THE INDEPENDENT WRITING TASK - YOUR ESSAY (TOEFL WRITING 2)

WELCOME TO THIS POST!

A LOVELY PHOTO FOR MY READERS!

Nature is so beautiful! 

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Source: Pixabay, Public Domain

WRITING AN ESSAY.

Writing an essay is what the Independent Writing Task on the TOEFL requires you to do. It is usually considered to be the most difficult part of the test; I know my students usually cringe when we talk about it!

The idea here is that the test will provide you with a topic (which can’t be changed) and you will have to write a minimum of 300 words on that topic, following the format of an “essay”.

In addition, this task has a demanding time control to it: you only have 30 minutes in which to produce your ideas, plan the structure, write the essay and then review it!

SOME THOUGHTS ON THE TIME CONTROLS FOR THE ESSAY WRITING TASK

Here you have those same ideas organized as a list, with suggested times attached

• Brainstorm for ideas – about 2 minutes

• Plan the structure – about 3 minutes

• Write the essay – about 21 minutes

• Revise your writing – about 4 minutes 

 

Now these suggested times are not necessarily the ones you will use. For instance, if you are a quick reader you might save 2 minutes on the reviewing, which you could use elsewhere.

These suggested times are mainly to show you that you really need to MOVE when you do this part of the TOEFL. The short version is that you will always be short of time, unless you really have nothing to write about, and that means that you will probably receive a rather low final result.

DIFFICULTIES I HAVE OBSERVED WHILE WORKING WITH MY STUDENTS

While patiently getting my face-to-face students organized on their essay writing task, I have observed the following difficulties:

• They don’t seem to quite grasp the contents of the sample questions that we’re looking through.

• They are slow on brainstorming and can’t come up with ideas when under pressure.

• They don’t have a clear idea of what an essay IS, or rather what it is NOT. They have a tendency to think that a simple “composition” on a topic will do.

• They are not familiar with the traditional structure of an essay.

• Their level of English is not sufficient to produce coherent sentences, never mind the structure!

 

Let’s look through some of these points in more detail.

GETTING THE MESSAGE!

Just recently I was discussing an essay question that requested the student to write about “Why families that visit a town for the first time, usually like to visit museums in that particular town” The student was supposed to develop an essay and give reasons, according to his own views on the topic.

An apparently simple task! But my friend (the student) developed a list of ideas which really meant that he was describing different kinds of museums, without a word on the WHY families tend to visit these places when the town is new to them.

In short, he did not “get the message”.

The writing task may or not be difficult, but you must analyze the question carefully so as to get a really clear idea of what you are going to write about.

THIS IS AN ESSAY WRITING TASK, NOT A COMPOSITION WRITING TASK!

What’s the difference, you may ask? That’s a good question and one that I will answer with my own “take” on the problem as it relates to the TOEFL.

The essay has a definite and rather logical structure, which can be briefly described as: 

• Introduction (includes the thesis statement)

• Development (supporting ideas, each with their own thesis statements)

• Conclusion (generally a paraphrasing of the introduction)

 

The composition, on the other hand allows you to “ramble” through the topic, the planning is not so strict, and the writer can even be rather vague and just weave through some ideas that hopefully relate to the topic. Including your own emotions could be permitted.

This may not be a very clear distinction, but it becomes clear when you start to write essays!

Take the case of my student and the example of the museums. 

The ideas he came up with were all related to different types of museums and which ones he would enjoy most. 

If he had developed these ideas into a piece of writing, it would have felt like a “ramble”. Probably quite good and quite interesting, but that would not have qualified very well as an essay for the TOEFL, I’m afraid.

CONCLUDING WORDS

So here we are, just scratching the surface of the Independent Writing Task for the TOEFL!

In my next post I will write about the problems of “brainstorming” and the way it relates to the structure of the essay. 

Then maybe we can finally get down to planning a real essay.

In the meantime, as this topic is rather heavy, here's another lovely photo for you to enjoy! 

LOVELY NATURE, LOVELY TREES!

Click to enlarge

Source: Pixabay, Public Domain 


See you soon!

© 2013  joveron (Joan Robertson)

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