Toefl Writing

As of late June 2023, ETS has published 23 Academic Discussion tasks for TOEFL Writing. They are in the subjects of:
  • Business
  • Education
  • Ecology
  • economics
  • Political science
  • Psychology
  • Public policy
  • Sociology

In other words, social sciences. It makes sense for ETS to use social science topics because they are topics that people disagree about. I will not be surprised to see tasks from other social sciences, such as anthropology, geography, law, and linguistics.

It seems to me that the hard sciences and literature/history are too difficult for this task. Also, there are already plenty of biology and paleontology tasks on the integrated writing task.

The questions are similar to the independent writing questions in the Official Guide to TOEFL iBT. Some of them are open-ended (you can write about anything you like), and some of them are forced choices (choose one of two choices).

With this logic in mind, I’ve written 32 academic discussions (and am continuing to write more). E4TG will begin offering an online (by email) Academic Discussion scoring service in late July, 2023.

For more information, contact Donald at  toeflcoach@gmail.com.

The three published questions for the new task are:

What do you think is the most significant effect that watching television has on people? Why do think television has this effect? (open-ended question in sociology)
What scientific discovery or technological invention from the last two hundred years – other than computers and cell phones – would you choose as being important. Why? (open ended question in economics)
If you were a policy maker, which issue would you argue is more important – education or environmental protections? (forced choice question in political science)

Notice that these questions are very similar to the independent writing questions in the Official Guide to TOEFL iBT, and that they are either open-ended (you can write about anything you like) or forced choices (choose one of two choices).

With this logic in mind, I’ve written 32 academic discussions (and am continuing to write more). E4TG will begin offering an online (by email) Academic Discussion scoring service starting July 31.

Each week will provide three tasks:

Monday

Academic Discussion

Wednesday

Integrated Writing

Friday

Academic Discussion

For four weeks. That’s 12 essays rated with grammar correction per month. The price will be ¥22,000.