Onterra TutorShould public money be spent reviving languages with few speakers?
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 linguistics. 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 Halim: Many linguists expect a large share of the world's languages to lose their last speakers this century. Should governments spend public money trying to revive languages with very few speakers left?
Yuki: They should. A language carries knowledge that survives nowhere else, from the names of local plants to ways of describing family, and all of it leaves with the last speaker.
Paulo: I would rather spend that money teaching those same communities the languages that get them work. Preserving a language for outsiders to study is not the same as helping the people who speak it.
Model answer
Paulo raises the objection that matters, but I think he has posed a false choice. Nobody has to pick between reviving a language and teaching a working one, since children learn two without difficulty and the communities involved usually want both. Where I agree with him is about who decides. Revival designed by outsiders, producing an archive and a dictionary that nobody in the village ever opens, does serve scholarship more than speakers. Yuki's argument survives that criticism as soon as the money follows what the community itself asks for: teachers in the local school, materials children actually read, broadcasting they can listen to. So I would fund revival, but as a service to living speakers rather than a rescue mission for a specimen.
Why this answer scores
- Rejects the false binary explicitly, which is a strong move when two students are set against each other.
- Agrees partially with the student it disagrees with, showing the balance high scores reward.
- The specimen and speakers contrast at the end gives the response a clear closing idea.
Do not memorise model answers; raters recognise recycled essays instantly. Study the moves, then make them with your own ideas, and check where you stand with a scored practice.
Onterra Tutor is an independent practice tool and is not affiliated with or endorsed by ETS, which owns the TOEFL trademark.