Practicing on these TOEFL iBT writing tests helps raise your score in the TOEFL Writing Section. Check the audio transcript and reading passage below. This video is in the series of NEW TOEFL iBT Preparation: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2jvSGmpWX1XL96rWU4YASA7GNOE1WhJH
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READING PASSAGE (3 minutes)
Spanking, or the act of hitting children on their bottoms, is a common punishment in many cultures around the world. However, recently child psychologists have begun questioning whether spanking is a good form of punishment. Although a consensus has yet to be reached, there are a number of advantages to using spanking as a disciplinary tool.
One of the most apparent advantages of spanking is that it helps children understand the difference between right and wrong. Spanking helps children remember that an act is not allowed by creating a psychological association between a particular forbidden act and the traumatic experience of being spanked. In establishing this association, children come to understand what is right and what is wrong.
Additionally, spanking is far more effective than other types of discipline. Unlike time-outs, which remove children from a situation and force them to stay in a quiet area, spanking has been shown to be more effective among children between the ages of three and five. After being spanked, children are much less likely to behave in the same way than if they had simply been put in time-out.
Finally, spanking is an understandable form of punishment. It can be used on nearly any young child. In contrast, young children may not understand that time-outs are punishments. For a young child that does not completely understand situations, a time-out can easily be mistaken for something else - children put in a time-out, for instance, might think that they are being removed from a situation for their own safety or because it is time for a nap. As a result, spanking is a valuable tool for parents to use because the child cannot understand it as anything other than a punishment.
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LECTURE AUDIO TRANSCRIPT
OK, so the inevitable question arises: what is an effective method parents can use to discipline their children? How do you tell a young person unable to understand complex language that a particular act is wrong? As I’m sure some of you remember from your childhood, spanking is a pretty common way to discipline a child, but is it effective and, more importantly, is it a good practice? In my opinion, it’s not.
To start out with, simply spanking children doesn't really teach them morals. If a child misbehaves and I spank him, the justification is that he will learn that his behavior is wrong and will stop doing it. This is incorrect logic, though—I mean, you’re not sitting down and explaining to children which actions are right and wrong. Instead, you’re spanking them on the bottom and expecting them to discover the moral connection themselves. For children that are just learning how the world operates, expecting them to make this kind of inference is just... well, it’s not reasonable.
In addition, spanking really isn’t a better disciplinary tool than other punishments like, time-outs. The fact of the matter is, all the studies that child psychologists have performed have pretty much concluded that, well . . . spanking isn’t more successful at all. In actuality, it’s probably a lot less successful. At least with time-outs, children have a time to think about what they’ve done and remember not to do it in the future. This isn’t true with spanking—usually the children forget about the spanking just five minutes after it has happened. Time-outs are actually far more successful for long-term behavior correction.
Additionally, when children are spanked, they don’t comprehend it as a punishment, but instead learn that it is all right to use violence to resolve a situation. Parents that spank children understand it as a quick solution to a problem because with a simple spank on the bottom, the children learn to behave, or so the reasoning goes. But spanking is not a universal punishment, and children don’t always make the connection between the spanking itself and their bad behavior. Since the children don’t recognize the association between the two, they merely comprehend that the parent is using violence to express anger. And since parents are the first people that children learn from, they are more likely to use violence to communicate their own anger in future situations.
So really, all of the conventional wisdom about spanking is pretty much inaccurate. Spanking is, well... it’s kind of ineffectual. It doesn’t benefit children at all, and parents really shouldn’t be practicing it any more, with the knowledge we have now.
