TOEFL Essay #002: Are parents the best teachers?
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TestMagic estimated score:
6.0/6.0:
This essay has nice organization
and good development. The author has some fairly deep
ideas about this topic and conveys them well.
Obviously, the first teachers we have in our lives
in most cases are our parents. They teach us to walk,
to speak, and to have good manners before we reach "the
real world." More than even the professional teachers
that we have in school, parents are generally the most
involved in the development and education of children.
Almost for sure our parents are the best teachers at
the beginning of our lives, which actually corresponds
to the parents' role in nature. Parents are most committed
and involved in teaching their children; they have a
kind of instinct to sacrifice a part of themselves for
the betterment of their children. They love us and have
great patience while passing down their knowledge to
us. They wish us a success and thus will not teach us
bad things. And of course, implicit learning occurs
when children unconsciously copy some of their parents'
habits and styles of behavior.
During the second stage of child development, adolescence,
parents can still be in the best position to offer advice
even though the children might not accept it. In this
case, perhaps the child's friends would be the best
teachers. Adolescents are notoriously rebellious in
many cultures and may automatically reject any advice
from their parents. My first marriage for instance,
was solely a matter of doing the opposite when my parents
tried to intrude in offering their advice. So in such
matters, parents should be much more flexible and be
rather the partners with their children. So we can see
that being a teacher of growing child become more and
more complicated case as the time passes and many parents
are simply not able to meet the increased demands.
On the other hand, I would say that parents are not
professional teachers and they tend to be very biased
by their love of their children. So wishing good things
and an easy life may prevent children from maturation.
In any case, parents usually can present only one viewpoint
of the world, while good teaching should be based on
different attitudes. Thus, when children go to school
and have a great diversity of teachers, they learn much
more than their parents could probably give them. Furthermore,
once our parents get older, they become more conservative
and cannot always be objective in regard to modern trends
and fashions. Thus we need to take their advice with
caution during that period. However, some kind of intuition
which I believe shared between relatives about what
everybody needs and great love which exists in a families
still makes our parents very good teachers and advisers
at any time.
In conclusion, while parents are not the ideal teachers,
and well-rounded children will generally need a great
diversity of teachers in their lives in order to have
a more accurate view of the world, parents are generally
the most committed of all teachers and have the greatest
emotional investment in their children and their future.
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- Parents generally have a greater commitment to their
children than their teachers do.
- Parents might not be impartial (fair) with their
children.
- Parents are not professional teachers.
- Teachers are professionals.
- Teachers usually do not have enough time to spend
with their students.
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- Failure to restate the topic is one of the most
common errors that TestMagic sees in most essays.
For example, many essays start like this: "I
agree with this point..." We need to say something
like this: "I agree that having food that is
easy to prepare has improved our lives."
- Very few people stated that parents are very important
because children have so much contact with them in
the first years of their lives. Most psychologists
agree that these years are fundamental to the emotional
and mental growth of the child.
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