Just an overview

[Locosr]

Hey guys, I'm new here. I decided to join the forum in order to get some advice about the toefl test IBT. I'm going to pass the exam in a few weeks, and I wrote my first independant essay tonight, Nevertheless, I'm not able to evaluate my level without any help. Thus, I'm asking for some help, would you like to read my essay and tell me about its quality ? I'm not looking for a precise correction, on the contrary I just expect that you would read it and tell me what kind of grade I would have got at the exam. You would be very nice and helpful to do this.

Concerning my background, I never went in an English country more than one week. But I used to read in english and to watch series in OV without subtitles. I plan to pass the exam in one month, and I've to estimate how long I should study in order to get 100+.

Here is my essay:

. Do you agree or disagree with the following statement? Television, newspapers, magazines, and other media pay too much attention to the personal lives of famous people such as public figures and celebrities. Use specific reasons and details to explain your opinion.

Although it is hard to draw a comparison between serious news and gossips, I may point out a lot of reasons why some people think that media focus too much on public figures. Among others, a large number of people are not interested in important news and prefer celebrities actuality. Alternatively, the news that people get depend on the media they choose. Consequently, I would say that serious news are more important rather than celebrities' privacy for the reasons below.

Firstly, people might be annoyed by the media that talk all the time about public figures. Celebrities do not have any privacy anymore. More precisely, you can see pictures of them everwhere. More over, people already know everything about public figures' life. Anyway, I would say that celebrities' life is not a very serious subject. I can site as an example my own experience. Last time, I bought a newspaper in order to find information about the European economic situation. The more I was reading the articles, the more I realized there were no interesting subjects. More precisely, the reading was only about famous people's privacy. I finally decided to throw the newspaper away because I was not looking for that kind of information. Though it could be argued that gossips are entertaining, I waste my money buying this newspaper and I waste my time reading it. To put it in a nutshell, news about celebrities are invading every media and I'm disapointed about that.

Secondly, there are more important subject than public figures' personal life. The last years make the world change a lot. On the one hand, some issues -such as the environmental issue- became more compelling. On the other hand, media are important to make people aware about what happens on the Earth. Let us consider the instance of adults who usually read important news. My father used to buy newspapers everyday in order to get aware. More precisely, he is interested in politics. Thus, every evening he explains me what he read and he gives his opinion about the situation. Thanks to him, I'm able to know what is happening in the world. More over, I did not realized what happened in the Arabic countries a few months ago. Nevertheless. thanks to some serious media I was able to fill my gaps about the subject very quickly. To sum it up, this example clearly illustrates why serious information are more interesting than celebrities privacy.

In brief, I would say that celebrities private life is unfortunately becoming more popular. Especially for young, they indeed buy a lot of magazines about people and gossips. To put it another way, they should develop their culture by reading more interesting things than celebrities because they already know everything about stars' life.

This essay is about 460 characters. Though some books recommand to write about 300, I decided to do the longest essay I could -even if the subject was not interesting-.

Best regards, and thank you for your help ;)

TOEFL listening lectures: When was Angkor Wat constructed?