Environmental issues such as climate change have always been an international challenge because the government is not imposing harsh punishments against offenders. To what extent do you agree or disagree? Support your answer with specific reasons and examples.
Sample Essay with Corrections
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The essay presents a clear position against harsh punishments for environmental offenders and develops its main ideas with relevant examples, such as the importance of education and fairness in punishment. Key strengths include a logical progression of ideas and appropriate vocabulary for the topic. However, critical areas for improvement include the need for more specific examples or data to enhance persuasiveness, as well as the use of more varied and sophisticated cohesive devices to improve coherence. Structural changes made include replacing basic transition phrases with more advanced linking phrases and ensuring clearer topic sentences. Suggestions for further improvement not implemented in the corrected version include incorporating synonyms to reduce repetition and using more complex sentence structures for greater grammatical range. The tone used is appropriate for an academic essay, maintaining a formal and persuasive style throughout.
Detailed Scores
What this means:
The essay is generally coherent, with a logical progression of ideas. Each paragraph presents a distinct point that supports the main argument. However, the use of cohesive devices could be improved; for instance, transitions between ideas could be more varied and sophisticated to enhance the flow of the essay. Phrases like 'first of all' and 'secondly' are somewhat basic and could be replaced with more advanced linking phrases.
How to improve:
- Use a clear paragraph structure
- Connect ideas with appropriate linking words
- Maintain logical progression
- Use referencing effectively
What this means:
The essay demonstrates a reasonable range of grammatical structures, with mostly accurate sentence formation. However, there are some awkward constructions, such as 'the government cannot control everything that people do,' which could be expressed more clearly. Minor grammatical errors are present but do not significantly impede understanding. To improve, the writer should aim for more complex sentence structures and ensure clarity in expression.
How to improve:
- Use complex sentence structures
- Maintain grammatical accuracy
- Use a variety of sentence patterns
- Check for common grammar errors
What this means:
The vocabulary used is appropriate for the topic, with terms like 'harsh punishments,' 'educating people,' and 'support and resources.' However, there is some repetition of phrases such as 'the government should' and 'instead of punishing people,' which detracts from the overall lexical variety. To improve, the writer could incorporate synonyms or more sophisticated expressions to demonstrate a wider range of vocabulary.
How to improve:
- Use a wider range of vocabulary
- Demonstrate awareness of collocations
- Avoid word repetition
- Use more sophisticated vocabulary accurately
What this means:
The essay addresses the prompt by presenting a clear position against harsh punishments for offenders of environmental issues. It develops main ideas with relevant examples, such as the importance of education and the fairness of punishments. However, the argument could be strengthened by providing more specific examples or data to support the claims made, which would enhance the overall persuasiveness of the response.
How to improve:
- Address all parts of the task fully
- Support ideas with specific examples
- Develop each point thoroughly
- Stay relevant to the topic
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