TOEFL Academic Discussion: Six Worked Example Responses

Write for an Academic Discussion asks you to contribute to an online class discussion. A professor poses a question, two students have already responded, and you add your own reply.

The task rewards four things: a clear position, real reasoning, one concrete piece of support, and genuine engagement with the discussion already on the page. The examples below show each of those working.

For the wider Writing section, see the TOEFL writing practice guide.

The four moves

Before the examples, the shape:

1. Position — what you think, in the first sentence, unhedged.
2. Reason — the mechanism. Why does this hold?
3. Support — one specific example, consequence or scenario.
4. Engagement — extend, qualify or push back on a named student.

Order can vary. Engagement often works well as the opening move or the closing one. What must not vary is that all four are present.

Example 1 — Technology in the classroom

Professor Nakamura: Some universities have banned laptops in lectures, arguing that they distract students. Others say the ban is paternalistic. Should lecture halls be laptop-free?

Priya: I support the ban. Every time I sit behind someone with a laptop I end up watching their screen instead of the lecture.

Tomas: Banning them disadvantages students who need them, including anyone with a disability that makes handwriting difficult.

Response:

Tomas has identified the problem with a blanket ban, and I think it is decisive. The accessibility case is not an edge case to be handled with exemptions — requiring students to disclose a disability in order to use a laptop turns a neutral tool into a public declaration about their health. The better target is Priya's actual complaint, which is not laptops but distraction spilling onto other people's screens. A seating policy that puts laptop users in designated rows solves that without asking anyone to explain themselves. Institutions that have tried this report fewer complaints than either a full ban or a free-for-all produces.

Why it works: Opens by engaging Tomas, takes a clear position, identifies the mechanism (disclosure burden), reframes Priya's point as a different problem, and proposes something concrete. 108 words.

Example 2 — Remote work

Professor Ellis: Should companies require employees to work in an office at least part of the week?

Sofia: Yes. Collaboration and mentoring happen in person, and junior staff lose the most when they are remote.

Idris: No. Requiring attendance is about control, not productivity, and it excludes people who cannot easily commute.

Response:

I would side with Sofia, but her argument needs narrowing. The case for in-person time is strongest specifically for early-career staff, because most of what a junior employee learns is picked up incidentally — overhearing how a colleague handles a difficult client, seeing which questions are worth asking. That does not transfer over scheduled video calls, where everything is agenda-driven. It does not follow that everyone needs to attend. A senior engineer doing focused work alone gains almost nothing from the commute Idris describes. A requirement tied to seniority rather than applied uniformly would capture the benefit Sofia is pointing at without the cost Idris is worried about.

Why it works: Agrees but qualifies, explains the mechanism (incidental learning), distinguishes cases, and resolves the disagreement rather than restating it. 116 words.

Example 3 — Grading

Professor Oyelaran: Should university courses replace exams with continuous assessment?

Marcus: Yes. Exams test memory under artificial pressure rather than understanding.

Hana: Continuous assessment rewards students who can commit time every week, which favours those without jobs or caring responsibilities.

Response:

Hana's point is the one I find hardest to argue with, and it complicates the position Marcus takes. Continuous assessment does not remove pressure; it distributes it across the whole term, which is easier for a student with unbroken time and harder for one working evening shifts. An exam, whatever its faults, is a fixed cost that can be planned around. The strongest version of Marcus's argument would be to change what exams ask rather than to abolish them — an open-book exam requiring an argument rather than recall tests understanding without creating the weekly load Hana describes. That seems to me a better target than the format itself.

Why it works: Engages both students, identifies the real trade-off, and proposes a synthesis. 112 words.

Example 4 — Public funding for the arts

Professor Lindgren: Should governments fund the arts when budgets are constrained?

Chen: No. Health and education have to come first when money is scarce.

Amara: Arts funding is a small fraction of most budgets and cutting it saves very little.

Response:

Amara's point about scale is the one that should settle this. Arts funding is typically a fraction of a percent of national spending, so cutting it does not meaningfully relieve pressure on the services Chen prioritises — it just removes the programmes least able to survive without support. There is also a distributional issue that gets missed. Commercial arts survive in wealthy cities regardless of policy; what public funding sustains is the regional theatre or the free museum in places where no commercial audience is large enough. Cutting the budget does not reduce art evenly, it removes it from exactly the people least able to travel to find it elsewhere.

Why it works: Names the strongest existing argument, adds something neither student said (the distributional point), and stays specific. 113 words.

Example 5 — Required electives

Professor Duarte: Should students be required to take courses outside their main subject?

Daniel: No. Degree programmes are already crowded and electives push out depth.

Amara: Yes. Graduates work in mixed teams and need to understand other disciplines.

Response:

I would side with Amara, though for a slightly different reason than the one she gives. The value is less about understanding other disciplines and more about practising evaluation where the standards of proof are unfamiliar. A biology student who has had to argue about historical evidence has been forced to assess claims that cannot be settled by an experiment, and that is closer to most workplace decisions than anything in their own field. Daniel's concern about crowding is legitimate, but it is an argument about how many electives, not whether. One or two required courses outside the major seems a small price for the habit they build.

Why it works: Agrees with a named student while explicitly differentiating the reasoning, then concedes the counterargument's valid core. 108 words.

Example 6 — Social media and attention

Professor Reyes: Do you think social media has changed how students read?

Lena: Yes, and for the worse. Nobody in my seminar finishes long readings any more.

Yusuf: Reading has changed, not declined. Students read constantly, just in shorter formats.

Response:

Yusuf is right that volume has not fallen, but I do not think that answers Lena's observation. The relevant change is not how much students read but what kind of attention they practise. Short-format reading rewards extracting a point quickly and moving on, which is a genuine skill — it is simply the opposite of what a dense argument requires, where the payoff comes from holding several threads at once until the last section. Practising one does not build the other. The seminar problem Lena describes is real, and it is a training effect rather than a decline in ability.

Why it works: Grants one student's factual point, defends the other's observation, and identifies a distinction neither made. 100 words.

Common problems

• Writing a standalone essay. If your response would read identically with the two student posts deleted, you have not done the engagement move.
• Hedging. "Both sides have valid points" is not a position. Commit.
• Assertion without mechanism. "Exercise is important for students" says nothing. Why, through what pathway, with what result?
• Generic examples. "For example, many studies show…" is not an example. A specific case is.
• Running long. Past about 140 words you are usually repeating. The scoring rewards development, not volume.

How to practise

Write one response a day, timed. Then check it against the four moves: can you point at the sentence doing each job? If any move is missing, rewrite just that sentence rather than the whole response — it is faster and it trains the thing you are actually missing.