托福机经：2013年3月17日托福写作考题解析

　　阅读提到理由如下：

　　一：deforestation

　　二：hunting

　　三：climate change

　　听力持反对意见，理由如下：

　　一：澳洲基本全是森林，人类放火开垦的量对熊的栖息地造不成影响, 且有的地方untouched by fire.

　　二：如果人们要捕猎必然有peers 之类weapons ，但是考古学家没找到。推测那时的人大多吃植物，只是碰巧吃dead diprotodons

　　三：climate change引起的dry weather,说在这之前至少有四次climate change，而diprotodon并没有因为dry weather 灭绝climate change引起的dry weather,说在这之前至少有四次climate change，而小diprotodon并没有因为dry weather 灭绝。

巨型袋鼠(Diprotodon)

巨型袋鼠化石

　　独立写作题目：Do you agree or disagree with the following statement: A leader should admit if they made a bad decision. Use specific reasons and examples to support your answer.

　　独立写作范文：

　　Everybody admires a leader, but being a leader is difficult. People depend on a leader to see the bigger picture and make the best decision. Sometimes, the decision a leader makes will not be the best one. It may not even be the correct one. Sometimes, the decision a leader makes will be just plain bad. In these cases, should a leader admit to making a poor choice? I think they should.

　　First, it shows that you are an honest leader. Because you are willing to call attention to your own failings, it demonstrates that you will not hide important information from the public or mislead them for your own benefit. It shows that you can take responsibility, even if it costs you the faith of your followers in the short-term. This is especially true in the political realm, where admitting to mistakes has heavy consequences. If a political rival catches you admitting to your mistakes-and it is almost guaranteed to happen-they will use it as ammunition to discredit you in some way. Nonetheless, I think it's important that a leader be the one to expose the mistake rather than someone else, because at the very least, he or she could say, "I freely admit it, and I ask for your forgiveness." This somewhat mitigates the damage.

　　Second, admitting to your mistakes is a crucial step on the road to self-improvement. If you are unable to acknowledge where you have failed, you will never be able to begin the process of working on your areas of weakness. In order to be a strong leader, one has to make mistakes, and confront them with a desire to do better in the future. This has more to do with improving your competence as a leader, rather than how people perceive you. A leader will constantly be faced with tough decisions. Every leader thus has to take risks, but a good leader takes calculated risks. The only way to get better at this decision-making process is to make mistakes and learn from them. Also, if you are willing to make your mistakes public, the people may be willing to trust you to take bigger risks in the future.

　　Granted, admitting to making bad decisions can undermine your authority. However, I think that in the long-term, it is still the best choice. For example, I once had to do a group project with a friend at school, and he was chosen to be our group leader. Overall he was very competent; however, he at times made errors in judgment that cost our group time and resources. Once, he told us to use a certain format for all our documents, because he thought that format would save us time during the editing process later. We were really annoyed when we later discovered our teacher actually required a very specific document format, so we ended up wasting time fixing the format. He was the first to bring attention to his mistake, and took it upon himself to fix all of the documents. By showing such honesty, humility, and willingness to remedy the situation, we forgave him easily and all ended up helping anyway.