Lots of people choose to have a pet as a companion in their lives

Toefl Essay: Pets should be treated like family members. Do you agree or disagree?

Pets have been great friends for humans for thousands of years. Lots of people choose to have a pet as a companion in their lives. The way we behave towards our pets reflects our personality and character. I believe that we have to treat our pets like a family member regardless of our financial situation and our living condition. We don't want our pets to suffer so we have to love them unconditionally because we are the ones that choose to keep them in captivity and take advantage of their company.

In my opinion most animals are very sensitive emotionally. Some are proved to be as smart as young children like African grey parrots. I had a friend who owned one and had to leave the parrot alone for several hours at home every day. He then noticed that the parrot developed a kind of misbehavior and plucked his feathers as a result of being stressed for his loneliness. A behavior which the owner later noticed that is very hard to reverse. If we do not treat them just like one of our family members they will suffer just as a young child might does.

Most pets love their owners, and when they receive love in return they understand it and they show appreciation. They want to stay with their owners always and emotionally they stay healthy, and this is how we, as pet owners, want them to be.

Moreover I think our behavior reflects our character. It shows our personality. If we treat a pet like a family member we show other people in our house hold including our children how to behave. We need to teach this to our kids to love the animal, especially those who we keep in our captivity. We need to behave in a way we expect our children do towards pets.

In recent years communication between people have been reduced due to many reasons including busier lifestyles. Therefor more people choose to have a pet to fill this gap. We need to treat our pets like one of our family members, and then we will have real good friends and will enjoy living with them.

PS: This does not reflect my personal opinion about this topic. I am anti-pets. I believe all animals should live free in their natural environments. But there we have to write an essay. And we are not given enough options to choose from. :D

PSS: I tried to use only my 30 minutes. This writing could have probably been improved by a second revision.

I'd like to thank you for reading this. Your feedback is greatly appreciated.
Kate.

It looks good but I find problem with your introduction and conclusion.
Generally, Conclusion should be a paraphrase of Introduction.
Good introduction should be like a map that give reader a sense of whats going to come in following paragraphs

You are right. That is what I see in all sample essays. But the thing is that I want to prevent repetitive statements. And that is what keeps me from paraphrasing the introduction in the conclusion paragraph. I personally get bored with the context when I see this happens in a reading. But I think I have to change my style of writing and do what u said. Thanks for your feedback Anil :) your time and care is so much appreciated.

Good introduction :)


In my opinion most animals are very sensitive to emotions.


What is the relevance of this idea to the previous? If you talked about their sensitiveness to emotions such as love, then elaborate on that idea before coming to a new idea. You should also provide an example to support your reasoning.

Thanks dumi for your feedback. When re-reading my topic sentence of 2nd paragraph, I think I should have changed the word arrangements. It seems it conveyed wrong meaning. What I meant was something like: "In my opinion most animals are emotionally sensitive." Then I should have linked it to the 2nd sentence and made it a one big statements and then bring the example as the descriptive part of my paragraph.

Some grammatical errors: teach somebody something (to do something); expect somebody to do something

I think you repeated the sentence "treat our pets as one of our family members" too many times. You should paraphrase it.