Necessary ingredients of independent essay
1.1. Thesis statements
TOEFL essay that got 5 out of 5 by the ETS rater
TOEFL Essay that got 4 out of 5 by the ETS rater
3.1. TOEFL Independent Essay Template
1. Necessary ingredients of independent essay
The necessary ingredients for the independent essay are these three:
- your position
- reasons for your positions
- examples that support the reasons.
Your position, which is also called the thesis statement, must be stated clearly so that the rater can evaluate whether your reasons and examples support your thesis. The question we consider today is this:
Question: Do you agree or disagree with the following statement? A teacher’s ability to relate well with students is more important than excellent knowledge of the subject being taught.
There can be three reactions that respond to the question:
absolutely agree, half-and-half, absolutely disagree
1.1. Thesis statements
These are examples of thesis statements that respond to the reactions:
Absolutely agree: I believe that teachers who can relate well with their students are more important than teachers who possess excellent knowledge without the proper concern for their students.
Half-and-half: I disagree with the idea that a teacher’s ability to relate well with students is more important than excellent knowledge of the subject being taught. Instead I believe that both qualities, the ability to maintain a good relationship with their students and the possession of excellent knowledge of the subject, are equally important to be a good teacher. That is, one quality cannot exist without the other quality when it comes to teaching. The thesis statement here is the highlighted one.
Absolutely disagree: My personal belief, when it comes to judging whether a person is a good teacher, is that the ability to possess excellent knowledge on the subject is far more important than the ability to relate well with the students.
What are your reasons for holding position 1, 2 or 3? Depending on the cogency of your reasons and examples, you can score high or low. Examples or reasons that do not support your position will not help your score however much you write. Watch this official video on TOEFL writing: https://www.ets.org/toefl/test-takers/ibt/about/content/writing.html
2. TOEFL essay that got 5 out of 5 by the ETS rater
Moving on to the second item, this is an ETS-released essay that received 5 out of 5 by the ETS rater.
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| TOEFL independent essay scored 5 out of 5 |
What jumps out at me about this essay is the organization. The essay does not begin with the five-paragraph style essay format, which we’ll talk about when we discuss the second essay that got 4 out of 5. Instead it begins with a hook. A hook is a stylistic device that attempts to grab the reader's attention so that they want to read on. The most common types of hooks are these: a question, quote, statistic, or anecdote. This essay begins with an anecdote.
The anecdote helps us expect what the position of the essay is going to be.
In the second paragraph, the essay provides the thesis it holds: “In order to do that, the teachers themselves have to be able to relate well with students.”
In the third paragraph the essay provides another reason for its thesis: teachers who can relate with their students can teach better because they can customize their teaching based on individual students’ learning style.
The fourth paragraph superbly addresses the question, Why is excellent knowledge not a big deal?: According to the essay, to be a teacher, one must already have the knowledge of the subject.
In the fifth paragraph, the essay explicitly provides the reader with the thesis statement accompanied by a perfect summary of what was said in the previous paragraphs.
After reading this essay, I cannot help but agree with the position taken by the essay since it covers everything: it not only provides cogent reasons and examples, but also addresses the potential problem to the thesis, what about the excellent knowledge. So I agree with the rater: this essay deserves the highest score.
3. TOEFL essay that got 4 out of 5 by the ETS rater
Now let’s look at the official essay that got 4 out of 5.
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| TOEFL independent essay scored 4 out of 5 |
I disagree with the idea that the possessing the ability to relate well with student is more important than excellent knowledge of the subject being taught for a teacher. T
Wow, this is the first sentence, but there are a lot of grammar mistakes here. So this essay cannot get 5 for sure. Let’s fix the grammar a little bit:
I disagree with the idea that possessing the ability to relate well with students is more important than excellent knowledge of the subject being taught for a teacher.
“possessing” is a gerund, which can function both as a noun and a verb. you have to use either as a noun structure or a verb structure, but not both in a sentence. as a noun form, it can take an article, and as a verb form it can take an object. but it cannot have the article and object simultaneously. so either of the following is the correct form:
the possessing of the ability
possessing the ability
“student” is a countable noun, so it needs an article or in plural form. Since we are talking about unspecific students, it should be “students”
3 “for a teacher” does not make sense here. maybe “by a teacher”?
This essay follows the schema of a five paraphrase essay to a T. which is this:
TOEFL Independent Essay Template
Paragraph 1: Thesis paragraph
Thesis statement: I believe that, My opinion is that...
Paragraph 2: First reason
First, to begin with
Paragraph 2: Second reason
In addition, moreover, another reason is that
Paragraph 4: Third reason
And finally, third reason is that
Paragraph 5: Conclusion paragraph
To put it briefly, to summarize, as a final note, by and large
So it is good that the reader can clearly see the thesis and reasons for the thesis. However, all of the three reasons discussed in the essay are not developed fully, so they are not persuasive. In other words, after reading the essay, we cannot be sure why the teachers with excellent knowledge are more important than the teachers who can relate with their students well.
The moral of the story from examining these two essays is that you should not worry so much about templates. To receive the highest score, you should rather keep working on developing your ideas fully. Learning a template takes a second, but developing ideas takes a lot of writing practice. You also need a coach that can show you how to write an essay that receives a high score on TOEFL writing. And this is why you need to take the Dr. Byrnes writing course.