Free iBT integrated writing task submission

**Jason** · Subject: Free iBT integrated writing task submission Tue Oct 02, 2007 1:08 pm

Please post your writing responses for the free online iBT integrated task here. You do not need to log in or register to post your writing, simply click on POSTREPLY. Please allow at least a couple of days for an OnlinEnglish.net Administrator to view and respond to your task. Responses will be limited to a score and some generic comments targeting the areas you could improve in.

Good luck!

**Yannick** · Subject: Score and feedback for Veena Mon Oct 08, 2007 2:56 am

veena wrote:

A ghost ship named Mary Celeste was abandoned in the coasts of Portugal in 1872. It was known to have been travelling from Newyork to Genoa, Italy. Several theories have been proposed as to what caused the abandon. The passage explains two of the possibilities, "A Mutiny" and "A Piracy".

The passage says that the Captain of Mary Celeste, Benjamin Briggs was overly strict which made his crew members to kill the captain and his family and throw them into the sea. But the lecture contrasts this by saying that the Captain was an experienced and a respected person who was in charge of his crew and had freindly relationships with them.

The passage suggests another possibility could be that the ship which found the Mary Celeste killed the crew and the passengers for greed of valuables and threw them overboard to erase any evidence and later took the ship to Gibralter to claim a prize for finding the abandoned ship. This theory too, is countered by the lecture. It says that niether did the passengers carry any valuables which led to piracy, nor did the court find any evidence against Dae E Gracias who found the ship. Also the captains of both the ships were found to be in good terms.

The lecture gives one plausible expalnation , since both the passage and the lecture agree with the fact that out of 1701 barrels of alcohol that were carried, 9 were found empty. The barrels of alcohol would have been emptied due to leakage which led to fumes. Captain Briggs feared an explosion from these fumes, He feared a fire most as never before had they exported alcohol. This also explains the opened hatches and portholes. Hence they fled on a life boat and got lost in the sea either due to starvation or falling prey to the storm.

Hello Veena. Thank you for submitting your writing effort for the iBT Integrated TOEFL.
Your score / range = 3.5 ~ 4

Key areas to improve

1) In your introduction you need to show a link between the reading passage and the lecture. At the moment, the reader/assessor believes you are simply reporting information found in the reading passage. To dispel this belief you must inform the reader/assessor what you plan to be writing about.
2) You did well at extracting the information from the reading and linking it to the appropriate points from the lecture, that said some information pulled from the lecture was inaccurate (there were valuable items on the ship) and some information was omitted (personal belongings not being taken). A little more work on note taking would prove to be beneficial.
3) Your final paragraph is spot on. The information you presented is delivered appropriately with good expressions being used.

Best of luck with your iBT TOEFL Writing

**Yannick** · Subject: Score / Feedback for Len Mon Oct 08, 2007 12:25 pm

len wrote:

A ghost ship named Mary Celeste was a mystery for many years and was found abandoned in the coast of Portugal in 1872. It was believed that it travelled from New York to its final destination Italy. There was a lots of possible theories about its mystery of abandonment, both mentioned in the lecture and passage maybe there was a mutiny or piracy.
In the lecture it gives more explanation in some of the information mentioned in the passage however, there are contradicting ideas that mentioned from the lecture and the passage. According to the passage it says that the crew members killed the strict captain, Benjamin Briggs, and his family before throwing them to the sea, this statement contradict what the professor said on his lecture that records have shown that the captain Benjamin Briggs was an experienced and respected person who is in charge of crew members with good reputation.Another contradicting statement was that in the passage it was said that the ship and the crew members who found the mary celeste near portugal were the one responsible and have taken some amount of the valuables and yet it was mentioned in the lecture that no personal belongings of the sailors was missing and even in court they failed to produce any evidence against El Y Gracias to rule out the piracy and it was believed that both captains were good friends.
On the other hand, it was said in both the lecture and the passage that the ship was carrying a cargo of 1701 barrels of alcohol, nine of which were found empty though it was not elaborated in the passage the reason why? it was mentioned in the lecture that it was emptied due to leakage and might result to powerful fumes that caused captain Briggs and his crew to panic maybe beacuse according to what the lecturer had said captain Briggs was not known to export barrel of alcohol in his ship and maybe due to the reason that he feared the fumes might caused explosion, this force them to open hatches and portholes to avoid the powerful fumes. Furthermore, this might caused the crew to leave the ship on a life boat and loss at sea maybe by starvation or drawn by storm.

Hi there Len. Thank you for submitting your integrated writing effort.
Your score / range = 3 ~ 3.5

Key areas to improve

1) Reading your introduction we can see that you understand the task, but right from the beginning you are misrepresenting ideas. This may have to do with the grammar you are using. For instance, “A ghost ship named Mary Celeste was a mystery for many years…” The use of the simple past tense makes the sentence read as if the Mary Celeste is not a mystery anymore. You need to work on restating information.

2) Additional work needs to done with note taking. Try focusing on main ideas presented in the reading and listen for points from the lecture that contradict or support the main ideas. You are missing quite a bit of information from the lecture.

3) Try separating all of your ideas into paragraphs. This would have made identifying the two main contradictions easier.

Best of luck on your integrated writing.

**Yannick** · Subject: Score / feedback for Julie Shi Thu Oct 11, 2007 2:00 am

JulieShi wrote:

Both reading passage and the listening passage are describing about the mystery of the Mary Celeste, but they hold the different positions. From the author's perspective from the reading passage, he claimed that the cause of the abandoned ship without any passengers was mainly because of the pirates' rubbery. However, the speaker on the listening passage cast doubts against the lecture on the following paragraphs.

First, the captain of the Mary Celeste was responsible and had full experiences. Therefore, he was never surrender under the pirates' threat. In addition, none of his personal belongings were taken. That is to say, those evidences showed that pirates' threat would not the main reason.

Second, the explosion of the boat might be the reason of the mystery of missing boat. According to the confident record, the captain of the Mary Celeste had no experience of carrying alcohol before. Therefore, maybe he was too nervous to notice the alcohol were leaking and causing a big explosion.

Third, there was also the evidence showing that fire would not actually destroy the ship and that's why there were no passengers on board. The fire and explosion made they had to abandon the ship to escape. And, those evidences unveiled the mystery of the Mary Celeste.

Hello Julie Shi. Thank you for submitting your iBT TOEFL integrated writing.
Your score / range = 1

Key areas for improvement

1) Your introduction has some good elements. For instance you inform the reader/assessor that the reading and lecture share different opinions. However, you misinterpret the information found in the reading. You need to work on your paraphrasing. Paraphrasing also becomes an issue with our body paragraphs.

2) Note taking. You must work on your note taking strategies. Use symbols or abbreviations. When taking notes on the reading focus first on the topic sentences. Then look at the details and examples. Take brief notes. When the listening comes around listen for information that will either agree or disagree with the notes you have taken.

3) You must show the relationship between the reading and the lecture in your body paragraphs. You need to demonstrate how the information presented in the reading is contradicted or supported by the lecture.

Best of luck.

**Jason**

yash wrote:

1872 there was a abandoned ship that originally known as ghost ship and they found it the coast of Portugal. the final destination of that ship is in the Italy. The ship was found with its hatches and portholes open, but noone is in there. there was no sign of damage and violence, but when that happened the crew and the passengers we're never seen and never heard by thier own family.
there was a rumor that the crew and the passengers were killed by the captain of the ship.

Hi yash and thanks for trying out the integrated essay task.

This answer would, unfortunately, only score you a 1 on the iBT 5-band integrated writing scale.

You have only really repeated some information that was already available in the reading portion of the task, and then only vaguely. There is no indication in your writing that you understood the accompanying information from the lecture, nor any capacity to relate this back to the reading text.

Suggestions for improvement:

1. Take initial notes about the reading passage and try to organize it into clear sections or 'chunks'.

2. Concentrate on getting as much information as you can from the listening lecture. As you listen to and note this information from the lecture, draw arrows to the parts in your notes about the reading where the information sources seem to be talking about the same thing.

3. Write an essay that has a clear introduction summaizing the overall topic and the main idea/position of both reading and listening inputs and how they relate. Then work through the information in your notes and express them in your essay, relating the two sources.

You clearly need more practice with this sort of task, so I wish you the best of luck with it!

Regards,

Jason