Do you agree or disagree with the following statement? The world is changing fast, people are less happy. Use specific reasons and examples to support your answer.
Many changes have been made in our lives nowadays. The innovations in the modern world definitely make us live more conveniently and comfortably. However, as far as I'm concerned, these changes make us live less happily for the problems they caused.
Firstly, the traffic jams are always annoying for people, especially the city residents. In the past, people walked to get to their destinations rather than drove (You are 'than'-ing with 'walked', so whatever verb that follows needs to be consistent in tense and aspect with 'walked'.). So there are not so many cars in the road as today. And in the traffic jams drivers keep their car engines running which is not only causing more air pollution but also making a lot of noise. Furthermore, the traffic jam is time consuming. Drivers caught in a traffic jam would spend nearly one hour to cover a distance which usually takes ten minutes' walk. So a/the traffic jam has a lot of bad effects on people.(Yes, but the question is not about whether modern living has bad effects on people or not. The question ultimately you need to address is whether people are happier or less happy. You do really need a sentence like 'and because of this, people are less happy' to make your point relevant.)
Secondly, the pollution from some companies caused a lot of disasters. We can often see in the newspapers that the water pollution due to the sewage from paper companies or chemical companies causes people in a little village to have cancer. As we all know, when we encounter this disease, we know that(Repetition with 'as we all know'.) there is limited hope for rehabilitation (This word is not associated with a 'disease' but more with addictions, such as drug or alcohol abuse. You 'recover' from a disease.). Even the people reading the news feel gloomy. In the past, on the other hand, the environment is much safer. People in the past do not need to consider the pollution. (I would probably argue very fiercely about how people in the past did not necessarily produce less pollution and the environment was probably not really much safer, but that's not the kind of argument for a TOEFL essay..) So I assert that the pollution from the modern changes make people upset. (Good. This is the kind of conclusion sentence you need.)
In addition, the food we eat today is not safe too. People no longer enjoy what they eat as they did before. Last year, there was an astonishing piece of news that nearly every milk company in China adds a kind of chemical addition (Repetition with 'add'.) to milk and causes the death of children. When I read the news I felt desperate because how can milk be poison what we nearly drink every day (This, is not a proper sentence at all. It's two sentences jumbo-ed into one and neither is entirely grammatical. It needs to be something more like 'how can milk be poisonOUS while we drink IT early every day'. You do not actually have a very good grasp on complex sentence structures, and your grammar is rather shaky in complex sentences, so I'd suggest you to either make sure you revise grammar properly, or write shorter sentences.). A study, conducted by China's Academy of social and sciences, showed that 63 percent of people in China today do not believe in that milk available in the market is purely natural and do not enjoy drinking it as before. So I think that food additions are another reason for people's unhappiness.
All in all, people today feel desperate and grief ('grief' is a noun, not an adjective, and it doesn't really have an adjective form that you can use in this sentence – 'grievous' is not the word by the way – so I'd suggest a simple 'sad'..) of the problems caused by modern changes. But on the other hand, we cannot live without them. What we can do is to take measures to reduce the effects of these problems like hard ('hard' is not an adverb. You're modifying a verb 'punish' here so you need an adverb. And it's not 'hardly', because 'hardly' means something else. I'd suggest something like 'harshly'.) punish the companies which add unhealthy additions to their products.(1. you didn't really discuss the need to 'take measures' in the body of the essay, and a conclusion paragraph is not the place to discuss such things. I understand Chinese students love to 升华, but you don't need to do it in TOEFL essays. It will not get you better credits. A conclusion paragraph is where you summarise your main points and assert your overall opinion again. 2. Even you really want to do a 升华 here, it cannot be for only one of the three points in your essay..)
Do you agree or disagree with the following statements? Young people todays are more likely to help others than young people in the past.
Although our living standards and technology have been improved in recent years, people don’t care about others as before. They, especially the young people, become more selfish and careful about everything, even including helping others. So I do not agree with the statement that young people today are more ardent and helpful than their counterparts in the past.
Firstly, young people, especially who live in metropolises, usually have a busy life style which leads to the fact that they have little possibility to help others. My cousin, a white collar in our city, normally gets up at six o'clock and hurriedly goes to his office, then he starts a long day's work and tiredly gets home at 9 o'clock or even 10 o'clock at night. He always feels that he doesn't have enough time to do his own things, so there is limited or even no time left for helping others. While in the past, the young people might do not have such a heavy workload and could spend more time to do the things they like, including helping others. So in view of young people's busy lives in the modern society, I think they might not be likely to help others.
Second, the young people in the modern society always have a doubt on the people, who ask them for help, especially the strangers. We can often see in the newspapers that there are a lot of people in our city disguising as poor peasants asking the people passing by for help, and the people who give them help would be raped or even dead. Our citizens are so afraid of cheating and normally cannot figure out that who asks them for help is evil. So they might tend to give less help to others to keep themselves from being risky ('risky' means 'likely to cause harm; likely to be a risk', rather than 'likely to be harmed by a risk'. You could use 'harmed'.). And I think the dishonest trend in the modern society is another factor that causes the young people to be unwillingly to help others.(The reasoning is fair enough, but this risk doesn't apply particularly to young people. In other words, you didn’t really argue why this risk of the 'dishonest trend' is specifically relevant to 'young' people. But I won't be too harsh on your logic so this is just something for you to think about. As far as TOEFL requirements go, what you wrote is good enough.)
In conclusion, I think that young people today are not as helpful as those in the past for their fright of cheating and their limited free time. They might want to help but they have no time because they have to finish their work first, otherwise they will lose their jobs.(This is a new point of argument for your 1st sub-point, so it shouldn't appear in your conclusion. Put all logical reasoning into the relevant paragraphs in the body of the essay.) And they cannot fully trust people, especially the stranger and feel that they might do evil things to them, rather than really asking for help, according to the crimes published in newspapers.
总结：
你的论述很清晰，但是语法上基本没有注意像单复数和第三人称单数这类的问题。。另外你对复句和复合动词短语的掌握比较差，1. 情态动词（may/can/shall/must之类）和否定句/问题句中加入的助动词do是不混着用的，混用的时候do的意思只能是实意动词‘做’，例如：She might not do her homework. and She does not do her homework.都是对的，但She might do not do her homework.是错的。2. 一个句子只能有一个主动词：像there are a lot of people in our city disguise as poor peasants ask the people pass by for help，主动词是are，后面所有的动词都必须变成分词，否则这句话实际上等于是四句话搅在一起的。3. that从句和wh类词（what, when, who, where, why, how）开头的从句是两种从句，在一个从句开头要么用that，要么用wh类词，但是不能两个一起用在同一句上的。建议你去找一本好的语法书，把动词的要点看懂，确保自己需要使用这些句型的时候有把握都用正确。 作者: mpromanus 时间: 2012-12-16 09:16:21
Do you agree or disagree with the following statement: People who cannot accept the criticism from others will not be successful at working in a group.
Everyone wants to be successful. How to be a successful person and what can we do to make ourselves more successful? As far as I'm concerned, there are many common outstanding traits of success people, such as responsibility, intelligence, diligence and so on. Among them, I think one of the most important factors to success is accepting other people's criticism, especially when you work in a group.
Firstly, people working with you are more likely to point out your weaknesses than yourself. In many cases, people want to make progress in their work but they do not know how to do it, because they cannot figure out what they should improve first. People usually fail to see their own mistakes and weaknesses. For example, when I was in high school, I did a math assignment with my classmate, Zora. My math was not good but I wanted to improve it. So I insisted on doing a lot of practice every day, but this didn't work either (I'm not sure why you specified 'either' here, since this is the first thing that 'didn't work'.). When we did that assignment, Zora said that I was such a scatterbrain for the careless mistakes about figures I had made, and suggested me doing less practice but making sure what I do , I do it as carefully as possible. I gratefully accepted her criticism and did as she suggested. In this way, I made great progress on my math skills and even got a great score on the final exam in that semester. So I think that other people's criticism can awake you about your weaknesses and thus you can make improvement in your work quickly.(This is well argued, but it wasn't very relevant to the 'working in a group' part of the question or of your introduction paragraph.)
Moreover, the criticism from others is a stimulus for you to make progress in your work. When you receive a criticism from other people, at first you may feel a little angry or uncomfortable, especially when other people have an excessive attitude (Not really sure what you mean by 'an excessive attitude' because you don't usually describe an attitude as 'excessive'.). But you should think it in a positive way. If you really did the things they had criticized about, you need to change this situation and never let these people criticize you again in the future. Only stupid people will make the same mistake again and again. So you can turn this criticism into an impulse (An 'impulse' is usually implied to be short-lived and rather reckless, in the sense that it is a feeling of a sudden but strong need to do something. I would probably have used the word 'drive' instead.) to make progress in your work. For instances, when I worked in a computer company last summer, one of my coworkers, Melanie, criticized that my file work was messed up. I felt humiliated at first, but then I thought positively that I could do with all my might to make my files as neat as possible for keeping myself from receiving this criticism again. In this way, I kept my file work orderly and neatly, and my boss even improved my salary (No, you don't usually use 'improve' but rather 'increase', with 'salary'..) for my neat file work. So I believe that criticism from other people can be an impulse to make improvement in your work.(Again, this is well argued, but not relevant to 'working in a group'. The question is not about any generic kind of success, but a very specific kind of success, that is, success at working in a group.)
In conclusion, I think criticism from other people can help you to finish successful work in a group because it was a sign of your weaknesses and an impulse for you to make progress.
总结：
句法上提高很大哦（笑），超过三个分句的长句子会有些开始混乱，所以请注意长句子里的句法，一个分句一个分句慢慢来别着急。。论述上很清晰，但是分论点和例子完全没有提到题目里working in a group这点啊。。
