TOEFL Essay Workshop #2
Topic :The 21st century has begun. What changes do you think this new century will bring? Use examples and details in your answer.
Group : Park Hyogeun, Choi Changseon, Cho Munyoung, Yun Ungsang, Gwon Junho
Original Essay
What is the most fatal, inevitable enemy of all living things? Of all life-threatening matters, the answer is disease. Humans, especially, have coexisted with it, trying to research, find treatments, and overcome it. Thus, as technology developed more and more, people were able to find better and more effective cure for diseases, resulting in lengthened life expectancy. Similarly, I believe the largest change in 21st centuryis disease, in both positive and negative ways.
To begin with, some of the incurable diseases would not be called the same in 21st century. As I mentioned earlier, humans are able to conquer diverse illnesses through constantly growing technology. Humans have done so until today, so there’s no doubt that more diseases would be overcome. To give an example of the incurable disease in past, pest, best known as black plague, was one of the biggest threats to Europeans in mid-14th century. Millions of people lost their lives, and there was no hope at the time, as no one could figure out the cause of it. However, today, pest isn’t even conceived as a serious disease since vaccine was invented. Scientists were able to verify the cause through microscope, and inhibited the potentially dangerous germs from harming humans. Likewise, in 2012, there are lots of diseases thought to be formidable and insurmountable, such as AIDS and cancer. Though countless people are suffering from them these days, through extreme advance in technology in this century, I expect these diseases to take the same path as pest, and even longer life expectancy for humans.
On the other hand, developments in 21st century may even worsen the ‘disease matter’. To be specific, extreme developments today have harmed the environment largely. The thing is that the environment is not the only target. Humans are also influenced by boomerang effect, and the best example is cancer.Although cancer is known to be a contemporary disease, it is not, as an ancient Egyptian was found to have carried cancer when he was alive. However, it was not a usual disease for Egyptians, and such informs us that some change brought increase in occurrence of cancer, which is human activity. In fact, there are numerous evidences showing how human activity can affect cancer cells to be more active. As humans are always looking forward to advance in their civilizations, more pollution is being generatedevery second. Although humans might overcome the present diseases in the future, at the same time, it is possible for them to resurrect the deadly illnesses that haven’t been found yet.
To sum up, 21st century will open up a new age for diseases through vast enhancement in technology and development. However, it is not sure whether the situation would improve or deteriorate, as the chances are fifty-fifty. Whether it would be an innovation or a disaster, humans must be ready to absorb such changes in disease on the upcoming 21st century.
Anaylzing Changseon's TOEFL Essay
Our team members chose Choi Changseon’s essay to review strengths and weak points.
When we discussed about revising his essay, we focused on the next categories: ideas, organization, word choice, sentence fluency and proofreading.
1. IDEAS – Changseon chose ‘diseases’ to be the big changes in the 21st century. We liked his interesting and creative idea. However, His writing needed more support, so we added some more details.
2. ORGANIZATION - His essay had a quite well developed beginning, middle and ending. Changseon introduced his topic interestingly by asking a challenging question “What is the most fatal, inevitable enemy of all living things?” Middle part was composed of 2 paragraphs. To support details, he used ‘comparison’ about diseases in the past and at the present. But, the examples supporting his topic sentences were not enough to clarify his ideas. Thus we added more examples such as ‘nanotechnology’ and ‘super bacteria’ to make his writing clear enough to understand. His closing was effectively summarized the contents of his essay.
3. WORD CHOICE – A good writing should use the best words and avoid redundancy and repetition. So we carefully checked for any flaws in his writing and we corrected them when revising.
4. SENTENCE FLUENCY – For effective sentence fluency, we sometimes combined or divided the sentences to make them read more smoothly. To do this work, one of our members read the essay loud and we listened carefully for anything that could be awkward.
5. PROOFREADING – After finishing revising, we checked for any errors in punctuation, mechanics, and grammar.
Revising
We revised changseon's essay ;
(If you click the picture, you can see it in detail.)
After Revision(Final Draft)
What is the most fatal and inevitable enemy of all living things? Of all life threatening matters, personally the answer is diseases. Humans have coexisted with diseases, trying to research, find treatments, and overcome them. Some say that people will be able to find more effective cures for diseases, resulting in lengthened life expectancy as the technology develops more and more. Others, however, say that numerous diseases will be able to come out as the technology advances. As Humans and diseases are inextricably bound up each other, the changes in diseases will greatly affect the 21st century as followings:
To begin with, some of the incurable diseases nowadays will disappear in the 21st century. Humans are able to conquer diverse illnesses through constantly growing technology. As a result, in the end, there will be no more incurable diseases left. To give an example of the incurable disease in the past, pest, best known as black plague, was one of the biggest threats to Europeans in the mid-14th century. Millions of people lost their lives, with no hope remaining, since no one could figure out the cure for this disease. However, today, pest is not even considered as a serious disease ever since vaccine has invented. Scientists were able to verify the cause through microscopes, and inhibited the potentially dangerous germs from harming humans. Likewise, in 2012, there are lots of diseases thought to be formidable and insurmountable, such as AIDS and cancer. Though countless people are suffering from them these days, through extreme advance in technology in this century such as developing nanotechnology, I expect these diseases to take the same path as pest, perhaps resulting in even longer life expectancy for humans.
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| Will humans destroy themselves? |
On the other hand, human activity, especially technological advance caused by the development in the 21st century may even worsen humans' power against incurable diseases. To be specific, extreme developments resulting in numerous vaccines have ironically caused stronger diseases, which are incurable, to occur. In the past, the rate of mutants in various diseases was low due to the lack of cures. However, as the development of technology led to the invention of effective vaccines, the rate of mutants in these diseases skyrocketed. According to Darwin’s theory of evolution, organisms develop and get stronger as they get biologically threatened causing invincible mutants to appear. Likewise, increase on cure methods led to the increase of mutants. Ultimately, the development of cures led to the infinite routine of cure vs. disease. One example of this is the appearance of Super bacteria. Since the past, bacteria haven't been a huge threat to the human race. However, due to the constant changes and development of medicines, Super bacteria, which are incurable with current technology, occurred. Although, humans might overcome the present diseases in the future, at the same time, it is possible for us to create more deadly diseases.
To sum up, the 21st century will open up a new age for diseases through vast enhancement in technology and development. However, it is not sure whether the situation would improve or deteriorate, as the chances are fifty-fifty. Whether it would be an innovation or a disaster, humans must be ready to absorb such changes in diseases on the upcoming 21st century.
The words in red - grammatical errors are changed
The words in purple– sentences and phrases are changed
After Finishing the Project
After we finished our team project of TOEFL WORKSHOP, we learned that we should give a lot of time and efforts to write a good essay. We know that an effective essay needs prewriting, writing, revising, and proofreading. While revising Changseon’s essay, we could think of the essentials in good writing and learn a lot from one another. We are sure that this revising experience will make us write better essays from now on.
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