Classmates and parents - two important factors which contribute to the academic success of a child

TOEFL

Do you agree or disagree with the following statement? Classmates have more influences on a child's success in school than parents do. Use specific reasons and examples to support your answer.

CHILDREN ARE GREATLY AFFECTED BY THEIR CLASSMATES

There are several factors that contribute to the academic success of a child, two of them are classmates and parents. While many people give prominence to parents' education methods, I personally believes that classmates play a more crucial role in the favorable outcomes of a child. I feel this way for two main reasons

First of all, children generally trust in their classmates more than in their parents. This is due to the fact that they are at the same age and share the same level of knowledge, so they make agreement with each other easily. My own experience is a compelling example. When I was in elementary school, I was an exellent student in my class. I had an very naughty friend who not only never did homework but also skipped the class frequently. The reason why we were so close to each other is because he admired my academic proficiency and always protected me from the other bad students and in return, I helped him doing exams. His parents tried many ways to make him interested in studying because they really wanted their son to become a doctor, but they failed. After knowing that we were close friend, they told me that they need my help to guide him in learning and advice him not to skip class anymore. After having conversations with me, he started joining more extra class and group study with me more frequently. As a result, he finished the grade five with a quite good score and now, he is studying at one of the most prestigious medical university in my country.

Secondly, children's behaviors are greatly influenced by the herd mentality, which can be explained as our tendency to adopt certain acts made by peers and people around us. This is certainly true when it comes to children. For instance, If a student does not finish his homework while every others do, he would be seen as the black sheep and would feel very shame. That will drive him to try finishing all the tasks given by the teacher in order not to being isolated with the rest of the class. If this situation is continuously happen, the student would quickly make progress and have more opportunities to success in the future career.

In conclusion, I totally believe that children are affected by their classmates more than their parents because of friends seem more trustworthy and this can also be explain by the herd mentality theory. For these reasons, parents should considered choosing a proper study environment for their children.

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Thank you for spending time on my thread. I'm not very confident in my writing, so I would appreciate all of your comments and advices!

Dovu, your opening statement was strong and right on the mark until you said "I personally believe..." Your personal opinion, although required in this essay, was misrepresented. You should have instead stated that "I agree with the opinion that classmates..." Remember, this is not a "belief" essay. This is an "agreement or disagreement" essay. Always make sure that you follow the instruction sentence of the prompt you are provided. BTW, pay particular attention to your punctuation marks. You are missing one at the end of this paragraph.

Your second paragraph is too long. It goes beyond the maximum 5 sentence requirement per paragraph. You should have just led with the story about how you trusted your classmates more and then stated the reason for it. The topic sentence first, the explanation second. The explanation must be completed within 3-4 sentences in order to be properly effective in the essay.

Your concluding statement continues to present additional information for the topic being discussed. That is unacceptable. The concluding statement needs to follow the same parameters as the rest of the essay. That means, it should be at least 3 sentences long to qualify as a paragraph and should offer a new summary for the topic being discussed, the information presented and a repeat of your "agreement" not belief, in the discussion that took place.

@Holt
Thank you so much for your comment. It is a eye-opener for me because I usually do not pay attention to the opening and concluding paragraph.

I wonder if a paragraph should have 5 sentences maximum, does the explanation within 3-4 sentences as you said cover an example already?