TOEFL INDIPENDENT WRITING TASK - 1 This is a short text i wrote while pricticing for my TOEFL indipendent writing task. The subject was people seeking and not seeking indipendece from parents. LEAVING THE NEST Growing up in life a man or a woman is challenged in many situations, work, firends, school and even hobbies-related activities can be the theater of uneasy situations. In the early part of a man's life, every situation, good or bad that it is, sees a sipervising figure watching over the child steps and aiding some, if needed. Parents teaches us not only to walk and speak, but olso how to behave and how to react at other people's behaving. An inmportant task that parents should accomplish is to teach to their sons and daughters how tho get what they want, how to estabilish a goal and how to move along the path of completing it. All this is to say that, to me, this is the difference between young adults that seek indipendency and ones that do not. If a person knows what he wants, and how to obtain it, soon he will develope autonomy in decisions and autonomous thinking. A person like that will experience many things on his own along his growth, thus developing personal tastes and desires. Otherwise, if parents fail to give their pupils the right autonomy in goal setting and achieving, there will be always the need for a supervising figure in the pupil's life. The adult that will result from that pupil will always need to be adviced, guided, watched and protected, in the worse cases even from himself. The desire of leaving the parents and the family is a strict necessity to people of the first kind, who need space to express their own tastes, to make their choices and mistakes with increasing autonomy. Otherwise, as birds do, a person who is not seeking aoutonomy will be glad to be fed from his parent's mouth, metaphorically speaking. Ultimately i am convinced that seeking indipendency is crucial to a mature and stable person, thus my best choice would be to seek it; but more important, i think, is not to choose indipendency, but to grow up like a person who needs it.

TOEFL INTEGRATED WRITING TASK - 1 This is a short text I wrote while practicing for my TOEFL Integrated Writing Task. Altruism, as we can read in the excerpt, is a common habit among human beings and mammals. This is described as an act of giving, sharing and behaving for someone else's sake. Sharing food or helping a member of the community or a group is seen as an altruistic act for an individual. The major point being the fact that there is nothing for him in behaving this way, except for loosing what he's giving. The reading passage argument this point by giving various examples; me most relevant one among them is the meerkat social habit. When these little mammals gather for eating or hunting there is one of them that stays apart, whatching over the group. It's a sentinel, placed there in order to warn the group for approaching predators. Here is where the excerpt and the lecture start splitting paths. The former states that being a sentinel is an altruistic behavior for a meerkat, the latter disproves this belief by pointing out recently discovered facts. It is true, as it is state by the passage, that the sentinel is the first in line when a predator approaches, but the lecture points out that, after the utterance of the warn cry, the sentinel is the first to escape and to reach a safe position. Also it's useful to the meerkat group to be warned, states the passage, but teir reaction to the warning may bring to a mass movement which would only make predator's attention focus on the meerkats, or notice them if it didn't yet. The last point about meerkats in both sources it's the sacrifice. It was supposed that the sentinel's role didn't include eating, but it has been found that, even in this case, the sentinel is the first to full up its belly before parting from the group; so this disproves for the third time the statements of the passage. As in the beginning of the excerpt, in the end of the lecture altruism is looked at from a human point of view. In cases like a person donating a kidney to a family member or a complete stranger, both sources agrees, it is an act of altruism. The passage states that this is not rewarded in any way, but the teacher in the lecture points out non material rewards can be seeked from donors. For some people things like gratitude, appreciation and self esteem may be a valuable ad worth reward for the sacrifice needed from the altruist.