TOEFL essay samples: Playing games teaches us

Life is a mystery. A man spends all life solving it. Games are synthesis of our efforts to solve life. From ancient time to the 21th century, people try to extract important aspects and life to implant it in games. I the follow part of this essay, I we’ll describe advantages and disadvantages of games. In conclusion, I’ll express my opinion which is related to support games and their educational part in life.

Firstly, I think that games are compilation of basic principles in the world. Chess, for instance, is game which emulates war. In this game are incorporated basic war principles. For example chess strategy contains many kinds of attacks, defences, counter-attacks, even ambushes. Therefore, many famous leaders in ancient times had been played chess. For instance, we know that Napoleon Bonaparte had been chess lover. I’ll point out other games which improve our ability to solve problems in real life. Nowadays, many computer games emulates very well real life.For example, I’ll mention one game called “The Sims”. In this game your aim is to build a house, set up a family, find a good job, even you must find friends. I believe that this game helps young people to build their view of life.

On the other hand, games have some disadvantages. First, if they contain scenes with violation, drug using and other social deviations, they are dangerous for children psychic. For instance, in many modern computer games you are a hero who must kill everyone in the game. Often, the scene of killing is related to many bloody scenes. Therefore, I think that these games are dangerous for the players. I’ll restrict my view on another problem of games. Life is a phenomenon, which is very intricate. It’s impossible to incarnate all principles of life in one game. On that account, these games might be dangerous. They show to the player one world, which is different from real world. Consequently, many gamers often are good players in games and bad players in life.

In conclusion, I think that games are very useful thing. They provide opportunity for players to learn some important principles of life. Also, they learn how to use this principles. However, some games are dangerous because they contain violence, sexual scenes, drugs and so on. Also, virtual world in games often remove real world. In the end I will paraphrase one translated Latin dictum:“it’s the dose that makes the poison”. In our case I’ll change the dictum in this way:" it’s the dose that makes games poisonous or not".

TOEFL listening discussions: A conversation between a professor and a university student in the professor’s office