出国留学网托福频道提供托福作文评分标准与托福作文真题下载,托福作文技巧与托福作文机经真经,剑桥托福作文等托福作文参考书推荐等托福作文培训与辅导。
Writing Section
Directions: These sample tasks in the Writing section measure your ability to write in English in an academic environment. There will be 2 writing tasks.
· For the first task in this sampler, you will read a passage and part of a lecture about an academic topic. Then you will write a response to a question that asks you about the relationship between the lecture and the reading passage. Try to answer the question as completely as possible using information from the reading passage and the lecture. The question does not ask you to express your personal opinion. Your response will be judged on the quality of your writing and on how well your response presents the points in the lecture and their relationship to the reading passage.
· For the second task, you will demonstrate your ability to write an essay in response to a question that asks you to express and support your opinion about a topic or issue. Your essay will be scored on the quality of your writing. This includes the development of your ideas, the organization of your essay, and the quality and accuracy of the language you use to express your ideas.
· At the end of the writing section, in this sampler you will find two sample essays for each question, the score they received, and an explanation of how they were scored.
· In an actual test, you will be able to take notes while you listen and use your notes to help you answer the questions.
1. Read the following passage and the lecture which follows. In an actual test, you will
have 3 minutes to read the passage. Then, answer the question. In the test, you will
have 20 minutes to plan and write your response. Typically, an effective response will
be 150 to 225 words. Candidates with disabilities may request additional time to read
the passage and write the response.
READING PASSAGE
Critics say that current voting systems used in the United States are inefficient and often lead to the inaccurate counting of votes. Miscounts can be especially damaging if an election is closely contested. Those critics would like the traditional systems to be replaced with far more efficient and trustworthy computerized voting systems.
In traditional voting, one major source of inaccuracy is that people accidentally vote for the wrong candidate. Voters usually have to find the name of their candidate on a large sheet of paper containing many names—the ballot—and make a small mark next to that name. People with poor eyesight can easily mark the wrong name. The computerized voting machines have an easy-to-use touch-screen technology: to cast a vote, a voter needs only to touch the candidate’s name on the screen to record a vote for that candidate; voters can even have the computer magnify the name for easier viewing.
Another major problem with old voting systems is that they rely heavily on people to count the votes. Officials must often count up the votes one by one, going through every ballot and recording the vote. Since they have to deal with thousands of ballots, it is almost inevitable that they will make mistakes. If an error is detected, a long and expensive recount has to take place. In contrast, computerized systems remove the possibility of human error, since all the vote counting is done quickly and automatically by the computers.
Finally some people say it is too risky to implement complicated voting technology nationwide. But without giving it a thought, governments and individuals alike trust other complex computer technology every day to be perfectly accurate in banking transactions as well as in the communication of highly sensitive information.
LECTURE TRANSCRIPT