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Lesson Three: The content of ibt independent writing

From KNILT

Introduction

We have already learned about how to structure a TOEFL independent writing essay. In this lesson, we are going to learn how to generate content--main ideas and supporting ideas--of the independent writing.

Some TOEFL writing topics will ask you to consider the relationship between two things, for example, your hometown (that is, the town where you were born or grew up) and your university town. Such topics may allow you to organize your essay either around the similarities between these two subtopics (for example, between your hometown and your university town) or around the differences between them. If you write about the similarities, the essay will be a comparison essay. On the other hand, if you want to write about the differences, your essay will be a contrast essay.

Lesson Objectives

After completing this less, you will be able to

  1. generate main points for a writing topic based on the comparative and contrastive perspective.
  2. generate supporting ideas by themselves for supporting main ideas.

Lesson Activities

  • Read the following paragraphs
    • My hometown and my college town have several things in common. First, both are small rural communities. For example, my hometown, Gridlock, has a population of only about 10,000 people. Similarly, my college town, Subnormal, consists of about 11,000 local residents. This population swells to 15,000 people when the college students are attending classes. A second way in which these two towns are similar is that they are both located in rural areas. Gridlock is surrounded by many acres of farmland which is devoted mainly to growing corn and soybeans. In the same way, Subnormal lies in the center of farmland which is used to raise hogs and cattle . . . .
    • Even though Arizona and Rhode Island are both states of the U.S., they are strikingly different in many ways. For example, the physical size of each state is different. Arizona is large, having an area of 114,000 square miles, whereas Rhode Island is only about a tenth the size, having an area of only 1,214 square miles. Another difference is in the size of the population of each state. Arizona has about four million people living in it, but Rhode Island has less than one million. The two states also differ in the kinds of natural environments that each has. For example, Arizona is a very dry state, consisting of large desert areas that do not receive much rainfall every year. However, Rhode Island is located in a temperate zone and receives an average of 44 inches of rain per year. In addition, while Arizona is a landlocked state and thus has no seashore, Rhode Island lies on the Atlantic Ocean and does have a significant coastline.
  • The first paragraph above is a comparative writing paragraph, and the second paragraph is a contrastive writing paragraph. Discuss with your peers on how the two paragraphs generate comparative and contrastive ideas differently.

Assignments

Write two paragraphs:

  1. One contrast paragraph of at least seven sentences
  2. One comparison paragraph with seven or more sentences.

Write them either in an e-mail program or on a word-processor. When you are finished, e-mail them to me at hz627672@albany.edu

Reflection

Through the activities and assignments in this lesson, the learners should have understood the techniques to create a TOEFL independent writing paragraph, which includes main idea and supporting ideas. Through learning to generate the supporting ideas based on comparative approach and contrastive approach, learners should have realized that it is not incredibly hard to generate more ideas, more sentences because when doing compare and contrast, it will be easier for them to come up more thoughts and ideas on a specific topic.


To go on to the next unit click here: Lesson Four: Getting started and Revising

Click here to return to the beginning of the course: TOEFL ibt Independent Writing Step-by-step

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