This is entire test of a real TOEFL Writing Section. It has both 2 tasks with sample responses. While you're working on Task 1, you can check back the reading passage below.
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READING PASSAGE
Depression is a condition that affects millions of people worldwide, but specialists remain divided as to how to treat it. Individuals experiencing depression suffer from severely negative moods that impact their everyday life and affect their ability to function. In order to treat depression, many useful medications have been developed. Medication is currently the best way for patients to fight against depression.
First of all, medication helps treat the cause of depression. To function properly, the brain requires naturally occurring chemicals. The most common cause of depression is a chemical imbalance in the brain of the patient. Abnormal levels of specific chemicals can have a dramatic effect on a person’s mood and can trigger depression in some cases. Treating these imbalances is the most important part of treating depression. The only known treatment for these imbalances is medication.
Moreover, the medication for depression has proven effective in numerous cases. A number of these medications have been successfully used to treat depression for several years and have been an essential part of helping patients move beyond their condition. With the help of medication, thousands of patients are now able to live fulfilling lives despite their depression. While other forms of treatment have been proposed to treat depression, none have yet proven as effective as medication has.
Additionally, medication is typically easier for the patient to deal with than other forms of treatment such as therapy. The medications are usually taken once or twice per day and do not disrupt the patient’s day-to-day life. Maintaining a person’s regular schedule is an important part of dealing with depression. Patients that have to undergo disruptive treatments are less likely to recover from their depression in a timely manner.
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LECTURE TRANSCRIPT
Depression, as you all probably know, is a growing concern in today's world. By nearly every account, rates of depression are increasing dramatically, and the field of psychology is struggling to deal with it. There's still a lot of debate over how we should treat depression, but many doctors are prescribing medication to depressed people. I, on the other hand, strongly believe that medication is not the answer.
I think one of the biggest problems here is that people often mistake the cause of depression. Doctors think that depression is generally caused by chemical imbalances in the brain. This idea is way too simplistic, I feel, because there are lots more factors that play into depression. Really, any sort of negative experience can set off depression in a person—maybe it's the death of a spouse, or a brother, sister, or parent. At any rate, experiences are by far the most common cause of depression, not chemicals. Yet medications are designed to treat chemical imbalances, not to help someone through a depressing situation.
This brings up another common misperception of medication—that it’s the best way to treat depression. In support of this idea, clinical trials are most often cited. However, I just really want to emphasize this—medications are just a short-term solution that artificially makes the patient no longer feel depressed. Medications are generally not effective over the long term. Often what happens is that the medication will work for a while, but over time it will begin to wear off. The person is left feeling as depressed as he did before. So to say that medication is the best treatment is pretty shortsighted and, well... inaccurate. Therapy, as opposed to medication; allows the patient to address the root of their depression and come to terms with it. Medication merely helps them suppress and ignore it.
So, finally, people that prefer medication argue that it’s less disruptive than therapy or other treatments. Since the patient only has to take a few pills, it’s easier for them to carry on with their day-to-day life ... or so the argument goes. Unfortunately, the side effects of medication can be really, really disruptive—medications can interrupt sleep cycles, affect your appetite, all sorts of things. People react differently to different medications, so we really have no idea how bad the side effects will be for a person. There are also many side effects that we can’t foresee in short clinical trials. To suggest that medications don’t disrupt someone’s life is misleading.
When you consider all of these factors, it’s pretty clear that medication is not the best treatment for depression. I would advocate a different type of treatment for those suffering from depression.
