2018-08-31 TOEFL: writing practice and samples

Greg Malivuk
[email protected]
http://www.pastebin.com/u/gmalivuk - notes from all classes
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London Underground video
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Writing practice: when you finish, email your responses to me
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BREAK
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Look at the sample responses with your partner. What score do you think each one should receive and why?
A - 3 points - The writer may have understood the points, but the first and especially third explanations are very unclear. The last sentence doesn’t make sense, and for the first point it looks like people in general (rather than other professors) think TV professors aren’t serious. (Omitting one key point from the lecture -> score of 3)
B - 1 point - This doesn’t include any points from the lecture.
C - 5 points - This clearly expresses all three of the points from the lecture, and connects them explicitly to the text in the first and last paragraphs. The topic sentence of each body paragraph explains how the lecture point opposes the reading point (even though it doesn’t say that’s the reading point).
D - 2 points - This summarizes only one of the points from the lecture (with errors that make the meaning less clear). The connection between the text and lecture is also not very clear, nor is the overall topic. “A reader who is not already familiar with the reading passage and the lecture would not understand what the response is about.”
E - 4 points - Mostly good and complete, but the first two points from the lecture are a bit incomplete or incorrect. (First, it doesn’t mention the consequences of lost reputation. Second, the idea of the professor losing their job is not supported.) “This stands in opposite to the reading” makes us expect that the following sentences will connect the previous paragraph (“This”) to the reading. There are also more significant grammatical errors in this response than in C.
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In writing, “this” in one sentence often refers back to something from the previous sentence(s), especially when it’s the subject of the sentence.
An exception is when the writer uses a colon:
	This is the problem: professors don’t seem serious when they appear on TV.
- “This” refers to the clause after the colon.
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Look at some scored samples for the independent task. Why did they receive these scores?
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Homework: If you want more feedback on today’s writing (more than a score and a sentence or two), email me with a self-evaluation about what you did well and badly, and an estimate of your scores.