Hi everybody, I'll take TOEFL IBT on Friday and I could not prepare at all. Since speaking and writing are my weak points, I would be grateful if you could check my essay. I didn't think about the subject throughly and rushed in, and didn't have time to review it at the end.
Do you agree or disagree with the following statement?
Childhood is the happiest time of a person's life. Use reasons and specific examples to support your opinion.
I agree with the statement that childhood is the happiest period of one's life. It's not only the lack of responsibilities and daily struggle that make childhood the happiest time of our lives, but also factors like learning lots of new things every day and freedom to imagine and say what you think.
Starting with our adulthood, we are strictly bounded with our responsibilities in our daily lives. We are told at what hour we shall wake up, how we shall dress up and how we shall behave. Every action we make are watched closely and judged by the community. But during our childhood, though responsibilies exist, we are much more free to do what we would like to. Being late for school or laughing at a place where you aren't supposed to do not have consequences as serious as that would be if you were an adult.
Another great thing about being a child is possibility learning new and interesting things about the world you live in every single day. Being a child means that you are new in this world and every single thing around you is there to be discovered by you. There are lots of new facts you can learn, stories you can listen to and things you can see. Therefore, childhood is the period of time in which a person is surprised most.
Using your imagination and saying what you think freely is another great thing about being a child. Children are not judged about the things they say as much as the adults, and freedom to express yourself is a very important for developing a colorful imagination. In adulthood, people are forced to express themselves in boundaries, therefore they are in no way free to think or use their imagination.
Childhood, in several aspects, is the happiest period of our lives. It's not only because of the nature of childhood and children, but also the way our lives are changed when we are adults. In an ideal world with less boundaries, social judgement and more freedom of thought, things could be different; but since this is not the case, it seems that we will always be missing our childhood days.
I would rethink your logic in the 2nd paragraph. You say that adults have more responsibilities than children, and therefore they are happier. However, i would find that point very easy to rebut. While adults do have more responsibilities, these responsibilities allow for more freedom. You say that, as adults, "We are told at what hour we shall wake up, how we shall dress up and how we shall behave". However, that statement applies better to a child than to an adult. An adult can build their own schedule around their responsibilities, and they have more freedom to live outside of some of the structure of a child's life. I'd say that a frustrating aspect to childhood is the structure; because kids don't really have that much control of what they are going to do each day. Parents give kids bedtimes, sign them up for activities, make them dinner, and other things, while adults do all of that for themselves.
The rest of your essay discusses more intangible aspects of childhood-creativity, curiosity, ect. I think this should be the main focus of the essay, and i like your points about it.
Thanks for the feedback, I know that the second paragraph is the weak spot of my essay. In fact, I realized it during the writing process, but felt like the essay will be weak without it. If I thought about the subject well enough before I start writing, I wolud probably write about something like family life instead.
