Please have a look at my essays

[Artem215]

Hello, everyone!

I have to take the TOEFL test quite soon. I would like to make sure that I don't have any major problems with my writing skills. So please have a look at my essays and tell me what approximate grade (out of 30) I can rely on with such writing skills.
Topics are a bit old as they were used in the old version in the TOEFL. Nonetheless, I hope it will not make a big difference when you analyze my essays.

Thanks in advance,

Artem.

1. What are the qualities of a good co-worker?

In order to complete our work, we have to co-operate with other people. These people are called co-workers. To be able to work efficiently, we need a good co-worker. A good co-worker has several important qualities.
The first important quality of any co-worker is work efficiency. This means that, if needed, the co-worker must be able to work for a long time without unnecessary breaks and without lowering the work efficiency after a certain amount of time has passed. A good co-worker must be able to concentrate and adequately react to any input information even if he has worked for a very long time and is, therefore, really tired. Work efficiency is important for a good-worker because it is hard to get work done properly with low work efficiency. Low work efficiency will take a lot of unnecessary time to complete the work and may also decrease the quality of work. For example, it is obviously not very convenient to complete a large piece of work with a person who takes breaks every half an hour or whose concentration and, thus, ability to do work properly lasts only for one hour, after which he stops working properly.
The second really important quality of a co-worker is the ability to listen to and understand other co-workers. If a co-worker has these qualities, he is likely to agree with the others when they offer him ideas of how to complete the work in a better way, for example faster or with a higher quality. On the other hand, if the co-worker doesn’t have these qualities, he will probably disregard the proposals of other people and stick to his own idea even if it’s wrong. It is very hard to, therefore, persuade such person that your idea is correct. Thus, a co-worker who is able to listen to and understand other people will contribute to the work being done more efficiently.
The third important quality of a good co-worker is the ability to hold responsibility for his own mistakes. This means that, if a work group is responsible for something and something goes wrong because of one of the co-workers, he or she should admit that it was his mistake and that the whole group should not be blamed. This quality is very important as it makes your co-operation with this person less stressful. If you know that you are responsible only for your own mistakes and the co-worker is responsible only for his own mistakes, you can better concentrate on your work and not think about what will happen if the co-worker does a mistake that doesn’t depend on you. A person who is responsible for his mistakes is also more reliable as you may be confident that he will not attempt to make you responsible for his mistakes. It is really important, in my opinion, that everyone is responsible for his part of work. Collective responsibility is not a good thing.
Thus, a co-worker must possess several important characteristics, which are work efficiency, ability to listen to and understand other people and the ability to hold responsibility for one’s mistakes. Of course, there are many other important characteristics, which also depend on the type of work done. But, in my opinion, the three listed qualities are universally important for all types of work and are the most important ones. Working with a co-worker with such qualities must make work easier and more pleasant.

2.Should teenagers have paid jobs while they are students?

Nowadays, many teenagers have paid jobs while they are students. They work, mainly, because they need extra money or because they want to obtain work experience. It is debatable whether it is an advantage or a disadvantage that teenagers have paid jobs while they are studying. In my opinion, it is not the best option for a teenager to work while studying for several reasons.
The first reason is that education is very important and it is very hard to work and earn money and study well at the same time. Students who work have limited time for other activities. Sometimes, they simply don’t have enough time to attend the lessons, read textbooks and do the homework. In other cases, they have time for that in theory but they understand that, if they put a lot of effort into studying, they won’t have time for anything else, for example for hobbies, family and friends. It’s not a very pleasant thing to have no free time, especially when you are young and there seems to be so many interesting and exciting things in the world. Therefore, many of them begin to disregard education so as to have some time for more pleasant things.
The second reason is that the paid jobs that students have are usually not very useful in terms of professional knowledge. Young people, without a completed education, are in most cases employed in simple jobs, for example waiters, messengers or cashiers. These jobs don’t require any particular knowledge and don’t give any significant knowledge. Considering that this time could have been used to obtain more useful knowledge, such work is useless and even damaging. It is important to understand that in the 21st century the economy depends very much on advanced technologies and a good education is much more important than work experience in simple jobs.
The third reason is that the necessity for many students to work so as to earn money is very often exaggerated and is, in fact, not so big for most students. As my experience of interacting with students shows, most of them work not because they couldn’t have otherwise survived. They work for several other reasons among which are the believe that education is unimportant and any work experience is more important, the desire to feel independent from parents, the fact that working at a simple job is much easier than studying well, so work for them is an excuse for not studying. Of course, some students come from really poor families but even those families in most cases can financially support the students, considering that education is very important. After all, those students who really lack money can work during the holidays but not during the time of education.
Therefore, in my opinion, education is much more important for students than paid jobs. Education takes only a couple of years and must be completed properly. Paid jobs for are much less useful students and can be justified only during holidays and in extreme cases when there is no other way of earning for a living.

TOEFL listening lectures: A university lecture on the history of the English language