Topic: 

Some people like to work in teams. Others prefer to work alone. Which do you prefer? Use specific reasons and examples to support your answer. 

Sample from a TOEFL IBT student:

There are two types of working. One of them is working with a group, another one is working individually. Although some people prefer to work alone, I believe it is much better to work in teams. If we compare these two working types, the benefits of team work are more than those of working alone. The advantages of working with a group can be found below.

Firstly, I prefer working in a team because team work allows a person to work according to his or her strength. Since the group members apply their strong sides to the work, the completion time will be faster. For instance, I was involved in a car design project several years ago. One person made engineering calculations to understand which parts are critical for our design, I made the drawings of the car components, and another friend of mine made the presentation of our project to the professor. He gave us a good response and additional points since we completed our work before the due date. To be more precise, we did a good job, because we divided the work according to our strong sides.

Another reason why I prefer to work with a group is that I think that this type of work establishes a better relationship between the team members. As humans, socialization is important for us and working with a team gives us a chance to improve our relationship. When people are in a team, they have to communicate with each other at each step of the process. For example, in our last year elective course, I made new friends because we were involved in a team project together. Thanks to the project, we did build a good relationship among each other, and we are still in touch.

Lastly, team work improves the sense of responsibility. All group members are aware that their performance affects the group, so all group members try to do their best and work hard to get better results. For example, a few years ago, some of my friends and I participated in a competition which was related to optimization. Since there were a lot of things to do, we divided the topics among each other. We did not have enough information about one of the shared parts. However, a person who got that subject made a lot of effort to learn the topic well. He attended online courses and read books related to that field. Eventually, he accomplished a great job. What I am trying to say is that in a group working, even if a person does not have enough information related to his or her working area, he or she may learn the things with his or her effort because he or she knows that a mistake will cause negative outcomes.

In conclusion, working with a team makes the things easier and helps the people work more happily. If we take into account all these factors, we may reach the conclusion that working in a group has more advantages than working alone.