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 a piece of news from my home village in Bac Ninh Province, about thirty kilometres from Hanoi. It concerns the old banyan tree in front of the communal house, which people say is roughly three hundred years old. One night last September, during a heavy storm, one of its main branches split away and crashed onto the yard. I found out the next morning through the village group on Zalo. My mother had forwarded me a blurry photo with the message, "The tree is hurt. Call your grandmother." The first people involved were the village elders, who called a meeting that same evening. Some officials from the commune thought the whole tree was now dangerous and ought to be cut down. The elders would not hear of it. In the end they contacted a tree specialist from an agricultural university, who said it could be saved with steel supports and proper treatment of the wound. That would cost around eighty million dong, and the village raised it in under two weeks, partly from people like me who work away from home and sent money online. Why did everyone care so much? Well, it's far more than a tree to us. Markets have been held in its shade for generations, children climb its roots, and couples have their wedding photos taken there. Losing it would have felt like losing the oldest person in the village. I also think people were pleased that, for once, the decision was made by the villagers themselves. When I went home last month, the supports were in place and there were new leaves on the damaged side.