Free essay samples for TOEFL Integrated Writing Question

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Working in teams – Lecture and reading from ETS TOEFL Official Guide Book 4^th edition

The lecturer talks about a research conducted by a firm to see the results of its working teams on several projects. He says that the theory presented in the reading passage was incorrect and somehow contradicted to what happened in reality.

First, some team members got ‘free-ride’, which means that some members did not contributed to the team’s work but received recognition. This also means that people who worked hard in the team might not receive the recognition they devoted. This idea contradicts the idea stated in the passage that the team member could have better chance to shine.

Second, the passage says that the team can work more quickly in response to the tasks assigned to the team. This is because team members have different ideas that the responsibility of the team is spread over all its members. However, the lecture says that in reality some projects handled by teams did not move quickly. The reason was that the team needed to reach a consensus after several meetings and discussions. This reality contradicts the idea of the passage.

Finally, in the research, the firm found that there were some team members who managed to become influencers. These influencers tried to persuade the team to adopt their ideas as the idea of the team while the ideas of other members were omitted or even not discussed in the team. The risk of this behavior is that if the ideas of the influencers were wrong, the team would go to a wrong direction. When projects failed, the blame was on all the members of the team. On the contrary, the passage says that team members feel better to provide decisions to the team.