13578 Adulthood
TOEFL 托福独立作文题库
Difference between A Child and An Adult
Example Answer by Jeenn Lee Hsieh
ielts360toefl@hotmail.com 谢振礼
Essay Prompt: 托福作文185真题系列
People recognize a difference between children and adults. What events--experiences and ceremonies-make a child an adult? Use specific reasons and examples to explain your answer.
Sample Essay: 谢振礼范文
The number of birthday candles, say 18 or 20, symbolically makes a child an adult; and, beyond that, age is a state of mind as well as a period of physical growth. Generally speaking, the puzzling period of prolonged adolescence is characterized by confusion in no-longer childhood and not-yet adulthood. From stage to stage, there are ceremonies and events that mark one's physical age, but it also depends on one's mental attitude experimented by experiences in recognizing a difference between a child and an adult.
To begin with, teenagers have time enough to find their way to adulthood through the stage of physical puperty. It happens to be a period of time which is the most difficult, if not the most important stage of life. Meanwhile, it is a transitional period that will gradually leave childhood behind. The common sense is that boys and girls change dramatically during this span of years, with the general belief that females advance faster than males into physical adulthood due to biological differences. For that matter, it is rather easy for people to see the physical transformation from a child to an adult. However, what is less obvious is the mental state lapping between maturity and immaturity.
The degree of mental maturity does tell an adult from a child. It is appropriate to claim that maturity, although not clearly marked by ceremonies, is a compelling evidence of adulthood. The point is that the immature minds of adults-to-be usually show a lack of that kind of experiences which are common among adults who are responsible for themselves and for others around them. To illustrate, maturity as such comes with a growing sense of responsibility as the carefree childhood is supposed to disappear, giving way for adulthood to enter into life. That is to say, it is a mental process of young minds getting ready to face responsibility on their own, becoming independent of parental protection. Therefore, apart from ceremonies that mark the number of the age, the level of mental maturity brought about by experiences serves to indicate the arrival of adulthood.
In conclusion, those events--ceremonies and experiences--witness a child growing up both physically and mentally into an adult. Oddly enough, chilehood tends to die harder in some teenagers than in others. After all, it is sometimes difficult to recognize a difference between children and adults due to their strange behaviors, now crying like kids, now dreaming to conquer the complexity of life like grow-ups. (Essay created by Jeenn Lee Hsieh, ielts360toefl@hotmail.com pigai zuowen)
