TOEFL作文范例

Some educators believe that students should receive letter grades in their examinations while others consider pass-fail grades more approriate. Give advantages and disadvantages of the two positions and explain which position you support. 　　Some educators believe that giving letter grades to students can best encourage compeition among students. Other people take the view that pass-fail grades are more approriate.While both methods have their advantages and disadvantages, they can be applied under different circumstances. 　　Letter grades divide the range of scores in a scale with A as the top score, and E or F as fail. This method can best represent the examiner's opinion on each student's level of study in a certain group of students. In order to get the top score, students compete fiercely, thus impelling them to learn more. On the other hand, students are usually very nervous when the examination day comes, and as a result may not perform well enough in their exams. Morever, the method itself is very arbitrary. It is difficult to draw a clear-cut line between A and B, B and C, and so on. A teacher's pre-impression of a students often makes the reliablity of such a marking doubtful. 　　Pass-fail grades, on the other hand, is a more general evaluation of students's performance in an exam. If students can show an adequate understanding of the subject matter they have learnt, they receive a pass. If they fail to answer the questions satisfactorily in an exam paper, they receive a fail score. With this system, students are more relaxed when the examination comes. And they are able to read extensively rather than only concentrate on a very narrow subject area. However, this marking method does not give students much pressure, and they find it easy to drift along quite happily in their study. The competition among them is thus discouraged. 　　In my opinion, the two marking methods should be used in combination under different circumstances. Letter grades can be applied to major areas of concentration to assure that students spend enough time and enough effort to understand the subject matter. Areas of minor concentration such as optional courses can be marked with pass-fail grades as these courses require only a general understanding of the contents.