Model answer
Written by 8020 teachers. Do not memorise it — take the structure and the way ideas are developed, then speak about your own life.
I'd like to talk about the weekly team meeting at my office, which I attend faithfully and which, I'm convinced, achieves almost nothing. I work as a junior marketing executive at a furniture company in Cau Giay District in Hanoi. Every Monday at half past eight, all twelve of us file into a glass meeting room, and we stay there for about ninety minutes. The format never varies. We go round the table and each person reads out what they did last week and what they plan to do this week, although all of it is already written in a shared spreadsheet that anyone can open. While one person is talking, the other eleven are secretly answering emails under the table. At the end our manager asks, "Any questions?" There's a long silence, somebody coughs, and we all go back to our desks. I do it because I have no choice. Attendance is compulsory, and as the newest member of the team I'm hardly in a position to suggest scrapping a tradition that is older than my contract. I think it's a waste of time for a couple of reasons. If you multiply ninety minutes by twelve people, that's eighteen working hours gone every week, more than two full days for one person. And nothing is ever decided. The real problems get solved afterwards, in two-minute conversations by the coffee machine. To be fair, it's the one time the whole team is in the same room, which is worth something. But a fifteen-minute stand-up would do the same job. I've actually drafted an email proposing that. It has been sitting in my drafts folder for four months.