TOEFL Example Essays

Both competition and cooperation play a large role in the advancement of society, both in business and non-business areas. Competition forces people to improve their products or services, and hence benefits the recipients of these products or services. Cooperation, however, plays an even more important role in development of individuals and the society as a whole, because it drastically increases the scale of these improvements. Working in groups and teams far increases the productivity of individuals. Thus, I firmly believe children should be taught to cooperate rather than to compete.

First of all, cooperation is an important skill in the future life of all children. They will need to live with other people throughout their life, since they will not study alone, work alone, nor spend their leisure time alone. If they do not know how to cooperate with their classmates, their colleagues, and other family members, then they will lose the chance to live happily. Thus, cooperation skills should be taught before they grow up to face serious problems living with others.

Furthermore, cooperation is a significant contributing factor to the development of society. While competition generally ends in a win-lose result, cooperation advocates that one plus one is larger than two, three or even a larger number. For example, the competition of two business firms would ultimately lead to the result that one becomes stronger and the other fails and goes out of business. However, if they cooperate with each other successfully, they may group together to form an enterprise larger than the mere sum of the two. The more successful cooperation there is, the better the society develops. Thus, cooperation should be taught to children, because eventually they will be the executives of important corporations.

Admittedly, competition also plays a significant role in many areas. Stressed by the competition, individuals and organizations have to struggle to survive, and so they are forced to make improvements and develop.

However, in comparison, cooperation is more effective in helping individuals and societies to develop, because it benefits not only individuals, but also society as a whole. The reality is that children should be taught both, but if forced to choose only one, parents should undoubtedly teach their kids to cooperate rather than to compete.