gre writing issue sample writing 30
- Teachers' salaries should be based on their students' academic performance.
Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the claim. In developing and supporting your position, be sure to address the most compelling reasons and/or examples that could be used to challenge your position.
Saying that teachers’ salaries should be based on their students’ academic performance, the speaker asserts that the primary duty of a good teacher is to improve his students’ intellectual capacity and academic skill. In some sense, it is undeniable that one of noble duties of an educator is to help students to grow intellectually. Still, in my opinion, the notion that teachers are only for students’ test score and intellectual achievements is somewhat outdated. There could be lots of other important roles and functions an effective mentor should take. --
Stating teachers’ salaries should be based on their students’ academic performance, the speaker asserts that the sole important duty an educator should take is to enhance students’ intellectual skills. Under the traditional norms, it is undeniable that teachers pay more attention to students’ academic performance than anything else. However, this view fails to consider several important roles and functions expected from an effective teacher.
Of course, few would disagree that providing students with good opportunities to develop their intellectual skills is one of the most important duties of any teacher. Considering the fact that schools are places where some basic knowledge is accumulated and transmitted to the younger generation, providing relevant knowledge is inseparable from the basic function of educators. In fact, a college professor who cannot provide proper guidance and tools for students’ research loses any ground for which he or she is in the university system. There is no excuse for a math teacher if his students receive little or no significant insight from him. Though higher test scores and grade points never constitute everything students expect from their teachers, they are never trivial in themselves.
Nevertheless, this does not necessarily mean that teachers should be judged only by their contributions to students’ academic achievements. Considering the fact that one’s school years are a period that is filled with confusions, unpredictabilities, and anxieties of life, a good teacher, I believe, is one who can provide appropriate advices for her students to reduce them. Perhaps, an advice of true sympathy and love might be much more valuable than an hour of lecture if a student were lost in his ultimate orientation of life. In this sense, I think the duty of a good teacher should not be restricted to providing good instructions. --------
By saying that teachers’ salaries should be decided by their students’ academic performance, the speaker asserts that the primary function of any effective educator is to offer practical knowledge to his students. Basically, it is difficult to deny that schools are institution for intellectual trainings and that one of teachers’ ultimate responsibilities is to provide adequate curricular services. However, this view seems to underestimate a variety of roles a good teacher should play for his or her students.
Without doubt, academic performance cannot be compromised in every level of education. Different from parents or peers of students, teachers in general have a basic responsibility to advance students’ intellectual skills required at a given level of learning. Unless a student earns basic math, science, and language skills from his fourth or fifth grade instructors, why should he sit a whole day and month in his classroom? If a professor cannot clarify general rules of research or complexity of theoretical backgrounds of certain topics, any college student would be dissatisfied with her relationship with the teacher. In this sense, it is undeniable that one of important criteria to evaluate the ability of a teacher should be his or her own skill to help students to increase their intellectual capacities.
However, teachers are not a “smart machine” that provides pieces of knowledge according to their students’ demands. Consider the fact that students are also human beings who wish to avoid confusion in forming their identities and structuring their worldviews. Then, it is clear that an effective teacher is one who can provide a range of social values, from desirable to undesirable. By showing a number of unique life experiences and thoughts related to them, the teacher can help students in more critical manners than a teacher who simply focuses on improvements of students’ test scores and grade points.
I disagree that contributions of a teacher should be calculated only by his ability to improve his students’ intellectual skills in another sense. With regard to the diversity of students’ actual demands, a good teacher cannot be one who unifies all those varied needs into one clear purpose, better test score. Rather, in my opinion, a good teacher is one who respects students’ distinct dreams and pays due attentions to individual needs. Some students, for example, may want to have psychological security from fears and anxieties. If a teacher fails to raise those students’ academic standing in this month in order to soothe their insecurities, then does he not deserve his salary? From my standpoint, he deserves a huge bonus as well as his own salary.
To sum, ~~~~