Topic 82

Please have a look at the following TOEFL essays which I've written. I would appreciate it if you could provide comments and suggestions to help me improve my essay writing skills.

(Do you agree or disagree with the following statement? Advertising can tell you a lot about a country. Use specific reasons and examples to support your answer.)

We live in a world of advertising, which is how a company encourages people to buy their products, services or ideas. Ads appear on television, as well as radio, newspapers, magazines and as billboards in streets and cities. So, we open up the pages of our favorite magazine, and there are glossy ads for clothes, shoes, cars, or beer. We turn on the television, and smiling faces on television try to sell us soup, toothpaste, candy, and politicians. As far as I am concerned, indeed, an advertisement can showcase us not only the cultural features but also the comprehensive national power of a country. There are three reasons underpinning my aspect.

To begin with, advertisements can reflect the culture level and local customs and practices of a country. I had an experience visiting Japan. When I stayed in a hotel, I turned on the television to amuse myself. Its style of show and program is very different from that of my country. In the TV commercial, a Japanese lady dressing in the kimono, a Japanese traditional garment which was never seen in my country, promoted a kind of vintage. This advertisement apparently manifested the spirit of Japanese culture and demonstrated its traditional dress. Today, Kimono, most often worn by women, especially professional sumo wrestlers, always used in important festival or formal moments, is the representative of polite and a very formal clothing. Therefore, the viewing of anyone dressing kimono gives us an association of Japanese cultural features and customs.

Another reason is that we can know the scientific and technological level of a country from the advertisement. It is vital to compare advanced countries’ technology and to improve our technical level of products. For example, Apple Company, a famous American multinational technology company, that designs, develops, and sells consumer electronics, computer software, and online services. all over the world. In its advertisement, the company manifests some experiments to prove its iPhone is the best premium brand, enjoying a high level of brand loyalty. However, in my country, I find no companies that manufacture fancy cell phones to be a match for Apple’s iPhone. The only way that we can do is learning from their advanced technology to keep up to the business opponents and to narrow the gap between our country and the developed countries . Clearly, by advertisements we get to know how huge the deviation of science and technology is between our country and the developed countries.

Last but not least, advertising can tell the competitiveness of a country. Take Toyota for example, Toyota, Japan's biggest car company and the second largest in the world, have earned a reputation for building high-quality cars and has been a huge success in the global marketplace. Toyota has been able to transcend western cultural and institutional barriers and superimpose Asian models of supply chain management and co-operation elsewhere. In contrast, many other Asian automobile manufacturers have been unable to overcome Toyota's advantages in human resource management, supplier networks and distribution systems in the highly competitive US market. Therefore, a Toyota advertising tells us a lot about the comprehensive national power of Japan.

After judging all the above mentioned logics and arguments, we can easily understand that from advertisement we can learn a great deal of information about a country.