TOEFL® essay samples: Chance or Work

[Mahdi]

TOEFL essay samples: Chance or Work

"When people succeed in life, it is because of hard work. Being lucky has nothing to do with success in life." Do you agree or disagree with the quotation above? Use specific reasons and examples to explain your position.

When people succeed? Who is a successful person? Maybe everybody think that is very easy question but if you think more that there is many different meaning for success. Some people think that a richman is a sucessful person and some others emphasize to the science or the athletic sport.
There is no doubt that there are a lot of sucessfull persons in any apect that are mentioned above. If we study their life we will find that they have had great goals and have attemted to achieve to the their goals. They have had often regular programs for their lifes. Although I dont deny this fact that may had have a little chance but their fame is because of their attemts. For example Bill gates is one of the richest man in the world. He is the boss of Microsoft coaporation one of the biggest sotware coaporations in the world. Maybe he was lucky that he was born in US and studied sotware programming when he was young but there are many sotware engineers in the US that are not as well as Bill.

All in all I belive that achieving great goals can not occur only with reliing to the chance.

[Mister Micawber]

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How do people succeed? Who is a successful person? Maybe everyone thinks that is a very easy question, but further consideration will show that there are many different meanings for success. Some people think that a rich man is a successful person and others emphasize sciences or athletic sports. [All of the underlined part is irrelevant to the topic. The topic is 'Success -- hard work or luck?' You are not expected to define 'success'. You will lose points if you do not stick to the specific topic.]

There is no doubt that there are many successful people in the world. If we study their lives, we will find that they have had great goals and have attempted to achieve these goals. They have often had regular programs for their lives. Although I do not deny that they may had have a little luck, their fame is because of their efforts. For example, Bill Gates is one of the richest men in the world. He is the head of Microsoft Corporation, one of the biggest software corporations in the world. Perhaps he was lucky that he was born in the US and studied sotware programming when he was young, but there are many software engineers in the US that are not as well off as Bill.

All in all, achieving great goals cannot be achieved only by relying on chance.

[Your approach is OK. Your introduction is poor: it has no thesis statement, and it wanders from the topic assigned. Your 'Bill Gates' example is good, but you need more details in the body of the essay. Your conclusion is direct, but far to short; it also needs more detail. You made some simple spelling mistakes; you must proofread your essay after it is written.]
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Canadian-American native speaker
who teaches English for a living at Mister Micawber's
ESL cafe: Interview with Mr. Micawber