基礎に立ち返ってみる： TOEFL Writing (Independent task)

昨日のEntryに書いたように、TOEFLに専念することにしたが、手始めに、前から遠まわし感を持っていたWritingの本質的能力改善のために、改めて基礎に立ち返ってみることにした。

Writing (Independent task)で重要なのは、以下であることを再認識した。

１．ボキャブラリーや構文がバラエティーに富んだ洗練された文章
２．エッセイとして構成がしっかりした文章

このうち、１．は一つ一つ表現を覚えて、実戦で使うという訓練を続けることで次第にできるようになると思うので、洗練された文章のコピータイプをするなどして蓄積できればと考えている。

２．については、都度書いたエッセイの構成がしっかりしているか色分けして検証するとよいだろうと思った。

＜Question＞
競争or協力

＜Sample Answer＞

     Without question, cooperation with others is the most important factor in a person’s eventual success. I have two reasons for this opinion: the way in which we can learn from others and the way we can complement each other’s strength and weakness.

     First of all, we can gain a great deal of information by cooperating with others. No matter how much we study by ourselves, we cannot learn everything that we need to know. By sharing information with others, we can gain much more knowledge than we could if we only tried to acquire the knowledge by ourselves. For example, when I was a university student, we formed study groups to help prepare for examinations. Different people were able to contribute different information. As a result, all members of the entire study group were able to learn the target material much more deeply than they could have if they had simply been in competition with each other, studying individually to get the highest grade. In short, all of us were able to attain our full potential through cooperation.

     Secondly, cooperation with others allows us to complement each other. Not everyone has the same strengths and weaknesses. By working together, one person’s strong points can compensate for another person’s weak points. In my case, I am very good at generating ideas, but very poor at concrete details and meeting deadlines. Inside my university study group there were two people who were very meticulous about making sure that we always included enough factual evidence in our group reports. In other words, they ensured that we moved down low enough on the abstraction ladder to fully support the points we were making. In addition, they were careful to set firm deadlines and to monitor the group’s progress to make sure that all of our group assignments were completed and submitted according to schedule. At the same time, they benefited from the ideas I came up with. Thus, again, through our mutual cooperation we were able to produce work together that was better than any of us could have created individually.

     For those reasons, cooperation is preferable to competition in allowing people to achieve their full potential.

太字が転換語や表現として有効と思われるもの。Bodyパラグラフにおける色分けは以下。

赤：トピックセンテンス

青：トピックセンテンスの詳細

緑：具体例

紫：パラグラフコンクルージョン

なんとなく書いていると、どこかの色が極端に薄くなり（紫はそもそも抜けたりする）、構成としてポイントが下がることも多々あるだろう。

上記で言えば、

・太字部分をふんだんに利用する

・一つ一つの文章表現を豊かにする

・色のバランスをよく考え、かつ特に紫が抜けないよう時間に気をつけて仕上げる

という点が注意点だろうか。

足元から自分の勉強スタイルを見直していこう。






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