TOEFL WRITING TASK 2 (ADVANTAGES & DISADVANTAGES) Introduction

In this article, you will learn how to write the INTRODUCTION for an 'Advantages vs disadvantages' TOEFL essay.

It is first important to read and understand the question:

'Some young children spend a great amount of their time practicing sports. Discuss the advantages and disadvantages to this. Use specific reasons and examples to support your answer.'

The question is not just looking for advantages OR disadvantages; it is not looking to see whether the advantages OUTWEIGH the disadvantages. The question is asking for advantages AND disadvantages. Therefore, you can devote body paragraph 1 to the advantages and body paragraph 2 to the disadvantages.

As I mentioned in my previous posts, first it is a good idea to locate the key words of the question (these are usually the nouns, verbs and adjective / adverbs) and use synonyms to RE-WRITE (paraphrase) the question.

So, our key words in the question are these:

'Some young children spend a great amount of their time practicing sports. Discuss the advantages and disadvantages to this. Use specific reasons and examples to support your answer.'

Synonym for key words:

Some = certain

young children = youngsters

spend = devote

great = considerable

amount = period

(a lot of) practice = go overboard (idiom)

Contents of Introduction:

The introduction for an 'advantage vs disadvantage' essay should consist of 2 sentences:

1. Paraphrased version of the question

2. Synopsis / outline (say what you're going to say in the body paragraphs).

Using the key words, the paraphrased version of the question will be:

Sentence 1:

A considerable period of time is devoted by youngsters to going overboard with sports. (paraphrased sentence, use of Passive Voice)

Sentence 2:

Although this may be deemed as a healthy activity, enabling self confidence, discipline and physical well being, it can however have detrimental effects such as distracting the child from their studies as well as pushing the boundaries of commitment and perseverance. (Synopsis / outline).

So, now the examiner / reader has an idea of what the body paragraphs of the essay will be about. Using this format, will get you top marks in your writing for the introduction.

My next post will be about writing body paragraph 1 for the TOEFL writing task 2.

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