Toefl- question 2- writing section:
Do you agree or disagree with the following statement? People who organize their rooms neatly have a higher chance of succeeding. Use specific reasons and examples to support your opinion.
My answer:
Many people believe that having a tidy room or office will help you to succeed because you will have a neat place to work or to study, and your brain will do not have a lot of distractions and be confused. I find myself in disagreement with this stance, and I will support my opinion by presenting several acceptable reasons.
The first reason for my disagreement is that people who organize their rooms do not have a higher chance of succeeding because there is no relationship between success and a room organization. To be more precise, many brilliant people are successful in their job, but they have an unorganized office or apartment. For example, Anna Maria is an English Second Language teacher, and she is working with the Voice of America program. She mentioned in her interview that her desk is messy, and it has many papers, objects, and other things. She believes that having an untidy desk gives her more inspiration for her written books and articles, and she can become with new stories by seeing some unrelated objects on it.
The second reason for my disapproval is that the process of organizing a room or an office will waste the time. Imagine that you are living alone in a big apartment. If you like to put everything in its place, you might spend at least one to two hours daily. Also, if you have important papers for your class and you put them away from your insight by using organizer book or on the book shelf, you will completely forget them, like what Americans say'' out of sight, out of mind''. So, you will not remember to prepare or study them.
According to what I listed above, I can conclude that having an organized room or workplace does not mean that you will have a successful life and a brilliant life.
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I am preparing for the Toefl exam and this question from the writing section-independent essay.
Thanks in advance.
Holt Educational Consultant - / 15388 There is a misconception in your presentation. The prompt is not referring to a room or a work desk. It is merely referring to an organized room, in general. No specific room was indicated and yet in your discussion, you focused on an office work desk and an apartment. You also indicated that your discussion would focus on the effect of clutter on the brain because the brain will not have a lot of distractions and be confused. The topic for discussion is actually the rate of success that organized people achieve in their lives based on keeping a tidy or organized room.
Your score for this essay could very well fall under the 1 mark due to the questionable responsiveness to the task. Again, the discussion is about "success in relation to organization of a room". However, your discussions only represent efficient work within a cluttered environment. So it does not properly address the task requirement for the discussion. The topic you chose to discuss is not covered by the original prompt.
While your command of written English is acceptable, the problem you have relates to your comprehension skills or your ability to understand English discussion requirements. You should work on your comprehension skills so that you can more appropriately respond to the task requirements. You can do that by doing more English reading and explanation exercises before you continue with writing your TOEFL practice essays.
@Holt
Thank you very much for your detailed comment. I will try to work on my comprehension skills.
- I think you should mention the 2 ideas in the first paragraph that you will develop in the next paragraph before you start the discussion paragraph.
- In the second paragraph, you should give an idea before giving a reason. for example, "a successful career and a neat room are something different and there is no causal relationship between them" then you can give a valued reason for this statement.
- In the third paragraph, I only see your reasons without an example to support your statement. According to the instructions in this question "Use specific reasons and examples to support your opinion"
- In the last paragraph, you should strengthen your statement by writing a brief reason that has been explained before, it would be better if there is an implication from the conclusion paragraph. For example, "the successful career was not always reflected in how a person organizes a neat room, the valued reason that can influence it is hard work and perseverance to reach the life goals"