Topic: In some countries, teenagers have jobs while they are still students. Do you think this is a good idea? Support your opinion by using specific reasons and details.
Some teenagers think that all their time should be spent on learning to get the best achievements when they are students. However, I believe that it is better for them to have jobs while they are studying at universities.
For one thing, having a job allows students to have some experiences. At school, they acquire basic knowledge that their future careers require. However, they are not taught how to apply what they have studied to real jobs. Because the gulf between theory and practice is sometimes enormous, they will face many obstacles when put their hands on a real job. Practice is always the best way to verify theory and let students have deeper understanding in their problems. Moreover, getting high scores at university does not ensure that they will have the best working positions. For example, if they do not how to communicate with their employers or how to cooperate with their co-workers, their chances for promotion are very small. In the other words, some soft skills which are able to be inferred when they are at works will give them more advantages than their competitors in future.
Furthermore, by working, students will realize the true value of money. When they were youngsters, the clothes that they wore, the food that they ate, the money for tuition fees and other allowance were provided by their parents. Sometimes, many students did not understand how hard their parents have worked to earn that money. However, having a job, they will know how much sweat, time, effort and even tears that they have to spend to exchange a cent. Thenceforth, they are more responsible for using money.
Finally, working makes students much more independent. They can cover the needs for their next years at university. They also have to manage their time reasonably to balance the time for studying and working. In addition, they need to make sure that their jobs will not have too many bad affects on their scholastic results and do not harm their heath.
For the reasons above, students should have a job before they graduate and start their professional careers.
TOEFL listening lectures: A lecture from an american literature class