Writing Feedback / TOEFL: Children should grow up in a big city!! [5]

This is my practice for the TOEFL writing test.
I would appreciate some tips.
Thank you all!

It is better for children to grow up in the countryside than in a big city. Do you agree or disagree? Use specific reasons and examples to develop your essay.

It's certainly better for children to grow up in a big city. Of course you need to choose a good neighborhood. I hold this belief because of two main reasons, academic and social reasons.

Some people thinks that if a child grows up in a big city they will be all day at home at the computer or at the video-game, but this is not true if you live in a neighborhood with other people about your age as I did. My friends and I used to play soccer, bike, climb trees and do a lot of other stuff every day. We did play video-games, but that wasn't our main activity. In a big city there are more kinds of people and more things to do.

I have a friend that grew up in the countryside. He said that he had to study a lot to pass the test to enter the university. This is another downside of growing up in the countryside. In a big city you have more qualified teachers and a better access to technology.

Growing up in the countryside is not such a good experience, you won't know a lot of people, there are gossips everywhere, and your life will be really limited. If someday I have children, I'm absolutely sure that they will grow up in a good neighborhood of a big city and they will be very happy about it.

Writing Feedback / Parents are the best teachers because they are more special than everybody else;TOEFL [8]

This is my practice for the TOEFL writing test.
I would appreciate some tips.
Thank you all!

Do you agree or disagree with the following statement?
Parents are the best teachers.
Use specific reasons and examples to support your answer.

I completely agree that parents are the best teacher. Children normally think that their parents are somehow special and that makes them the most important people in the children's lives.

Firstly, the things that parents say have great power to their child. More power than any friend or other adult could have. For example, if someone tells a kid that something is wrong and they shouldn't do it, but his father told him/her that it was right, the kid will listen to the father instead of the other person, even if his father is wrong.

Secondly, a child normally spends more time with their parents than with other people, so their parents have more time to teach him/her than anybody else. They have more contact and more intimacy with their children.

Lastly, children usually mirror themselves on their parents. That's as important thing because even if the parents don't intend to teach their children something, they are always observing and learning by themselves. So, if there is a man that beats his wife and treats her bad, his child probably is going to be rude and treat girls bad.

All in all, I agree that parents are the greatest teachers and I think that they should be very careful with what they say and do in front of their child, because it can define who he is going to be.

Writing Feedback / Easy preparation of food leads to a better life; TOEFL [3]

I would appreciate any tips you could give me.

Nowadays, food has become easier to prepare. Has this change improved the way people live? Use specific reasons and examples to support your answer.

The Technology has developed a lot. With that development, food can be prepared more easily and it can taste a lot better than it used to. With that change, people's lives are a lot better for several reasons. Some good reasons are about having more time and being able to prepare better food without being a good cook.

Firstly, people normally have lots of things to do. Because of that, they don't have much time to spend in the kitchen. But being able to prepare a tasty food just putting it into the microwave or into the oven is awesome. For example, if an engineer needs to make a project, but he needs to deliver it tomorrow, he could save hours preparing a food with the microwave instead of cooking everything from scratch.

Secondly, when someone wants to prepare a good food alone for some reason, some time ago he/she would need to be a very good cook to prepare that food, but nowadays is very easy to prepare a healthy and tasty food. For example, if a guy wants to prepare a dinner to his girlfriend, he could just buy some food that comes with instructions. Normally you just need to put it into the oven and wait some time.

All in all, that ease to prepare food has improved people's lives. And that happened mainly because of the development of the technology. But people should be careful with what they eat, because some industrial foods are very bad for their health, so they should buy only food from well known brands.