You must select a person to teach others to do a job. Which one of the following is the most important for you to consider in making your selection? (full score)

TOEFL Writing Topic: You must select a person to teach others to do a job. Which one of the following is the most important for you to consider in making your selection? (full score)

the person’s education

the person’s work experience

the quality of the person’s previous work

Use specific reasons and examples to support your answer.

The answer to this question depends largely upon the type of position because the idea of ‘teaching others’ to do a job is a little bit vague. In other words, there are additional facts that need to be supplied. However, I will do my best to respond with several specific examples.

Each of these factors could be advantageous for a new employee, but some of them might be more heavily weighted as in the case of a person hired to teach at a professional level. For instance, if the new employee is going to be in charge of training certified public accountants, then he or she will obviously need to have the relevant background and skills. In this case it is likely that the person’s education will be the foremost consideration, e.g., do they have CPA training? If not, then the issues concerning work experience and quality of work might be irrelevant. How could they teach professional staff CPAs without having already earned the requisite certification themselves?

On the other hand, if the vacancy involves creating digital models for public exhibitions, then certainly the applicant’s education will not be important assuming that they can present a high-quality portfolio. Furthermore, if the job opening is a sales position, then prior work experience would likely be the most important consideration.

In each of these cases, however, there is one additional factor that could impact the hiring process: recommendations from former supervisors. In this regard, prior employment background is commonly a critical factor especially if the new employee will be training others on-site. It would not be a good idea to hire an employee who has previously demonstrated poor teaching and/or social skills.

Ultimately, I would ask the applicant to present a sample tutorial or lesson in addition to a work portfolio (if relevant), a CV/resume and letters of reference. [311 words]

Notes:

1. All of the prompts are from former TOEFL exams.
2. The information available online, i.e., Google search results, is either misleading or wrong relative to length: [an organization] states independent essays should be between 280-320 words. More words than needed is equivalent to more opportunities to make a mistake. Students should be informed re: word count, i.e., MORE WORDS does not mean a higher score.
3. Information concerning paragraphs/content available from [a TOEFL training school], etc. is also wrong: the number of paragraphs is irrelevant and the only important issue re: content is to RESPOND DIRECTLY to the prompt, i.e., the raters/software doesn’t care about structure or content except the latter must Make sense and Must directly respond to the prompt [to preclude prepared essays].
4. UK usage/spelling is entirely acceptable.
5. AVOID complex grammar; avoid ‘Chinese English’ usage; 5 tenses: present, past, future, present perfect [have done/has been], and conditional [would go/could do it] are OPTIMAL.
6. Don’t rewrite the prompt in the first paragraph of your essay…it’s okay to paraphrase [use words that mean the same thing].
7. Recent TOEFL change…students found test takes too long, so there are fewer multiple-choice questions, i.e., essays are now more heavily ‘weighted’]