TOEFL essay/ reducing living expenses

Topic: If you want to recommend a way to reduce living expenses for your friend, which of the following will you choose? Why?
1. Find a roommate to share a room
2. Do not buy the latest mobile phone / Buy new technological devices less frequently
3. Buy cheap foods and cook home / Do not often eat outside

Today’s world is such an intricate, developed, and complicated one that leads people to reduce their living cost in ample ways. With this in mind, a heated controversy exists over whether it is useful to reduce living expenses through finding a roommate and less frequently buying new technological devices, or buying cheap foods and cooking at home. As far as I am concerned, buying cheap foods and cooking at home can culminate in huge advantages in comparison with two other solutions.

To begin with, one may not face any special problems by cooking at home or buying cheap foods. In other words, one can easily choose to eat different kinds of food without any need to ask other people’s opinion. By having a roommate, however, one might need to be matched with him or her for various things. For example, when I was at university I used to live with a roommate. Whenever I wanted to hold a party I needed to ask her opinion and see whether or not she agrees. Had I not had the roommate, I would have been able to do what I like without any problems. As a result, saving money through buying cheap food may not have such problems for people.

The other equally significant reason worth mentioning is that today’s technology is indispensable in our lives. Therefore, individuals would be considerably attached to electronic devices for their work, studies, or any kind of activities. It would not be exaggerating to say that technology can bring about a wide spectrum of benefits for people. On the other hand, eating expensive food outside of the home can be easily removed without any difficulties. For instance, one of my friends had wanted to reduce the amount of her extra expenses. Her father had suggested she did not buy a new laptop and work with the old one in order to reduce her cost, although having a laptop with a cutting-edge technology was vital for my friend’s job. However, after some months, she had to buy a new one in order to be able to keep pace with her other colleagues and keep her job position. Accordingly, one can easily diminish his or her expenses and manage money by cooking at home without dramatically afflicting his or her life.

To sum up by taking all of the above-mentioned reasons and examples, one can conclude that declining the amount of expenses is possible by cooking at home and eating cheap foods rather than sharing a room or not buying state-of-the-art devices. By doing so, not only may not encounter one with serious peoblems, but also he or she can easily make decisions without being concerned about others.

50 min—453 words

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Hi, this prompt was a little unusual and I think you didn’t handle it as well as you might have. You have a good overall format of comparing your top solution to alternate A in paragraph 1 and to alternate B in paragraph 2.
But your topic sentences didn’t really make that clear and your introduction did not really set up the scenario that well either. You basically need topic sentences like “Buying cheap food is a better way to cut costs than getting a roommate because it disrupts one’s life much less.”} Here are some other specific suggestions:

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Thanks veryyy much…your comments are really instructive :ok_hand::pray:
just one question, at the end of the body paragraphs, if I want to write a sentence as a conclusion which transition word should I use? Transitions which show contrast like IN/BY CONTRAST, ON THE OTHER HAND,…?

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I don’t think a contrast transition will work there. I would suggest something along the lines of “As one can see”, “As this example shows/displays/illustrates/makes clear”, “Thus,” “It is clear/obvious/indisputable/undeniable/irrefutable that”

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By the way, this is a thread from long ago that has a lot of (in my unbiased opinion :wink: ) useful information in it. If you scroll down there is a good list of transitions organized by category.

here is a link to the first post about transitions:

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Thanks a million, I’ll do my best to use them correctly :slight_smile:

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