"Transportation in Surabaya - my hometown" - essay for replacement test of IALF

I live in Surabaya, I've been living here for 25 years. Surabaya is one of the biggest city in Indonesia. It is a capital city of East Java. The increasing of the number of population, absolutely will influences the number of transportation. It is just because we need transportation to do our activities every day. So it's possible to find many transportation in the road including public transportation and personal vehicles.

Public transportation helps us to go to somewhere easily. Bemo is the most populer public transpotation in this city. Most of students go to school by bemo because it's easy to find and cheaper than the others. Bemo looks like a mini bus but it has special colour. Every area has different colour, so it helps you to find which bemo that you need.

However, it also has some diadvantages. Bemo is smaller than a bus, but sometimes the driver wants to take more people. So you have to be patient for waiting the other passengers. If you in a hurry, bemo isn't the best choice, it will be better to take taxi. Besides, although bemo is a car and can protect you from the sun, but there is no air conditioner. So it feels so hot inside.

Surabaya also has a traditional transportation that we call pedicab. It doesn't have any machine. It uses a human power, so it won't make any pollution. It's good for our living. One thing that you have to remember, because of using a human power, it ca 't take you further.

Surabaya is a developed city. There are many businessman living here, so it's possible if I say that almost all of the inhabitant of Surabaya has their own vehicles. It's very helpful actually. We don't have to take any public transportation because we can drive our own car or ride our motorcycle faster.

However, there must be some disadvantages. The increasing of the number of transportation will causes traffic jam and pollution. In my opinion, we shouldn't drive a car everywhere we go. You can drive it if you really need it, for example, you can drive your car when you will go to another city. Just imagine one person one car, how crowded it will be?

It is hard to review your paper without knowing what the prompt is. Kindly provide the prompt so that I can better understand the requirements of the paper. However, even without the prompt, I can see that the paper needs major help in the grammar department due to numerous grammatical errors. Then there is the problem of thought coherence within the paragraphs. The sentences are too short to be considered paragraphs. A paragraph needs at least 3- 5 sentences minimum in order to discuss an idea. You need to lengthen your paragraphs and develop the ideas that you present more. Of course if there is a word count limit on the paper, that will totally change the way I will review the paper. I suggest that you provide the prompt before I provide more comments on your paper so that I will be able to address the requirements of the prompt in reference to your essay. Thanks :-)

Hi, Betty


I am in line with Vangiespen. In order to write in formal situation you have to use compound and complex sentences. Your essay looks separate partially. It effects on essay's flow and coherence which are not built well.

However, let me try to give some minor corrections












For thoses cases, avoid contraction in formal writing. Write in up in the complete form e.g : I have been or we should not . Contraction commonly used in spoken.




As results, it is obvious that the number of public and personal vehicles increase dramatically.


Hopefully these help :)