Should we judge people by first impressions?

English as a Second Language Preparation for and help with the TOEFL® Test and
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Hi, this is my new essay. Hope yu can rate and check it for me. Thank you!

Topic: Some people trust their first impressions about a person character because they believe these judgment are generally correct. Other people do not judge a person’s character quickly because they believe first impressions are often wrong. Compare these two attitudes. Which attitude do you agree with? Support your choice with specific examples.

Essay:

One of the aspects that greatly affects our lives is the way we judge others. Some people put their belief on the first impressions and make conclusions about a person totally based on these foremost perceptions while others neglect them because they think first impressions are often misleading. In my opinion, both sides have their points but we should only consider the first impressions a small factor in our judgement of a person. I will present my ideas in the following passages.

First of all, the first impressions are often related to appearances of people we meet and it is clear that the outside features can reflect several aspects of a person, his job, his social status and other characteristics. For example, teachers in my country always wear glasses and dress in T-shirt; they also behave slowly as well as politely. Likewise, we can reasonably assume that a person appearing with a black vest, always talking about economy could be a businessman.

However, defining others by first impressions have numerous drawbacks. Foremost, appearances could not tell the whole story a bout a person. For instance, thieves are often thought to behave in bad ways, with tattoo in their bodies; however, it is very popular in my country that thieves appear politely like good people and then they silently steal something from surrounding people, which is affected by their appearances to conclude that they would be no harm. Besides that, our first impressions about someone are depended on their temporary acts in a specific situation, not their behaviors in a long time which can exactly reflect their characters. For examples, I met one of my classmate when he was rushing to the bus, making a collisons with me heading to another direction then; yet he left without any apology. At that time, I thought he was so rude but later, I discovered that he had been rushing to the hospital, his mother had broken her leg. Actually, he has great personalities.

To conclude, first impressions are just minor information that we should use to make conclusions about other people because they could not tell the whole story about others and not based on our long-time observation.

TOEFL listening discussions: What is the main weakness of the student’s essay?

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Hi Helias, your writing in this one is quite good, but I don’t think your first body paragraph was appropriate for this type of prompt. As a result, it is hard for me to guess what this essay would rate.

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Hi, Mr. Luschen. Thank you so much for checking the essay for me. As you can see, the topic requires me to “compare these two attitude”; i thought in the first body i should discuss the advantage of on attitude and then support the other in the following as well as assert the idea i wanted to support, was that ok?
In addition, please explain to me how can i use “can” and “could”?
Thank you, sir!

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Hi Helias, I am so sorry, you are correct. I did not read the prompt carefully enough - I deserve a very low score for this correction! Remember to use “can” when talking about ability and use “could” when talking about a possibility or a hypothetical situation. “I can correct essays.” “If I read the prompt correctly, I could do a better job of correcting essays.” In your essay, you are saying what appearances and first impressions have the ability {or inability} to do, so use “can”.

Here is a webpage with a little more detail: learnenglish.britishcouncil.org … n-or-could