14511 grades
TOEFL Independent Writing Task
Essay Question: Grades Encourage Students to Learn
Sample Answer by Jeenn Lee Hsieh 托福范文
ielts360toefl@hotmail.com 谢振礼 通信讲座
TOEFL Essay Topic:
>Do you agree or disagree with the following statement? "Grades (marks) encourage students to learn." Use specific reasons and examples or details to support your opinion.
Outline:
Introduction: Grades can encourage students to learn due to two factors: pride and fear.
Body Paragraph A: Pride
Body Paragraph B: Fear
Conclusion: Pride and fear cause students to learn.
Notes: Of course, there are other ways to write an essay, but it is a good idea to use a relatively simple outline for clarity.
The best questions for opinion essays have no obvious answers, and always bring together some conflicting options.
TOEFL Example Essay (Jeenn Lee Hsieh 谢振礼):
In schools, good marks are often considered as a form of reward; and bad marks, that of punishment. Based on this perception, the grading system seems to have been designed to cause pride and fear. Largely due to these two emotional factors in contrast, it can be argued that grades can encourage students to learn.
In several ways, academic achievement is something to be proud of. If nothing else, the sense of pride can urge most students to seek good grades to please their parents, their teachers and of course themselves. Without a doubt, excellence in academic learning is an honorable success in schools, even though it might turn out that the most successful people in life are not necessarily the ones who got the best grades or got into the best universities. However, in schools as well as in life, the satisfaction of being successful in the academic field remains predominant because, in competition as in war, there is no substitute for triumph. Paradoxically, even though it is true that too much emphasis on grades should not be the sole purpose of education, it is also true that there may be no better way to stimulate students' learning progress than the current grading system. In other words, in order to have pride of having good grades, students are supposed to learn and take examinations seriously.
It may also be presumed that students are obliged to study earnestly for fear that they might not be able to get their desired marks. Worse still, failing to prepare for those scary tests could mean the possibility of getting low scores or literally being flunked. That is in part why in any educational environment (where the grading system exists), that kind of fear which is related to ranking students' performances forever prevails. For example, it can be seen that, as long as teachers give tests, there will always be prayer in schools. More often than not, students are afraid of becoming losers in their low-level positions, when consciously competing with peers. Understandably, that worry about "losing face" comes from the fact that grades are almost completely relative, in effect ranking students to others in their class, which means extra achievement by one student not only raises one's position but also lowers the position of others, thus telling winners from losers, for that matter.
In conclusion, the grading system is a means to the end when it comes to encouraging students to learn, no matter whether they are motivated by pride or fear or both. Given that marks can not exactly measure one's intelligence no more than age can define one's maturity, the scoring system should be regarded as the Golden Rule to motivate learning. The big picture about grades is that winners are pleased and losers are ill at ease. (Essay created by Jeenn Lee Hsieh 谢振礼 重写作文 ielts360toefl@hotmail.com pigai zuowen)
