Most important characteristics of a good leader

TOEFL Essay 30 with model answer:

Read the question below. You have 30 minutes to plan, write, and revise your essay. You should write at lease 300 words.

What are some of the most important characteristics of a good leader?

Use reasons and specific examples to explain why these characteristics are important.

Model Answer:

It is said that great leaders are made not born though it might contradict with some people’s opinion about inherent characteristics of a natural born leader. The statement is authentic but there are few exceptions too. Surrounding environment is an important issue regarding the leadership. To be a good or great leader, few important features are required.

Leadership is the process to execute a task in engagement with the other relevant people, by applying available resources and skills and within a deadline. But the tasks are not as easy as it is pronounced. A leader needs to achieve some specific qualities that will make him special from the common people. The first and the most important feature of a leader is honesty; he has to be honest in his speeches and works. He may get some advantages, temporarily, by falsifying information or being dishonest but in the long run, such leaders lose their credibility. So, if you plan to be a good leader, you have to be honest in every possible way.

To be a leader, one needs to be extrovert in nature. Unless you are being able to communicate with the people you are working with, you cannot be a successful leader. For communication, you have to move first in many places. But introvert people do not take the first attempt usually for their reclusive nature. Besides, you have to be confident enough to execute a specific job within a budgeted time and using the available resources. If you lack the confidence, you cannot be a good leader. The leaders who have created histories in different countries were highly confident about their goals and achieved so by using the confidence.

Attitude is a great fact to make you a good leader. If you do not own a positive attitude and always seek faults of others, you might be unable to be a good leader. Humans are never perfect and thus they cannot bring perfection in all of their works. So, you are to be positive in your attitude. You have to share your knowledge and inspire other over accepting responsibilities. You have to do it because great leaders also make leaders. So, you are to be inspiring and allow others to follow you in different activities and works. It will help to build a positive image for you among the people you are working with.

The leader should also be visionary. It is an extraordinary quality for a leader to be visionary and plan accordingly to overcome the obstacles on the way to development. If he cannot foresee the problems, he cannot be a good leader. All the subordinates, in fact, wait for such predictions from the leaders so that they could move in the right way and if the leader fails, he loses his popularity from his men. Most of the times we react but the great leaders never exercise reactive attitudes. They are always calm and proactive. So, proactive attitude is another must for the leaders. Besides, a leader never takes pride in his ability to perform the things rather he is on the view that a team is more successful than a leader alone.

There are a large number of political and social leaders are available who exercise the qualities in their everyday life. They have not turned into the leader by overnight rather they were patient and continued exercising and finally, they win.

(Word count = 567)

Sometimes you have to lose in order to win

TOEFL Essay 28 with model answer:

Read the question below. You have 30 minutes to plan, write, and revise your essay. You should write at lease 300 words.

Do you agree or disagree with the following statement?

Sometimes, you have to lose in order to win.

Use specific reasons and examples to support your answer.

Model Answer:

Life is a battlefield and we are the soldiers in this field. Sometimes we win, and at times we are to fail. The failure provides us encouragement to be successful in the next round.

To win something, you are to be a loser at first and it is imperative not to take the failure as a negative experience. It is considered as the pillar of success. There are a large number of people who have failed several times in the beginning of their life and now they are at the peak of success. They did not give up hope or lost motivations. They tried continuously and finally succeeded to reach the goal.

Usually, people are afraid of the thought that they will be unable to be successful as they have failed in their first attempt. So, they give up performing the job or do not try hard or sometimes lose inspiration over the issue. They take the failure as a negative thing and it happens as most of the people do not know that they sometimes might fail in any task in order to win that perfectly. When people turn loser over any issue, it actually helps them to lose their fear too. Most of the people are afraid of doing any specific thing being occupied with fear and the fears are of different kinds. When they gradually start failing, the fear becomes vanish and they win finally.

Besides, losing in any job helps improving creativity. When a man turns loser, he tries to discover some other ways to execute the job and by this way the creativity exercise begins. They try to get a perfect way and accordingly invent many other similar methods to complete the job. Although all the ways are not equally helpful to accomplish the job, some of them turn the most efficient one and it happens only for their creativity.

Moreover, when someone loses, s/ he learn a very important lesson over the issue. When the issue comes before them once again, they do not commit the same mistake twice and become successful in doing so. But they lost at the first time and that does not mean that they are losers.

To take an example, we can cite many celebrities and famous people who have failed for several times and continued the failure attempts until they succeeded. Walt Disney, J. K. Rowling, Steven Spielberg, Steve Jobs, Oprah Winfrey, Thomas Edison, Bill Gates, Albert Einstein, Abraham Lincoln, Henry Ford, Winston Churchill, Charlie Chaplin, Emily Dickinson, Elvis Presley and many other renowned people have failed in their first attempts. But they are respectfully remembered in the current days as they did not give up hope and continued their efforts unless they achieved the success.

So, if you fail in the beginning, please do not give up hope or stop your endeavors. Miracles happen every day and it may also happen for you too. You are unable to do something today, but if you continue exercising that, someday you will be the master of your specific arena.

(Word count = 509)

What one quality or characteristic best defines success?

TOEFL Essay 25 with model answer:

Read the question below. You have 30 minutes to plan, write, and revise your essay. You should write at lease 300 words.

People define “success” in many different ways. In your opinion, what one quality or characteristic best defines “success”?

Use specific reasons and examples to support your choice.

Model Answer:

Success has different point of views or meanings and it varies from place to place, person to person. So, success is considered as a universal issue which has different terms based on situations. But the most important thing about success is that people are after it. If a student passes the exam, his passing is termed as a success. All the students in the world are after ‘success’, it means they want to pass their examinations with good grades. For a service holder, promotion is a success. If they are promoted to the desired level, it is considered that they have become successful in their career.

So, we are having various schools and opinions over defining success. But is it true that passing or getting promoted in a job is the success in a true sense? I do not think so. To me, success has a different meaning. It is not only passing the hurdles of life. I think success is the ability to perform things in a proper manner. If the works are done in the right way, they turn easier and the desired outcome is received. As a result, we turn successful.

So, it appears that success is the feature which is necessary to perform things in the right way to win the situations in your own way. Actually, success is a universal thing and it cannot be defined in words only. Sincerity is the most required thing to be successful.

If you do not become sincere whatever you are doing, you cannot expect to have a better result than the average level. If you want to have an extraordinary performance, you are to work harder than ever before. If you want a quality in your work and thrive in your profession, you are to work sincerely. Success has no shortcuts. You cannot achieve that or reach your destinations until you are preparing yourself with sufficient groundworks, and if you are on the view that you will achieve something easily, I bet that the thing will not last for longer. You are to regret for losing the thing.

To be successful, another important feature is to gain self-confidence. If your confidence level is of below standard, surely you will not gain the desired results. So, in line with sincerity, you are to gain a good level of self-confidence too to be a winner (or successful).

Therefore, success, to me, is the combination of sincerity in work and a positive attitude with belief to gain something. But it may not be denied that luck has something to do with success but that is a minor issue. If you do not work and believe that you will be the gainer, you are dreaming the daytime. So, get rid of the dreams and start believing and work accordingly.

(Word count = 465)

A good sense of humor is one of the most important human qualities

TOEFL Essay 19 with model answer:

Read the question below. You have 30 minutes to plan, write, and revise your essay. You should write at lease 300 words.

Do you agree or disagree with the following statement? 

 

A good sense of humor is one of the most important human qualities.

Use specific reasons and examples to support your opinion.

Model Answer:

Human being is the best creation in the universe. They are the best because of different reasons and quality and a good sense of humor is one of them. Without the sense of humor, one cannot live a happy life.

A sense of humor is the quality to appreciate the humor without being affected negatively by them. It does not mean that you are to memorize each and every joke you hear and have to deliver them in different conversational events, or you are to response to every issue you are hearing or dealing with. The sense of humor refers to appreciate the situation where the jokes are cracked, conversations are held and even if it is meant for or against you, you have to keep away from the negative consequences. Rather, you are to look and judge the issue from a different perspective.

As humans, we are blessed with different qualities including good and bad. We are considerate, by the same time some of us are inconsiderate. Some of us are highly intelligent and smart while some others are dumb to a great level. Some of us like to be calm and quite while some become angry easily. But anger is one of the most unwanted features of human beings as when they get angry, they start destructive activities of different scales. If you lack a good sense of humor, easily you could turn angry with the speeches you are listening or if something is thrown at you mockingly at any public forum. For instance, you are attending a public ceremony where all of your familiar people are present and making fun of each other. Someone cracked a joke and you got hurt as you lack the sense of humor. You do not have the idea how to appreciate the joke or how to avoid the comments inflicted upon you, technically. So, as a result, you are standing alone, away from the other guests, or you just left the party. Simply you missed the party and all the fun.

But think of the scenario from the opposite point of view. Someone cracked a joke which is related to you or has some similarity with your personal experience. What did you do? You just made a hilarious reply in exchange of the joke. The environment becomes friendly. Everyone starts appreciating your sense of humor. Your relation with the other invited turns warm and pleasant. You have gained a large number of your new friends and well-wishers on your real life list from the ceremony or party whatever it is.

Thereby, it appears that being a positively responsive man, you could gain many things. But on the contrary, if you react negatively to the issues related to you, you are the loser. Your social life will be lost. You will lose your friends and community. If you do not develop a good sense of humor, you are unable to lead a prosperous life. If you keep continuing such negative reactions, you are to suffer in the long run. The most important issue is that you will lose your tolerance ability over petty issues like negative remarks. It will block your way of marching ahead. But if you develop a sense of humor, you will march ahead. Nothing will be able to hinder your progress.

Moreover, a good sense of humor will make your relationships with the other people warm and responsive. People will be amazed over your appreciations and the quality of thinking and analyzing things from several angles and perspectives, and ability to change the situations efficiently. Therefore, a good sense of humor is considered as one of the most important qualities of human beings.

(Word count = 609 )

There is nothing that an uneducated person can teach an educated person

TOEFL Essay 16 with model answer:

Read the question below. You have 30 minutes to plan, write, and revise your essay. You should write at lease 300 words.

Do you agree or disagree with the following statement?

 

There is nothing that an uneducated person can teach an educated person.

Use specific reasons and examples to support your opinion.

Model Answer:

Knowledge is a universal thing. It is not limited to the pages of textbooks or the books of general knowledge. Rather the sources of knowledge are vast and are found everywhere. In fact, there are many great philosophers, scientists, artists and enlightened people we can find in the history who did not have formal educations and yet they have passed their great knowledge to others and have made the world a better place to live in. I completely disagree that an uneducated person, who has no academic certificate, cannot teach an educated person.

But at times there are some misconceptions that knowledge could be found on books and only the educated people could teach. In fact, the idea is entirely wrong. Knowledge or education is not the issue to be taught only by the educated people. One can learn many unknown issues from an individual having less or no education too. A good number of debates have been created to prove it.

Learning cannot be accepted only from the learned teachers or educated people. It could also be achieved from the people of every stratum regardless of their academic status. Education is the way to be illuminated. It allows people to take the right decision to lead their life. It helps to pick the right from the wrong. It broadens the outlook. So, it is achievable from everyone, older or younger, educated or uneducated, rich or poor. For example, I have learned swimming and art from a relative who was uneducated in terms of formal education. Many values and moralities he has passed to others and because of that he was a respected man in our area. For instance, if someone, highly educated, wants to learn driving, then s/ he need to go to a driving school. But in most of the cases, the driving school staffs are actually less educated comparing the person they are teaching how to drive a car. Learning to drive a car is the application of earned knowledge from the training staffs in the daily life to make it more comfortable. Driving is also a form of education and they are learning the knowledge from someone less educated.

Further, if you want to learn cooking, you are to admit yourself at any restaurant or any catering institute for your first-hand experience. There you will be taught how to prepare foods, what temperature should be maintained, how long you have to cook, what ingredients to be used for specific kinds of cuisine, what to do to make the foods tastier and more other issues. But have you ever noticed your teacher who is teaching you to cook? Have you ever asked about his/ her academic skills? The answer is - no. You have never asked about the issue as you have not considered so. They are teaching you to cook and you are satisfied with learning the right ways to prepare foods. The academic status of the teachers is not considerable. But if you ever ask about the academic status, you will find that they are less educated or at times may have no education at all.   

Sometimes the people with less or no education have more knowledge and experience that we cannot gain those by reading books only. They become the pool of knowledge and have been surviving with the application of knowledge in their everyday life. So, if we have the misconception that we will get the education or learn something from only the educated individuals, we will be wrong.

We have to be more benevolent and respect all the people regardless the academic criterion. We truly will be educated when we could be able to learn anything from anyone with paying due respect.


(Word count = 620 )

Always telling the truth is the most important consideration in any relationship

TOEFL Essay 2 with model answer:

Read the question below. You have 30 minutes to plan, write, and revise your essay. Typically, an effective essay will contain a minimum of 300 words.

Do you agree or disagree with the following statement?

 

Always telling the truth is the most important consideration in any relationship.

Use specific reasons and examples to support your answer.

Model Answer:
A relationship is one of the most blessed things of the world. It is made of mutual trusts, love, sincerity, respects towards the partner, mutual understanding and some other correlated issues. Relationships are not perfect always rather it needs to be made so. The partner may not be the right one, or the decisions once taken to get the partner may prove wrong. It happens mostly due to the lack of mutual trusts. Truth is definitely a strong pillar to keep any relationship alive.

Truth is the only thing that can make people trustworthy or disloyal to the surroundings, and thus I believe that telling the truth is considered as one of the most important pillars that helps to stand the relationship firmer. Truth has unimaginable power to influence the relationship. It helps to make or break the relation within a few seconds.

For instance, one may have some bitter pasts and s/ he is haunted by the past events. Forgetting the past is not only the solution and many of them cannot do. Therefore, in such situations, if someone is planning to get a new partner, they should make the past clear to the prospective partner. It helps to make the relationship transparent and a mutual respect is created between the partners.

But if the past events are hidden from the partner and s/ he comes to know about the fact somehow (usually such ill tricks are played by third parties to get some fun and ruin the relationship), the impacts are devastating. As a result, you are to lose your own reliability to your partner. If trust broken once, it is impossible regain. Consequently, you are to lose your partner with whom you could have a better future. Moreover, you may also lose respect as a friend or familiar. While money, blind belief, respect and benefits can be some ingredients to sustain a relationship, lies kill any relationship slowly.

Therefore, it is highly imperative to tell the truth about you if you have any and you consider that is important enough for your partner to know. If you are meant to be with your partner, s/ he will not leave you even after knowing the darkest past of yours. So, do not lie to your partner if you want a strong relationship, be it a friend, family member or someone else.

(Word count = 394)

When people succeed in life, it is because of hard work

TOEFL Essay 1 with model answer:

Read the question below. You have 30 minutes to plan, write, and revise your essay. Typically, an effective essay will contain a minimum of 300 words.

Do you agree or disagree with the following statement?

When people succeed in life, it is because of hard work. Being lucky has nothing to do with success in life.

Use specific reasons and examples to support your answer.

Sample Answer 1:
Who does not desire success? But being victorious is not that easy, especially in this ever-increasing competitive era. Some express their view that without the favor of luck, we cannot become triumphant in life while others totally disagree as they opine that hard work is the mantra to achieving success. I personally agree with the latter group who believe persistent work is the key to success in life.

To begin with, the world events or someone's fate is not random, rather both are based on some prerequisite and actions. From this regards, doing nothing and blaming the fate for our misery is a foolish act. Successful people in the history were not suddenly promoted by luck, rather they dedicated their life for achieving their goal. Likewise, industrial animals do not suffer from the scarcity of food while the opposite is observed in the mother nature. This also teaches us the importance of diligent work in life.

Many people would argue that some people are more successful than others despite hard words done by these both groups. However, a careful examination would reveal that there are some other attributes besides hard works that have also made the difference. These qualities often include talent, timely decision, and determination. However, all qualities would go in vain if the persistent work is absent. Take Bill Gates as an example who has become the greatest software engineer and a world renowned philanthropist and few people would say that he was tremendously lucky. I believe the luck favors the determined and hard working people as it did to Bill Gates.

To conclude, luck is what we make our life, not what some arbitrary events determine it. History suggests that hard working and determined people are winners in the world and this is why someone's success is piled up on the amount of work and dedication, not the twist of the fate. 

(Word Count = 318)


Model Answer 2:
Success is the most desired thing in the entire world and people are always after it. Their pursuit of success is never ending and thus some of them turn successful while some others do not get so. Why does it happen? What is the key cause of the failure to get success when many of the success-seekers are attaining it? The answer is simple. It needs hard work. I entirely agree with the statement - When people are successful in life, it is mostly because of their devotion to their work, luck has very little to do with success in our life.

Without struggling enough and working hard, one cannot think of success. There is a popular saying – “Industry is the key to success”. So, if you are on the view that success will be attained only by the dint of your luck, then you are walking in the wrong direction. Success never knocks on the door of those who consider themselves as lucky rather people invite it to be a part of their life. There is none in the world who has attained success without any struggle or investing hard labor for the purposes they were after. A large number of discoveries have been made till the date and all of them required long term relentless efforts by the people who were after that. They tried for hundred times to make a single effective invention. Take Thomas Alva Edison as an example who tried several hundred times to come out with an effective light bulb. When his assistant got tired of the effort, Tomas Edison gave his one of the most famous quote and realization – “I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work”. Luck does not bestow us with the blessing we have, hard work does.

Again, there are lots of people who have climbed on the summit of their respective arena and it was possible for their struggle, their relentless efforts and not giving up attitude. If someone gives up the initiatives, s/ he never would be able to shine in the upcoming days. Failures make people stronger. But many of the people do not try fearing failures and consequently, cannot reach to success. They are on the view that if that is for them, they certainly will get that without any trouble. But they are unaware that to be fortunate enough to get the success in any of the issues in life, they need to be bold. They will certainly have that in exchange for their hard work and sincerity. Take any artist or scientist as an example and hard work, dedication and commitment would be the root for their success, luck did nothing for them.

In conclusion, the world history, and our life are prime examples of hard work. Being lucky means getting rewards from the hard effort we put for achieving something.

(Word Count = 480)