2003年1月18日TOEFL作文题:
“ Do you agree or disagree with the following statement? A person’s childhood years (the time from birth to twelve years of age) are the most important years of a person’s life. Use specific reasons and examples to support your answer.“
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It is debatable that whether a person’s childhood years are the most important years of a person’s life. Obviously childhood is really an important period in a person’s life, however, it is hardly to say childhood or any other period of life is the most important, since each period is an integral part of one’s life. It’s superficial to say that a person’s childhood years are the most important.
To begin with, childhood partially determined a person’s future life as the beginning of life time. An infant is like a blank paper with nothing on it. What happened in childhood is what children first know about the world. They will accept everything they hear and copy everything they saw since they don’t have their own judgment. According to research on the histories of many criminals, it is found that more than half of them have an unhappy childhood caused by various events. Especially parents’ divorce when their children are very young is most likely to distort their children’s psychology. On the other hand, children who enjoy a happy childhood will developed much healthier and most of them are proved to make many great achievements when they grew up. It is not contradictive that some children who suffered a lot also did so, since they who have overcame great ordeals will reach even greater level of achievement than those who have a happy childhood. A person’s childhood is the first cross dividing people into several quite different groups.
Secondly, life is a continued, indiscerptible process. Different periods play different role in one’s life which can’t be determined by a single period. Everything in the world keeps changing all the time. Many famous people were bad child or had a sad life in their childhood. Take Edison as an example, he was even proved to be a foolish boy whom no teacher wanted to teach. As everyone knows Edison has made great accomplishment afterwards due to the study all through his life. That no one can judge anyone only according to the childhood is somewhat similar to that no one knows how many fruits an apple tree will have by seeing its seed.
In conclusion, childhood does influence a lot on a person’s life and even partially determine the direction of the life, but it’s really unwise to say that a person’s childhood is the most important years of one’s life, since life is an continued process affected by every minutes of life.

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