14512 population
TOEFL Independent Writing Task
Essay Question: Less Important Things in Life
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? People pay too much attention to less important things in life and fail to see the larger issues. Use specific reasons and examples or details to support your answer.
TOEFL Example Essay (Jeenn Lee Hsieh):
A burgeoning population must be regarded as the problem No. 1 on the planet--home to today's 7 billion inhabitants. However, so much attention is paid to less important things in life that not enough action seems to have focused on what can still be done to prevent possible risks from happening about larger issues. To put it more alarmingly, turning a blind eye now to the demographic growth in particular could mean the beginning of the end of human civilization, if only referring to the two related problems: food shortage and climate change.
The food problem is nothing new, but this time it is certainly different and more dangerous in scales. So, in envisioning the hungry billions in the future, the real issue of food shortage demands really effective solutions, considering that today's emphasis is placed much more on economic prosperity than on birth control. To learn from history, many past human societies have collapsed, with overpopulation playing an invisible role. But at present, a global civilization is in peril and nothing significant is being done about it in societies whose leaders appear to be insane enough to believe that the present economic growth is perpetual. As an irony, such leaders should be taught basic arithmetic to allow them to grasp the consequences of the uncontrolled population growth and accordingly take smart measures to handle the food shortage, or else. Moreover, along with the pressure of birth rates comes the aging population, both being important issues that deserve to be watched for attentively, if a disguised human disaster is to be averted.
Likewise, whether to see it or not, climate change is associated with population expansion. The Earth is being harmed due to human activity, which means that the greater the global population is, the more damage is likely to be done to the natural environment. Scientists say that the global pollution has reached such a point that it is causing the climate to change, mainly through the "greenhouse effects'. Although most people fail to see the danger of this large issue clearly, signs of global warming (prolonged droughts, huge storms and severe floods, rising sea levels, etc.) are already here from to time to time. Should, year after year, environmental conditions become from bad to worse, the entire world is in for the lack of fresh water and non-renewable energy, not to mention other human necessities. Indeed. this is one of those large issues (related to a rise in the global population) that have gone too far, and that people cannot afford to act in a way as if the environmental conservation were nobody's business.
Not to stay off the big picture, there is nothing wrong to pay attention to less important things in life as usual, but it is also urgent to see to it that food shortage and climate change should be handled in time along with the population expansion. More importantly, people should open their minds' eyes, trying to envision the destiny of the human civilization, and look for solutions other than simply heavy dependence on what modern technology has to offer. Unless, of course, such technological devices as computers can download food and water and energy. (Jeenn Lee Hsieh 重写作文 ielts360toefl@hotmail.com pigai zuowen)
Jeenn Lee Hsieh: 猫头鹰在线写作实验室提供考前作文练习题。The following essay questions are selected from topics of the IELTS Writing Task 2. For practice, these IELTS essay topics may also be useful to TOEFL test takers as the two international English proficiency exams are very similar.
