目前距离2019年3月9日
1. Schools have always offered students three types of after-school activities. But due to recent limited budgets, they can only support one kind of activities. Which one would you choose? Why?
1) Sports 2) Arts 3) Volunteering (e.g. for the community)
All three activities are beneficial for students, and will help them build various skills, as well as teach them important values. However, I am convinced that, in case of a budget cut, schools should only maintain volunteering as an after-school activity.
It has been proven that students that have been assigned to volunteer work finished their semester healthier and happier than their peers who did not volunteer. They became more altruistic and empathetic, and had less negative attitudes. Moreover, volunteer bring students into contact with individuals from all walks of life, which helps broaden their minds and challenge their vision of power and privileges. All in all, volunteer has all kinds of positive impact on students’ mind.
On a more practical note, volunteering experiences will boost a student’s resume. Employers like seeing that the student volunteered his or her time, since it shows that he or she is able to manage time well enough to take on an unpaid position. Volunteerism also suggests that the candidate is a team player, a quality that many employers will look for in potential hires. Indeed, students may find in volunteering opportunities for a future career path. By volunteering students can try out different careers, and have first-hand experience of certain sectors.
Finally, volunteerism fosters personal growth. Volunteers feel good about themselves. The work they do will be rewarding and beneficial to segments of the population and areas of the community that need volunteers to thrive. In a volunteer situation, one person can make a real difference, and students will get that feeling once they start. Not to mention that the community itself will benefit incredibly from the volunteers’ work.
In conclusion, in case of limited budget, schools should focus their resources on promoting after-school volunteering programs. Volunteering experiences will help students feel more accomplished and become altruistic and empathetic. In addition, they will be advantageous for the students’ future careers.
2. Recently, some students need to arrive school at the early time in the morning. Some people think that starting school day early is a good approach to support learning, while other people think that starting school day at the later time is a good approach to support learning.
In the contemporary society, the length of study time on the part of students has become one of the mostly debated issue among the general public. When it comes to whether students should be required to arrive school at the early time in the morning, people’s notions may vary from one to another. In my eyes, starting school day at a late time is a better choice for the following reasons.
To begin with, arriving school at the late time will ensure students have a good rest and thus contributes to the improvement of their study efficiency. As is common sense, the increasingly heavy study burden on the shoulder of students has squeezed their leisure time so much that their sleeping time cannot be guaranteed. As a result, with the implementation of starting school day in a late time, the quality of their rest will be improved, with the consequence that their attention will be more concentrated in class. On the contrary, shortening their rest time by requesting students begin class early will definitely produce a negative effect on their study. To be specific, it will be common to observe that students feel so sleepy as to have a short nap during the class.
In addition, students who start school day in a late time will obviously avoid being stuck in traffic jam and thus have a better mood in the morning. Undoubtedly, under the drive of a cheerful frame of mind, children will raise their efficiency of study to a large extent. The experience of my cousin, Tom, can serve as a good example to shed some lights on the above reasoning. Tom, a student in a middle school of Beijing, used to be required to arrive school at 8 a.m. Every morning, in order to prepare better for the National Examination of College Admission. However, the problem is that according to the regulations of most companies, employees also have to start work at 8 a.m. Therefore, it is not hard to imagine that the subways, buses and taxis are crowded with people in the morning. According to Tom’s recounting, no one will feel good after such an experience, let alone immediately devoting him/herself to study.
Taking what has been discussed into consideration, we can draw the conclusion that it is wise to require student to arrive school at a late time in the morning, in order to ensure the quality of their rest and develop a light heart.
3. Do you agree or disagree with the statement that the people in the past are more friendly than people today?
Some will say that the past is unduly romanticized as a friendlier time-that people then couldn't have been much better-disposed than they are now. But I'm not so sure. There are a number of reasons why people may have been more genial back in the day.
For one thing, people in the past interacted with each other in person more than we do today, and this naturally resulted in a comparatively higher level of friendliness. The reason people interacted more was because they had fewer technological distractions. Back then, it was both routine and enjoyable to shoot the breeze with others while waiting for a trolley or sitting on your front porch after work. Socializing face to face with complete strangers was commonplace. Nowadays, however, people have all sorts of devices like smart phones, e-readers, and iPods that draw them into their own private worlds even while out in public. While taking the subway to work, you'll rarely see two people strangers talking unless it's to yell at each other. More likely, they'll be totally absorbed by the miniature screens in front of them.
For another thing, the pace of life today is much faster than it was in the past, and as a result, people today are much more hurried and much less friendly. Those living in modern society tend to have little patience for idle conversation, as they are always on their way to do something or see someone. The leisurely daily rhythms characterizing past eras have been replaced by a frantic rush to accomplish as much as humanly possible. This has led to friendliness, and often even courtesy, taking a backseat to efficient and mechanical interactions.
Granted, people today are also much more connected via non-traditional mediums than they were in the past. Thanks to computers, the internet, and social networking services like Weibo and We-chat, people can keep in touch with each other no matter where they are in the world. However, this type of connection is a poor substitute for face-to-face interaction and does not necessarily encourage friendliness. In fact, it may make us even colder towards others because we become accustomed to viewing people as remote, disembodied data. The shallow interactions facilitated by technology may actually deepen the divide between us rather than bring us closer together.
People in the past moved through life at a more leisurely pace, and they didn't have the technological distractions that we have today. Though technology is often seen as a tool that connects people, it may in fact have the opposite effect. For these reasons, people in the past were probably friendlier than people today.
4. It is often not a good idea to move to a new city or a new country because you will lose old friends.
In this day and age, globalization allows people from every corner of the world to travel around and even settle down easily at almost any place they favor. Is it a good thing for people to move to a new town or new country? Opinions vary about this issue. Some people oppose it by arguing that moving away means the loss of old friends. From my view, it is not true. Instead, moving to a new place might lead one to a new world.
To begin with, moving to a new place does not necessarily weaken the bond between friends. This is mostly because modern means of communication allows people to keep close contact with friends even hundreds of miles away. Therefore, it is not uncommon that friends who have not seen each other for years might know about one another’s life quite well and still have much in common. For example, a person moving from Shanghai to New York can easily get in touch with his friends at home through the simultaneous communication tools such as MSN, We chat and so on. It is incredible that these tools can make it possible to transmit not only voice and image but also real time video! Chatting with friends like this is of no difference from talking face to face. Besides, the popular online social network such as Facebook provides a platform for people to share important moments with friends by posting pictures and videos online anywhere and anytime. It is not exaggerated to say that technology has transcended space and time; distance, a traditional friendship killer, would beat a retreat in front of modern technology.
Secondly, even if old friends are not as close as before, it is not justified to say that moving to a new place is not advisable. People move to different places for a variety of reasons ranging from career development to a new start of life. In this case, old friendship should not become a hindrance to one’s development. On the other hand, old friends might be strong supporters of those who have decided to move. A new job opportunity in a larger market might exploit the greatest potentials of a sales person, whose talents would otherwise be stifled in a small retail store at home. A lady troubled by marriage issues might start a new family and open a new page of life in another country, where no one knows about her past. Thus, the possibility of losing old friends is not strong enough to judge whether moving to a new place is good or not.
In conclusion, even though moving to a new town or country might risk the loss of friends, modern technology has managed to minimize such risk. Besides, choosing where to live depends on a combination of factors, which is too complicated to be justified by the state of old friendship.
5. Do you agree or disagree with the following statement? If you and someone have been friends for a long time, you continue your friendship even if she does something you don’t like.
One of the most beautiful qualities of true friendship is to understand and to be understood. Thus when exposed to the topic whether we should try to keep the friendship when something unhappy occurs, I strongly contend that we should.
Nothing will be completely perfect in the world. Everyone was born to be a distinctive individual. We have different family education, growing up experiences, as well as characteristics, which gradually result in our possessing different values. Therefore our tastes and behaviors can never be the same. And thus it is quite acceptable that our friends may do something that we do not like, because they are not us. If we are looking for a friend who will never make us annoyed, we are not going to find one in reality. Besides it’s hardly a fair criticism that our friends have errors. We have never been close to perfect and sometimes it might be our faults. Once I read a short story about how to get along well with each other between two friends. And let’s call one girl Ann and the other Lucy. Ann did not like eating eggs while Lucy did. So every-time when Ann got one egg, she would directly give it to Lucy. However, one day when Ann wanted to have a taste of the egg, she just kept the egg without giving it to Lucy, which made Lucy quite angry. From this story, I think all of us need to ponder deeply over a question whether we have taken what our friends do for us for granted.
Besides, a considerate attitude is a must in true friendship. When something unhappy happens, we often tend to blame others. And in most cases, this way will worsen an embarrassing situation. The wise way is to examine ourselves first. Sometimes it is we who need to apologize to our friends. In other cases, if we realize our friends really make mistakes which quite hurt us, it is advisable that we tell them in a harmless way. I believe this is the most desirable method which can deepen our friendship, enable our friends to perfect themselves as well as make us more popular.
Finally, friends are lights in winter: the older the friend, the brighter the light. Ralph Waldo Emerson once said “It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them”. Old friends are our valuable treasures. They are the ones who know our merits and demerits, who encourage us when we get depressed, who pick us up when we fall down, and who will company us when we are alone. If one day, they offend us by doing something we do not like, what we are supposed to do is figuring out what’s wrong with our friendship and doing our best to continue it instead of just blaming our friends or breaking up the friendship.
In a word, friendship will probably never be perfect, but that’s a small price to pay for what it does offer and we need to be responsible for maintaining it no matter what happens.
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