Read this Model TOEFL Essay to learn how to score 30/30 points on the writing section of the TOEFL Exam.
Model TOEFL Essay Writing Prompt
Below is the writing prompt that I will use for this Model TOEFL Essay.
Writing prompt: Young people behave more badly than those 50 years ago. Do you agree or disagree with this statement?
Model TOEFL Essay
Society takes pride in its youth and whether or not this young generation grows up to be contributing citizens, and every generation believes that this new group will be more successful and more civilized than their preceding counterparts. No one can deny that, in modern civilized society, people are usually polite and kind, and compared to youngsters in the past the same age group in present is more well-mannered. In other words, I disagree that young people behave badly more often than those fifty years ago because today’s youth are more educated and technology tends to overgeneralize bad behaviors which do not occur as often as they seem.
First of all, young people today have access to public education that prepares them to be civilized citizens. In the past, however, public school was not prevalent, implying that the majority could not learn to interact properly with others, which easily caused arguments between people. On the other hand, because of the establishment of public schools, children are able to learn people skills from professional teachers. To illustrate, my father, who has studied Hong Kong education for several decades and (has) published a book about this topic, mentioned that five decades ago most children who did not have a chance to go to school usually hung out with their friends on the streets. Because of the lack of education, they tended to act aggressively and churlishly when encountering strangers. In contrast, thanks to public education which places importance on nurturing civilized citizens, at least in the case of Hong Kong, children have become more polite and helpful. For example, when a stranger asks a child how to get to a certain place, the child will respond decently. As can be seen, nowadays, public education helps foster well-mannered young people, so, unlike youngsters in the past, those in present behave more properly.
Second of all, people sometimes will notice bad behaviors occurring in the Internet social media sphere, will use technology to record these negative occurrences, and then will overgeneralize those cases as happening more often than they actually do. Specifically, if a person does something unpleasant, witnesses can record his behavior using a smartphone and post the video online afterward, and then that rude person will be blamed by the Internet users or even may suffer from cyberbullying. Even worse, people who watch these videos will begin to believe that these cases of rude behavior are happening more often than they actually do. For example, in Hong Kong, youngsters love browsing an online forum containing a wide variety of videos, the most popular of which are those about rude behaviors, such as a young man yelling at a waiter in a restaurant. Commenting on the social media video, the Internet users then blamed the ill-mannered youngster by using bad words or even threatening him. Due to these overpublicized instances of online rude behavior, in order to prevent being judged online, young people are more careful about their behaviors, thereby being more polite and kind to others, especially in public areas. In contrast, in the past, even if people behaved badly, no one would know because no technological device recorded their behaviors. As a result, young people likely acted more rudely fifty years ago than those today.
In sum, young people behave properly nowadays compared to those fifty years ago because of the widespread public education and the advancement of technology which helps record and publicly show one’s improper behaviors.
High-Scoring Characteristics
Certainly, this model TOEFL essay will likely score 30/30 points. What are some high-scoring characteristics?
- The average number of letters per word is 5.1, which is quite high.
- The sentences average around 30.1 words, yet another example of college-level writing.
- Because of the sentence and word length, the grade level for this essay is 15.1, which is also college-level.
- The 100+ word introduction contains a two-point thesis forecasting the key points in the body paragraphs.
- Each 150-200 word body paragraph contains a clearly marked topic sentence that restates a key point from the thesis.
- Each body paragraph contains 1-2 concrete examples to show depth and complexity of thought.
- Displaying a wide range of vocabulary and syntactic variety, the essay has few errors with punctuation, word choice, grammar, and sentence structure.
Michael Buckhoff, mbuckhoff@aol.com
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