Help me by rating and correcting my writing

[Khalil701]

Hello, this is my first post in this forum. I am preparing myself for Toefl. I hope you help me with my writing. It is about eating at home or outside. Here is my writing:

Eating habits vary greatly among societies. In the past, humans used to have their meals at home. However, this is not the case in the current time. Restaurants have become an icon of the modern civilization because most people, simply don’t have enough time to prepare their food.

Humans’ life-style has been changed dramatically. People are always in harry to achieve their goals in life. They tend to spend a great deal of time working in order to make money. Thus, they have only a limited time to prepare and eat their food at home. This is especially true when both parents work outside the house. As a result, people tend to eat outside or to buy their food from restaurants and eat it at home.

Cooking and eating at home is preferred by many people. Home made food is fresh, healthy because people usually use good quality ingredients when cooking their food. From a social point of view, eating at home helps the family members to be more close to each other because cooking and eating food inside the house is considered to be an important sort of communication among family members. However, it requires skills, time, and effort in both: cooking and cleaning up the mess afterward.

Although eating outside has its drawbacks, it has lots of advantages as well. Fast food restaurants are specially aimed to serve busy people who have little time to eat. Moreover, restaurants serve different types of food which are not found at home. In addition, people such as lovers, friends, co-workers enjoy eating at restaurants. On the other hand; it costs more, the quality of the food is questionable and it is usually not a healthy food.

Although restaurants were founded to satisfy people needs at the first place, they have become a source of entertainment. There is no point in deciding whether eating outside or at home is better because both actions complete each other.

TOEFL listening lectures: A lecture from an American History class

[Luschen]

Hi, your English ability is obviously quite good, but I did not thing the overall structure of your essay was very effective. I think this article gives a good overview of a better way to organize an essay: bookrags.com/articles/4.html

You had some good reasons, but they seemed jumbled together and you lacked much support in the way of specific examples. As I said, your writing is very good though, with only a few minor grammatical errors and incorrect word choices here and there. Overall, I would rate this a 3.5 out of 5, but with a better structure you should be able to score much higher.

@Khalil701

Hello, this is my first post in this forum. I am preparing myself for Toefl. I hope you help me with my writing. It is about eating at home or outside. Here is my writing:

Eating habits vary greatly among societies. In the past, humans {“humans” sounds odd here - it is better to use it when talking about biology or comparing humans to other animals} used to have [all] their meals at home. However, this is not the case in the current time. Restaurants have become an icon of the modern civilization because most people, {no comma} simply don’t{avoid contractions} have enough time to prepare their food.

Humans’[People’s] life-style[s ] ha[ve] been changed {“have changed” is better here} dramatically. People are always in harry [a hurry] to achieve their goals in life. They tend to spend a great deal of time working in order to make money. Thus, they have only a limited time to prepare and eat their food at home. This is especially true when both parents work outside the house. As a result, people tend to eat outside {“eat outside” implies a picnic} or to buy their food from restaurants and eat it at home. {this paragraph does not have a clear topic sentence - it is better to have a topic sentence that gives a reason supporting your thesis}

Cooking and eating at home is preferred by many people. Home made{one word} food is fresh [and] healthy because people usually use good quality ingredients when cooking their food. From a social point of view, eating at home helps the family members to be more close to each other because cooking and eating food inside the house is considered to be an important sort of communication among family members. However, it requires skills, time, and effort in both:{no colon} cooking and cleaning up the mess afterward. {this paragraph has too many ideas, none of which are really developed well}

Although eating outside {once again, eating outside implies eating outdoors} has its drawbacks, it has lots of advantages as well. Fast food restaurants are specially aimed to serve busy people who have little time to eat. Moreover, restaurants serve different types of food which are not found at home. In addition, people such as lovers, friends, [and] co-workers enjoy eating at restaurants. On the other hand; it costs more, the quality of the food is questionable and it is usually not a healthy food. {you did not include the exact prompt, but for this type of essay I think they want you to pick one side or the other. If you include information that works against your viewpoint, it is important to explain it away better}

Although restaurants were founded to satisfy people needs at the first place,{“in the first place”, but that sounds odd here} they have become a source of entertainment. {don’t bring up a new reason in your conclusion - this would have been very good to include in a body paragraph though and expand with an example} There is no point in deciding whether eating outside or at home is better because both actions complete each other. {how do they “complete each other”? This does not really make sense to me}

TOEFL listening lectures: A lecture from an American History class

[Khalil701]

Thank you a lot Luschen for your support and advise. The article is very useful. I’ll try to work more on the essay structure. I have just one question: Do I have to totaly support one of opposite opinions? Is it ok to be in the middle?

[Luschen]

There are two different types of prompts - if they say “which one do you prefer and why” you should pick one or the other - if they say something like “give the advantages of each and give your opinion”, you should discuss both viewpoints and then give your opinion in your third body paragraph.