TOEFL independent writing section is a 30-minute writing task. Candidates need to write an essay as a response to a topic by providing their personal experiences or opinions. This TOEFL independent writing sample focuses on working with a co-worker having different opinions. Candidates can practice similar topics from TOEFL writing practice papers. 

Topic: Imagine that you have been asked by your supervisor to work with one of your co-workers on a project. This co-worker has opinions that are very different than yours and they feel very strongly about these opinions. Do you think this is a good idea? Use reasons and examples to support your answer.

Answer:

The workplace is filled with colleagues of distinct types. Collaborating with different types of people in a project is equally challenging and usual in workplaces. I am personally for those collaborations which take place with different-minded colleagues as it increases the chance of implementing distinctive ideas in the project.

Check:

Firstly, colleagues having different beliefs and ideas can miraculously aid in building a project with a whole new perspective. They may come up with prolific ideas and solutions that when put together with the other ideas, can result in a hit. What happens, employees serving a particular workplace for quite some years tend to have stagnancy in their growth of ideas that affects their problem-solving skills. This can be better explained with an instance I had in the past when I interned in a local magazine. They assigned me the task of convincing retailers to purchase advertising in our magazine. I had the notion that only renowned retailers would buy and strategized the plan and started approaching them accordingly. But it seemed nobody was interested and that’s when my senior added Robert to the team and we collaborated together. He proposed the idea of calling the local retailers as they might be interested in buying these. To my surprise, they were actually interested and we sold off quite a number of advertisings.

My second opinion is, working with a co-mate with radically different ideas can result in you being a better communicator. As it happened, during my college days I worked as a teaching assistant in a local school. Once an incident happened that few of the students arrived late to class. I was rigid about my decision to scold them but one of my colleagues asked me to give them another chance. At this stage, I had to debate why scolding them was necessary for them to be disciplined and be punctual.

Therefore, I can conclude by saying that working with people with distinct ideas is quite progressive for your own self.