Do you support or oppose with the plan of the a new restaurant? TOEFL independent task

Although, many people can be opposite for a new restaurant in their neighborhood, personally speaking, I agree with the plan of building a new restaurant in my neighborhood because it represents new options for dinner, increasing the competition among restaurants and new jobs for people living in neighborhood.

First of all, the new restaurant opens new possibilities of choosing for dinner. For example, closest my house always has had one restaurant that makes everyday food. The food has had high quality, but eating the same food that I could eat at home is not so attractive. When an Italian restaurant opened a lot of people were happy with new options to eat. Hence, new restaurant means the new menu and new options of the dishes.

Furthermore, the new restaurant will increase the competition among restaurants, probably the price will decrease. For instance, in my current neighborhood, there are many restaurants that service different kinds of food. No one can set a high price because the other restaurant will use this fact to attract more consumers. Inversely, when a restaurant creates a promotion with huge discounts for clients, all others will set similar promotions to answer this action. Therefore, the new restaurant is better to cut off prices and increases the often the people in eating out.

Besides, the new restaurant will need of employees that may be contracted in the neighborhood. I remember that when I was searching for my first job, every company searched for professionals with experience, but I did not have experience. My first job was in a restaurant close to my house. It was so perfect for me, because the restaurant receives new employees without experience.

All in All, I think that the new restaurant has more advantages to the neighborhood than disadvantages. Everyone wishes to eat a great and healthy food without spending a lot of money or time to do it.

Ronei, while your English grammar is far from perfect, you have managed to impress me with your ability to put your thoughts into words. The sense of reasoning that you provided in this essay shows that you clearly understand the requirements of the prompt and adding your personal experience as a reference point is something that made the line of reasoning even more effective. It is nice that you were able to present a complete introduction that represented the thesis, points to be discussed,and your point of view in an interesting manner. That said, I have to tell you that even with the existing grammar problems in your essay, if this were a real TOEFL test, you would have scored very well owing to the evidence of proper reading and comprehension skills on your part as a test taker. The grammar portion definitely needs work in order to get it polished but everything else about the essay is fine. Do you want me to show you how you can further improve this essay as an example of how you can better use English grammar to present your arguments? One other thing, the conclusion became weak because you were not able to properly restate the prompt, summarize the facts, and present your opinion at the end. That is negligible though since the overall content of the essay adhered to the prompt :-)

Hi Vangiespen,

Thank you!

I have a lot of problems to put in practice, in the first time, the rules that I know about modifiers, comparison, verbs tense etc ( It is a problem that I have with the speaking tasks, because I said something wrong and after some seconds I realized that I spoke in the wrong way :-( ). Also, I have problems with vocabulary... I spend much time searching words to express my opinion. Besides, I know that the conclusion is weak, but I yet am not able to write a full essay on time. Now, I follow this way: 1) I write my point; 2) I write second and third paragraphs; 3) I write the introduction and the conclusion; and 4) I write what is possible in the fourth paragraph. Normally, I have four minutes to write the last paragraph and need around thirty or forty words to achieve the 300 words.

I would like to know how I can write my essay in a more polished way!

Thank you so much by the help!

Ronei, there is actually a simpler way to write your essay. Just remember the IBC rule of essay writing: Introduction - Body- Conclusion. When you discuss in a time limited essay, you need to limit your essay to 3 paragraphs in order to better use the available time. Write the introduction that contains your restated prompt, point of view to be discussed in the essay, and your personal opinion (if required).

When you write the body of the paragraph, use only one reason and fully develop that reason within 3-5 sentences. This will allow you to have enough room to edit and revise the essay later on. This paragraph body should contain the common discussion of the reasons supporting a particular stance in the essay. After developing that common argument, you can move on to your personal opinion on the matter if necessary.

Your personal opinion should clearly explain why you support a particular stance on the matter and how you feel about it. Use any examples that you can to enhance your reasoning. There are times when a personal experience can bring great improvement and supporting evidence to such personal reasons or statements so take advantage of such opportunities whenever you can.

As for the conclusion, you simply need to wrap up the essay by presenting your restated prompt again, a summary of the points discussed, and a restatement of your opinion. There is no need to present new ideas in the conclusion, in fact, it is frowned upon in the TOEFL test. You can then use the remaining time to review your essay and further improve points where you feel that can be done or change certain paragraphs to suit your needs. Proofreading is also done within the remaining time.

Please try to revise the essay using the advice I just gave you. Compare it to your current version and you should see a good change in the way that you write. Post it here so that we can continue to work on the improvement of your English writing skills together :-)