Onterra TutorDo recommendation algorithms expand our choices or narrow them?
TOEFL iBT writing question in the official format, with a full model answer and notes on why it scores. Write your own version below it and get an instant rater-style score.
The question
Your professor is teaching a class on media studies. Write a post responding to the professor's question. In your response, express and support your opinion and add to the discussion in your own words. A strong response has at least 100 words.
Professor Novak: Streaming platforms increasingly use algorithms to recommend what we watch, read and listen to. Do these recommendation systems expand our choices or narrow them?
Sofia: They expand them. I have discovered musicians and films from other countries that I would never have found in a record shop. The algorithm knows my taste better than any critic.
Jamal: I would say they narrow our world. The system keeps feeding us more of what we already like, so we stop encountering anything challenging or unfamiliar. Choice without variety is not real choice.
Model answer
Both students are describing the same system at different moments in time. Sofia is right that recommendations expand choice at first; I also found foreign films I would never have met in a shop. But Jamal describes what happens next: the system learns what kept me watching and steadily narrows toward it. The honest answer is that algorithms expand discovery and then quietly close it, because their goal is engagement, not breadth. What I would add is that the user is not powerless. Deliberately searching outside your usual taste retrains the system within weeks, so the narrowing Jamal fears is a default, not a destiny. The real risk is that most people never test that default.
Why this answer scores
- The time-based framing (expansion first, narrowing later) reconciles the two posts with real insight.
- Personal evidence is brief and relevant rather than a long anecdote.
- The closing distinction between a default and a destiny is precise, memorable phrasing.
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