The capacity to accept criticism from others, though harsh vituperation, has a great role in a team

Do you agree or disagree with the following statement: In a team, those who do not accept others 'criticisms cannot succeed. Use examples and details to support your idea.

Dear editor, that's a TOEFL essay and I would like to know whether my reasons are reasonable enough to address the prompt clearly or not? Is there redundancy in my essay?

Team working is one of the most successful features of workplaces. There are many attributes that can contribute to the success of team working and its members. The capacity to accept criticism from others, though harsh vituperation, has a prominent role in a team.However, I believe the ability to cooperate with others effectively and managing tasks efficiently are more important that the ability to tolerate opposing views.

Cooperation means the capability to work with other team participants in an effective way. A student who is cooperative can establish a better connection with her classmates in a science team. She can ask for the help of science team members and in return solve the problems of others. An employee who is cooperative and works in a business team can communicate with the rest of the team members more extensively. In addition, being collaborative even can bring other advantages to the employee, like getting a promotion.

The second factor that plays an important role in grand achievements in a team, is the ability to manage tasks. Someone who has time management and can prioritize things, can perform manifold tasks effortlessly. A team of cyclists, for example, who wants to schedule an event for the next sports race, should be able to exploit and manage the potential resources in order to hold a memorable event for the professional cyclists and audience who attend the race. The cyclists might negotiate or even dispute over choosing the proper date and site for the event. They might rebuke each other and put up a fight, as if some member of the team cannot bear criticism. However, if they have a good manager in the team, finally they can come to a conclusion over choosing an exact date and place.

All things considered, cooperation and management are the two most important attributes that a team member should possess, otherwise there would be no team at all! The tolerance to accept criticism from others is a valuable personality traits, but definitely not the most important trait to lead a team to success.

I think it's better to say team work or work in teams rather than team working, but apart from that it's a good essay!

Hi Zara, Overall its a very good essay. But I think you should address a bit about why tolerance for criticism isn't the most important trait to lead a team to success. Cheers :)

Hi Zara :-) It's nice to meet you. I hope my help won't come too late for you. I've reviewed your essay and found some problems points that needs to be addressed. I am not sure if we can resolve the problems that you have before you take the TOEFL test but we will certainly try :-)

My first criticism of your essay is that it deviated from the prompt requirements in a big way. While you were supposed to simply disagree or agree that when team members who cannot accept criticisms will not succeed, you ventured into a discussion about the importance of cooperation in a team instead. If you review the prompt, your response should have been either one of two opinions:

1. Team members who cannot accept criticisms cannot succeed

2. Team members who cannot accept criticism can succeed.

Once you made a decision as to which part of the prompt to use in your essay, you should have then worked on using examples to better illustrate your reasons for supporting a side. In this case, you decided to say that cooperation was an important factor in team success rather than being able to tolerate opposing views. Now, review the prompt again, do you see where you made your mistake? Where in the prompt where you asked to discuss cooperation? The basis of the prompt is "success through teamwork". You were not able to properly identify the prompt requirement so, and I am sad to say this, the failure of your thesis would have resulted in an immediate failure of your essay in the TOEFL test. The examiner will immediately see that you have a weakness in English comprehension skills and do one of two things, deduct points from your essay or, automatically fail the essay.

The discussion should have only centered upon the agreement that team members who cannot accept criticism cannot succeed. The reason being that when one does not know how to accept criticism, then he will not be able to help the team perform well by adjusting his talents or skills to the needs of the majority. An example of this would be a basketball team. If the coach has a game play that he knows can win the game, he expects his players to cooperate with one another follow the game play. When a player is asked by the coach to position himself away from the goal and pass the ball because he is not a good shooter, that is a criticism that the coach says because he wants to help the player do what he is good at in order to help the team. Then the player decides to steal the ball and go to the hoop during the actual game and misses the goal. The team loses by one point. Did he help the team? No. Not only did he fail to succeed, but he dragged his whole team down with him. Do you now see how the essay could have been better discussed if you had not accidentally misstated the prompt?

Make no mistake about it, the TOEFL test will concentrate not only on the way you express yourself in written English, but also look at your English thinking process as reflected in the way that you wrote your essay. So one mistake could prove to be detrimental to your results. By the way, don't try to use extremely high vocabulary words such as vituperation in your essays. Keep the English words simple. Don't try to impress the examiner with your gift of big words, he won't be impressed. Impress him instead by presenting your thoughts using everyday English words coupled with the ability to make yourself understood using written English :-) That is all he wants from you as an test taker :-)

Thank u very much, dear Louisa :) --- Your comments are really really helpful :) :) :)