Question：Do you agree or disagree with the following statement?

　　Always telling the truth is the most important consideration in any relationship.

　　Use specific reasons and examples to support your answer.

　　Score 5 Essay

　　Dishonesty kills reliability

　　There are certain considerations or factors that everyone takes into account in a relationship.

　　People may look for honesty, altruism, understanding, loyalty, being thoughtful etc! Everyone would more or less wish that the person s/he is dealing with, has some of these virtues above. Putting them in an order according to their importance, however can be very subjective and relative.

　　When someone asks him/herself the question “What do I consider to be the most important thing in my relationship?” the answer depends on a lot of factors such as how his/her earlier relationships were.

　　After stating that everyone’s opinion can be different about this, for me honesty, in other words, always telling the truth is the most important consideration in a relationship. Opposite of this is inarguably lying and if someone needs to lie, either s/he is hiding something or is afraid of telling me something.

　　In any relationship of mine, I would wish that first of all, the person I’m dealing with is honest. Even though s/he thinks that s/he did something wrong that I wouldn’t like, s/he’d better tell me the truth and not lie about it. Later on if I find out about a lie or hear the truth from someone else, that’d be much more unpleasant. In that case how can I ever believe or trust that person again? How can I ever believe that this person has enough confidence in me to forgive him/her and carry on with the relationship from there. So if I cannot trust a person anymore, if the person doesn’t think I can handle the truth, there’s no point to continuing that relationship.

　　Although I would like to see altruistic, understanding, thoughtful and loyal behavior from people, an instance of the opposite of these behaviors would not upset me as much as dishonesty would. Among all the possible behaviors, dishonesty is the only one for me that terminates how I feel about a person’s reliability. Therefore honesty would be my first concern and the most important consideration in a relationship.

　　Rater’s Comments

　　In this response the writer first approaches the topic by underscoring that a number of character traits are important to a relationship. The writer then effectively develops an argument that unlike other negative behaviors, dishonesty or unwillingness to fully disclose some bad action cannot be forgiven and can be the most important factor in destroying a relationship. The writer’s language is fluent, accurate, and varied enough to effectively support the progression and connection of ideas. There is a variety of sentence structures, including rhetorical questions. The essay is not mechanically perfect, but as long as such errors are occasional, minor, and do not interfere with the reader’s understanding, an essay like this one can still earn a top score.