a foreign country. Friendship takes time to build. Thus, I would choose a one-year stay.

Answer B: If I stay in a foreign country for a year, I would be able to learn the culture and the language well. I would also be able to bond with the people there. If lucky, the country would be my second home. On the other hand, if I travel around the world for a year, I would be familiar with a variety of climate types and societies. I would choose the latter because I want to see the world first, and then think about whether to stay in a foreign country for a long time and which country I should stay if I do it.

 

 

 

Writing Question: Which would you choose: a high-paying job with long working hours or a lower-paying job with shorter working hours?

 

 

☆Let’s think

Make a point-by-point comparison of the two types of the jobs in the question, using the table below.

	Disposable Income	Amount of Free Time	Stress Level	Job Satisfaction	Leisure Activities	Stability	Others
High-paying job with long working yours Examples:
Lower-paying job with shorter working hours Examples:

 

1.       Which working condition would you rather choose? Why?

2.       Explain why you do not care about the disadvantages?

 

 

☆Hints for Points

Reasons to choose a high-paying job with long working hours

1.       I would like to contribute to society as a specialist. I like working. I would spend long hours p the practicing my profession, gaining knowledge, and improving my skills.

2.       Life planning is the key. It is common sense to choose a job with regular working hours for stability. I would like to live in a safe and comfortable place, wear stylish clothes, and eat safe food to live a long, healthy life. I would also like to get married and have children as a respected citizen.

3.       All I need is money rather than time, so a lower-paying job is not my choice.

 

Reasons to choose a lower-paying job with shorter working hours

1.       Unless life becomes precarious, I would like to continue my study over the next ten years.

2.       My nature defines the so-called normal lifestyle. I just cannot conform to regular work hours. I am not inclined to work 8 hours from 9 to five every week day. This does not mean that I am lazy. I have a strong power of concentration, while my body clock is just not suitable for a regular life pattern.

3.       I would like to enjoy leisure time with modest income. It is healthier both mentally and physically than to have a high-paying job.

4.       As the saying goes, “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy”

 

 

☆Sample Response Structures  

Sample 1 

【Thesis】It may sound counterintuitive, but I think a hard-working specialist has a well-rounded life.

【Supporting Details】Lower-paying jobs with shorter hours often require the worker to be a small part of the whole operation like a cog in a machine. The tasks are simple and monotonous, giving the worker little joy of labor. They are often either always sedentary or always itinerant. Chances to interact with other humans through normal discourse are limited. All of these are stressful to human nature. On the other hand, higher-paying jobs with long working hours allow workers to be voluntary, proactive, and creative. Challenging job assignments help keep the spirit high, and in the end, will contribute to contentment.

【Counterargument-treatment】Although Mia assumes personal fulfillment and well-being relates to jobs with shorter working hours, jobs with long working hours are also accompanied by them. Not only the job satisfaction I mentioned above but also abundant remuneration saves the workers and their family from fears of precarious life, unlike those with lower-paying jobs. In addition, labor law protects workers from working extremely long hours.

【Conclusion】Therefore, I would rather pursue job satisfaction and stable life by working long hours.

(190 words)

 

Sample 2

【Thesis】Considering the balance between work and life, I would choose a lower-paying job with shorter working hours because time is life, as the author of Momo says.

【Working hours】This insightful children’s book, which is intended for adults to read, questions values of capitalist society, suggesting sacrificing time is the root cause of unhappiness in today’s world. Adults in the village in this story, recruited for business, lose time to spend with their children, who get agitated with this neglect. Momo, a girl who is not related to the villagers and their activities, alone is saved from losing time and remains happy. As we can see in this story, keeping the natural, relaxed lifestyle is the key to happiness. Therefore, work with shorter hours is preferable. The flexible work hours allow a relaxed lifestyle.

【Income】 Lower income may not promise a life free from anxiety. However, it is also doubtful whether high-income jobs guarantee it. Companies can go bankrupt, or injury or illness can easily lower their status. If you are money-oriented, this downfall will be your death sentence, while prioritizing time at least saves you from identity crisis.

【Conclusion】After all, even if you have a lot of money, if you do not have time to spend it to enjoy life, your life is a failure. To stay as human as possible in this modern world of insanity, I would be happy to be less paid and have more leisure time.

(238 words)

 

 

 

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TOEFL iBT Writing for an Academic Discussion Human actions and its effect on the environment (revised )

Are our actions causing more harm to the environment than in the past or are we now making a stronger effort to protect and preserve it

 

 

☆Discussion

Read the following essays for ideas and expressions. Think of counterarguments against them.

 

Essay 1  Writing for the TOEFL iBT, Barron’s

The quality of human life has improved greatly over the past few centuries, but Earth is being harmed more and more by human activity. As we develop our technology, we use more and more natural resources and cause more and more pollution. As our population grows, we destroy more and more natural areas in order to expand towns and cities. The Earth is being harmed, and this harms people as well.

We often act as if we have unlimited natural resources, but this isn’t true. If we cut down too many trees to build houses and make paper, not all the trees will grow back. If we catch too many fish, the fish population will get smaller and smaller. If we aren’t careful about how we use our natural resources, we will lose many of them. We are already losing some.

We don’t seem to pay attention to the amount of pollution human activity can cause. Our cars pollute the air. Our factories pollute both the air and the water. We throw our waste into rivers and streams. We act as if the air and water can clean themselves up, but they can’t.

As urban populations grow, the cities grow too, taking over more and more land. New houses, stores, and office buildings are built all the time. Land that was once forest or farms is now parking lots and apartment buildings. We seem to act as if we have unlimited land, but we don’t. We need to plan more carefully so that we use our limited land in the best way possible.

People need to respect the Earth and try to preserve it. If we don’t, we will lose all the natural resources that we depend on for life. Then what will happen?

 

Essay 2

We hear talks that humankind is harming the earth every day, and most people seem to agree with it, while we also hear that we are making efforts to make the earth a better place to live.” The question is for whom we are making the earth a better place to live.

   Humans try to change nature into what we want it to be. We build roads in plains and mountains for transportation, build structures as shelters against elements and for other purposes, and make facilities for resources such as water pipes or nuclear reactors. We build cities so that we can fend for ourselves. However, when someone gets something, someone else loses it. When human society gains something involving nature (development), the environment loses something (destruction).

 

Effect of Human Activities Especially in the Last 200 Years   Human Activity ↙           ↘    Development of Society        ⇔   Destruction of the Environment

 

When we were cavemen, most of our activities were part of nature. Like other animals, we slept in our “dens,” and hunted and gathered what we needed to survive. We made a fire to cook, but it was not enough to cause global warming. We collected pretty stones and shells for some reason, and it had little effect on the environment. Perhaps we ate a species too much and drove it to its extinction, but the influence was not so strong as to change the whole environment.

   Now, highly-developed technologies allow us to affect the environment on a large scale. We clear-cut forests to make cities and fields; bulldoze mountains to build residential areas, to mine minerals, or to make golf courses; and drill rocks in the desert and ocean bottoms to get oil and gas. We also kill insects with chemicals to grow food, overfish to satisfy our palate, and wipe out some species for the fur and skin to enjoy fashion and hobby. In addition, we pollute the air, water, and soil for production and transportation. Furthermore, we have started global warming by releasing a large amount of greenhouse gases into the air mainly by burning fossil fuels.

   By doing these things, we invade other animals’ natural habitats, deplete natural resources, and destroy the environment. To survive, to expand our territories, and to enjoy ourselves, we are doing harm to nature. It is obvious that our activities are causing environmental strain. Our activities might make our lives convenient, but they affect nature. Now, the word “ecological damage” is about disturbing ecosystem and causing decline or extinction of species. It is predicted that about one-fourth of all plants and vertebrate animals may go extinct by 2050 due to global warming. Ecological damage is not an exaggeration. The climate crisis is real. It is man-made, and we are killing ourselves.

   It is true that we cannot live like a caveman. We need energy. We need food. Development is good for us. However, it is usually bad for the environment, and in the end, it is bad for us as well because humankind is part of nature.

 

 

☆Sample Response  

【Thesis】Both scientific data and our current experiences show that we have been pressuring the environment to the point of no return, and we are not making a course correction.

【CO2】Global warming is in progress. The concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere has passed the threshold of 350 parts per million long ago. This means that we cannot stop global warming anymore even if we stop burning fossil fuels right now, and yet the oil industry is still expanding. We are knowingly doing harm to the environment as a result of big businesses prioritizing short term profits.

【Effect on the Environment】Climate crisis is clearly felt by all of us now. No one is now opposed to the view that summer is getting hotter year by year, and in fact the average temperature has been rising over the past 200 years. The polar ice is melting in an unprecedented rate. Fishermen report that they see fishes different from those they used to catch, meaning fish are moving away from their habitat due to warmer water. Farmers see their crops affected by higher temperature and fiercer and more frequent disasters. Extinction is now exponential.

【Counterargument-treatment】Technologies to soften the impact of climate change exist, but governments have little will to use them because of professional lobbyists from related businesses. Environmental movements have not achieved a decisive success because the leaders are paid by businesses according to “Planet of the Humans”. Their existence has been used for greenwashing in most cases.

【Conclusion】Scientists call these changes anthropogenic climate change. There is no denying that human activities, especially greenhouse emissions, are destructing the ecosystem and causing our demise.

(268 words)

 

 

 

Check out the following for review:

An Inconvenient Truth

An Academy Award-winning documentary film in 2006 about climate change, or global warming, presented by former United States Vice President Al Gore. Al Gore’s claim is that global warming is real and largely human-caused. (Wikipedia)

 

Planet of the Humans

A documentary released in 2020 that has shown the failure and the cause of it in the environmental movement, especially those to fight global warming. It reports that solar, wind, and biomass power plants cannot reduce greenhouse gasses or even increase them and that the reason why this fact has not been known is that leaders of the environmental movement are paid by renewal energy companies or making money by owning them. The criticisms about the movie have been disproved, and it has been found that the media and pundits that criticized the movie were paid by the “green billionaires”.

 

Greta Thunberg and Fridays for Future

A Nobel prize-nominated activist and a movement, which she started alone when she was 14 year old that is now a global action lead by the young around the world.

 

DRAFT