TOEFL Write for an Academic Discussion Practice Questions

Check your response: does it…

• Respond to the professor's dilemma about unfinished prototypes versus finished achievements.
• Explain and support your own position with a developed reason or relevant example.
• Add an original contribution that engages at least one existing idea in the discussion.

Model response (one good answer — yours can differ)

I would not treat this as a simple choice between exposing drafts and hiding them. If the center organizes the display around one design question, a prototype can remain visible without pretending to be a finished standard. For example, a section labeled "How can a chair stay light but support weight?" could show an early wobbling model, a revised version, and the final piece. That helps visitors read the objects as steps in inquiry, not as the center's expectations. Still, if the learning center cannot give that framing, the second concern matters: a loose prototype may look like an unfinished promise rather than productive learning. So the display should depend on whether context makes exploration obvious.

For answers at every band and annotated reference responses, see the Academic Discussion sample answers.

Check your response: does it…

• Take a position on whether cities should make their buses free to ride.
• Support the position with a reason or example that goes beyond Maya's points about traffic and boarding speed and Kwame's point about who the new riders would be.
• Engage with at least one student's idea while adding a new contribution to the discussion.

Model response (one good answer — yours can differ)

Kwame's prediction may well be correct, but I don't think it is an argument against free buses. If many new riders are people who used to walk or cycle, the bus is finally reaching people who were getting around with difficulty: an older man walking twenty minutes to the pharmacy, or a parent crossing town with two children because a family's fares add up quickly. Moving those people is exactly what public transportation is for, even if it does little for traffic. There is also a cost argument. Collecting fares is not free, since a city needs ticket machines, card systems, and staff to check tickets, and in a small system those costs can swallow a large share of what the fares bring in. So the question isn't only whether free buses remove cars. They make the city easier to move around for the people with the least money, often at a smaller net cost than it seems.

For answers at every band and annotated reference responses, see the Academic Discussion sample answers.

Check your response: does it…

• Take a position on whether museums should give more space to interactive displays.
• Support the position with a reason or example that differs from Jaya's point about learning by doing and Teodor's point about real objects.
• Respond to at least one student's idea while contributing something new.

Model response (one good answer — yours can differ)

Teodor's argument becomes even stronger when you think about how long each kind of display lasts. An original pot has already survived a thousand years and will look the same in another fifty, but a touch screen is designed to last a few years at most. Its software needs updates, its parts wear out under thousands of fingers, and eventually the whole system has to be replaced, sometimes before the museum has finished paying for it. Money spent that way is money that can't go to caring for the collection or to bringing in new objects. As for Jaya's memory of boring museums, I think she has identified the wrong cause. Children aren't bored by old things; they're bored by long labels and rooms where they have nothing to do. A museum that lets them handle a replica tool or sketch the object in front of them gets the same engagement at a fraction of the cost.

For answers at every band and annotated reference responses, see the Academic Discussion sample answers.

Check your response: does it…

• State which way of organizing a community garden works better.
• Support the choice with a reason or example that is not simply Anouk's point about responsibility or Pablo's point about bringing neighbors together.
• Engage with at least one student's idea while adding a new contribution.

Model response (one good answer — yours can differ)

Individual plots work better, and the reason is what happens when a group has to decide what to grow. In a shared garden, space is limited, so every row of one crop is a row taken from another, and the majority's preferences usually win. In a diverse neighborhood, that is a real loss. A family that cooks with bitter melon or a particular kind of chili pepper may not find those vegetables in any nearby store, and a vote will almost always favor familiar crops like tomatoes and lettuce. Pablo hopes that making decisions together will bring neighbors closer, but I think he has it backward. Arguments over scarce space are one of the quickest ways to turn neighbors against each other. Separate plots let each family grow what matters to them, and neighbors will still meet and talk, because they will be working side by side every weekend.

For answers at every band and annotated reference responses, see the Academic Discussion sample answers.

Check your response: does it…

• State which approach a city should choose when its transit budget is limited.
• Support the choice with a reason or example that adds to Mirela's point about access and Rahul's point about ridership.
• Engage with at least one student's idea while contributing a new idea.

Model response (one good answer — yours can differ)

I'd choose frequency, and I think it actually serves Mirela's riders better than a thin network does. Consider what an hourly bus means in practice. If you arrive at a stop at a random moment, you wait thirty minutes on average, and if your trip needs a transfer to a second hourly route, a twenty-minute ride can easily take two hours. A teenager or a worker without a car can't build a life around that, so they end up asking for rides or not going at all. With a bus every ten minutes, nobody needs a timetable, and a transfer costs a few minutes instead of most of an hour. Mirela is correct that people in outer areas pay taxes too, but spreading the buses so thinly that no route is useful doesn't really serve them. The fairer goal is service people can actually rely on, even if some of them have to walk farther to reach it.

For answers at every band and annotated reference responses, see the Academic Discussion sample answers.

Check your response: does it…

• Take a position on whether it is better for museums to allow photography in their galleries or to have visitors keep their phones in their pockets.
• Support the position with a reason or example beyond Ayesha's point about attention and Lukas's point about later learning.
• Respond to at least one student's idea while adding a new contribution.

Model response (one good answer — yours can differ)

Asking visitors to put their phones away would shut out some of the people who look most carefully. For many visitors, a phone is a tool for seeing better, not a distraction. My grandfather has weak eyesight, and when we visit museums, he photographs labels and small objects so that he can zoom in on details he could never read from behind the rope. Visitors reading labels in a foreign language do something similar with translation apps. Ayesha is describing a different problem. The crowds she saw in front of one famous painting were not really caused by cameras; those people would be standing there anyway, because that painting is what everyone came to see. Taking away their phones would not make the room less crowded, and it would make the museum harder to enjoy for exactly the visitors who need a little help to pay attention.

For answers at every band and annotated reference responses, see the Academic Discussion sample answers.