WRITING EOI C1 DEMO

TASK 1

Telecommuting – a hoax!

The pandemic appears to have accelerated many firms’ thinking on “Working from Anywhere”. Facebook, Twitter and other high-tech companies have promoted the idea of allowing permanent remote working to employees. Do you agree that this trend is a boomer? Keep reading and have a look at what happens when embarking on this trend!

The pandemic-enforced social isolation appears to have shifted also worker psychology on remote working, with a recent survey showing that 80% of employees would prefer to work from home. But, is it really a win-win situation?

Most of the companies (apparently no tech ones) are facing hurdles when it comes to keeping up with competition and innovation. Yet, working from home has proved to be detrimental to worker productivity and peers collaboration, and conflict is more likely to develop among the workforce. On top of that, the overload of information the employee pumps out from the screen and the impaired on-line communication can trigger mental fog, loss of creative thinking and anxiety. Commuting to work and working from an office can promote well-being and you can put your mind at rest from the constant screen exposure you have at home. I think telecommuting is a complete hoax. Don’t you agree with me?

You decide to write a letter to the editor, explaining your opinion on the topic (130 – 150 words).

TASK 2:

Choose one of the following options (A or B) and write about 200-220 words following the corresponding instructions. The recommended time for this task is: 55 minutes

OPTION A

One hundred years ago collecting postcards was a much more widespread and popular pursuit than stamp collecting. Postcards were collected by all walks of people, young and old, men and women, and it was commonplace and indeed fashionable among the middle classes to have an album of these pasteboard mementoes. Now there is a new way of connecting the world. Postcrossing is the hobby of sending and receiving real postcards (not electronic ones) around the world by registering with a website.

Write an article to a newspaper giving reasons for taking up the hobby of postcrossing, discussing the effects of taking up postcrossing on the person who does it, speculating on how popular a trend it might become.

OPTION B

In his book Generation X, Canadian artist and novelist Douglas Coupland examined 21st-Century modern life only to see that “people in 2001 looked exactly like the people in 2021”. Yet, what seems to have changed is not the way we look; rather, it is the way we look at the world through the screen of an electronic device.

Write an opinion essay to express your views on the changes that have taken place worldwide over the twenty years in such domains as work, technology, and society.