TOEFL: Children should not learn to manage their own money at young age.
Within the last few decades, there has been an unprecedented development of people's perception of living in society, which results in the drastic changes of managing money in daily life. Admittedly, cultivating young people to manage money at an early age is favorable for the sense of responsibility, however, compared with the disadvantages, I disagree with the statement that young people should learn to manage their money at young age from three perspectives: irreasonability, temptations outside and premature worldview.
First of all, children are too young to manage their money, since they are irreasonable to deal with financial problems. At early age, kids are not aware how crucial money could be, and they are more likely to spend money randomly on some useless goods. It is hard to deny that young individuals have difficulty with differentiating important things from trivial objects.
Second, kids are not immune to a variety of allure in the world, so that they cannot manage money well. Imagine the following situation: Will a child choose to save money firmly when faced with a large bar of delicious chocolate? Even adults sometimes hardly resist the appealing effect of it, not to mention young individuals. And the chocolate in the situation could be replaced by other harmful factors, such as junk food and game coins , which could do a tremendous amount of harm to young people.
Last but not least, children are supposed to enjoy the innocent moments when they are still young. It is not appropriate for kids to learn to cope with money early, which will make them premature and unnecessarily realistic in their lives. They deserve their unique happiness living in an idealistic world at young age.
In conclusion, I believe that young people should not be required to learn to deal with the financial stuff so early, by contrast, they should be taught by their parents when they are older at a proper time.
Menglu, I'd like to help shape up and boost your essay.
Kindly find the remarks below.
- living in the society,
- which results in thethat resulted to drastic changes of
- managing money in their daily lifelives .
- young age from three perspectivesdue to the following reasons :
- irreasonabilitymismanagement , outside temptations outside and premature worldview.
- since they are irreasonablethey have the tendency to become unreasonable to deal with financial problems.
- At an early age,
- SecondNext , kids are not
- immune to a variety of allure in the worldready to battle out temptations ,
- so thatand they cannot manage their money well.
- Last but not leastLastly , children are supposed
- to enjoy the innocent moments whenwhile they are still young.
- happiness, ( don't forget your punctuation marks ) living in an idealistic world at young age.
- financial stuffaspects of life so early,
- by contraston the contrary ( contrast - use to describe color ) ,
- they should be taught by their parents when they are older at a proper timeand are able to understand the importance of their own finances .
There you have it Menglu, as you can see there are still a lot of improvements to be done in your essay.
I hope you will follow through and see the difference of the enhanced essay.
Thank you.
I have always been confused about several questions during the process of writing. I hope that you could help me out.
1. I am not sure the difference between "in society" and "in the society" .
Is "in society" more general than "in the society", which refers to "human society"?
2.I still have trouble in distinguishing "when" and "while".
3.I read some papers and book reviews downloaded from JSTOR recently. They are about feminism and are written by Americans. When the authors wanted to show the contrary, they tended to use the phrase "by contrast". I have read the phrase for at least ten times. Is it improper or inaccurate? Are you sure that the phrase could only be used to describe color?
4.Is it correct to say "the reason why...... is that......" ? Or "the reason why........is because......." ?
When I help with other people here, I find that some of them use the latter one.
"because" (conj.) The reason why.......(subject) + is （verb）+ ".................".clause -(object)
Can a clause start with the conjunction "because"?
5.Is it correct to use "at young age"? Or "at a young age"? Even the phrase "at young age" is given by the TSK itself, I am wondering, if there is an "an" in "at an early age", why isn't there an "a" in "at young age" ? Or just most people's habits?
I really appreciate it if you could help solve my problems. Look forward to your reply.
Hi Menglu! You seem to have a pretty good command over the English language. Your essay is a bit verbose, especially your first sentence. It even took me, a native English speaker, a few reads of that sentence to figure out what you meant. Is there a way you can simplify it a bit more? I'm not even sure what you mean by premature worldview, even after reading the paragraph that supposedly explains it. I assumed you meant an immature world view- being to young to understand the meaning of managing money, but I'm not even sure that's what you mean after reading your essay. Do you mean they will be taking on serious responsibilities too soon?
Also, I'm not sure irreasonability is the right word there; in fact, I'm not even sure that's a word at all! Maybe you mean irresponsibility? Irresponsibility means not showing maturity, good judgement, or being trusted to make the right decisions. Irreasonability sounds like it might mean the inability to reason? I'm not sure what you are going for there.
As far as the questions you've asked:
1. I've never heard "in the society" unless you are saying a specific society. Like, "in the aboriginal society," etc... If you mean the general society, you can say simply "in society".
2. When and while are interchangeable in general speech, at least in my experience. While generally expresses duration. So if it's something that happens over a long period of time, you would use while. If it's something that has a short time period, when is used. But that's not a hard and fast rule. Perhaps an internet search to look at various opinions might be helpful?
3. "By contrast" is okay, but it's awkward. What is generally used, in my experience, is "in contrast." This does not have to relate to color. Take this quote, for example "In contrast to logic or reason, a story is about emotion that gets staged over a sequence of dramatic moments, so you empathize with the characters without really thinking about it too much." You could also say conversely or contrarily, which mean the same thing. But "in contrast" is perfectly fine. :)
4. I'd say "That" is generally more appropriate than "because" in that instance. But it's also okay to say "xx happened because of yy." In that case, it's perfectly okay to use "because" as it's linked to the verb "happened."
5. I've never heard of "at young age" being correct. I'd say it's "at a young age". But with a google search, it looks like "at young age" might be correct as well.
I've also never heard of "suppose to." I would have said "supposed to" is perfectly correct. But I guess that's what happens when you have different people from all over the world, each having learned different grammar rules. I'm just trying to give my opinion on what is correct. :) Take care!
Hi.
Thank you so much.
The "verbose" problem, yeah, I have recognized it. However, I am totally struggling to fulfill the task. It is said that a valid response should be at least 300 words in TOEFL, not to mention getting a "GOOD" in the test . ( "GOOD" is equal to "A" level) Sometimes I tried to simplify the passage, but failed and the teacher told me I should write as more complex sentences as possible. Do you have any good suggestions about accomplishing writing 300 words with simple language? I really have trouble in it. Please help me.
The "premature" paragraph → I want to say that young children are innocent, cute and pure. They should not worry about money too early. Isn't it bored to calculate and pay the bills? Their world should be filled with toys, cartoons and fairy tiles. All of them are not related to the realistic world----the adults' world full of pressure. It's just some kind of stereotype. Should I make the idea clearer----give more details?
Take care. I am looking forward to your reply soon.
I think using simple sentences can be detrimental only if they are really simple, like something a child would write. When your sentences are so complex that the meaning is hard to understand, that is even more detrimental. It's best to aim for somewhere in the middle. The sentences themselves don't have to be so simple, but they should be clear and easy to understand. Its less about the sentence and more about the words themselves. You can write a long, complex sentence where the meaning is easily understood because the words are simple. For example, I'm not using extremely simple sentences here; however, all of the words are understandable, concise, and the meaning comes across easily.
Here is an example of a possible thesis statement.
Children should not be taught to manage money at a young age because they are unaware of the importance of money, there are too many temptations, and they should not be burdened with that responsibility yet.
Yes, it is long, but it is explaing your three reasons in a way that anyone can easily understand. It is more about the language being simple than the sentence being short.
I think, in your case, you shouldn't focus on having more complex sentences to meet the word requirement. That will just make your writing harder to understand. Instead, focus on writing more simple sentences. Use more detail and explanation. This will help you have a stronger essay because you are backing up your opinions with stronger examples and reasons. Backing up your opinions with examples is what they are looking for in an essay where you have to choose a side and explain why you have chosen it. Right now, you could make your thesis statement clearer. It seems like your three reasons can be merged into one reason, and so you should make each point clearer and have more detail.
Not once in your essay do I see you have written why you feel that these three things are true. You have explained them, but not given any reasons behind why you believe them. To amp up your essay, try giving examples from your life or things you have seen/ heard about. Why do you believe it is hard for them to resist temptations? When you were a child, did you spend your allowance on candy or toys? Write about that! What makes you feel like it will be too much pressure for children to learn about money early on? Why do you think they shouldn't be burdened or pressured to manage money? Include that as well. Why do you believe children are too irresponsible or unaware of the importance of money? The more you back up your three reasons, the stronger your essay will be.
I wrote other essays before this passage. At first, I used examples in my daily life, however, they gave me suggestions that I shouldn't. They said that, " personal experience doesn't always imply to others". After seeing that, I am afraid to use examples. Maybe it's culture shock. When I post something happening in my life, which is common in my country, the audience doesn't believe it. Then I don't know what to do. There is only half a month left before the test.
Yes, I agree that can be tough. I mean, the best reasons you have are what you have experienced, so that seems strange to me. It's common practice for people to use their experience as evidence to support their opinion. And right now adding those things will strengthen your essay. Personal experience doesn't always translate to others, true, because not everyone has the same experiences. I think, however, that if you can articulate these experiences clearly and concisely, it shouldn't matter as long as the reader can understand your point.
I'm not a teacher, but if you show me something that you wrote using your experience, I can let you know my opinion on it. It doesn't have to be the whole essay, but maybe a few sentences or something.
Thank you for your advice. Finally, I got someone who really understand my trouble. Sometimes, I felt so frustrated when they just posted some frigid criticism, I made corrections and believed that I got what they want. But next time, I follow the suggestion , there will be another piece of post saying the opposite thing. So I lost my direction,I don't know what to do. God bless you. I will try harder.
I'm sorry that you have lost your direction, but keep going, keep trying. That's the only way you're going to improve.
There are always going to be varying opinions, especially here, with people from all over the world. Everyone is going to have a different opinion on the best way to go about writing an essay.
You have to stay true to yourself and listen to your gut.... it's your essay after all and you're the only one who is going to be affected by what you choose to write and whose advice you listen to.
Best of luck to you!
