Band 70-80: FRIENDSHIP

          There is a fact that people have been interacting with one another for ages. This interaction has been engaging people not in the real life but also in their minds and dreams. This simply makes the interaction cover people’s lives to a large extent during their lives. In line with this, the interaction among people is so important for them in the world, where interpersonal relations prevail, that it brings with some strong emotions for people over time. These emotions also generate close relationship as we can label ‘’real friendship''. As Samuel Taylor Coleridge said, ‘’Friendship is always a sheltering tree’’. As can be understood, the friendship that people gain great experience forms a crucial part of communication among people because people are born, grow mature, and die with their friends. Nevertheless, having a real friend might require some criteria for people such aspaying special attention to personality features, mutual respect and social relations of your potential friend.

           To begin with, personality feature is a crucial criterion for people who are on the verge of making a friend. This feature forms a basis for a permanent friendship. There is a range of personality features with the inclusion of being supporting and encouraging, sharer and honest. Having a supportive friend hits the spot for people when they confront with a vague problem. In such cases, the friend manages to raise people’s moral and encourages them. For instance, while I was getting prepared for the university exam, I had low scores in earlier exams. However, my sister struggled to encourage me to succeed by heeding my trouble like a close friend and consequently, I coped with the exam. Another feature to consider is about being sharer. Being sharer may be crucial to you. Sharing includes not only property, but also emotions. As long as people share their friends’ happiness and sadness, they will be more pleased in the life. For example, I was staying at dormitory in high school years and we were always celebrating our friends’ birthdays, so we shared one another’s happiest day and consolidated our friendship. The last thing would be related to having honesty. As it forms backbone of friendship, even tiny lie may damage the friendship, so people should love each other without profit. Otherwise, they may not have even a friend. In short, above mentioned personality features are vital to make friends.

         Another point to consider in making friends is the mutual respect. This point is effective for long-standing friendship. For one thing, racial discrimination is a disruptive attitude in friendship, so you should not give priority to people’s appearance and races in making friend. The thing that you need to care in making friend is to have mutual respect. For example, a lot of blackish people may go to your country to work or study. However, when you run across these kinds of people in your circle of friends, you should never give prominence their races to make friendship. It is because people’s races are not important for friendship and people should be judged with their behaviors not races. The other point to consider is about empathizing with people. The empathetic understanding provides to continue your friendship for a long time. For instance, if your friends make a decision which you do not appeal, you should empathize with her/him to see the point instead of being angry with her/him. The last thing would be related to choosing

your words carefully in conversation. While you are in communication with your friends, you should think twice your words which will say. Otherwise, you cannot draw back your words and consequently, you may be on the brink of disagreement with your friends, so talking carefully in friends is an important criterion. To wit, mutual respect is also crucial criterion in making a firm friendship.

        Thirdly, social relation is a critical matter for a peaceful friendship process. As you know, every person wants to make a friend who is compatible with her/his circle. Nobody wants to be harmed or killed because of their friend acquired, so people care about their friends’ social relations in making friend. For example, some people come across a person who has been in the prison because of committing offense and the situation precludes making friend due to people’s prejudices against the person. In addition, people’s relationship with their families is a crucial criterion for friendship. For instance, every person cannot get on well with their families. This disagreement brings about great problems for them like not staying at their home, staying at their friends’ home or living rough and consequently, this situation causes to be approached against the people with bias in the way of making friend. Above mentioned reasons, social relations have crucial role for an impeccable acquiring friends.

          To sum up, making a friend includes criteria like personality features, mutual respect and social relations. When we look in general, these species of criteria vary from person to person. The reason of variability in making a friend stems from having different qualifications like personality features. These features are enough for people to give confidence one another. Mutual respect is a crucial criterion in terms of being understanding and not being prejudiced for people’s appearance and behaviors. Social relations are also vital matter about making a reliable friend and not being exposed to threats by friends people have. I think, while comparing the criteria, personality features are the most inclusive criterion in above mentioned criteria. Having mutual respect and good social relations will be also inevitable in making friend if people have decent personality features. In short, as Aristotle said ‘’Wishing to be friends is quick work, but friendship is a slow-ripening fruit’’. As can be understood, this qualification diversity that people have causes to process slowly period of making friend. Therefore, it takes time to find a friend who has an excellent feature.


by Çetin Özgür Düzgün 1st year ELT Student @ Erciyes University