TOEFL® essay: If you could change one important thing about your hometown...

[Quan11287]

If you could change one important thing about your hometown, what would you change? Use reasons and specific examples to support your answer.

I have been living in my hometown since I was born here. Therefore, as a citizen of the city, I clearly understand what it is in dire of now. Frankly, if possible, I would like to have the performance mechanism of the municipal authority reformed.

First, bureaucratic procedures have caused people too many troubles. The law stipulates a significant number of unreasonable requirements that could hardly be met. Therefore it may take a person months or even years to get a document approved. In particular, some requirements cannot be realized in reality. For example, if you want to buy a house in the city, you should have the permanent residency card first. On the contrary, if you want to apply for a permanent residency card, you must own a house beforehand. So the procedures form a vicious circle. Also, many other ironic things still exist in the administrative system, causing difficulties for people. The citizens have widely complained about these paradoxes for a long time. However, everything is changing slowly. Only when those unnecessary regulations are done away, do people’s lives become more pleasant.

Second, a complex legal system full of paradoxes also results in many evils. Exhausted by the tangled procedures, people ask for help from officers, the informed insiders. Unfortunately, because they are insiders, state officers know how to maneuver the regulations to harass the citizens rather than to help them. If you have a trouble with a procedure, just give the relevant officer an envelope including a reasonable sum of money, then your problem will vanish. Otherwise, you will be told to wait indefinitely or to give absurd documents as provided by the law. This practice has actually become a social evils, producing a number of corrupt cadres. The city’s budget is embezzled, the public works projects are thieved and so on. If everything goes on like this, very soon, the municipal authority will lose the belief of people. New laws should be adopted to strictly punish the corrupt officers and control the performance of others more effectively. Once the mechanism is renovated, people’s lives will be improved. Their taxes will not go into the hands of wrong-doers anymore, the public works will be safer. Hence, needless to say how happy the community will be.

All in all, more than ever before, the municipal authority is in need of a drastic change so that the social order and discipline could be ensured.

TOEFL listening lectures: A university lecture by a professor of Paleontology

[Alan]

I have been living in my hometown since I was born here. Therefore, as a citizen of the city, I clearly understand what it is in dire NEED of now. Frankly, if possible, I would like to have the performance mechanism of the municipal authority reformed.

First, bureaucratic procedures have caused people too many troubles. The law stipulates a significant number of unreasonable requirements that could hardly be met. Therefore it may take a person months or even years to get a document approved. In particular, some requirements cannot be realized in reality. For example, if you want to buy a house in the city, you should have the permanent residency card first. On the contrary, if you want to apply for a permanent residency card, you must own a house beforehand. So the procedures form a vicious circle. Also, many other ironic things still exist in the administrative system, causing difficulties for people. The citizens have widely complained about these paradoxes for a long time. However, everything is changing slowly. Only when those unnecessary regulations are done away WITH, do people’s lives become more pleasant.

Second, a complex legal system full of paradoxes also results in many evils. Exhausted by the tangled procedures, people ask for help from officers, the informed insiders. Unfortunately, because they are insiders, state officers know how to maneuver the regulations to harass the citizens rather than to help them. If you have a DIFFICULTY with a procedure, just give the relevant officer an envelope including a reasonable sum of money, then your problem will vanish. Otherwise, you will be told to wait indefinitely or to give absurd documents as REQUIRED by the law. This practice has actually become a social evil, producing a number of corrupt cadres. The city’s budget is embezzled, the public works projects are PLUNDERED ??and so on. If everything goes on like this, very soon, the municipal authority will lose people'S TRUST. New laws should be adopted to strictly punish the corrupt officers and control the performance of others more effectively. Once the mechanism is renovated, people’s lives will be improved. Their taxes will not go into the hands of wrong-doers any more, the public works will be safer. Hence, needless to say how happy the community will be.

All in all, more than ever before, the municipal authority is in need of a drastic change so that the social order and discipline could be ensured.

A good piece of writing

Alan
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English as a Second Language
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