[TOEFL] Parents are our teachers from the very early time in our life.

Topic: Do you agree or disagree with the following statement? Parents are the best teachers. Use specific reasons and examples to support your answer.

Answer

Learning is a thing that we do in all of our lives. Getting the best lessons, besides our abilities to self-study, depends on our teachers a lot. There are people who believe that no one else is better than our parents in terms of teachers. I whole-heartedly agree with this opinion because of these following reasons.

Firstly, parents are our teachers from the very early time in our life. As we were born, parents taught us from the very little things such as how to smile, how to walk to the ordinary routines such as eating. Moreover, when we grow bigger, they teach us many fairy tales and several important ethic lessons that affect us till the end of our lives.

Secondly, at school we study bigger things about sciences and languages, but after school we learn from our parents. In my opinion, we spend most of our time at home with our families than it at school. I think when we leave school, maybe we will forget parts of the lessons we learn at school if we do not experience them in life, but I strongly believe we will never forget what our parents have taught us because we use it every day. For example, I believe I will never forget what my parents told me about how to be grateful to other people who help me.

Thirdly, I totally believe parents love their sons or daughters unconditionally. Therefore, even when we grow older, get married and then have our own families with spouses and children, parents always keep watching us and help us to realize which is right and which is wrong in life. For instance, my older brother has got married and lived independently for two years but when he faces difficulties in his work or his life, he comes back to meet our parents and ask for advice.

To conclude, I strongly believe that parents are our best teachers.

Lian, I like the thoughts and point of view that you present in your paper. However, the grammatical errors take away from the pleasure of reading it. So I will offer my comments on revising the essay below. I'll also restate some of your paragraphs so you will have an idea about how to better present the paper in the revised version:


- When we are born, we do not know anything about life. We are taught everything we know about survival by our parents. That is why they are known as our first teachers. But does that necessarily make them the best teachers? After all, we go to school to learn most of the things we need to know. But school cannot teach us everything. That is why I believe that our parents still make the best teachers.


- As I previously mentioned, our parents are our first teachers. They taught us how to eat, walk, and speak. As we grew, they began to teach us about interacting with other people, how to make friends, and learn from mistakes that caused us pain. Before we learned how to drive, our parents were the first people to teach us how to travel on wheels using our bikes.

- Perhaps you can mention other specific examples as well. The paragraph too short, which means it is underdeveloped.


- We learn academic things in school. We learn about life and responsibilities from our parents. The minute school is out and we head home, our parents take over our practical and social education through family time and trips. Our parents teach us everything we need to know in order to survive. The school takes care of our academics, our parents take care of our practical learning and skills.

- It will be beneficial to this paragraph if you can further explain the lesson that your parents taught you. It shows the practical and social education that I believe you should mention.


- Parents love their children unconditionally. That is why they never tire of guiding and teaching us in our lives. We can turn 50 or 70 and our parents will still try to teach us something new because they have lived longer than us. Thus, they have more advanced practical knowledge that they can pass on to their children.

- This sentence can use a personal experience again.

You need to work on a good concluding paragraph. Your points are really good and should be noted by the readers :-)

Dear Vangiespen, thank you very much for helping me to correct my essay. I am quite poor at using words to express ideas into detail. I will try harder. Thank you.

Lian, don't feel afraid, be disheartened, or lose hope when it comes to your essay writing skills. You are just beginning to learn the rudiments and the methods of essay writing. You will feel comfortable and gain proficiency in your writing skills over time. Everything that relates to essay writing comes with practice and time. In addition to that, you also need to widen your intellectual horizons by reading more English materials. For the TOEFL test, I would advise you to read about American current events, their popular culture, and a little bit about their history. These are all sources of information that you will find useful as instant reference material when practicing your TOEFL essays. In fact, I would go so far as to suggest that you try to write opinion papers based upon any English based reading material that you come across. It could be an online newspaper or an entertainment magazine, or even a newspaper in your native tongue. What is important is that you can write an opinion essay based upon what you just read. After the only prompt for those self assigned essays will be "Do you agree or disagree?" That way you can build up your confidence with your English writing skills without having to worry about passing the TOEFL grading rubic. Of course we will still assist you whenever you want our advice in relation to your self assigned essays :-)

Thanks for your advice. I think I'll try to practice as your guide. Thank you.

Lian, I have the same problems with my essay writting as you do. Sometimes I even realize that I do know, let say, some words from "academic" vocabulary that is especially valuable in TOEFL. However, I mere do not use them in my writing! Indeed, I do not know how to make my vocabulary "applicable". Therefore, it is too poor((. I believe that expertise comes with practice.


Apart from general conclusion, write in briefly the main arguments that you pointed out in your essay