Writing Feedback / What do you want most in a friend TOEFL [7]

Hi! I am an international student and would like to get a feedback and a score from 1 to 5. The topic is:

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? Use reasons and specific examples to support your choice.

Friends have always played an important part in the life of each individual. However, what is the most important quality that makes us choose someone to be our friend? In other words, what do we appreciate and want most in a friend? Personally, the quality I want my friend to posses is reliability.

The first and maybe most important reason for my choice is that we all have moments when we need help and if our relatives are not able to help us then we have to turn to our friends. For example, we may be living far from our family and we may have broken our leg. Then only our friend can help us get on the bus, walk the stairs, clean the house, wash the dishes, etc. If, however, we cannot depend on our friend then we will be in big trouble.

The second reason is that we can share everything with our "amigo", if we can trust him. We will be able to tell him or her what our problems are and will know that not only will he or she try to help us solve them, but he or she will also not tell other people about them if we think that this can embarrass us.

Finally, if our friend is reliable, then we can be sure that if we lend this person some money, then he or she will return it. In this way, we will not spoil our friendship with him or her and will even strengthen the bond between us.

In conclusion, no matter what other qualities your friend possesses, he or she needs to be reliable, because otherwise, when you need help, you may turn out to be on your own. It is like the old saying: "A friend in need is a friend indeed".

Writing Feedback / parents and relatives make the decisions [3]

Do you agree or disagree with the following statement? Parents or other adult relatives should make important decisions for their older (15 to 18 year-old) teenage children. Use specific reasons and examples to support your opinion.

From the moment we are born, our parents and relatives begin to make important decisions for us. However, when we are older teenagers, we think that we are mature enough and are ready to be on our own, that we are prepared to make important choices in life. In my opinion, however, we are totally wrong, because when we go to college we see how hard it is to be independent. Therefore, I think that when we are older teenagers, we should let our extended family make the important decisions for us.

When we are in High school, we make lots of friends and before graduation we start asking them what they are going to study in college and what job they want to work afterwards. Their responses might have a significant influence on us and might lead us to studying something that we do not like. For example, we may not like studying history, but some of our classmates may say that archeologists are well paid and we might decide to study archeology in university, just because of the money; in other words, we might begin to think that money will stimulate us enough to study a subject that we find uninteresting. However, we then may not be able to graduate because we will not like the subject and even if we do get a diploma, then we will have to work a job that will be high paid but we will not like it and we will have a huge problem. Therefore, we should listen to our relatives for that decision, because they have lots of experience and will be able to explain to us the whole situation. They also know our strengths and weaknesses and will be able to point us to the right major.

Second, our parents and relatives want only the best for us. We should never think that their decision is bad for us. We should listen to them because other wise, we might hurt their feeling and this might lead to the alienation of the family. We might then be left on our own and will regret what we have done. For example, many teenagers escape from their home, because they do not want to listen to their parents any more. However, they realize their mistake, but when they return, they find out that their parents do not trust them so much and the whole family is not the same.

All in all, when we are teenagers, we do not have a lot of experience and we should listen to the people who love us the most - our parents and other relatives.