Due to my recent TOEFL exam preparation for the exam’s writing section, especially independent writing, the following lines are a piece of writing than I wrote about this topic: “Do you agree or disagree with the following statement? Parents are the best teachers.”
Your evaluation and correction points are highly appreciated. Here it goes.
I personally believe in the fact that the statement can be both right and wrong because there are reasons for both. First of all, family as the first social community is the platform for developing almost every basic aspect of our personal and social behaviors and this is mainly due to the presence of our fathers and mothers. Although, the very first behaviors are rooted back in our parents’ behaviors, we as social species get influenced by different experiences as we grow up. However, how much these behaviors are valued in the real society is hundred percent related to our parents and situations that we have been influenced by.
Imagine that you are born in a family where your parents are bad tempered and easily get extremely angry at things that are not very important. So as a child in such a family, you cannot possibly reason their behaviors and most probably, in my opinion, this habit is engraved in your personality. On the other hand, imagine that your parents are such a very smart and reasonable in the society in which they are always admired for their wise reactions to life difficulties. Being in such an environment that such parents provide, influences you in a way that you learn how to come up with new ideas to overcome the setbacks that every now and then occur in your life.
Besides all the influences that we may get from our parents, teachers at elementary and intermediate stages will have considerable influences on our personality. It is very likely that we in our school age have such inspiring teachers that, no matter in which condition we have grown up and who our parents are, teach us how to recognize right from wrong. With the help of such teachers, we can be more aware of right and wrong of our behaviors and learn how to strengthen the right and eliminate the wrong. For those whose parents had nothing to do with books and education, the teacher would play an important role in how to help them understand the education value. Therefore, in my opinion, parents can teach us good and bad behaviors simultaneously. They as human beings have their own especial positive and negative behaviors that can be noticed and learned by children much easier than I could be though. But parents with the teachers’ accompany most likely can teach us the bests.
Hi, your writing is very good, but overall your structure is somewhat confusing to me. For this type of TOEFL question, you should pick one side or the other and support your viewpoint with clearly identifiable reasons, which you then detail and support with examples. Here is a good overview of an effective essay structure that I think works well for the TOEFL: bookrags.com/articles/4.html