TOEFL Sample essay : integrated essay from TPO6

In this set of material, the reading passage discusses three disadvantages of communal online encyclopedias. The author of the passage claims that contribution of any Internet user can pose several problems and provides three of them. The lecturer, however, finds the criticism unfair and prejudiced against the online encyclopedias and presents some evidence to refute them all.

First, the author of the passage asserts that the online encyclopedias often include academic inaccuracy since non-experts can make changes in the articles or share new articles. In contrast, the lecturer states that errors are more common in traditional encyclopedias and they remain for decades in printed forms but it is easy to correct the mistakes in online forms. Additionally, no one can find a comprehensive and perfect article about a special subject in online or offline resources and even traditional encyclopedias are not close to be accurate.

Second, it is mentioned in the article that hackers change the content of the articles maliciously in online encyclopedias so that the entry will not be reliable. On the contrary, the lecturer draws attention to the strategies applied by online encyclopedias in which the crucial facts are reported in a reliable read-only format that no one can change them. In addition, there are special editors whose job is to monitor all changes and eliminate not valid, malicious ones.

Finally, the reading passage states that the importance of the subjects focused in an online encyclopedia is not considered by professionals and specialists which will result in a false impression of consideration to different topics. Conversely, the professor disproves the idea due the fact that traditional encyclopedias have limited space that cannot embrace a great range of interests. This is while online encyclopedias cover a great diversity of subjects, including academic articles as well, which is the strongest advantage of online encyclopedias.