Governments should focus its budget more on environmental protection than on economic developments

environmental protection vs economic developments

TOEFL - Question:
Governments should focus its budget more on environmental protection than on economic developments. To what extent do you agree or disagree?

Answer:
Environmental protection is a topic widely discussed throughout the world. Although some may argue that environmental protection is more important because economic development may cause a lot of pollution which may have devastating impact to the whole world and result in the loss of many vulnerable species. However, I believe that focusing on economic development should be put into priority for the reasons below.

To begin with, meeting minimum living standards and providing a comfortable living quality should always be the main concern for governments of any country, especially it is a problem meant to be tackled in undeveloped countries. That is to say, people in places like Africa face poverty. Hundreds and thousands of people die every year because of war, diseases and starvation caused by poverty. If the government still focus their budget on environmental protection instead of dealing with poverty, such as creating jobs for people, providing better education, or promoting foreign transactions for better resources, the people in Africa will be living a life surrounded by death, fear and misery. Environmental protection will not solve these poverty problems and may make it harder to make money, because environmental protection costs a lot of money.

Another reason that may support my point is that countries compete with each other. Countries who are more highly developed tend to have more resources and power, they may enslave poorer countries in many ways. For instance, many Western countries go to South East Asia to produce their products because of the low wages. These low wages are caused by poverty or low quality of life in contrast to the developed countries. Therefore, if the government don't focus on thriving the economic status of their country, it would be hard to change the wages of poorer countries and maintain the status of the countries poverty and under development.

For the reasons above, I disagree that environmental protection should be put before economic developments.

Carol, when you are asked to respond to a question, you must do so within the first paragraph of the written response. Now, I see that you placed your actual response at the every end of the essay. That is definitely not the right place to introduce your response as the whole premise of your essay reasoning will be based on your response to the question. Better known as a thesis statement, this presentation is done within the last sentence of the first paragraph in order to help you outline your discussion topic for the 250 word maximum essay.

I can see that you made a mistake with your response not only in the presentation location but the type of response as well. Since the prompt asks you to indicate a measurement of your disagreement with the essay, you must use words that show your conviction or belief in the side of the discussion you are supporting. So you can say:

I strongly disagree
I firmly disagree
I am a firm believer that...
I will present strong reasons to support my unwavering disagreement with

and other variations thereof. Now, you did a good job with this essay in the sense that you opted to discuss only one side of the issue within the essay. This shows a clear focus and understanding of the discussion requirements. While your presentation is not grammatically perfect, your message clearly comes across to the reader and that should help get you a passing score in the independent writing task.