Re: review my essay pls
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24 Jul 2013, 11:39
It is widely believed that the world will soon run out of its oil supply. Providing details and examples, explain how you think the average person could reduce their oil consumption
I guess this is a really important topic and the humankind has to solve this problem as soonest as possible, because we need oil everywhere. We need oil that our cars are running, that we can produce plastic and so on. In my view, it is very important to reduce the oil consumption for several reasons. First of all you should work on grammar; although grammar will not be the main focus (content is), grammatical errors will prevent you from getting high scores. For example, you should have written "as soon as possible" and NOT "as soonest as possible." BUT most importantly, you have made a terrible mistake! The prompt asks you to provide examples of how people can REDUCE the amount of oil they use, NOT the IMPORTANCE or SIGNIFICANCE of reducing oil consumption. You have to make sure that your thesis actually answers the question. Interestingly, your body paragraphs do answer the question (though unclear at times). So you just have to change the thesis statement to match your entire response. Something like, "In my view, there are various ways in which an individual can reduce his or her oil consumption." should work.
First reason I want to mention is that we could save a lot of oil by improve our cars with new technologies (Change to: "First of all, people can use technology to reduce oil consumption." Notice how I do not limit myself to "cars" in my topic sentence (because there are other ways in which people use oil / after you use this topic sentence, THEN you can introduce cars), and how I deleted the word "reason." This is not a "reason," it is a "method" used to reduce oil consumption.. For example we could upgrade our cars that they run half with gasoline and half with solar power or battery power. That would save a lot of fuel we are wasting every day only to get from place A to place B. Good example and explanation, but too short. Try to explore a little more. For instance, you can elaborate more on the use of cars; how people (many of them) use cars very often which is leading to the overall decrease in oil supply.
Another reason I want to provide is that we could take public transport like buses or trains to get to school and work. (Again, not a "reason," so change it to something like: "Similarly, people can use public transportation such as trains in order to save oil." Taking the car is often very ineffective because the most cars have four seats but in the most cases we use only one to two of this seats. In contrast buses, in buses are often seats available for up to 50 persons and the bus runs to the most important places, so everybody could use the bus. The next better idea would be to take the bike, if the place of working or school is not that far away from home. You make a very interesting point about trains and buses using less oil compared to cars but carry more people at the same time. However the connection between this point and "oil reduction" is implicit and should be made more explicit. Try using sentences like "While vehicles such as cars use a certain amount of oil to carry a very limited number of people, vehicles such as trains and buses use less oil but carry more people. Clearly using public transportation can be more convenient for people and friendly to the environment in many cases." See how I connect everything to the topic of "oil" which we are supposed to discuss.
Last reason how we could save oil in a very effective way is that we can establish carpool communities. Again, not a "reason," so make sure you change it. But more importantly, you should probably define what "carpool communities" are. Defining significant terms is very important when writing essays. For example if somebody in your neighborhood has to get in the same direction like you, you can take him with in your car. So we could oil for one car. If everyone would to this we could have a multiplication effect and so we could save oil in a huge amount.
In conclusion, I guess we have a lot of possibilities to reduce our oil consumption. If we would use every alternative we have we could save a lot of oil and would not run out of it in such a quick time. That is why I guess it is a very important question to discuss.
General feedback: Review your thesis statement and make sure it answers the question. Even if the body paragraphs answer the question, if the thesis is unclear, you will lose points. Next, work on your grammar. There are frequent, minor grammatical errors in your essay which can distract your audience from your main point. Also, you have interesting ideas but you do not expand your ideas. Providing more examples, explaining its significance, and things like this will make your overall argument stronger. Good luck!