备考
Why do you think some people are attracted to dangerous sports or other dangerous activities?
43. Why do you think some people are attracted to dangerous sports or other dangerous activities? Use specific reasons and examples to support your answer.
Among various motives that spur people to perform dangerous activities are money, pleasure, and ironically, nescience.
Perhaps one of the most obvious motives that people perform dangerous activities might be the drive of money, which everyone needs in this world. People have enough wit to balance their certain choices, especially when they face with danger and money. Those stunt men or women in Hollywood movies, photographers who shoot sharks or crocodiles, those who participate in stock car racing, and even those criminals who rob the banks, are always sophisticated enough to calculate. If they are willing to take the risk, they must have evaluated well. They know exactly the rule: the more risks they take, the more they might get.
Another possible motive might be the desire to pursue happiness. There also is another kind of people in this world. Money is of almost no importance to them. They perform dangerous activities just for their own pleasure. Perhaps the most appropriate example is sports. Actually every kind of sports is dangerous, and even can be deadly. Danger always exists, but people tend to simply ignore it. Take parachuting for example, who can refuse the fascination of flying in the sky like a bird? On the other hand, it seems that danger itself makes the activity so fascinating. To conquer is the very nature of human being from the very beginning. Pheidippides said seconds before dropping dead two thousand years ago, “Rejoice, we conquer!” And it seems perfectly logical for some people that celebration follows conquer.
Ironically, sometimes blind brave comes out of nescience (ignorance). Sometimes people simply don’t know the activity is hazardous or how perilous it exactly is. It can be exemplified by a recent incident. Five students (among them three are master degree) lost their lives in a mountaineering expedition. Reporters say those students didn’t make an adequate preparation before expedition, which made the tragedy ineluctable. People always praise alpinists with words such as strong, brave, courageous, but in this case none of these words is appropriate. Those young students traded their springtime with blind brave, and died in vain.
You do not have to use anecdotes in your essay to achieve best score.
Do not use anecdotes in your essay. → You do not have to use anecdotes in your essay to achieve best score.
You do not have to use anecdotes in your essay to achieve best score.Appropriately used, anecdotes, quotations, legends etc. can really give a fine polish to an essay, but this doesn’t necessarily mean wonderful essay could not be done without them. Besides, most anecdotes are fabricated, implying that they are unreliable as valid evidence in rational argument.
In a well-known anecdote, Columbia once put up a goose egg. However, historians never buy it. The reason is simple: A same story can be found in record which merely had a different protagonist, and had been circulated more than two hundred years when Columbia was born. In fact, such purposely adapted stories abound in history and should not be taken as serious in rational argumentation.
Another anecdote is related to great Washington. The legend has it, when old Washington asked little Washington who on the earth had killed the little cherry tree yonder in the garden, six-year-old Washington replied with honest and courage after a short moment of hesitate: “”I cannot tell a lie, father, you know I cannot tell a lie! I did cut it with my little hatchet.” Despite of the alleged pedagogic value of this story, historians don’t buy it again, because evidences show that there had no cherry trees at all in Washingtons’ garden.
Even some alleged historical facts might well be untrue. A well-known example is Shen-Chong rape case in 1946. It was reported that in December 24th, Shen-Chong, a Peking University student, was raped by American Soldier (Marine). The incident soon sparked off an anti-American student movement. However, after immigrated to America in the early 1990s, Shen-Chong denied the fact that she was raped. If what she said 44 years after is the truth, then the alleged historical fact needs reconsideration.