Alumni Spotlight IV- Newsies

Time to meet some more recent Tulane graduates- this time we hear from some alumni who are involved in the fast-paced field of bringing news to the world. We've previously met our fasionisitas, foodies, start-up-ers, and now it's time to hear from five Tulane grads from the past few years who have found themselves in the media world. We've got on air talent, behind the scenes writers and more. As they are all so talented in the communication and journalism field, I'm going to tell them speak for themselves. Here goes!

Stefanie in action

Stefanie Bainum- class of 2009 - Hometown: Charleston, SC - Reporter at ABC News 4 in Charleston

Wondering what it's like to be an on air personality in a morning show? "As a television morning reporter I start my day at the crack of dawn, actually, a little before the crack... My alarm goes off at 1:40 a.m. and I am in the newsroom by 3 a.m. preparing for the morning show. Our show, 'Good Morning Charleston', is on the air weekdays locally before the popular national show 'Good Morning America.' After preparing for my story from 3 to 4 a.m., I hit the town with my photographer to report live in the field on the big story of the day. Our show starts at 5 and wraps up at 7 a.m. The hours sound crazy but the work is very rewarding! My favorite part of my job is giving a voice to the voiceless and raising awareness to issues in the community. Meeting new people everyday and learning about so many interesting things is also a big plus of the work. Everyone has a story and I feel blessed that I get to tell people's stories and share them with others for a living."

Sounds cool! Stefanie also told me that Tulane means the world to her and is a big part of who she is today. She noted that "Tulane and the City of New Orleans both help shape you into a well-rounded person and that is what you have to be in my job. It is anything but glamorous in the TV world (despite the common misconception.) You meet people from all different backgrounds and walks of life and there is nothing that prepares you better than that than the diversity of New Orleans."  Stefanie also told me that the Communication and Political Science Departments at Tulane were also outstanding in educating her on the big picture of life and getting practical experience. Thanks to a Communication professor, she got her first TV internship at WGNO in New Orleans and fell in love with everything about TV Journalism. "The rest is history," she tells me. As for what's next? "Stay Tuned!" 

Hey its John. With the Mayor of New Orleans 

John Harper- class of 2012 - Hometown: Portland, OR- Staff Writer, Photographer and Videographer for NOLA Media Group (NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune).  

John's an incredible writer. Why don't I just let him take this one for me: 

"I do just about everything from swamp to bayou to the river belle. When I first started working at NOLA.com I was strictly and assignment reporter, covering high school sporting events around all of Southeast Louisiana. I still do some of that, but my job has become much more diverse in the 12 months since I published my first report on a girls volleyball game that took place at a fairly obscure school in Gretna.

"Things got dramatically more exciting last May, just over six months after I started at “The Pic”, when I was given the opportunity to fill a vacating weekend position in the paper’s award winning criminal justice department. In a serendipitous stroke of luck, one week after I began that job, several other people left the paper and I ended up working many hours of overtime writing stories on a number of topics. A number of my stories have made front-page headlines, and some have even gone viral on the web.

Breaking the news

"The experience has been incredible, especially considering that in my first year working at a daily newspaper I was put in the drivers seat on some of the most highly read and discussed news items not only in metro New Orleans, but in the entire US. I am left with a body of experience that few journalists my age ever acquire so quickly. I was fortunate enough to be in the right place at the right time and to be working in a venerable institution full of people that were super-skilled and able to put me in a position where I could be immediately successful, produce high quality work, and continue learning every single day I was on the job.

"As far as the fun aspect of the job, it’s not all death and destruction. Now that the Friday night lights are illuminated again I have been able to build another set of skills producing game day videos to go with reports. Not only is my body of writing experience continuing to grow, but I continue to be on the beneficial end of training programs that range from moveable type and html programming to video production and editing. One time I got to ride the Algiers ferry with a group of people dressed as sea creatures in protest of a schedule change (the point was that they might have to start swimming across). One time I interviewed a girl who had been stranded in a boat floating off an Island in Honduras for a week, and when the Supreme Court struck down DOMA I was sent to Jackson Square to cover the colorful celebration that began when the bells at Jackson Square went off (“I think I hear the wedding bells,” one guy screamed, effeminately I might add.) No day or assignment is ever the same, and I never have the feeling of going to bed just to wake up and punch the clock again."

One more question for John- Did Tulane or NOLA prepare you well for this job?

"Interestingly enough, it was during my senior year at Tulane that I decided to revisit my childhood journalistic aspirations, which I had given up when in 2008 it seemed every major newspaper was on the verge of bankruptcy (except, ironically, the Times-Picayune, which like its home town has a reputation for stubborn resurgence). I was pleasantly surprised by my senior 40-hour service-learning component. For a Mexican Politics class I was to create a radio documentary about Mexican immigration to New Orleans. I fell in love with the project, and through my economic study I simultaneously realized that the business of news was at a critical point in history: the Internet fits within a lineage of creative-destructive mechanisms that have repeatedly throughout history redefined and eventually expanded the roll of media.

"The bottom line was that, during my moments of senior year clarity, I decided that media was going to be the most interesting place to have a career that starts in the year 2012, so I befriended the advisor who taught the radio class and worked with her for some time as an intern. This ultimately led to me freelancing for a short period of time (with mixed success) before being picked up by the TP last September. An interesting historical note: my first day at the Times-Pic, when I was given my badge and toured the iconic facilities at Howard Avenue, was actually the last Friday that a daily paper would be spun off the presses. Many long time employees were packing their desks into boxes and, boy, did I bare the brunt of some disdainful glances.

"I have been incredibly fortunate in my early career. Tulane was initially a guttural choice for me, carved out of some instinct or nagging sensation that came when I first stepped on campus. I felt like there was opportunity, everyone seemed so willing to help make you feel at home and put you in the right place. Well I have been put in the right place. I feel more and more so every single day." 

Lucy reporting live.

Lucy Biggers - 2012 Gradate - Hometown: Westport, CT - Reporter: WABG-TV Greenville, Mississippi. Local ABC Affiliate TV Station. 

Since last October, Lucy has been the Morning Anchor for Good Morning Mississippi and a Reporter. Her job description is really everything under the sun at the TV station. Like Stefanie, she gets to work early- at 4:30 AM. She produces her show and then anchors from 6 to 7 each morning.  She told me that "the show is a lot of fun, with cooking segments and guests. Imagine the Today Show with about 1% of the production value. But believe me we have a lot of fun! After my show wraps, I head out around the region to report. The craziest thing about of my job is that I am a local celebrity and get recognized at Walmart and the gym -- it's very surreal!" Lucy studied Political Science and History at Tulane, which she says gave her a lot of background that helps when she reports. She told me her time in New Orleans outside of Tulane has also played a big part in getting me to this point. After she graduated, she stayed in New Orleans for the summer and interned at WDSU, an NBC affiliate. There, Lucy learned a lot about reporting and the business and  put together her on-air reel which she used to get the job she hast today.  

Emily Mourad - class of 2009 - Hometown: Minden, LA - CBS Sports Network – Manager, Affiliate Marketing. 

Lets switch it up and check out the other side of the camera. Emily works on the Distribution and Affiliate Marketing teams for CBS Sports Network.She works with television providers (i.e. DirecTV, Cox Communications, AT&T U-Verse, etc.) across the country to negotiate contract terms, including license fees and distribution rights, on behalf of CBS and CBS Sports Network. She covers small and medium sized operators on the distribution sales side of the business and all sized operators on the marketing front. I asked Emily how Tulane played a role in all of this, and she told me that she can "truly say that had I not attended Tulane I do not think I would be in New York City working for CBS today. Tulane provided me the confidence to know I could move to New York City right after graduation with a solid network of friends and alumni connections (with lots of help from friends and family!) I also believe that balancing schoolwork with extracurricular activities at Tulane aided in the development of my organizational and interpersonal skills which I utilize every day on the job." 

Ali at NBC

Ali Vitali - class of 2011 - Hometown: Briarcliff Manor, NY - Multimedia Editor for MSNBC.com. 

Ali describes herself as a Digital Journalist. She's responsible for Video Content on MSNBC.com, as well as reporting on stories for the site. She's also working for a start-up on the side as a Vice President, Managing Editor (and sometimes contributor) for Sweet Lemon Media – a digital magazine and blog for Gen Y men and women. 

Ali e-mailed me that she tells anyone who will listen that writing and communicating effectively are everything. "I had wonderful professors at Tulane who always pushed me to write better and communicate my ideas more clearly," Ali told me. "And communicating clearly is key – especially in 140 characters or less. I remember freshman year I took Persuasive Writing with Professor Kaufman and during his office hours he basically tore apart what I thought was a pretty good paper. But, sure enough, my next draft was a marked improvement – and he told me as much. I went from a B to an A, and it was largely because I was able to sit down and ask him what I could do better on a second go-round. That one-on-one time to talk through ideas and really learn in a hands on way prepared me not just for the next four years of essays, but for working with my editors here at work when I’m reporting, as well as when I’m editing content for others. Tulane being the size that it is and boasting the student to teacher ratios it does allows students to not only get to know their professors, but to learn from them outside of class settings." I agree. 

I asked her about any more Tulane ties. "I love getting to work on Sundays and watching my former Professor Melissa Harris-Perry on my network, asking tough questions and stimulating good debate just like she did in our class of 20 people on campus. It was even cooler when, unbeknownst to me, a screenshot of one of my articles was used as an element in one of her segments recently.

"It’s funny but Tulane has come to be the most interesting part of my resume – which is saying something because I used to think my internship at Late Night with Jimmy Fallon would be the focal point for potential employers reviewing my CV. I recently wrote a blog post about why I’m thankful every day to be able to list Tulane on my resume. And it’s because everybody asks about it. And when they ask, they really want to know. See, here’s the thing you realize when you leave New Orleans: it really is as interesting and unique as Tulane marketed it to be. The city itself is amazing, not just for what it endured and rebuilt after Katrina, but for the traditions it maintains, the weirdness it sometimes harbors, and the people it attracts. And Tulane is very much a part of that city, those traditions, and yes, that weirdness. This school has the ability to turn any “cold interview” into a warm conversation if only you’re willing to talk about your experiences in this city."

So there you have it! There's one more quote from from Ali that I thought wold be a great wrap up for this Newsies blog. I asked Ali what Tulane really can do for it's graduates:

"Tulane’s a school that makes you unique. You can get a good education anywhere, I firmly believe that, but that doesn’t mean you’ll have a good experience everywhere. Tulane is both – and that’s no easy feat. But when you’re at an institution that pushes you to both explore your passions with professors who will take interest in your success, while also being able to get involved in the community around you, the skills you come away with are invaluable and highly transferable everywhere. And if you can meet amazing people, a network of friends that will become a professional social circle once you graduate, all the better. My favorite (and often best) pitches come from my former study (drinking) buddies at Tulane – and it should be that way! Tulane – and New Orleans – will heavily shape you if you go there. Know that up front. You will come away changed and highly loyal to the 504. But that’s a good thing. Then you can join my ranks and list #RollWave on every bio or Twitter profile you have to write simply because you want everyone to know, yup, I went to Tulane."

Couldn't have said it better myself. 

Stefanie in action. 

More of Stefanie reporting live!

Good Morning Mississippi with Lucy and fan club.

The article that Melissa Harris Perry used from Ali

John can write. Seriously. 

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MEMORY

One of the great gifts of mankind is our memory. Without it, we could be greatly impoverished, though, as gifts go, it is a double-edged sword: a donor as well as a tormentor—sometimes a pot of gold, sometimes a Trojan horse.

I see memory as tripartite: good, bad, and whimsical. By this I would mean memories of good things, bad things, and surprising things. But that is a slight oversimplification. Memory of good things is mostly a good thing, but not entirely; memory of bad things is mostly bad, but not entirely; whimsical memory is neither good nor bad, but unexpected and puzzling. Let’s look more closely.

Good memory reflects on good things that happened to us: a lovely lover, a picturesque place, a happy experience in theater, opera, concert, museum or cinema. Or just plain luck, as when I found in the street two twenty-dollar bills. It is basically a good thing, on the principle of Tennyson’s, “’Tis better to have loved and lost/ Than never to have loved at all.”

But there is the obverse of the coin, Dante’s “Nessun magior dolore/ Che ricordarsi del tempo felice/ Nella miseria.” Or “There is no greater hurt than remembering happy times in times of wretchedness.” And it needn’t even been misery; suffice for it to be daily drudgery and beastly boredom.

For this, there is solace in that great eraser, oblivion. Take Swinburne’s, “And the best and the worst of this is/ That neither is most to blame/ If you have forgotten my kisses/ And I have forgotten your name.” (If there is any blame at all, it is for that “most,” where “more” would, strictly speaking, be better grammar. Yet a perfectly plausible argument can be made for “most.”) But of course the benefit of oblivion cannot be guaranteed as long as there is thought, as the Serbian poet Milan Rakich (I transcribe the name phonetically) wrote, “When the heart cries out, thought is to blame,” thought that, often, is precisely unhappy remembrance.

The problem is that happiness, like perfume, is not duplicated by happy memory, just as the scent from a bottle of perfume is not tantamount to that which emanated from a beloved person.  A superb landscape is not fully replicated by a photograph, and even a CD can only approximate the experience of great music hard at a concert.

The place where memory is blessed is in poetry remembered. There memorization is an undoubted boon. But nowadays, when the schools no longer prescribe it, memorization is becoming rarer and rarer. To be sure, do the younger generations even care for poetry? Unless, that is, it comes from a dubious surrogate, such as, say, Maya Angelou. The late Ernest Van Den Haag used to threaten me with a collection of her poetry, which he never enacted, and which, in any case, could be discarded before it became a clinging memory.

What does hurt is, for instance, memory of a Paris never to be revisited in my lifetime, or of the irreplaceable giant turtles of Galapagos, or of childhood Easter vacations in Dubrovnik or Abbazia (now Opatija). Or of a boyhood sweetheart. Or of my beloved dog Bari and cat Bibi. Or of marzipan potatoes, my favorite dessert, essentially unavailable in America, and by now as much conceivably even in their native Austria. And, apropos Austria, edelweiss, for which the Rodgers & Hammerstein song , however well remembered, is not quite a substitute.

Now what about bad memories, memories of unhappy things? Are they all bad? Like telling a female British journalist how I couldn’t grasp her collaboration with a certain lousy male journalist—who turned out to be her husband. This makes me, unrepentant, smile to this day.

Or the memory of having once hit my loving mother? Or of having, with my air gun, killed innocent sparrows. (Anouilh has a play dealing with that trauma.) Or having, as a Belgrade schoolboy, impressed by the son of the German Ambassador, given him on a class excursion my orange, pretending that I loved the rind as much, and eliciting his gloating comment, “Good, in future you can always give me your orange and keep the rind.” His father became a notorious Nazi.

Still, bad memories have their good aspect: one can derive from them what not to repeat. Think of Santayana’s famous dictum that whoever fails to learn from history is forced to repeat it, where history is tantamount to collective memory and can even stand in for the individual one.

I shudder to think of when my classmate Branko and I were looking out the window of my parents’ Lake Bled villa at the neighbor girls sunbathing. We were kneeling on a sofa, and I waited for the moment when Branko’s face was smack behind my posterior to break wind.

Or the time when a bunch of us schoolboys were on winter vacation skiing on Mount Kopaonik, and the winner of the slalom, I, was awarded a cake, which one shared that night with one’s dorm mates. There was one boy disliked by all of us for whatever footling reason, and I denied him a slice of the cake. Origin, perhaps, of my growing up a severe critic.

Funny how such childhood contretemps or peccadilloes can haunt the adult I seem to have become. How about the time during Latin class in my year at a British public school (the Leys, at Cambridge), when the chap next to me was asked to translate “husband” into Latin and was stuck for an answer. I whispered to him “Think of the English,” foolishly hoping that he would think of “marital” to lead him to “maritus.” Instead, he blurted out “husbandus.”

Venial offenses, these. Surely I must have committed much graver ones that I have conveniently forgotten. Which is a good thing about bad memories: that they lessen in time. As if the good things one remembers excused them. Thus, when I received in the mail the dollar bill owed to another John Simon, I dutifully forwarded it to the correct one. (Would I have done as much for a hundred-dollar bill?) But why did I not visit at the hospital my loving and beloved German prof, Karl Vietor, who, as he lay dying, sent me a supremely kind message through a fellow student who did visit him?

Or why did I not take to a film screening the woman who fast and flawlessly typed my very long doctoral thesis (in time for a prize that it, after all, did not win), only because I considered her too unattractive for a date where she could have been viewed as my girlfriend?

Well, enough of that. What about involuntary, whimsical memories? Day in, day out, there spring into my memory, totally unsolicited, proper nouns, titles, cognomens of characters in fiction or history, from sources that I may barely recall. Or mere common nouns, puzzling in their randomness, their lack of relation to anything concurrent? Sometimes I cannot even understand them, let alone associate them with anything of recent, or even remote, interest. It is as if all these things were rolling around in my unconscious, until, like a roulette ball on a random number, they came to rest at a small window into my consciousness. Or is this merely the beginning of Alzheimer’s?

I wish I could recall the exact word that came up seemingly from a literary work’s earlier version that I cannot even recall having read. The chance of this happening was perhaps one in a trillion, if that. O thou mischievous memory, what time I have wasted trying to comprehend thee!

In his lovely poem, “I Remember, I Remember,” Thomas Hood paints enchanting pictures of things and states remembered, and contrasts them with his dreary reality. Four lines from it run. “My spirit flew in feathers then,/ That is so heavy now,/ And summer pools could hardly cool/ The fever on my brow.”

I doubt whether any memories—good, bad or whimsical—can cool the fever on my brow. Yet such as they are, the whole lot of them, they can ignite the fever in my heart, which helps me be a more sentient human being, and that, surely, is a good thing.

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Topic 48. People work because they need money to live. What are some other reasons that people work? Discuss one or more of these reasons.

People work because they need money to live. What are some other reasons that people work?
Discuss one or more of these reasons. Use specific examples and details to support your answer.

Sample essay 1.

In modern society, work has already been a necessary means by which all the people live in the
world, in spite of a few exceptions. First of all, people must work in order to get the money to
meet their living. Besides, there are some more reasons that are also important for people's
working, of which making continuous progress is what I mostly want to emphasize.

As we all know, the human being is an animal greatly more advanced than, and greatly different in
many aspects from, other common animals in the world such as cats, horses, oranges and so on.
So feeding is not the only aim that people live for, as is said in a Chinese saying, “human beings
are not living for only living.” People also need to make continuous progress personally in the
modern and continually changing world. And all kinds of work give people one of the most
effective ways to make progress, which can be illustrated by some reasons below.

First of all, people can learn varieties of basic knowledge and abilities that they need to deal with
all kinds of problems they may meet in study, life, or work in current society. All the abilities,
except for those physiological functions, people need to live in the world are not innately, of
which family and school could supply only a small part, and most of them must be given by work.
For example, proper relationship in work is the basic warranty of your working successfully.
While in work, you would learn how to deal with the relationship between you and your leaders of
your company, if you are an ordinary employee, or the relationship between you and your
followings if you are a director mastering the company. Further more, this rule can surely also be
used when you affiliate with other people you meet in society.

Besides, on the way of making continuous progress, people usually can't control themselves
correctly by themselves in two basic aspects: the direction and motivation of progress. However,
in the course of work, people will not lost their basic direction according to the daily task given to
them. As the same time, once you have a fresh task that can interest you, you also will process the
motivation to finish it, which keep you making progress in your life.

In a word, there are various kinds reasons that people need to work, some of which usually
combine to each other. So far as to me, however, making continuous progress is one the most
important reasons because it is people's one of the most expected aims in their life, and work gives
people a very effective approach to reach the aim.

(This is a 5 point essay)

Sample essay 2.

Although people work to earn money, money is not the main reason people stay in their jobs.
They also work because they enjoy working, they receive job satisfaction, and they like the sense
of accomplishment.

Most people work for work's sake. They enjoy going to an office, or store, Or school each day.
They like to interact with other people. They like to help people solve problems, learn something,
or get a product. People like to help other people.

A lot of people keep the same job because the job gives them a lot of satisfaction. They genuinely
enjoy what they do. This is true for most teachers. A teacher's pay is not very great, but the job
satisfaction can be very high. Helping someone learn is one of the greatest things anyone can do.

People enjoy their work because they like the sense of accomplishment. They like to know that
they finished a project. People who work in factories take pride in the car they produce or the
television they assemble. When they see a car on the street, they can feel a sense of
accomplishment. They helped make that car.

Money is nice, but it is not the only reason people get up and go to work each day. I believe that
people work because they enjoy the act of working; they find their work personally rewarding;
and they like the feeling of a job well done.

Sample essay 3.

When talking about working, some people always complain a lot about it. They regard working as
affliction which means hardship, vapidity and low earnings. They may even dream that they can
also live a happy life without working. But as we all know, that won’t come true. Everyone needs
to work for many different reasons. I believe the three most common reasons is to acquire
knowledge, to seek fame and to enjoy life.

In the first place, we work to practice our skills and we have to learn many aspects of knowledge
to solve the problems and to overcome difficulties. So working makes us skillful and effortless.
The experiences we learn from working are the most important wealth. They are the major
sources of wisdom. If we don’t work, how can we improve our intelligence and then how can we
create wonderful lives?

In the second place, we work to realize our value by producing large amount of goods and serving
the others. Farmer is not a farmer until he plant corps, teacher is not a teacher until she instruct
classes. They all have their responsibility and they also receive our respects because of their
contributions to the society.That’s the meaning of the life, which gives us courage and confidence
to exert our powers to build happy home.

In addition , we work to keep us healthy. We can communicate with each other during work.
Meanwhile,we are helpd and encouraged all together. However, If we don’t work, we will become
torpid and fat. We have to work to relieve our pressure. When you do something you are very
competent to, you will view it as a kind of entertainment. You even find joy from them.

In conclusion, I believe working is a tool by with we can make a key to the gate of knowledge, it
is a road which leads to tomorrow, and it is a drug which can keep us fit. All in all, working
provides us so much that I love work.

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Topic 47. Some people prefer to work for a large company. Others prefer to work for a small company. Which would you prefer?

Some people prefer to work for a large company. Others prefer to work for a small company.
Which would you prefer? Use specific reasons and details to support your choice.

Sample essay 1.

No doubt, I choose to work for a small company because there are too many benefits that
outnumber its disadvantages not to choose. But working for a large company has advantages no
more than its disadvantages.

The most important benefit of working for a small company is that I will have many chances to
develop. In gerneral, a small company is a developing enterprise and it is not easy to absorb many
excellent employees. If I enter this small company, I think that the boss will appreciate me and
give me many opportunities to reveal my abilities. Only I let the job do well, I am sure that I will
rise very rapidly.

On contrary to this, a large company is already a high developed institutions. There are many
prominent talent working for it. A good position will absorb hundreds of opponents. It will take
me a lot of time and vigor to get this position. Maybe I have no chance to win this competition at
all.

Another benefit of working for a small company , which working for a large company almost
cannot achieve, is that I can learn more skills in a small company than in a large company. As
shown above, a small company is a developing enteprise. This means that it have no a great deal
of money to employ many persons . So, I can do all kinds of jobs at the same time. I think that this
will be useful to compete in the society. But in a large company, maybe I only engage a
monotonous job over a long period of time . I believe that this will be helpless to improve my
capacity.

Of course, choosing to work for a large company also has advantages to some extent. For
example, it will afford handsome salary and will be not easy to fail in business competition. But
from my own development, I still want to work in a small company. In addition, I believe that
every large company originates from a small company. Maybe I will become an important person
when the small company in which I work become a large company.

(This is a 5 point essay)

Sample essay 2.

I would prefer to work in a large company rather than a small one. A large company has more to
offer in terms of advancement, training, and prestige.

In a large company, lean start at an entry-level position and work myself up to the top. I could
start in the mailroom and, once I know the company, can apply for a managerial position. In a
small company, there is not as much room to grow.

In a large company, there are a variety of jobs. I could work in sales, in marketing, in distribution,
in shipping, or in any department I applied for. I could be trained in a variety of positions and
would have valuable experience. In a small company, there would not be the same opportunity.

In a large company, there would be more prestige. I could brag to my friends that I worked for
one of the biggest companies in the world. I would always have something to talk about when I
met strangers. If I worked for a small company, I would always have to explain what the company
did.

Working for a small company would -not give me the same opportunities for advancement or onthe-
job training as working for a larger company would. Nor would I be as proud to work for a
small company-unless the small company was my own.

Sample essay 3.

Some people show special interest in working for a big company, while other are more willing to
work for small ones! Of course, every individual has his own opinion about the strengths and
weakness when it comes to serving in a big firm or a small one ;for me, my choice is definitely to
work for a big company!

Now let's use the analysis of "SWOT",which was always employed in the field of economics to
get the above-said problem sloved! Here, S stands for "strengths",W for "weakness",O for
"opportunities" and T for "target"!

Working for a big company will have many aspects of strengths for your development in your
career, because, in my head, a big company usually provides more competitiveness and it
demands its employees to be self-educated at the very beginning of becoming one member of the
group or he or she will be dismissed without hesitation, for as a big company, there are always a
pool of talents waiting for the position which he or she occupied before! Besides, in a big
company, you will deal with shades of people, who are maybe from different provinces or even
different countries, having various education, as well as family background, and so on, in such
way you will be inevitably influenced by "multi-culture",regardless of the various cultures of
different provinces, or of different nations, which is of great importance for a person with the
hope of tailoring himself to be an international talent. Finally, in a big company you will be given
more opportunities to be charged up in your free time either at home or abroad and be endowed
with more chances to contact with more elites in the specific field or other fields.

When speaking of the weakness, in my humble opinion, of course, every thing is a double-edged
sword, working for a big company might have little chance for those who have little of parts to get
out due to the bulk of talents, but compared with strengths and the opportunities mentioned
above, it can be omitted, to put it exceedingly!

When it comes to the target, you, as a member of a big company, you will be more likely to
motorize your target because of the plentiful resources including material resources, as well as
human resources.

All that I have said above boils down to the conclusion that if you are a person who craves for
competitiveness and desires to be an international or Inter-provincial talent, you should choose
the big firms for your future development.

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Topic 46.What are the important qualities of a good son or daughter? Have these qualities changed or remained the same over time in your culture?

What are the important qualities of a good son or daughter? Have these qualities changed or
remained the same over time in your culture? Use specific reasons and examples to support your
answer.

Sample essay 1.

The qualities of a good son and daughter-obedience, loyalty, respect-have not changed. Any
parent will tell you that, like their ancestors, they expect these qualities from their children.
However, they do not always get what they expect from their children.

Parents demand that their sons and daughters, regardless of age, obey them. Even if the children
are married and have their own children, they should still do whatever their parents ask of them.
At least, that's the way it was. Now, children tend to obey their parents until the children are of
college age. Then they feel they are adult enough and can make their own decisions even if these
decisions are against the parent's wishes.

Parents also expect loyalty from their children. If there was a dispute in the neighborhood or
between families, the parents would expect their children to side with their own family. This
quality is probably still very common. Most children today will support their family against others.

Parents, of course, demand respect. As people become more mobile, and children are introduced
to non-traditional ways of doing things, this quality may not endure. Parents are sometimes
viewed as old-fashioned. Children don't think their parents can appreciate the way life really is.
They think their parents are too old to understand. They lose respect for their parents.

Obedience, loyalty, and respect are virtues that are being challenged today. We may not obey our
parent, give them the loyalty or respect they wish or deserve, but I hope my children obey me, are
loyal to me, and respect me.

Sample essay 2.

When asked about the important qualities of a good son or daughter, people have all kind of views
concerning it. From my point of view, the important qualities of a good son or daughter consist of
listening to the right advice from parents, taking care of parents when growing up and respecting
them.

The most important quality, I think, is that we should respect our parents. It was our parents who
brought us into the world and brought us up. They provided us food and clothes, and send us to
school to study knowledge. They tried their bests to make our life happy and comfortable.
Accordingly, it was our responsibility to respect our parents, including their labor and opinions.
We should not spend too much money on useless things because it comes from parents’ labor. At
the same time, we must listen to the right advice from parents and don’t act according to our own
wishes and desires despite the objection of parents.

The second quality for a good son is that we should care for our parents when we grow up.
Nowadays we have already attended the university, usually far away from parents. So we should
keep in touch with them by telephone, letter and e-mail, not making them feel lonely. We may
talk about their life at home, such as their work and their health. In fact every time when I give a
call to my parents, I may feel that they are very happy because of the telephone. The reason is
that not only can the get the information about me, but also they know that their son concerns
himself with his parents.

A good son should have many merits. From my point of view, respecting the parents and caring
for them are the most important for everyone. What’s more, they can’t be changed with the
development of the society because they are the fundamental qualities for a good son or daughter.

Read More →

Topic 45. Some people prefer to get up early in the morning and start the day's work. Others prefer to get up later in the day and work until late at night. Which do you prefer?

Some people prefer to get up early in the morning and start the day's work. Others prefer to get
up later in the day and work until late at night. Which do you prefer? Use specific reasons and
examples to support your choice.

Sample essay 1.

Some people prefer to get up early in the morning and start the day’s work. Others, however,
prefer to get up later in the day and work until late at night. As far as I am concerned, getting up
early is a good habit because it is good for health and is easy to take care of everyday works.

In the first place, everyone knows that getting up early is a very good habit for our health. You
can enjoy the fresh air in the early morning, and also you can get a good night sleep during the
quiet midnight time. Moreover, if you get up early, before go to work, you still have enough time
to do some exercises, such as walking, running and riding the bike. Without doubt, all of the
exercises do help your health.

In the second place, it is a little bit easy to take care of everyday works if people get up early. For
example, if everyone in the family gets up early, wife will have enough time to prepare the
breakfast for the whole family, children will have enough time to catch the school bus, husband
will never forget to change his dirty shirt. Everything is on the order.

Admittedly, some people who work until midnight and get up later in the day claim that working
in the midnight is more efficient and can concentrate the work without distraction. However, the
advantages of getting up early carry more weight than those of getting up later.

To sum up, from what I have discussed above, we can safely draw a conclusion that getting up
early can benefit not only because it is good for ours health but also it is easy for us to take care of
everyday works. Therefore, I prefer to get up early in the morning and start the day's work.

(This is a 5 point essay)

Sample essay 2.

Some people prefer to get up early in the morning to start the day's work; while other people like
to get up later in the day to work until late at night. Which option do you prefer? I would choose
to get up early in the morning. This view is based on the follwing reasons.

By getting up early in the morning you can enjoy a lot of good things that nature offers. You can
breath fresh air, smell aroma of flowers, listen the birds singing in the morning. What a beatiful
world! In the meantime, these can refresh our brains and quickly get ready for the day's work. We
can immediately concentrate in the work, and solve the problems with great efficiency. For
example, when I was in senior middle school, I got up early in the morning everyday to go over
my lessons and prepare the courses that I would have that day. I found it was so efficient and I
memorized my study material so deeply. On the contrary, people who get up late and go to bed
late tend to leave all the day's work to the night, and tend to go to bed until the finish the day's
work. This is not a good living habit and also not an efficiently way of working.

Anotherreason why I would like to get up early to start a day's work is because I believe that it is
good for our health. The body's cycle follows the nature: when the sun rise, it is time to get up;
when the moon rise, it is time to go to bed. Besides, by getting up early we can have time to do
some excercises such as jogging, hiking and swimming, which will benifit our health. Many
statistics show that most people who live a long life get up early and go to bed early. While getting
up late and go to bed late violates human biology and therefore will do harm to the health. And
peopel who get up late never got a chance to do morning excercises.

In a word, getting up early in the morning to start a day's work is a smart choice for people, it can
benifit both people's work and health.

Sample essay 3.

I prefer sleeping late and staying up late at night. This routine fits my body's rhythm, my work
schedule, and my social life.

I believe in following my body's natural rhythm. My body tells me to sleep until I am ready to get
up and go to bed when I am sleepy. This means I never get up early in the morning. My body tells
me it likes me to get 8 to 10 hours of sleep a day.

Sleeping late also fits my work schedule. Actually I don't have that much work to do. I can easily
finish my work between lunch and dinner. I think that if one works too much, there is not enough
time left to enjoy one's self.

My active social life is another reason I prefer to sleep late. Who gets up early in the morning to
have fun? No one. Anything amusing, such as concerts, dances, parties, dinners, all happen at
night. If I got up early in the morning, I would be too tired to enjoy myself in the evening.

I will maintain this pattern forever I hope. I think it is always important to listen to your body and
if your body tells you to stay in bed, you should listen to it. By listening to your body, you will
never let work interfere with your social life.

Read More →

Topic 44. Some people like to travel with a companion. Other people prefer to travel alone. Which do you prefer?

Some people like to travel with a companion. Other people prefer to travel alone. Which do
you prefer? Use specific reasons and examples to support your choice.

Sample essay 1.

Traveling is a very pleasant thing. Some people like to travel with several friends. Other people,
however, would prefer to travel alone. Each way has its advantages. As far as I am concerned,
traveling with my friends is my choice.

Why do some people like to travel just himself or herself? For one thing, they have more freedom.
They do not need to discuss the routine with others. What he or she wants to go, just go. For
another, they can have more relax. They do not need to keep an eye on how to get along with
friends.

Although there may be one or more advantages to traveling alone, I insist that traveling with
friends far overweigh them. In the first place, you can make the trip easy.Traveling is not a very
easy activity. For example, you need to find transportation tools, hotel and restaurant in strange
places. Several friends can average these tasks so that such things will not bother every one much
and enjoy the journey more.

In the second place, you can get help when you need. There will be many unexpected surprising
thing during the journey. Such as, get lost, be sick, cannot wake up early for the morning flight. It
is very tough for people to handle these situations by themselves especially when they travel to a
strange place. Friends can give you a hand to overcome all these difficulties. As a Chinese slang
says, "every one needs the help from others."

In addition, you can have more fun. Enjoying the scene spots is wonderful, while traveling on the
road is boring. How to spend this boring time? Talking with friends, playing cards will help you
out.

In conclusion, I prefer to travel with friends rather than travel alone not only because the trip will
be easier with friends, but also because more help and fun will be got from friends.

Sample essay 2.

I prefer to travel with a companion.

First, you can save plenty of time and money. In the travel, you have lots of things must do except
see landscape such as booking hotel, buying tickets, looking for bus stations etc. If you have a
companion can do these things with you, you will have more time to see landscape and to rest. It's
the most important that you will have a good mood rather than be upset by those small beer.
Money is a very big problem. If you like to travel alone, you must afford all. But if you have a
companion, you can save money in transport, hotel, even tickets. That may let you travel more
days than you plan.

Time and money is important to you, but when you have trouble what you want is sincerely help.
I like climbing mountain. I have been to the Jiuzhaigou in the Sichuan province. It is very
beautiful place, but it locates high altitude. We meet big trouble of breath when we climbed
mountain. in the way, my friend and I had a turn on carrying bags and helping each other when
we felt tired. when we reached the mountain peak, we embraced. We all knew the one thing that
if you have no help from your friend, you cannot reach the peak.

In most of time, you may get funs from your friend. When you want to get a photo, your friend
can take a picture for you. When you feel scared, your friend can encourage you. When you are
lonely, your friend can joke you. When you get a beautiful place, you can share your happiness,
inspiration with your friend.

A companion can bring some help, save time and money; also you can feel human's spirit in the
same time. Your eyes not only see nice landscape of nature, but the beautiful landscape of human
beings.

(This is a 5 point essay)

Sample essay 3.

Traveling alone is the only way to travel. If you take someone with you, you take your home with
you. When you travel alone, you meet new people, have new experiences, and learn more about
yourself.

When I travel with a friend, I spend all my time with that friend. We eat together and sightsee
together. When I travel alone, I spend my time looking for new friends. It is easy to find other
people, either other tourists or locals, to eat with or have a coffee with. When you share meals
with strangers, they become friends.

When I travel with a friend, my routine is predictable. We maintain the same schedule that we do
at home. When I travel alone, I adopt the rhythm of the place I visit. I might take a nap in the
afternoon and eat dinner at 11 pm. I might go to a disco and dance all night.

When I travel with a friend, we know how we will react to things. When I travel alone, each new
experience requires a new reaction. If I don't try new things, I won't be able to decide if I like
something or not. Shall I ride an ostrich or eat one?

I think it is always important to do things on your own. You can find new friends, collect new
memories, and adopt different ways of doing things. Isn't that the point of travel?

Read More →

Topic 43. Have you experienced the fear of bungee jumping? Have you ever enjoyed the excitement of car racing? Nowadays, more and more people are attracted to such dangerous activities, especially the young people. Wondering why? After thinking about the lifestyle of those people, the reason goes as follows.

Have you experienced the fear of bungee jumping? Have you ever enjoyed the excitement of car
racing? Nowadays, more and more people are attracted to such dangerous activities, especially the
young people. Wondering why? After thinking about the lifestyle of those people, the reason goes
as follows.

Sample essay 1.

While the world is becoming more and more competitive, the task on each person’s shoulder
becomes heavier and heavier. People’s activity everyday is very intense and they get more and
more burdened after days of hard work. So everyone wants a release and the best way to relax
and get relieved is to do the dangerous activities, because while you are doing something
dangerous, you have to be concentrated on it, and you can’t think about anything else. Hence you
relieved all the unhappiness and the troubles you had in daily work.

In addition, to take risks and try out new things is one of human being’s basic instincts. People
always like to do something new, especially when something is popular as well. According to
some stastistics, the dangerous activities are becoming extremely popular among young people. If
you don’t try some dangerous activities, people will think that you are a coward and afraid of
doing it. So it’s reasonable enough for them to do dangerous activities to show their braveness.

However, I don’t like dangerous activities and I believe the phenomenon that people are attracted
to dangerous activities is just a whim. After realizing countless disadvantages of them, people will
reconsider about them. Some safer activities to help people to get relieved will be developed
afterwards.

(This is a 5 point essay)

Sample essay 2.

Dangerous sports or activities attract a certain type of person. This person is often a risk taker, an
optimist, and a fatalist.

People who take risks are found both in dangerous sports and business. But it is a special person
who takes a risk with his own life as opposed to his money. My father was a risk taker. He put
everything he owned into his business, but he stopped playing risky sports like horseback riding
and skiing. Once his business was a success and he no longer had to worry about providing for us,
he returned, at the age of 60, to the risky sports that he did as a youth.

Someone who plays dangerous sports must be an optimist. They cannot imagine that anything will
happen to them. They never think about breaking their leg while skiing, falling off a cliff while
rock climbing, fatting on their head while sky diving. They live for the thrill of the moment
without a thought to the many things that could go wrong.

Rock climbers and sports car drivers must be fatalist. They might plan for potential problems, but
once they have done everything they can do, the outcome is out of their hands. A motorcyclist
who jumps across a narrow canyon will get the fastest, strongest bike available that will carry him
or her across the canyon. However, wind conditions or other problems might interfere and the
cyclist may fall short of his goal.

Many people have the same traits of course. Many of us are risk takers, optimists, and fatalists.
But I think people who play dangerous sports must have these characteristics in abundance.

Read More →

Topic 42. What is a very important skill a person should learn in order to be successful in the world today?

What is a very important skill a person should learn in order to be successful in the world
today? Choose one skill and use specific reasons and examples to support your choice.

Sample essay 1.

Upon the question that what is the very important skill a person should learn in the world today,
different people have differnt opinions. In my point of view, I perfer to think that communication
is the most impotant skill for almost every person. There are many reasons to support my view.

Firstly, communication is a bridge between people. Nobody is omnipotent; people depend on one
another in their daily lives. We all hope we can be become the person who masters every skills
and can complete every kind work by ourselves. However the real world tells us that this just is a
dream. Therefore, people are interdependant, no can can say that he does not need other people's
help. The society requires cooperation among people. Communication is the link. Communication
is the first step of successful cooperation among people. By communication, we exchange of
thoughts and information, and get other people understand our needs and ideas. For example, in a
company, big or small, a manager always has to communicate with his boss, coleagues and
subordinates.

Secondly, communication can help us keep friendship and make new friends. Friends need to
communicate to each other, so that they know each other's needs and feelings. Indeed, the most
important qualities of a friend is communication and understanding. If you are a good
communicator, it is very easy for you to keep your friendship and make new friends. If you do not
communicate with your friends, you will not only feel lonely, but also can eventually loss your
friends.

From all above, I think that communacation is the most important skill for people to survive in this
society. I hope everybody works hard to get the skill.

Sample essay 2.

Nowadays people say that we have stepped into "The Information Age", therefore computer skills
are one of the most important skills in today's society. Being able to operate a computer is an
advanced technique and can increase one’s work efficiency and simplify many works.

Using a computer can help people do many complex works. You can calculate a very complex
arithmetic problem. Many arithmetic problems in engineering are too complex to work out by
hands. A computer can do these works conveniently and easily. You can also look for some
references from a foreign country from a computer if you login in the Internet. You can save your
documents in some discs on a computer no matter how large they are and you do not need to take
a lot of paper.

Using a computer can increase your work efficiency. With its help, you can book plane tickets
and hotel rooms for a business trip. You can easily compile your files in a shorter time and retrive
them whenever you need. If you are an engineer, you can control machines automatically with the
help of a computer. The products are more precise than those controlled by hands and the product
efficiency is higher. You can save a lot of time to consider other things and this is important for
your success.

If you can operate a computer, you can sit down in your own home and control distant work. All
you need to do is pressing some keys. With the help of a computer, your work can be simplified.
You also can use a computer to communicate with your friends by e-mails and it is quicker and
safer than ordinary means.

There are many other skills a person should learn to be successful, but I think that being able to
operating a computer is the most important.

Sample essay 3.

With the development of science and technology, the world is no longer what it used to be.
Everyone should master one or more skills in order to survive and succeed in the world. As far as
I am concerned, the most important skill one should learn is to teach himself or herself.

To begin with, no one can depend on a teacher in the whole life. In high school and university,
several teachers can tcach you physics, chemistry, biology and so on. But when you find a job and
leave school, few people will tell you how to solve the problem you encounter in the job. What
you can do is to read books and find the answers yourself. If you do not have the ability to teach
yourself, it is difficult to survive in the world.

In addition, what we have learned in the school is probably not enough. Nowadays new science
and technology develop very rapidly. Suppose you are majored in computer. As we all know, the
computer science is changing fast. New idea and concept may appear everyday. Once you stop
studying, you may probably leave behind and even lose your job.

Last but not least, keeping studying can lead you to a high salary job. If you understand the most
advanced knowledge, lots of companies may hire you, because the more science one can master,
the higher productivity he will have. Do you have a dream to have a good job? If you do, learn
how to tcach yourself right now.

So from what has been discussed, one can reach only this conclusion that teaching himself or
herself is a very important skill a person should learn in order to be successful in the world today.

(This is a 5 point essay)

Sample essay 4.

Two years ago, if you ask a person what do they think is the most important skill to be successful
in the world, you will get a variety of answers. If you ask a person who is about my age the same
question, persumably, eight out of ten will give the same answer as mine-computer skill is the
most important skill a person should learn.

Why I think computer skill is the most important skill? First, computer skills such as operating a
word processing software package or typing are convenient and efficient. For example, I am
writing this essay by using a computer. If I do not have computer skill, I can not make a
composition as quickly as possible; maybe I can only write on paper. Another vivid example is
that many colleges is offering online classes for student to choose, which means the students can
study in the comfort of their homes and acquire their knowledge by means of using computer at
home.

Secondly, computers is an important tool for teaching and communicating between teachers and
students. Recently, school teachers have an increasingly demand on students to turning in their
papers or school works, and the teachers can score on line. If the teacher has a assignment, they
just send an e-mail to the students. In addtion, many young people use computers to communicate
with each other. They use online chat rooms, ICQs and messengers. They even play online games
through the internet. Therefore computer skills are important for students to communicate with
their teachers and fellow students.

Last but not least, computer skill help a person to find a good job after they graduate. As we open
newspapers and search for a good job, we can find that computer skill is a required skill for nearly
every job. Indeed, whether you work as a receptionest, salesperson, warehouse manager and
office clerk, you have to operate a computer and therefore computer skills is absolutely
neccessary for these jobs and most others.

Although there are many other important skills for a person to succeed in today's world, judging
from what I have mentioned above, I think my point of view is solid and sound. Having computer
skills is one of the most important thing in today's world.

Sample sample 5.

The one skill I would choose for success is tolerance. I do not define success economically; I
define success socially. To succeed in the future, we will need to be tolerant of one another's
background, opinions, and lifestyle.

The world is becoming increasingly mobile. We no longer are able to live and work only with
people who went to the same schools and went to the same parties as our parents and we did.
Now, we will work directly with people whose backgrounds are completely different from ours.
We must be tolerant of these differences as they must be tolerant of us if we are to live and work
together amiably.

We cannot stop speaking to people or start a war just because there is a difference in opinion. We
must learn to be tolerant of one another and respect these differences in opinion. We have to find
a common ground, an idea we can both agree on. Once we have agreement on one subject, it will
be easier to settle differences in other subjects.

Different people have different lifestyles. We must accept these differences even though they
may be different than what we are used to. Women can live on their own, hold important jobs,
and raise children on their own. Men can stay home and take care of children. Social roles can
change and we must be tolerant of these changes.

To succeed socially, you must get use to varieties. You must be tolerant of all peoples regardless
of their background, their opinions, or their lifestyles.

Read More →

Topic 41. Some people think that human needs for farmland, housing, and industry are more important than saving land for endangered animals. Do you agree or disagree with this point of view? Why or why not?

Some people think that human needs for farmland, housing, and industry are more important
than saving land for endangered animals. Do you agree or disagree with this point of view? Why
or why not? Use specific reasons and examples to support your answer.

Sample essay.

In the past, there have been many endangered animals. Now they are extinct. Does it matter? Has
our environment been affected by their absence? Has the quality of our own life been changed?
The answer to these questions is "Yes."

It does matter if we destroy an endangered species habitat to develop more farmland, housing or
industrial parks. There is a delicate balance of nature. If one small part is removed, it will affect all
the other parts. For example, if certain trees are cut down, bats will have no place to roost. If they
cannot roost, they cannot breed. If there are no bats, there will be no animal, or bird to eat certain
insects that plague our crops.

Our environment has been affected by the absence of certain animals. Certain flowers are
pollinated by butterflies which migrate from Canada to Mexico. Some of the breeding grounds of
these butterflies were destroyed. Now these flowers are disappearing from certain areas. We will
no longer be able to enjoy their beauty.

The quality of our life has been changed. America used to be covered with giant trees. Now we
have to visit them in one small park. Rainforests around the world are being cut down to make
room for humans. We will never be able to see or study this fragile ecosystem.

I would encourage us humans to look for other alternatives for our farmlands, housing, and
industries. We have alternatives; the animals do not.

Read More →

Topic 40. The expression "Never, never give up" means to keep trying and never stop working for your goals. Do you agree or disagree with this statement?

The expression "Never, never give up" means to keep trying and never stop working for your
goals. Do you agree or disagree with this statement? Use specific reasons and examples to support
your answer.

Sample essay 1.

I do strongly support the idea that we should keep trying and never stop working for our goals. I
think this is the most important thing that can help us to achieve our goals. I believe that
everybody meets many obstacles in their lives before achieving their goals. I have learned the
biography of some famous people in the past. I found that almost all of them persevered through
enormous hardships in order to reach their goals. In this essay, I will give you an example of the
attempt of a great inventor of the world named Thomas Edison.

I am quite sure that everybody knows Thomas Edison. He made many inventions during his
lifetime. According to his biography, it states that he always met obstacles in order to invent
something. However, he still kept trying in order to meet his goals. I personally think that this is
the most important thing that made him reach his goals. Some scientists said that it was impossible
to invent something such as electric light and movie projector. However, he could make them
success. In my opinion, the greatest invention of Edison was electric light. I have learned that he
got many hardships and failures, but he never gave up. He spent about two years to achieve it. He
used to say that his successes came from hardworking more than luck or fate.

In conclusion, I believe that everyone cannot achieve their goals if they always give up when they
meet the obstacles and hardships. I think that we have to try to solve the problems we will meet. I
am quite sure that we can do everything success if we are confident that we can do it and never
give it up.

Sample essay 2.

"Never, never give up" means to keep trying and never stop working for your goals. I think it's a
very good piece of advice for all of us.

Never stop working for your goals doesn't mean you must be successful; it doesn't even mean that
you must achieve your goal, but it's very important to keep it in your mind.

You want to be a great basketball player, but you are 1,60m tall; you want to be a great pianist,
but what you have studied in the university was physics; you want to establish your own
company, but you are just a clerk in a small company. These examples are very common in our
real lives.

There are enough unfavorable conditions which make our lives difficult, but what important for us
is to make efforts towards your goal or your dream. If you have given your best for your goal or
your dream, whether you succeed or not, at least you won't leave any regret in your life. What's
more, who knows, what will happen in the next 10 years?

You might not be a famous basketball player, but you could become a good player in the
basketball-team of your school. You might not be a great pianist, but you play the piano very well
and enjoy yourself after the heavy work every day. You might not be able to establish your own
company yet, but you are just collecting experience and knowledge as a good manager, and
maybe in 10 years, you will become the boss of your own company.

Few of us have perfect lives, what I want to say is, don't give up working for your goal or your
dream. If you succeed, you will taste great joy in your life. If you don't succeed, you won't have
regret in your life because you have given your best. Besides, in trying to achieve your goals, you
might find out that perhaps your goals are not correct or not practical at all, then you can improve
them and make your life more beautiful.

Read More →

Topic 39. Do you agree or disagree with the following statement? With the help of technology, students nowadays can learn more information and learn it more quickly.

Do you agree or disagree with the following statement? With the help of technology, students
nowadays can learn more information and learn it more quickly. Use specific reasons and
examples to support your answer.

Sample essay.

Technology has greatly improved the way we get information. Students can now get more
information, get it more quickly, and get it more conveniently.

The Internet and the World Wide Web has opened every major library and database to students
around the world. Information comes not only in print form, but also in multimedia. You can get
audio and video data. You can get information about events in the past as well as events that
unfold as you watch your computer monitor.

Information comes at the speed of the Internet which is to say in nanoseconds. ? You can type in
a few key words in your search engine, and the engine will search the entire WWW to find
information on your topic. You don't have to spend hours pouring over card catalogs in the library
and looking at the shelves. This research is done for you instantly on the Web.

It is certainly more convenient to sit at home and do research on your computer. Your computer is
open 24-hours a day, unlike a library or office which has limited hours and limited resources. You
can do research in your pajamas while you eat breakfast. What could be more convenient?

Technology, especially the Internet, has certainly changed the quantity and quality of the
information we get. The speed and convenience of a computer helps students learn more, more
quickly.

Read More →

Topic 38. Learning about the past has no value for those of us living in the present. Do you agree or disagree?

Learning about the past has no value for those of us living in the present. Do you agree or
disagree? Use specific reasons and examples to support your answer.

Sample essay.

I disagree wholeheartedly that learning about the past has no value for those of us living in the
present. In fact, the definition of learning includes the idea of an accumulation of experiences
from the past. Learning can only take place if we make an association between things that have
happened in the past or between something in the past and something that we predict will happen
in the future. All knowledge that we acquire as we grow is from the past-language, customs,
academic subjects, and so on. While it may be helpful sometimes to be able to overlook previous
knowledge in order to avoid the constraint conformity, the vast majority of knowledge that we
learn is a huge boost-imagine if each of us had to discover by ourselves that 2 + 2 = 4! So, in a
very real sense, all learning depends on past events.

We are only able to live in this world with our current standard of living because we have learned
from the past. We receive knowledge from the past and we are able to use it and improve it. We
examine our actions in the past and we make judgments about what was right and what was
wrong. Then, it is hoped, we will attempt to avoid those same mistakes again. For example, one of
the great mistakes all over the world has been depriving women and the disempowered classes
status in society and many industrialized and developing countries all over the world are
attempting to avoid such mistakes both in the present and in the future.

Furthermore, all of the knowledge that we have today is a result of all the work of our
predecessors. The ancient Greeks developed geometry, which helped other European scientists
analyze the solar system, which in turn gave us a new understanding of our place in the universe.
The great majority of technology today depends directly on several thousands of years of work of
past thinkers. To ignore the knowledge of the past would be to throw away five thousand years of
history and experience.

There is, however, some seemingly small, but important value to ignoring the past. It is often the
case that history or tradition has the effect of constraining our thought in the present and many
important philosophical and scientific breakthroughs have only been possible as a direct result of
ignoring the past. The past, in a sense, can blind us to the truth, we can become bound by
tradition. For example, at one time, leading thinkers in Europe thought that the Earth was at the
center of the universe and those who disagreed were persecuted as heretics, even Copernicus,
who we now know was correct about his heliocentric model of the Solar System. However,
scientists were eventually able to break from the past and accept the new model of the universe.

In short, learning from and analyzing the past has enormous value for us and life as we know it on
Earth today would not be possible without the benefit of thousands of years of history and
accumulated knowledge. It is important, however, to ignore the past so that we can make a step
forward, and such free thinking should be encouraged, although not at the expense of past
knowledge. Learning from the past is something like learning from our parents-in most cases, their
past helps us have a better future, but there are times when we need to make a break from the
past and make a bold step into an unknown future.

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Topic 37. Do you agree or disagree that progress is always good?

Do you agree or disagree that progress is always good? Use specific reasons and examples to
support your answer.

Sample essay 1.

Who would disagree with the statement "progress is good"? Without progress, there would be no
change. Without progress, there would be no change in our economy, our standard of living, or
our health.

Progress is required to keep the economy moving forward. New products need to be developed;
new services need to be created. Without progress, our economy would standstill. There would be
no change. Without progress, there would be no supermarkets with fresh produce brought in from
all over the world.

Progress is required to improve our standard of living. Our homes today are more efficient and use
less natural resources thanks to improvement in home construction techniques. Our clothes are
warmer and safer thanks to developments in textile manufacturing. Our educational system is
better thanks to the use of the computers and the Internet.

Progress is required to improve the health of the world population. Without progress, there would
be no vaccines against deadly diseases like smallpox. Without progress, there would be increased
infant mortality. Thanks to progress, our lives are longer and healthier.

Progress is a natural state. Without it, we would not evolve. Without it, our economy, our
standard of living, and our health would deteriorate. Who could deny the necessity of progress?

Sample essay 2.

Is progress always good? Scientific progress brings us many conveniences and advanced
machines, such as computers, automobiles, and so on. Progress seems to have made life more
simple and more comfortable. But if we analyze it carefully, we will find that progress is not
always good.

Modern industry brings us more convenient life. But at the same time, some problems appear. For
example, "the green-house effect" is a very serious problem that scientists try to solve it as early
as possible. It increases the earth temperature and some icebergs melt and the sea level becomes
higher and higher gradually. Maybe someday the sea will swallow some big cities nearby the sea.

Progress enhances the product efficiency, but it also brings us an other serious problem-pollution.
Pollution is so serious that ecological balance is damaged and many animals and plants lose their
living environment and become extinct eventually. The air is polluted and it is not suitable for
people. The water is also polluted and people are facing deficiency of drinking water in some
countries.

Progress makes the speed of life faster and faster because of the usage of computers and
automatic machines. People have to work faster than before and it makes them nervous. More
and more physical and psychological problems disturb people's life. Many people do not have time
for recreation.

From the above statements, it can be concluded that progress is not always good. It has its own
negative influences on our life. Maybe those problems can be solved by more progress.

Sample essay 3.

Alll over the world people are welcoming progress into their home, their business and their
education. Larg corporations use progress in technology, industries use progress in their
manufacture process. How ever, when we think about in larger picture, it is clear that progress can
be damaging in some cases. We as asociety have to check ourselfs once and a while to make sure,
that the progress is not making to much damage to certain communities around the world.

Speaking as a member of avery spacial community called a Kibbutz, which used to provid to our
poeple from the agriculture products we grow in our own feilds, and sell in markets. When
progress came to our country, many industries got stronger, and farmers like ourselfs found their
selfs without a future for their agriculture investment, that they worked and built for years. In this
case progress has damaged a larg community, and made them face a hard finencial fueture.

Another unfourtunate veiw on progress, is the use of computures to entertain children. In the year
2000, when every home has adopted the progress in computures, children find themselfs sitting
long hours infront of the compure instead of playing outside or inviting friends over. This way of
spending to much time on the computure is very damaging to thier social skills, and even a reason
for weight gain amoung young children.

After looking at a differnt aspects of progress, i can say clearly, that progress has to be supervised.
That in some cases progress is making a big damage for our society. People sould welcome
progress in many feilds of life, but always have your eyes open for littel "land mines" that could
make an unreversable situation and future.

(This is a 5 point essay)

Sample essay 4.

The nobleness & the use of progress in any field, to an individual, or to the society on the whole,
will depend on what use the progress is being put to, and I feel, cannot be generalized as stated
above.

Progress has been inherent with the human race. As the human brain developed, so has progress
been achieved, in almost all fields known to man. The cultural progress over the ages, have made
humans better and made this world, a better place to live in. Similarly, scientific progress has been
effective in eradicating diseases, providing better food crops, facilitating transportation etc.
Literary progress has helped us better document our history and has produced works that have
made us think. Progress in communication techniques have converged this whole world of ours,
into the 'global village'.

If we look at the above examples, we see that they are all aimed at the betterment of our world.
Here progress is being applied for the society's good.

The products from the same progress in the various fields, when in wrong hands, wreak havoc in
the same society that they are supposed to make better.

Sophisticated arms & explosives in the hands of terrorists & children, science of human cloning in
the hands of scientists, crop control technologies in the hands of corporations etc., are some of the
examples of how progress can go wrong. Think of how much better the world would be, without
nuclear and biological weapons, without mutated food grains et al. Think of how many people
would not have died or maimed for life, if there had been no land mines ? After witnessing the
destructive use the Dynamite could be put to, Alfred Nobel himself repented his own creation of
Dynamite so much that he set up the Nobel prize, to be awarded to people who work for the
betterment of the human society.

Therefore, it is my strong contention that progress is only good when it is put to the right use, for
the betterment and upliftment of the individual and the society, on a whole. Progress put to any
ulterior uses should be outrightly condemned.

(This is a 5 point essay)

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Topic 36. Choose one of the following transportation vehicles and explain why you think it has changed people's lives. * automobiles * bicycles * airplanes.

Choose one of the following transportation vehicles and explain why you think it has changed
people's lives. * automobiles * bicycles * airplanes Use specific reasons and examples to support
your answer.

Sample essay 1.

An airplane is a form of transportation that has changed people's lives. Thanks to the plane, our
lives are now faster, more exciting, and more convenient that before.

You cannot deny that a plane is fast. For example, the Concorde flies at supersonic speed. A
businessman can leave Paris at 11 a.m. in the morning and arrive in New York at 8 a.m. the same
morning in time for a day's work. Many business people in Europe will fly to London for a noon
meeting and then return home to Rome or Madrid for dinner.

It is always exciting to take a plane trip. When you take a trip by plane, you know that you might
cross many time zones, many oceans, and many countries. When you get off the plane, you could
be in a place that speaks a different language. A plane is like a magician's trick. You get in a box
and you come out somewhere totally different.

Nothing can beat the convenience of a plane. In the old days, it might take you days to do what
the plane can do it an hour. Boats, for example, only leave on certain days of the week and take a
long time to get to their destination. Planes give you the option to leave several times a day and
get you to your destination quickly.

Although other forms of transportation may be more comfortable, none has changed the way we
do business and live our lives more than the plane. Thanks to the speed, excitement, and
convenience of the planes, our lives are richer.

Sample essay 2.

The modern society have been changed by the enormous impact of the invention of the
transportantion, such as the automobile, which has become indispensable in the daily live. The
automobiles are so popular that almost every family or even everyone has one. Since the function
and effect of automobile is known by everyone. In this essay, I would discuss another invention of
the transportantion that is as important as the automobile in the modern society, the plane. As far
as I am concerned, these are three conspicous aspects as follows.

The main reason for my propensity to choose plane is that plane is the vehicle used by people
most frequently. Usually, people drive car in short way, while they take plane in long travel. The
most important reason people choose it for long distance is that the speed of plane is much faster
than others. The invention of plane create a compeletely new live. Nowadays, we can travel
around the earth within twenty-four hours, that is something say we can reach any place of the
word in one day. And there are many people who live in a place and work in the other city even
the other nation, for the plane can bring them go home in weekend.

Another reason can be seen by every person is that plane is known as one of the most safe and
convenient vehicles. It is reported from the relative data that the accident ratio of the plane is far
under that of the train, the ship, the automobile and any other else. With the developenment of the

hi-tech, faster, safer and more comfortable plane are made.Since the supersonic plane appears,
both speed and security rapidly improve.Furthermore, new type plane provide various of the
equipments to alleviate the fatigue of the passengers and improve the degree of comfort.

In addition, the charge for taking plane is affordable to common person. Similar to the most family
can take enough money to buy a car, most people have enough money to buy a ticket of plane.
Especially, there are so many discounts for students,old men and children by the ailine company.

General speaking, the new technology has brought many invention to us in the modern society.
Taking into account of all these things, we may reach the conclusion that as a important
transportantion vehicle the plane changes our daily live and at the same time brings the enormous
influence to the modern society.

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