Opinion essay regarding the trend that shopping is taken as a hobby.

Question :
In the past, shopping is a routine domestic task. Many people nowadays regard it as a hobby.

To what extent do you agree that this is a positive trend?

Essay:
Shopping used to be a chore that people must do, but now it is accepted as a leisure activity that many people do in their free time. I totally disagree this trend can be beneficial because going shopping wastes one's time as well as money.

One of the reasons, why I believe spending all of the spare time on strolling markets is not a good trend, is that spending free time on shopping once becomes habitual, it can take up one's plenty of personal time. Shopping usually takes longer than what people would have expected because people prefer to compare, before buying, the quality or the price of the same product from different shops. Visiting dithers stores one by one and barging with the shop keepers definitely take a long time, and the outcome of this is ending up spending two three hours for just to buy one item. A recent survey, for example, done by the World Leisure Organization shows that nowadays each person spends around 60 hours per month for shopping by average, namely the most of the spare time of a workingmen and women is used for buying stuff in malls or shopping centers.

The other reason why I think it is not a positive trend to regard shopping as a hobby is that overly interested in shopping can cause unnecessary spending. People who like shopping are often the victims of those endless advertisements on new arrivals, new fashions or big offers. These people are likely to purchase and even stock up on items they don't even need at times, namely, money will be used in advance and those unnecessary things bought will expire or will be out of fashion before using, which means the money they spent on shopping is wasted. For instance, many bachelors in Shanghai City do shopping with friends as soon as they get free time, as a result almost every month they are tend to work for the credit-card repayment of previous month.

In conclusion, obviously, going to shops for entertainment is waste of time and money, so I completely disagree to say it can be a positive change to consider shopping as a hobby.

The writer cannot use an opposing point of view in the development of the response. He was prevented from doing so by the prompt requirement that asks him for a clear measured agreement to the given statement. Therefore, the discussion using an opposing point of view will result in a failing score. Since he did not develop an essay based on the given discussion point, he cannot be given a passing score overall.

As far as acceptable discussions go, he can only represent the positive aspect of shopping as a hobby. For example, by formatting his response as :

I agree that this is a positive trend to the extent that it promotes a healthy lifestyle by encouraging passive exercise and cardio- vascular strength.

Then using the 2 references in the discussion paragraphs. The current prompt will not allow the writer to disagree in any way. There is no allowance provided for such a response. The incorrect discussion format prevented the proper assessment of the writer's writing skills in terms of comprehension skills and related discussion development.