Written Expressions
3rd Year Classes
Collected byMr. Rouabhia Ridha
Unit One: Exploring the Past
Civilisations
Topic01:
Modern civilization
has kept changing at a fast pace. Discuss.
Typical Essay:
A century ago, people
were able to live in better conditions than their parents thanks to the
progress made in science and technology. But in practice, the outcome of this
progress was slow to materialise. For instance, most people still used to
travel long distances on foot or by stage coach. And as mechanization was not
introduced significantly in daily activities, household chores still had to be
done manually, and were therefore time consuming.
On the other hand,
community life was still an asset for social cohesion, since people had more
opportunities to meet and interact. So they were able to chat with neighbours
at shops or in clubs and have a cup of coffee with friends or relatives and
tell stories and jokes. Likewise, family visits were frequent and kept the
folklore alive, with the grandparents who used to tell traditional tales or
sing lullabies or folk songs to their grandchildren. Unfortunately, with the
development of audiovisual means such as the cinema, radio, television and then
personal appliances like the computer, CD-ROMs and DVDs, the chances of
socialization are dwindling and the lack of interaction between people may
increase stress, loneliness and anxiety.
Could we then complain that we are missing
out on some ingredients in life which used to make our great grandparents
happier? This is probably so, since closer contacts among neighbours, friends
and families had to be beneficial for communal harmony. However, scientific
progress in all fields, particularly in medicine, modes of transportation and
communication, and agribusiness can only show that our lives are today quite
fulfilling and , if anything, more comfortable than a century ago.
Topic02:
Algeria was the cradle of many ancient civilizations.
Discuss.
Typical Essay:
Algeria is a huge country in Northern
Africa. It covers 920,000 square miles (2,380,000 sq. km), making
it more than three times the size of Texas, and the 11th largest nation on
Earth. It shares borders with Libya,
Mali, Mauritania, Morocco,
Niger, Tunisia, and Western Sahara, and has coastline
on the Mediterranean.
People have been living in the region
that is now Algeria, and the
surrounding Maghreb, for more than 200,000
years. The first civilizations sprang up between 4000 and 8000 years ago,
eventually forming a cohesive population, usually referred to collective as the
Berber culture.
From about 900 BCE Algeria has been invaded repeatedly by various
peoples, mostly from across the Mediterranean.
First the Phoenicians came, trading along the coast and eventually establishing
Carthage in nearby Tunisia
and various outposts in Algeria.
Then came the Romans, who conquered the Berbers more-or-less completely by 24 AD.
By the 4th century Algeria
had been converted to Christianity.
Beginning in the 8th century Algeria, and the greater Maghreb,
became a strategic target for the expanding Islamic world. By the end of the
first decade of the 8th century the Umayyads had conquered all of North Africa,
including Algeria.
Over the next few centuries Algeria
converted to Islam and was Arabized dramatically.
In the 16th century Algeria came under the control of the Ottoman Empire, and became a center for Mediterranean piracy and privateering.
It was in Algeria
that the infamous pirate Red Beard (neé Barbarossa) eventually was based, as a provincial
governor. During this period both Arabs and native Berbers saw their roles
diminished, as Turkish became the national language and Turks became entrenched
in most positions of power. Piracy continued to spread and become
institutionalized in Algeria,
as well as its neighbors, in a confederacy known as the Barbary States. In addition to capturing the
wealth of European traders, these pirates also began capturing Christians as
slaves, a turn of events that eventually led the young United States to enter into two of its earliest
wars against the Barbary Coast.
In the early 19th century Algeria was
conquered by the French, who began to settle and develop the region. Although
infrastructure developed under French control, to the majority of the Muslim
inhabitants of Algeria, France was seen
as a harsh colonial power. Resistance and open revolt continued throughout all
of the French occupation, but it began to grow substantially and develop during
the 1930s. Although relatively peaceful attempts were made for a Constitution
and more equality in the mid-1940s, these were met with no support by the French
government.
By 1954 the situation had gotten bad
enough that the citizenry revolted on a massive scale. The National Liberation
Front was the main body of revolt, launching a full-scale civil war that would last for eight years. In that time nearly two million
Algerians would die, and another two to three million were relocated. Independence was finally
achieved in 1962, after one of the longest, bloodiest wars for independence in
modern history.
http://www.wisegeek.com/what-should-i-know-about-algeria.htm
Topic03:
Write a composition on
the scientific achievements of the ancient Greek civilization.
Typical Essay:
The Greeks were very interested in science as
a way of organizing the world and making order out of chaos, and having power over some very powerful things like oceans and weather. From about 600 BC,
a lot of Greek men spent time observing the planets and the sun and trying to figure out how astronomy worked. They must have gotten their first lessons from the Babylonians, who were very good at astronomy and also very interested in it.
By the 400's BC, Pythagoras was interested in finding the patterns and rules in mathematics and music, and invented the idea of a mathematical proof. Although Greek women
usually were not allowed to study science, Pythagoras did have some women among
his students. Socrates, a little bit later, developed logical methods for deciding whether
something was true or not.
In the 300's BC, Aristotle and other philosophers at the Lyceum and the Academy in Athens worked on
observing plants and animals, and organizing the different kinds of plants and animals into types.
Again, this is a way of creating order out of chaos.
After Aristotle, using his ideas and also ideas from Egypt and the Persians and Indians, Hippocrates and other Greek doctors wrote important medical texts that were used
for hundreds of years.
Topic04:
Write a composition on
the ancient Egyptian civilization.
Typical Essay:
Egypt is one of the most fertile areas of Africa, and one of the most fertile of the countries around
the Mediterranean Sea. Because it is so fertile, people came to live in Egypt
earlier than in most places, probably around 40,000 years ago. At first there
were not very many people, but gradually Egypt became more crowded, so there
was more need for a unified government. Around 3000 BC
(5000 years ago), Egypt was first unified under one ruler, who was called the Pharaoh.
The pharaoh’s government guaranteed both external and internal security
to the people of Egypt. As a consequence, the Egyptians grew very proud of
their country and became so fond of the pharaoh hat they worshipped him as a
god-king. This national pride and identification with the pharaoh kept the
unity of ancient Egypt and made its civilization prosper for many centuries
From that time until around 525 BC,
when Egypt was conquered by the Persians, Egypt's history is divided into six different time periods. These are
called the Old Kingdom, the First Intermediate Period, the Middle Kingdom, the
Second Intermediate Period, the New Kingdom, and the Third Intermediate Period.
But the economy of
ancient Egypt was ruined by all the resources that the pharaohs put into the
building of pyramids and the gradual decline and fall of ancient Egyptian
civilization.
Topic05:
Write a composition on
the scientific achievements of the ancient Egyptian civilization.
Typical Essay:
Egyptian scientists were generally
most interested in observing nature and practical engineering, and they were very good at both of these
things. The pyramids and temples, for example, show good knowledge of geometry and engineering. Egyptian engineers used the Pythagorean Theorem, thousands of years before Pythagoras was
born.
Because the Nile flood was so important to Egyptian farming, scientists also worked out good ways to measure how high the flood was
going each year, and kept accurate records and good calendars. You can see here
how the Egyptian wrote down numbers. The device they used to measure the height of
the Nile flood is called a Nilometer.
They also worked out good ways to move
water from the Nile to outlying farms in the desert, using hand-powered irrigation pumps (shadufs) and canals.
It may also have been Egyptian
scientists who first figured out how to make yeast-rising bread.
Topic06:
Write a composition on
the achievements of the ancient Egyptian civilization in architecture.
Typical Essay:
People tend to think that Egyptian building
styles stayed the same for the whole period of Egyptian history, from the
beginning of the Old Kingdom to the end of the New Kingdom two thousand years
later, but that's not true. The Egyptians built different kinds of buildings at different times, just like any
other group of people.
In the early part of the Old Kingdom, the
Egyptians built mainly mastabas, a kind of tomb with a flat roof like a house.
Then throughout most of the Old Kingdom, the Egyptians built the pyramid tombs which are now so famous. Of course they also built smaller
buildings like houses and butcher shops.
In the Middle Kingdom, the mastaba tomb came back again, although in
a more elaborate form for the Pharaohs. They didn't build any more pyramids.
Then in the New Kingdom there was a lot of building that was not tombs: temples for the gods
especially, but also palaces for the Pharaohs.
Topic07:
Write a composition on
the ancient Sumerian civilization and its achievements.
Typical Essay:
The
people who settled down and began to develop a civilization, in the land
betweenthe Tigris and the Euphrates Rivers, are known as the Sumerians. About a
thousand years later, the Babylonians
took over in the south, and the Assyrians took over in the
north, but the Sumerian culture lived on.
The Sumerian civilization probably
began around 5000 BCE. In the beginning, they were an agricultural community. They grew crops and stored food for times of
need.
The
ancient Sumerians were very smart. They invented, amongst other things, the
wheel, the sailboat, and the first written language, frying pans, razors,
cosmetic sets, shepherd’s pipes, harps, kilns to cook bricks and pottery,
bronze hand tools like hammers and axes, the plow, the plow seeder, and the
first superhero, Gilgamesh.
They
invented a system of mathematics based on the number 60. Today, we divide an
hour into 60 minutes, and a minute into 60 seconds. That comes from the ancient
Mesopotamians.
Some
Mesopotamian words are still in use today. Words like crocus, which is a
flower, and saffron, which is a spice, are words borrowed from the ancient
Mesopotamians.
The
ancient Mesopotamians created a government that was a combination of monarchy
and democracy. Kings ruled the people. Elected officials who served in the
Assembly also ruled the people. Even kings had to ask the Assembly for
permission to do certain things.
Law
held a special place in their civilization. In Babylonian times, laws were
actually written down. But there were always laws. The laws clearly
said how you had to behave and what your punishment would be if you did not
behave correctly. And the laws that were later written down, for the most part,
were laws created by the ancient Sumerians.
Ancient
Sumer was a bustling place of three or four hundred people. The ancient
Sumerians built many cities along the Tigris and the Euphrates Rivers.
Archaeologists believe that their largest city, the city of Ur, had a
population of around 24,000 residents!
Topic08:
Write a composition on
the ancient Phoenician civilization.
Typical Essay:
Another great race of people descended from
the Babylonian or Semitic stock were the Phoenicians. They inherited the
intellectual and adventurous side of Babylonian life, and through them the use
of the alphabet, or written language, was spread abroad over all the world.
The Phoenicians were earth's
first-known sailors and explorers. In tiny barks, such as we of today would
think scarcely safe for navigating a river, they coasted the entire
Mediterranean Sea and even ventured far along the shores of the tempestuous
Atlantic. They went not as traders in the ordinary sense, but as bold
adventurers, eager to see new things, resolute to confront and conquer whatever
sudden, unknown danger leaped upon them.
Their home lay along the eastern shores
of the Mediterranean, adjoining Palestine, the home of the Hebrews. There they
built mighty cities--Tyre, Sidon, Byblos, celebrated in song and story, the
richest, most strongly guarded towns of their day. From these, the daring
little ships sped forth ready to traffic or to plunder--for the Phoenicians
were ever pirates where piracy seemed most profitable--ready to turn miners and
dig in the tin mines of England, or become herders and raise flocks in the
fertile valleys of Spain. They were, as the Greeks called them, a "red
people," ruddy of face and probably of hair. The whole world knew and
liked and feared these red Phoenicians, these first ready-witted searchers of
the globe.
Topic09:
Write a composition on
the achievements of the ancient Indus valley civilization in architecture and
art.
Typical Essay:
The earliest big buildings in India
were built by the Harappan people in the Indus River valley, about 2500 BC.
The Harappan buildings included high brick walls around their cities to keep out enemies. Most of the buildings
were ordinary houses, with rooms arranged around a small courtyard. Probably
some families owned a whole house (and lived in it with their slaves), while others rented only one room in a house, and the whole family
lived together in the one room. The rulers built bigger buildings, like this
public bathing house and a town warehouse for storing wheat and barley, also out of mud-brick and baked brick. Like the houses, these bigger
buildings were square or rectangular, with small courtyards in the middle. They
used arches, but, like the Sumerians and the Egyptians, they only used them underground, as drains or foundations for
buildings.
The major themes of Indian art seem to
begin emerging as early as the Harappan period, about 2500 BC.
Although we're still not sure, some Harappan images look like later images of Vishnu and Shiva, and the tradition may start this early.With the arrival of the Indo-Europeans (or Aryans) around 1500 BC, came new artistic
ideas.
Around 500 BC, the conversion to Buddhism of a large part of the population of India brought with it some new
artistic themes. But at first nobody made images of the Buddha - only stupas
(STOO-pahs), symbolic representations that didn't look like a person.
Then the conquests of Alexander the Great, in the 320's BC, also had an important impact
on Indian art. Alexander left colonies of Greek veteran soldiers in Afghanistan
and Pakistan, and these soldiers attracted Greek sculptors (maybe some of the
soldiers were sculptors). Their Greek-style carvings attracted attention in India - the first life-size stone
statues in India date to the 200's BC, just after Alexander.During the Guptan period, about 500 AD,
the great cave temples of Ajanta and Ellora were carved. Scenes from the life
of the Buddha became popular, and statues of the Buddha.
Finally, the arrival of the Islamic faith and Islamic conquerors about 1000 AD brought iconoclasm to India, and a love of varied and complex patterning derived from
Arabic and Persian models. This affected even Hindu artists who had not converted to Islam. Small Persian-style miniature
paintings also became popular.
Topic10:
Write a composition on
the scientific achievements of the ancient Indus valley civilization?
Typical Essay:
From the time of the Harappans to the time of the Islamic conquests, Indian scientists and mathematicians were leaders in many different fields. They
especially stood out in mathematics and engineering.
The Harappans in 2500 BC
had a sewage system at their city of Mohenjo-Daro, and carefully laid out,
straight streets. So even though we can't read their writing, we know that the
Harappans understood a lot of geometry.
A severe climate change halted development at Harappa around 2000 BC.
The Aryan invasion of 1500 BC also seems to have stopped scientific
advances for a while, but it did bring military advances to India in the form
of horse-drawn war chariots. Around 800 BC, when the Aryans in northern India
learned to smelt iron from the Assyrians in West Asia, this gave them another military advantage.
Around 500 BC, thanks to Persian influence, the city of Taxila (in modern Pakistan) became a great
scientific center. Atreya, a great botanist (plant specialist) and doctor, was working at Taxila about this time. Around
the 300's BC, Indian farmers seem to have been using water wheels to lift water
for irrigation - the earliest water wheels in the world.
By 250 or 200 BC, under Mauryan rule, Indian scientists were the first in the world to be smelting iron with carbon to make steel.
In the 600's AD,
Indian mathematicians may have been responsible for inventing the
numeral zero, and the decimal (or place) system (or it is possible that they got this idea from Chinese mathematicians). This made it a lot easier to add and multiply than it had been before. Indian mathematical ideas soon spread to West Asia and from there to Africa and Europe.
Indian advances in iron-working led to some
new ideas in the 1000's and 1100's AD. First, Indian architects were the first
to use iron beams to replace wooden beams for building big temples. Second, Indian
blacksmiths discovered a kind of iron that made a very strong and flexible kind
of steel, called wootz steel.
Topic11:
Write a composition on
the scientific achievements of the Roman civilization?
Typical Essay:
Roman scientific achievements are
mostly in the areas of medicine and engineering. The Romans invented a lot of new ways to mine for
metals like silver and gold and lead.
They developed water mills as well for grinding grain. And they were the first people to really use concrete for major building projects. The use of concrete helped them to develop
the dome and the barrel vault and the cross vault. They used their vaults to build aqueducts to carry fresh water to towns, and they used their engineering skills
to build sewage systems to keep their towns clean and healthy.
Roman subjects in Phoenicia also
invented blown glass, and mold-made pottery and oil lamps were also first made in the Roman
period.
In medicine, Galen wrote during the Roman Empire, and he was the first to describe many symptoms and treatments. His
medical textbook was the standard for over a thousand years. The Romans didn't do that much work in
mathematics, but they did develop their own way of writing numbers.
Topic12:
Write a composition on
the achievements of the Roman civilization in architecture?
Typical Essay:
One of the things the Romans are most famous for is their architecture. The Romans brought a lot of
new ideas to architecture, of which the three most important are the arch, the baked brick, and the use of cement and concrete.
Around 700 BC
the Etruscans brought West Asian ideas about architecture to Italy, and they taught these ideas to the
Romans. We don't have much Etruscan architecture left, but a lot of their underground tombs do
survive, and some traces of their temples.
In the Republican period, the Romans built temples and basilicas, but also they made a lot of improvements to their city: aqueducts and roads and sewers. The Forum began to take shape. Outside of Rome, people began to build stone amphitheaters for gladiatorial games.
The first Roman emperor, Augustus, made more changes: he built a lot of brick and marble buildings, including a big Altar of Peace and a big tomb
for his family, and a big stone theater for plays. Augustus' stepson Tiberius
rebuilt the Temple of Castor and Pollux in the Roman forum. Augustus'
great-great-grandson Nero also did a lot of building in Rome, including his Golden House.
Then in 69 ADVespasian tore down some of the Golden House to build the Colosseum. Vespasian's son Titus built a great triumphal arch, and his other son Domitian built a great palace for himself on the Palatine hill.
Even though Domitian was assassinated in 96 AD,
later architects continued to use the techniques that had been developed for
his palace, just as later emperors continued to live in Domitian’s palace.
Trajan’s architect used brick and concrete arches to build a new forum with a big column in it and an elaborate market building that is the source of modern shopping malls.
Trajan also built the first major public bath building in Rome. It may have been the same architect
who later designed Hadrian’s Pantheon, a temple to all the gods, which used brick and concrete to build a
huge dome. Nobody would build a bigger dome for more than a thousand years.
http://www.historyforkids.org/learn/romans/architecture/romarch.htm
Topic13:
Write a composition on
the ancient Roman system of government.
Typical Essay:
From 500 BC
to nearly 1500 AD,
for two thousand years, Roman government had more or less the same system. Of
course there were some changes over that time too.
When the Roman Republic was first set up, in 500 BC, the people in
charge were two men called consuls. The consuls controlled the army, and they
decided whether to start a war and how much taxes to collect and what the laws
were. There were also prefects in Rome, whose job was to run the city – some
heard court cases, some ran the vegetable markets or the meat markets or the
port. Finally, there was also an Assembly of all the men (not women) who were
grownup and free and had Roman citizenship.
Once the Romans began conquering other places, far away from the city of Rome, they also had
a system of provincial governors – men who took charge of a province of the
Empire, and who heard court cases there. They were also in charge of the army
while it was conquering places.
By about 50 BC, the time of Julius Caesar, these generals had begun to take over the
government and not pay any attention to the consuls or the Senate anymore, and
just do as they pleased. They could do that, because they had the army with
them.
Augustus, in 31 BC, was one of these generals. But he realized that people
didn’t like this pushing people around, and so he set up a different system
keeping the Senate and the consuls This system kept on going for the next 1500
years, more or less.
Topic14:
Write a composition on
the scientific achievements of the ancient Chinese civilization.
Typical Essay:
In early and medieval China, as in the
Roman Empire, science seems to have been oriented mainly towards engineering and practical inventions, and not so much towards theoretical ideas about how the natural world worked. It was in Han Dynasty China that paper was first invented, and about the same time that the magneticcompass, for telling north from south, was also invented there. Scientists in
China also invented gunpowder.
Chinese scholars also conducted
scientific observations of plants and animals, and also of astronomy (the stars and planets). The many detailed and careful drawings of flowers and other plants, and star charts, from China show this interest.
The influence of Confucius made China a place where logical thought was also highly valued. Mathematics was taught in the schools, through the use of a math textbook called
the Nine Chapters, which may have been written as early as the Han Dynasty in the 200's AD
(but nobody knows for sure).
By around 850 AD, under the Tang
Dynasty, Chinese printers were experimenting with block printing, and around the year 1000 they invented
moveable type.
Topic15:
Write a composition on
the ancient Islamic civilization.
Typical Essay:
People first came to the Arabian
Peninsula probably about 150,000 BC, in the Old Stone Age. They were hunters and gatherers. By 2000 BC
(or possibly earlier) Semitic-speaking people had moved into the Arabian Peninsula, also coming from the north. They were nomads when they arrived, who travelled around with their sheep and goats pasturing them in different pastures at
different times of year. And they stayed nomads: many of them are nomads today.
In the southern part of the peninsula,
on the other hand, the people were farmers. Nobody is sure where they came from, but the Queen of Sheba mentioned in the Bible may be one of these people.
By the time of Alexander the Great, we start to know a little more about the
Arabs, because the Greeks were trading with them. The Romans also traded with the Arabs, who got spices and other things from India and sold them to the Romans for gold.
In the long war between the Sassanids and the Romans, different tribes of Arabs fought on each side. In this Late Antique
period, the kingdom of Saba (Sheba) fell apart.
The Prophet Mohammed was born in the northern Arabian trading city of Mecca between 570 and
580 AD. When he was forty years old, he heard the angel Gabriel speaking to
him and telling Mohammed that he was a prophet in the line of Abraham, Moses, and Jesus, who would continue the faith those prophets had started. Mohammed's
faith was called Islam (iz-LAMM). After a slow start, Mohammed made a lot of converts to his
religion, and after he won some military battles, most of the other Arabic
tribes also converted to Islam. After they had done that, Mohammed's successors attacked first the Romans and then the Sassanids to convert them. By 640 (after the death of Mohammed) the Arabs
controlled most of West Asia, and soon after that, under the rule of the Umayyad caliphs, they conquered Egypt. By 711, the Umayyads controlled all of Western Asia except Turkey (which was still part of the Roman Empire), and all of the southern Mediterranean: Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, and most of Spain.
Topic16:
Write a composition on
the scientific achievements of the ancient Islamic civilization.
Typical Essay:
Because West Asia was such an economic crossroads in the medieval Islamic period - because of
the Silk Road that connected China and India in the east to Europe and Africa in the West - there were always lots of new scientific ideas coming through West Asia too. Educated West Asian scholars were able to make use of these foreign ideas to
develop new scientific theories and approaches.
One example from the East is the use
of "Arabic" numbers, which really came from India, about 630 AD.
The Arabic word for numbers, in fact, is hindsah, which means
"from India". Arab scientists, especially the Persian Mohammed
Al-Khwarizmi, were able to make use of the new numbers (and possibly the work
of Greek mathematicians like Diophantus of Alexandria) to develop algebra around 830 AD (The English word "algorithm" comes from
Al-Khwarizmi). (Ordinary people, however, kept on using the Greek system of numbers; only mathematicians used Arabic numbers).
In the 800's AD, the great schools at
Cordoba in Spain, under Umayyad rule, inspired many scholars to investigate new scientific ideas. Among them
was a man of Berber origin, Ibn Firnas, who designed the first glider, which he
successfully used in 875, when he was 65 years old, to fly down from a cliff
near Cordoba (though he hurt his back when he landed). This was the first
controlled human flight.
A more successful invention also from
Islamic Spain was the glass mirror, invented around 1000 AD. Even earlier, in
the 900's, Ibn Sahl and others made curved glass mirrors that concentrated
sunlight to focus heat.
About 1000 AD, West Asian blacksmiths
also learned how to make steel from India, and then they developed the idea further to produce the
very high quality Damascus steel that was used in fighting the Crusades.
Another example from the East is the
use of paper, which the Arabs learned from the Chinese about 750 AD. The magnetic compass also came to West Asia from China, about 1100 AD.
From the West, Arabic scholars were
able to read the books of the Greek philosophers Plato and Aristotle, and the Roman encyclopedist Pliny the Elder, and they translated these books into Arabic. They were especially interested in Aristotle and Pliny's studies of
plants and animals, and produced many new studies like that of their own, often
with beautifully detailed and accurate illustrations. This led to the
classification and description of many new species of plants and animals, and
also to advances in medicine. All through the Middle Ages, everyone knew that the best doctors, men
like Ibn Sina or Maimonides, lived in the Islamic kingdoms.
Topic17:
Write a composition on
the achievements of the Islamic civilization in architecture.
Typical Essay:
The first buildings that were built in
the Islamic Empire were designed by Greek architects who had already been living in the area when
the Arabs conquered it. Because of that, these buildings look a lot like earlier
buildings in the area - Late Roman Empire buildings. But because they were now
building Islamic mosques and not Christian churches, these Greek architects were able to experiment with some new forms,
developing a new Islamic style. One of the earliest mosques is the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, from the 600's AD.
It's octagonal, like Hadrian's Pantheon, instead of being cross-shaped like a Christian church. In the late 700's AD, the new Arab rulers of
North Africa marked their new territory by building great mosques like the one
at Kairouan (modern Tunisia) and the one at Cordoba in Spain.
In the Abbasid period, beginning about 800 AD,
the capital of the Islamic empire moved further east, to Baghdad, and so the
caliphs needed a lot of new beautiful palaces and mosques built in Baghdad. Because Baghdad was in the old Sassanian Empire, the architects who lived there followed Sassanian architectural traditions, and these buildings, like the mosque at Samarra, looked very different from the ones built by
the Greek architects.
In the end, though, the Islamic Empire
made it so easy to travel around that all the architects got to know each
other's styles, and there got to be one main style of building all across the
Islamic Empire. As the empire broke down into a lot of smaller kingdoms, the
ruler of each kingdom needed to show how important he was, so he built mosques
and palaces in his own capital. The Fatimids, for example, built the Al-Azhar mosque in Cairo in the 900's AD. In
Spain in the late 1200's AD, the Almohads, built their own palace at Granada, the Alhambra.
The Ottoman sultan built the last
great Islamic building before 1500 AD - his palace in Istanbul, which he built in the late 1400's AD.
Topic18:
Write a composition on
the achievements of the Islamic civilization in art.
Typical Essay:
For the earliest years of the Islamic
Empire, under the Umayyad dynasty, we don't have very much art surviving. The
best of it is the elaborate mosaics on the Dome of the Rock mosque in Jerusalem and on the Great Mosque in Damascus. These mosaics are
done in a Roman style, probably by Roman craftsmen.
But already we can see one big
difference between Roman art and Islamic art: the followers of Islam, like the Jews, took seriously the idea that you should not make graven images, and
although these mosaics show plants and buildings they do not show people or animals.
By the Abbasid period, even plants and buildings were frowned on.
Most of the art was geometric designs. A lot of these designs seem to be from
fabric patterns. The Arabs, because they were nomadic, had always relied on carpets and hangings for decoration. Now that
they lived in buildings, they used those same familiar patterns only in stone
or tile. They often used calligraphy (beautiful writing) of verses from the Koran to decorate buildings, plates, and vases.
In this period, also, the focus of the
Islamic Empire shifted from Damascus and the old Roman territory east to Baghdad and the old Sassanian territory. So the art also became more Persian and less Roman.
By about 1000 AD, the Islamic empire
was breaking up into smaller states, and each state developed its own art
style. There are individual styles for Spain, the Maghreb, Egypt, the Ottoman Empire, and Persia.
In some of these places, the iconoclastic rules against using pictures of things or people were relaxed as time
went on. In Persia (modern Iran), painters made beautiful little miniature
paintings of people at court, and of famous people from history.
The arrival of paper from China in 751 AD let artists do a lot more painting, because paper was so much
cheaper than papyrus or parchment.
After the Mongols conquered Persia and China in the 1200's AD, many Chinese motifs started to show up in Persian
painting and vases.
Unit Two: Ill-gotten gains
never prosper
Ethics in Business
Topic19:
Write a composition on
the conception of corruption.
Typical Essay:
There is an old axiom often applied to
those with political ambitions: Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts
absolutely. In this case, the term corruption means the abuse of
a public office for personal gain or other illegal or immoral benefit.
Political corruption is a recognized criminal offense, along with bribery, extortion, and embezzlement – three illegal acts often associated with corruption in office. Some
forms of corruption may escape legal notice, such as the hiring of relatives
for key positions, but they may not escape the scrutiny of voters on Election
Day.
Whenever a person accepts a political
appointment or wins election to an office, he or she must take an oath to
uphold the public trust. While this may sound noble on paper, enforcement of
this oath can prove problematic. Very few political candidates successfully
reach office without making a few promises along the way. Many of these
campaign promises are harmless, such as sponsoring a bill or lobbying for more
funding for schools. Other promises, however, may come closer to crossing an
ethical line, such as hiring relatives or awarding government contracts to
influential contributors.
Political corruption has been a fact
of life for thousands of years, beginning with the first attempts at a
democratic form of government in ancient Greece and Rome. Almost all of these
countries' political representatives were from the wealthier class, which
inevitably led to a division between the influential haves and the
virtually powerless have-nots. The seeds of political corruption were
planted as soon as the senators and other political leaders realized that power
and wealth could be equals. Political corruption often begins with favoritism
towards those with wealth and influence.
In the modern sense of the term, political
corruption is a cancer on the integrity of a governmental body. Very few
public officials begin their careers with the intention of becoming corrupt,
but some succumb to a sinister form of peer pressure over time. Being placed in
a position of significant political power can be overwhelming, and the
temptation to bend or break rules for a perceived 'greater good' is always
present.
There are a few experienced
politicians, however, for whom political corruption is a natural state of
being. History is filled with examples of corrupt public officials, such as New
York City's Boss Tweed and his political cronies at Tammany Hall during the late 19th century. Charges ranging from bribery and graft to nepotism, racketeering and fraud were all leveled at Tweed's administration, but it was Tweed's skills
in political corruption that kept law enforcement at bay for years. A number of
judges and law enforcement officers were already on Boss Tweed's secret payroll. Political corruption may always remain a concern for democratic
governments, but there are a number of independent checks and balances that can
root out corruption before it affects the integrity of the political body as a
whole.
Topic20:
Write a composition on
embezzlement.
Typical Essay:
Embezzling is the act of taking money
that has been placed in your trust but belongs to another person. For instance,
someone who works in a bank may secretly steal money that he or she has been
entrusted to look after. This money belongs to the bank's customers, and the
employee's action can be considered embezzling.
One of the major methods used in
embezzling is to falsify records and documents. A recent British case involved
a bank manager embezzling 23 million GB pounds (GBP). The bank manager set up many
false bank accounts and deposited millions from other bank accounts into them.
Another very
successful method of falsifying records is the phantom employee. The manager
may create a job role and documents for an employee who does not actually exist.
The phantom employee is then paid a salary.
Even charities are threatened by embezzlement. One of the most common methods used in this
case is to redirect large amounts of money for administrative purposes. Sadly,
many worthwhile charities have been shut down as a result of this type of
embezzling.
Topic21:
Write a composition on
bribery.
Typical Essay:
A bribe is a form of corruption which
involves the promise of money or a favor to someone in a position of power,
with the hope of influencing that person's behavior. Bribery is viewed as a crime in many regions of the world, and people who are
caught offering or receiving bribes may face hefty penalties. In other regions,
the line between bribing and tipping is sometimes rather blurred, which can
make it difficult to prosecute people for bribery, or to understand when one
has crossed the line.
There are several reasons why bribery
is viewed as a crime. In the first place, accepting a bribe and acting on it is
a clear misuse of power, and a dereliction of duty. In egalitarian societies,
the thought of greasing the way with bribes is especially distasteful, because
it highlights the differences between those who can buy power or favors, and
those who cannot. A bribe may also compromise the quality of a transaction. For example, when a construction firm
bribes a government official to get a contract, the government official may
overlook a company which provides superior or cheaper work, thereby essentially
cheating the government.
Bribes can take any number of forms.
Historically, bribes to public officials have been extremely common, and in
some regions, this continues to be the case. Bribes also play a role in the
financial industry, and even in occupations like medicine, where doctors may be
bribed by drug companies to prescribe their products. Politics is also rife
with bribery in many region, with people bribing politicians to achieve desired
ends, and politicians in turn offering bribes to others in the hopes of
attaining specific goals, like winning an election.
Drawing the line with bribes is very
challenging. For example, many politicians receive healthy campaign
contributions from an assortment of companies and industries. These payments
could be viewed as bribes in the eyes of some critics, especially when the
politicians vote and act in the interests of their biggest contributors.
However, it could also be argued that these companies are certainly entitled to
support candidates they like, especially when those candidates have political
beliefs which align with the interests of the company.
Likewise, the practice of offering a
bribe to ministry officials in some countries is so widespread that bribes are
viewed almost like set fees. People who attempt to act with integrity may find
that the ministry in question never approves a request or a document, thus
forcing them to bribe an official to get the job done. In some cases, such
bribes are even tax-deductible, with tax agencies recognizing them as a legitimate business expense.
Topic22:
Write a composition on
money laundering.
Typical Essay:
Money laundering
refers to the process of concealing financial transactions. Various laundering techniques can be employed by
individuals, groups, officials and corporations. The goal of a money laundering
operation is usually to hide either the source or the destination of money.
Perhaps the best way to understand the
concept is to take a look at some common examples. Suppose, for example, that
an employee was stealing large sums of cash from her employer without getting
caught. If she was to make large deposits into her bank account, some regulator
(or computer program) might notice the unusually large deposits, thereby increasing
the chances of getting caught. To launder the money, the criminal might simply
use the cash to make purchases and then resell the items in a legitimate
market. The revenue gained from these sales is 'cleaner' and the criminal is
drawing less attention to herself.
The example provided above is a
particularly simple example that involves a non-cash step; actual money laundering operations are often complex
assortments of various transactions. The term 'money laundering' is typically used to refer to any
financial transaction that is not kept transparent. Needless to say, the
practice is illegal and large penalties, fines or imprisonment may ensue.
Topic23:
Write a composition on
tax evasion.
Typical Essay:
Taxevasion is usually understood to be an act in which an
individual intentionally chooses to not pay income taxes due. This act of not paying taxes may be conducted by simply chooses to
not file an income tax return, or choosing to not include information about taxable income on the filed return. In all instances, taxevasion
can be considered to be fraud, and usually carries stiff penalties.
While there are some that consider any
type of omission from the tax return to
constitute taxevasion, it is important
to remember that it is possible to omit an item simply because the data was
overlooked when filing the return. Thus, the intent of the individual plays a
key role in determining if taxevasion
has taken place.
However, when it can be demonstrated
that the individual willfully attempted to hide information about income that
was subject to withholding, the tax
agency may choose to impose more than a simple interest fine on the amount
omitted. The filer may be subject to stiff fines associated with the deliberate
failure to file an accurate tax return,
or even possibly face prosecution and some time spent in jail for the
intentional negligence.
Taxevasion is considered a crime, and is often classified
as fraud. All citizens suffer from taxevasion,
as the act prevents the government from collecting funds to use for the
operation of essential services to the population. When these funds are not
collected, services have to be curtailed and thus result in a lower quality of
life for all citizens.
Persons
who become aware of an error on calculating taxes on reported income or notice
that income was inadvertently left off the tax
return for a given period should contact the tax
agency and make arrangements to file an amended return as soon as possible.
This will help to minimize the chances of being suspected of taxevasion, and allow the matter to be settled
before interest charges become significant.
Topic24:
Write a composition on
creative accounting.
Typical Essay:
Creative accounting, also
called aggressive accounting, is the manipulation of financial numbers, usually
within the letter of the law and accounting standards, but very much against their spirit and
certainly not providing the "true and fair" view of a company that
accounts are supposed to.
A typical aim of creative accounting will be
to inflate profit figures. Some companies may also reduce reported profits in
good years to smooth results. Assets and liabilities may also be manipulated,
either to remain within limits such as debt covenants, or to hide problems.
Typical creative accounting tricks include off balance sheet financing, over-optimistic revenue recognition and the use of exaggerated non-recurring items.
The term "window dressing" has
similar meaning when applied to accounts, but is a broader term that can be
applied to other areas. In the US it is often used to describe the manipulation
of investment portfolio performance numbers. In the context of accounts,
"window dressing" is more likely than "creative accounting"
to imply illegal or fraudulent practices, but it need to do so.
Topic25:
Write a composition on
currency counterfeiting.
Typical Essay:
Counterfeiting refers to the imitation
of something with the intent to deceive. As a general rule, people use the term
specifically to refer to people who replicate currency in the hopes of passing
it off as legal tender. However, a variety of things can be counterfeited, from designer
handbags to legal documents. In terms of counterfeiting money, counterfeiting
comes with severe consequences, as it is treated as a very serious crime in
most nations around the world.
Most modern counterfeiting is focused
on paper money, because paper money has a higher face value. Counterfeiters use
a variety of techniques to produce replicas of the desired currency, depending
on the security features which a nation uses to protect the integrity of its
money and the level of realism desired. For example, a color photocopier can
sometimes render a credible replica of legal currency, especially when the
currency is run through a washer to age it, but counterfeiters may also use
sophisticated printing techniques like those used at a national mint.
Most mints around the world use a
number of safety systems to protect their money. For example, many nations
print engraved money, meaning that specially engraved plates which are very
hard to replicate are used in the production of currency. Many countries also
use specialized papers and inks, along with complex designs which are hard to
copy, and they may change the look of their currency frequently in an attempt
to foil counterfeiters.
Someone who is convicted of
counterfeiting will spend at least a decade in prison. He or she may also be
forced to pay fines or restitution, and the property used in the counterfeiting
process may be seized. Counterfeiting is treated as an extremely serious crime
because it devalues a nation's currency, potentially threatening its economic
stability and global standi
Topic26:
Write a composition on
extortion.
Typical Essay:
Extortion is a crime which involves
the illegal acquisition of money, property, or favors through the use of force,
or the threat of force. Historically, extortion was defined as an abuse of
privilege on the part of a public official who used his or her position to get
money or favors, but today, people at all levels of society could potentially
commit extortion. Penalties for extortion vary, depending on the specifics of
the crime. In some countries, extortion is treated especially seriously because
it is linked with organized crime, and sometimes special laws are designed to
make it easier to prosecute and punish extortion.
To the casual ear, extortion can sound
very similar to blackmail, in which people use a threat to demand payments or favors, and
robbery, in which a criminal takes something by force. However, extortion is
slightly different from both of these crimes. In blackmail, someone threatens
to do something which is entirely legal, such as publishing a set of
photographs, with the blackmailee offering payment to avoid exposure and
humiliation. Extortion is entirely illegal, as it involves threats of violence
or other illegal acts.
In a robbery, the violence is very
real, and also very immediate. In extortion, violence may never progress beyond
the stage of being a threat, assuming that the person being extorted pays up.
For example, if someone is threatened at gunpoint and ordered to surrender all
valuables, this is a robbery. If, on the other hand, a criminal strolls into a
shop and threatens to shoot the clerk's family unless the criminal receives a
share of the store's income each week, this is extortion.
Organized crime is perhaps the most
famous user of extortion. For example, members of the Mafia have historically
demanded “protection money” from businesses, suggesting that if the businesses
don't pay up, they may be robbed or otherwise harassed. Extortion has also been
used to keep community groups in fear so that they will not seek prosecution
for members of a criminal organization. However, individuals may also commit
extortion, as may officials, especially in corrupt agencies or governments.
In order to prove charges of
extortion, a prosecutor must be able to prove either that an illegal threat was
made, or that goods or services were received in exchange for such a threat.
Proving such charges can sometimes be very difficult, as people may be too
intimidated to testify.
http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-extortion.htm
Topic27:
Write a composition on
blackmail.
Typical Essay:
Blackmail is the crime of threatening
to reveal damaging or embarrassing information in order to coerce money or
other goods or forms of cooperation out of the victim. For blackmail to be
effective, the blackmailer must, in most cases, have physical proof of the
information he or she threatens to reveal, such as photographs or letters.
Blackmail is often considered synonymous with extortion, and in this sense it may rely on a threat of action other than
exposing the victim's secrets.
Some laws distinguish between
blackmail and extortion, while others do not. Blackmail may be defined as
extortion attempts in writing. Alternatively, blackmail may refer only to
threats of action that is not illegal per se, such as revealing
compromising photographs, while extortion relies on more active threats, such
as physical harm.
The victim of blackmail is typically
threatened with exposure of his or her private life, the consequences of which
can range from embarrassing to socially devastating to legally damning. A
blackmailer may threaten to expose the victim's extramarital affair, for
example. Homosexuals were often blackmailed in the past, though this is less common
as alternative sexualities are increasingly more accepted. At its most serious,
blackmail may rest on the exposure of a serious crime, which would do
infinitely more damage to the victim than complying with the blackmailer. Even
secret information that is not of a criminal nature, however, can make the
victim of blackmail feel that he or she has no recourse against the crime.
A relatively new form of blackmail,
more similar to extortion, is known as commercial blackmail. In this
crime, a business is the victim. The blackmailer threatens an action which
would be devastating to the company's sales or reputation and typically demands
a large payment. The perpetrator may, for example, threaten to interfere with
the company's ability to conduct Internet sales. In a recent case of commercial blackmail in Australia, the
blackmailer claimed to have poisoned a small random selection of the victim's
candy bar products.
http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-blackmail.htm
Topic28:
Write a composition on
child labour.
Typical Essay:
Any child under the age specified
by law worldwide works full time, mentally or physically to earn for own
survival or adding to family income, that interrupts childs social development
and education is called child labour.It is any kind of work children are
made to do that harms or exploits them physically, mentally, morally, or by
preventing access to education.
However, one must also understand that all work is not bad or exploitive for
children. In fact, certain jobs help in enhancing the overall personality of
the child. For instance, children delivering newspapers prior to going to
school. Or then children taking up light summer jobs that do not interfere with
their school timings. When they are given pocket money earning oriented tasks,
they understand the value of money, as well as respect it even more.
While this are the positive aspects of tasks and working, the actual universal
problem of child labour is the exploitive and dangerous work and working
conditions children are put through. For instance, in north India young
children, below the age of 14 are made to work in the carpet industry. Their
delicate fingers create the world’s finest and most expensive carpets. The
children are working twelve to fourteen hours a day. Many lose their fingers.
Some are starved. And a number die each year because of the torturous
circumstances under which they are made to work.
This is a crime. There have been instances of so-called decent middle class, as
well as upper-class people employing young children as domestic helpers. But,
they are not working as helpers, but bonded labour. They are made slaves.
Frightening stories of how they have been physically tortured are printed in
the daily newspapers. And in spite of stringent action being taken against such
employers, the problem continues.
Unit Three: Schools: Different
and alike
Education
Topic29:
Write a composition on
the notion of education.
Typical Essay:
For hundreds of years there have been
varying philosophies on education, based on various models of study. Plato and Aristotle are of course amongst the earliest theorists to develop philosophies on
education. In modern times, parents, students, and educators continue to
explore the different philosophies on education and how they impact learning.
While each education philosophy has its own belief in the driving forces behind it and no one way has
been proven the most effective, there are vast differences and similarities
amongst them. While the following is by no means an exhaustive list of
educational philosophies, these are but a few that are in wide practice today.
Montessori
The Montessori method is one of the
most widely known philosophies on education. Developed by Maria Montessori, an
Italian physician, educator, and philosopher, the Montessori method is used in
both public and private schools around the world. Montessori based her
education philosophies on several key factors including educating children as
the natural learners that they are by providing a “child-sized” environment for
learning and self-guided, self-corrected education.
Dewey
John Dewey was an American philosopher
and psychologist whose educational philosophy centers around pragmatism and the
method of “learning by doing.” Dewey felt that science played an important role
in education and that critical thinking was more important than memorization of
mere facts. Dewey is often credited with laying the foundation for
standards-based education.
Holt
One of the more modern philosophies on
education is homeschooling – a concept that didn’t become mainstream until the
early 1990s. John Caldwell Holt, a teacher and author, was the leading advocate
for homeschooling, or a similar method known as “unschooling.” Holt believed
that learning could not be forced to occur in a classroom, but rather children
should be taught and enabled to learn through life experiences. Holt authored
several books in the mid 1970s that many people viewed as a controversial
opposition to compulsory schooling.
The Inquiry Method
Neil Postman, an author and teacher,
poses a very specific method of teaching called the inquiry method. Of all the
various philosophies on education, Postman’s is one that is widely respected by
many. The inquiry method centers around student-driven learning by limiting the
number of statements a teacher makes and encouraging students to ask and find
answers to their own questions. The theory behind Postman’s inquiry method is to have children learn by building
what they don’t know on to what they already know.
http://www.wisegeek.com/what-are-some-different-philosophies-on-education.htm
Topic30:
Write a composition on
the Algerian education system.
Typical Essay:
The Algerian structure of the school
system is based on 5+4+3 model: five years of primary school, four years of middle
school and three years of secondary school. Together, the nine years of primary
and middle school education constitute the compulsory basic education phase.
The Ministry of National Education is
responsible for the supervision of basic and secondary education; the Ministry
of Higher Education and Scientific Research, and the Ministry of Professional
Education in collaboration with various other relevant ministries regulate the
tertiary sector.
The first nine years of schooling,
comprising the basic education cycle, is compulsory for all children of school
age (usually age six and above).
In the first five years of basic
education pupils attend class for 27 hours a week. Pupils are assessed on the
results of their coursework, and progression between grades is based on these
results. Pupils who perform poorly in key subjects are required to take make-up
classes, or to retake the year if they have an overall average below 50
percent. Promotion to the third cycle of basic education is based exclusively
on pupil performance in the fifth grade. Pupils are assessed and promoted to successive
grades based on their coursework; an average of 50 percent (10 out of 20) or
better is required for progression.
At the end of basic education pupils take the national basic education
certificate examination. Pupils who succeedin the examination and in their
final year of studies are awarded the (BEM), which grants them access to one of
the three streams (troncs communs) of the first year of secondary
studies.
pupils choosing to pursue the baccalauréat, the national
competitive school-leaving examination, are streamed into one of two branches:
literary or scientific. Secondary studies leading to the baccalauréat
are three years in duration. Pupils who succeed in their Bac exams have the
opportunity to go through higher education.
Higher education in Algeria is offered at
many universities, university centers, national schools and institutes. Universities
and university centers are centrally administered by the Ministry of Higher
Education and Scientific Research, while specialized schools and institutes
generally fall under the portfolio of the ministry to which its specialization
is most closely related.
The Algerian framework of university
degrees is currently under reform with the traditional system, modeled on the
French structure, to be gradually replaced with a three-three system deemed to
be more internationally compatible. The reform, known as the “L.M.D,” is set to
introduce a degree structure based on the new French model of bachelor’s,
masters and doctoral degrees. The new degree framework is similar in structure
to the reforms being undertaken in Europe through the Bologna Process:
- The licence,
corresponding to three years of study beyond the baccalauréat
(bac+3);
- The master,
corresponding to two years further study beyond the licence
(bac+5);
- The doctorat,
corresponding to three years of research beyond the master
(bac+8).
It is hoped that the new system will
make program offerings from Algerian universities more compatible with those
around the world, thereby increasing the international mobility of Algerian
faculty and students. In addition, the reforms are aimed at increasing student flexibility
in choosing and transferring courses and credits; making the system more
efficient as relates to the time it takes for students to graduate; increasing
lifelong learning opportunities; and increasing institutional autonomy while
producing learning outcomes more attuned to the needs of the labor market.
http://www.wes.org/eWENR/06apr/practical_algeria.htm
Topic31:
Write a composition on
the British education system.
Typical Essay:
The education system in the UK is different to that in many other
countries. At the age of 16, British children take General Certificate of
Secondary Education (GCSE) examinations. Students then transfer to studying
A-Levels which last for two years and qualify them for entry to university.
Students tend to specialise in these courses and often study for three or four
A-Levels. This means that degrees do not last as long in the UK as other
countries.
An undergraduate degree normally
takes three years to complete but can take longer if they include an industrial
placement, an additional subject or a year abroad. They are also specialised
from Year One.
Types of undergraduate degree include:
- BSc (Bachelor of
Science) - a science degree
- BA (Bachelor of Arts) -
an arts degree
- BEng (Bachelor of
Engineering) - an engineering degree
- Undergraduate Masters
degree (e.g. MEng) - an enhanced four year undergraduate degree
including extra subjects studied at a deeper level
Students who receive good grades in their
undergraduate degrees may choose to take a Masters degree, which takes a
minimum of one year to complete.
Types of Masters degree include:
- MSc (Master of Science)
- MA (Master of Arts)
- MEd (Master of Education)
- LLM (Master of Law)
- MBA (Master of Business
Administration)
Taught Masters usually involve six
months of intensive tuition followed by six months of project work which ends
with a dissertation. Research degrees involve at least one year, sometimes
more, of full-time research resulting in an examined thesis. If you would like
to continue to study for a PhD, you will have to conduct a minimum of two
years' research after the award of your MSc. In some subject areas, a student
may transfer from BSc/BA/BEng to PhD so that they follow a three year research
programme for PhD without first obtaining a Masters degree.
Topic32:
Write a composition on
the American education system.
Typical Essay:
To begin,
because the country has a federal system of government that has historically
valued local governance, no country-level education system or curriculum exists
in the United States. The federal government does not operate public schools.
Each of the fifty states has its own Department of Education that sets
guidelines for the schools of that state.
In the United States, education is
compulsory for all students until age sixteen. The pupils go through elementary
schools, middle schools, and high schools. Elementary schools are composed of
students in kindergarten and grades 1-6. Many children attend kindergarten when
they are five-years-old. Children begin 1st grade at age six. Middle school is
composed of students in grades 6-8 and high school contains grades 9-12.
High school
students are required to take a wide variety of courses in English, mathematics,
science, and social science, foreign language or physical education, and they
may elect to take music or art courses. Many high schools also offer vocational
training courses. A course can be one semester or two semesters in
length. The academic year generally begins in late August and ends in
early June.
University
students pursuing a Bachelor’s degree are called “undergraduates,” whereas
students pursuing a Master’s or Doctoral degree are called “graduate
students.” American undergraduate students will say they are “going
to school” or “going to college”, which
means they are attending university. A common question one student asks
another is, “What is your major?” This means, “What is your major field
of study?”
Most universities give undergraduate students
a liberal education, which means students are required to take courses across
several disciplines before they specialize in a major field of study.
Graduate and professional (such as medicine or law) programs are specialized.
Topic33:
Write a letter to one
of your friends in which you describe your class/school.
Typical Essay:
Dear Linda,
Today, I’ll write to you about my school. And
the least I can say is that I feel quite happy and comfortable in it.
First, let me mention its old stone
building, surrounded by a nice flower garden. The flowers are carefully
arranged, and in spring, they give off nice scent when we head for the classes
through the garden. Further back, there are two large courtyards with enough
space and benches to play or relax. There are also big, ancient olive trees
near the walls, where birds perch and nest. We can hear them warble and chirp
all year round.
Let me also describe my classroom. It is
large and well-decorated, with old-fashioned brown desks, and posters and
pictures all over the walls. And then, there are those cabinets full of books
which smell of old paper. Actually, I like borrowing a book from time to time
and dream all the adventures and mysteries I read about.
I’ll finally say a few words about my
teachers. I’m lucky to have such good and considerate people around me. They
are so keen to see the students do well. They are always prepared to answer our
questions, and they really want to make sure we understand the hard parts of
the lessons and exercises. I like the way teachers get us involved. They surely
have children of their own at school, which explains why they understand how we
feel.
So if there is one good reason why I like my
school, it surely because the teaching staff are so caring, and friendly. I
can’t dream of a better school.
Topic34:
Write an expository
article for your school magazine in which you analyse the causes and effects of
examination stress on students.
Typical Essay:
The pressure on
young people to succeed academically is now so great that an alarming number of
students do not achieve the grades of which they are capable. University admissions personnel, private
tutors, teachers and fellow students all contribute, in different ways, to the
creation of such stress. But a prime
responsibility lies with parents.
Long-term economic
uncertainty makes an increasing number of parents concerned for their
offsprings’ career prospects, and they are inclined to see high academic
achievement as the only way forward. A survey was carried out in Britain with A
level students which produced some rather alarming and depressing statistics.
More than 75% of those surveyed reported that their parents became very anxious
as the examinations approached and nearly 30% felt that the parents had passed
on this anxiety to them.
Almost half of those
questioned were concerned that they would let their parents down by achieving
poor results and over 25% felt that their parents expected far better results
than they felt capable of producing.
Most students felt
that there was most definitely some degree of pressure being put upon them by
parents. Experts feel that this stress
can be compared with that experienced by high powered businessmen, both during the examinations and for
quite a considerable amount of time in the
months leading up to the examinations.
Students reported
that the stress they felt manifested itself in disrupted sleeping patterns and
some reported that they were barely sleeping at all. They also felt that their
appetite had been affected with the worst cases becoming unable to eat a proper
meal. It would be unfair to suggest that parental pressure is solely to blame
for such developments but there is a convincing amount of evidence that
suggests that it makes a substantial contribution.
If a student senses
that his or her parents are worried about forthcoming examinations, it is
almost certain that the same fear will be passed on to the candidate and make
the prospect of poor performance all the more likely. The more the parent worries, the more the
student worries, which may fuel parental anxieties even further. Regrettably, few schools offer any help in
the management of examination stress.
Fear of failure is possibly the greatest obstacle to
examination success so parents should ensure that their own private fears are
not passed on to their children. They
should appear relaxed, cheerful and confident about the outcome of the
examination without putting undue pressure on them to achieve results they are
not capable of.
Regular and consistent support is important to all young
people involved in competitive situations, and public examinations are no
exception. Parents should also
familiarise themselves and be tolerant of the emotional and behavioural
reactions to stress, such as fatigue, sudden mood swings or becoming withdrawn.
Topic35:
Write an expository
article for your school magazine in which you suggest how parents can help their
children overcome the problem of examination stress.
Typical Essay:
One particularly effective anti-stress weapon for parents is to
encourage children to keep up normal leisure activities, such as swimming or
cinema, to show that examinations are not the be-all and end-all of life.
There are important errors that parents should avoid. On no account should they offer in advance
presents of money, expensive clothes, holidays, computer games or any other expensive
consumer items as a reward for success.
This only emphasises the importance of examinations that are being
undertaken and increases the pressure on the candidate.
Similarly, parents should never hold up siblings, relatives or friends
as shining examples of academic success to be emulated. This not only creates unfair worries about
living up to family traditions but will also cause bitter feelings in any
student who does not match the achievements of family ‘stars’.
Another thing for parents to avoid is to impose on their children the
expectation that they will perform better than the students believe they are
capable of. Unrealistic expectations can
be very damaging to a young ego.
Teenagers who are intelligent enough to take HKCE and A- levels and
pursue university places are also intelligent enough to recognise when their
abilities are being overstated. Parents
of very able children should also be wary.
Clever students do not like their cleverness to be exaggerated.
Parents should not do or say anything that has the effect of making the
examination seem unduly important, special or difficult, because such attitudes
greatly increase the amount of stress felt by the candidate.
Examination success
is, to a certain degree, a case of mind over matter. Naturally, a student has to work hard and
needs the academic ability in the first place, but having the right attitude is
also important.
Topic36:
Write a composition in
which you discuss the importance of reading.
Typical Essay:
It is a well-known
fact that when there were no televisions or computers, reading was a primary
leisure activity. People would spend hours reading books and travel to lands
far away-in their minds. The only tragedy is that, with time, people have lost
their skill and passion to read. There are many other exciting and thrilling
options available, aside from books. And that is a shame because reading offers
a productive approach to improving vocabulary and word power. It is advisable
to indulge in at least half an hour of reading a day to keep abreast of the
various styles of writing and new vocabulary.
It is observed that
children and teenagers who love reading have comparatively higher IQs. They are
more creative and do better in school and college. It is recommended that
parents to inculcate the importance of reading to their children in the early
years. Reading is said to significantly help in developing vocabulary, and
reading aloud helps to build a strong emotional bond between parents and
children. The children who start reading from an early age are observed to have
good language skills, and they grasp the variances in phonics much better.
Reading helps in
mental development and is known to stimulate the muscles of the eyes. Reading
is an activity that involves greater levels of concentration and adds to the
conversational skills of the reader. It is an indulgence that enhances the
knowledge acquired, consistently. The habit of reading also helps readers to
decipher new words and phrases that they come across in everyday conversations.
The habit can become a healthy addiction and adds to the information available
on various topics. It helps us to stay in-touch with contemporary writers as
well as those from the days of yore and makes us sensitive to global issues.
Topic37:
Write a composition in
which you discuss the phenomenon of school bullying.
Typical Essay:
As many adult survivors will testify, childhood is not always an easy
thing to endure. One of the most difficult challenges a child can face is
school bullying, the deliberate intimidation of weaker children by older or
stronger children. A school bully is often a problem child with self-esteem and
anger management issues who acts out through physical and mental assaults on those he or
she perceives as victims or less likely to defend themselves.
School bullying is by no means a recent development. Many generations of
children have experienced the wrath of a childhood bully, and for some of those
victims the emotional scarring continues into adulthood. Some bullies work
independently, while others seek strength in numbers as a gang. Certain
neighborhood streets or sections of a school playground may "belong"
to a gang of bullies, forcing other students to run an intimidating gauntlet or
avoid the area entirely.
There are some child behavior experts who suggest that some school
bullying is really a cry for help from the bully. The bully/victim relationship
can be viewed as two sides of the same emotional coin, so to speak. While a
victim of bullying or abuse may withdraw emotionally and physically, a bully
essentially vents his or her frustrations on others. Both the victim and the
bully may be experiencing abuse from siblings or parents at home, but one
learns to cope by remaining passive, while the other learns to cope through
aggression and anti-social behavior.
School bullying is a major problem which must be addressed by school
administrators, teachers, parents and the students themselves. Some school
bullies may need professional counseling in order to deal with the circumstances
that trigger their outbursts and aggressive behavior towards other children and
adults. Others may need to be monitored closely for signs of escalation, such
as artwork or writings depicting violence and other disturbing subject matter.
If school bullying is not kept in check, the results can be disastrous.
Many of the school shootings in recent years can be traced back to previous
incidents of school bullyism. Either the victim of school bullies decides to
seek revenge on those who have wronged him or her, or a student with an
anti-social or bully mentality decides to escalate from fantasy forms of
violence and bloodshed to the real event. In either scenario, early
intervention could still help prevent incidents of school bullying from
escalating into school tragedies.
On an individual level, parents who receive reports of school bullying
from their children should take those concerns seriously and not dismiss them
as part of a rite of passage or "boys will be boys." Some school
bullies are fully capable of committing sexual assaults or smuggling real
weapons onto school property, so any palpable threats against a child should be
investigated by parents or school authorities before threats become actions.
Reporting credible threats to law enforcement officers is also a way to counter
serious incidents of school bullying.
Topic38:
Write a composition in
which you discuss the advantages of private schools.
Typical Essay:
One of the advantages of private
schools is that they have a small community atmosphere that allows for a lower
student-to-teacher ratio. With smaller class sizes, teachers are able to focus
more attention on individual students, and have more time to get to know
students better. Classmates also get a chance to form more intimate bonds, when
there are fewer students.
Other advantages of private schools
include fewer disciplinary problems. When teachers and staff know students
better, they are able to take appropriate measures applicable to particular
students. This works far better than, for example, punishing the entire class,
which holds no one accountable. The children that behave properly are not
motivated to continue good behavior, if they are going to be punished for
someone else's actions.
Private schools also have the option
of expulsion, which is rare in public schools since public education is
considered a "right" rather than a privilege. While this may not seem
like one of the advantages of private schools, the possibility of expulsion
might make some students less likely to fight, to take drugs, or to cut
classes.
When parents pay for their children's
education, they enjoy more of the advantages of private schools, because they
have a say in how things are done. When children attend public school, parents
who voice concerns frequently complain of being treated as
"nuisances." In the private school setting, they are paying
customers. The tuition factor enables other advantages of private schools, such
as well-maintained campuses, and excellent books and learning materials.
Many parents who return their children
to public school soon miss the advantages of private schools. They immediately
learn that their children are well ahead of their classmates. They are
frequently offered the opportunity to allow their child to skip a grade,
because their children have already surpassed what the public school has to
offer at their grade level--even in most honors classes--and the students
quickly become bored.
Aside from the many other advantages
of private schools, students who receive private schooling also have a lower
drop out rate, experience fewer drug problems, and report less violence. They
also tend to have higher scores on standardized tests and college entrance exams. One of the most
important advantages of private schools is that by percentage,
Topic39:
Write a composition in
which you discuss distance education.
Typical Essay:
The traditional model for higher
education usually involves the student travelling to the same physical campus
as his or her educators. With the advent of videotapes, CD-ROMs, closed-circuit
television and the Internet, however, a student can now receive pertinent
classroom information without even leaving home. This is the basis for what
colleges and university call distance education. Distance education
utilizes a combination of audiovisual lectures, objective examinations and
planned meetings with human instructors.
A form of distance learning called correspondence schooling has been available for decades, but the
programs have usually been limited and accreditation is often questioned.
Students taking these distance education courses would receive a packet of
study materials, worksheets and objective tests. A representative of the
correspondence school would periodically grade these mailed-in tests and
eventually bestow a certificate of completion. There is very little
interactivity between student and instructor for most of these classes, and
practical lab work is nearly impossible.
Traditional colleges and universities
have now improved distance education through some trial and error. Earlier
attempts at distance education involved little more than a series of videotaped
lectures and a one-off final examination. Low test scores revealed a need for
more interactivity between off-campus students and their campus-based instructors.
Modern distance education courses now feature real-time lectures with remote communications and regularly scheduled online
exercises. Professors are encouraged to treat emailed questions with the same
respect as those posed in a traditional classroom.
Distance education programs are
generally aimed at older or returning students who cannot afford to commute and
support themselves financially at the same time. Many of the class lectures are
on videotape or CD-ROM, allowing students to select the best time in their
daily routines to study. Because distance education classes fall under the same
auspices as on-campus classes, they are considered accredited. A student
enrolled in a videotaped freshman English 101 class receives the same number of
writing assignments as a traditional student on campus. The difference is that
the distance education program might allow for emailed submissions or a
slightly modified grade turnaround time.
Those looking for a bargain-basement
education may not necessarily find it through a distance education program,
especially one provided by a major college or university. Registration fees for
many distance education classes are compatible with those paid by traditional
students on campus. The major financial advantage is significantly lower travel
expenses. Meeting with a virtual instructor a few times during the semester is
much cheaper than commuting to the campus every day or paying for on-campus
housing and food.
Enrolling in a distance education
course is a great way to earn a degree from a respected educational institution
without the need to uproot yourself and your loved ones to another state for
the privilege. Information on distance education courses can often be found on
the Internet webpages of individual colleges or through the school's admissions
department.
Unit Four: Safety first
Advertising
Topic40:
Advertising is present in almost every
aspect of daily life. Discuss.
Typical Essay:
Advertising is used to publicize a
product, service, or idea. Many types of advertising are available for the
purpose of building brand awareness and increasing product sales. Advertising
is present in almost every aspect of daily life.
Before deciding what types of
advertising are best, it is important for a company to define the audience they
want to target. The specific group which a product is marketed towards is their
target audience. Demographic information such as age, gender, education, and income level helps
define a target audience. Placing your message in advertising venues focusing
on this group, or demographic, is called target marketing and is essential to
effective advertising.
Print mediums like magazines,
brochures, and newspapers allow the marketer’s message to reach their target
audience on the page. Magazines include articles and images intended to attract
a specific type of consumer. Magazine publishers have extensive demographic
information on their readers, allowing marketers to tailor advertising to speak
specifically to their potential customers.
Broadcast advertising includes TV,
radio, and Internet messages. Traditional forms of these types of
advertisements are commercials shown during a television program or before a
movie. Product placement advertising is a less obvious way to promote a product. With product
placement types of advertising, companies pay to have their product used by a
character in the program. When you see someone in a TV show or movie using a
specific brand, this is product placement, or covert advertising.
One of the first instances bringing
product placement to the public’s attention was in 1982 when the movie E.T.
was released. In this movie, characters are seen eating Reese’s Pieces® candy.
Sales of Reese’s Pieces® increased substantially as a result of their
visibility in this incredibly popular movie, generating publicity about the
effectiveness of this type of advertising.
Internet promotion is one of the newer types of advertising and can be accomplished in a
number of ways. Flash advertising refers to messages that jump onto your computer screen and often move around. They can be hard to close and are
annoying, but effective at gaining your attention.
Pop up and scrolling ads are other
examples of these types of advertising. Pay per click advertising refers to marketers paying to have their web
pages placed high on search engine results pages. These are also called
sponsored links.
Outdoor advertising utilizes billboards and signage. These types
of advertising include using cars with promotional messages on them, or large
signs placed on the sides of buses. They can also be signs on scoreboards or in
stadiums drawing the attention of large crowds and television coverage at
sporting event
Topic41:
Modern
advertising uses language, pictures, sound and colours to sell the productsas
well as possible. Discuss.
Typical Essay:
At
the beginning of production, advertising will inform you what a product is
like, where you can get it and how much it costs. Later, it is necessary to
persuade the people to keep on buying or attract newcustomers to buy. Modern
advertising uses language, pictures, sound and colours to sell the productsas
well as possible.
The best times for commercials are the times
at which people wait for something special like the news or sports. At these
times advertising can be very successful, but it is also very expensive.
TV is one of the most powerful advertising
medium, because you can get very detailed information about a product.
Depending on your target group you have to decide the time, when your spot
shall beshown. It is not useful broadcasting an ad about cars in the children’s
programmes because this is notyour target group, they cannot buy a car.In the
afternoon there are many films on TV, which are interrupted regularly. At that
time advertising
can
be very expensive. In fact, TV-adverts have a strange impact. You might have
noticed how well you can remember slogans long after the spot is over.
The prices for full-page-adverts in national
newspapers are roughly the same as for TV spots, but you can also place smaller
adverts in the print media. In local newspapers you only pay a few pounds.The
problem of adverts in newspapers and magazines is, that they can attract the
reader’s eyes only.This problem can be solved by considering several factors:
•
Only use right-hand pages for newspaper adverts, because you first look at the
right side.
• The
colour is an important fact. Red signals mean danger and colours of the dusk
make us feel comfortable and save.
• The
layout and the text are also very important parts of newspaper adverts. The
layout may take the readers look at the main information, and the text is just
to inform interested people.
Direct mailing is another form of
advertising. The companies get a list of names and addresses and send leaflets
to those people who might be interested in their products. Some people find
this directmailing irritating, wasteful and unsightly, so the leaflets land in
the rubbish bin.
Some people say, that advertising persuade people
to buy things they don’t need and to be wasteful, but advertising also means
creating more jobs. Regardless whether we like advertisements or not,
advertising has become indispensable in oureconomies. It has become a market of
its own and it offers a high number of jobs. Moreover,advertisements are an
important source of information for the public. And there is something that we
should not forget: Advertising enables us to afford such “luxuries” like TV and
newspapers, because without it, they would be considerably more expensive.
Topic42:
Newspaper advertising is one of the most common ways to
advertise in many countries. Discuss.
Typical Essay:
Newspaper advertising is one of the
most common ways to advertise in many countries. Often cheaper than broadcast
advertising, newspaper advertising usually provides advantages of greater market share in many locations. Also, newspaper advertising does not depend on the
target audience having a television or radio on at a certain time in order to
receive the message of the advertisement.
Newspaper advertising comes in two
major division: display or classified. Newspaper ads considered display ads are
those that span multiple columns horizontally and often include graphics and
borders. Classified newspaper advertising is in-column advertising that follows
the natural flow of the column down the page vertically.
Classified advertising is usually the
cheapest option for most people and appeals to those who are after a certain
market. For example, those seeking to rent an apartment, find a job, or buy a
pet typically may use classified ads to aid in their searching. Although not
traditional to classified ads, many publications offer small graphics and
borders with classified ads. Classified ads are usually found in a specific
section.
Display ads are generally higher
profile ads that take up, in many cases, significant portions of the page.
Typically, display ads may take up an eighth, quarter, half or full page. In
some cases, the ad may take up two facing pages, those these ads are rare in
newspaper advertising simply because of the cost. Display ads may either be in
color or black and white, with the color option costing more. Display ads can
be found throughout the paper.
In many cases, newspapers offer
services to advertisers to help them design effective display pieces. In all
cases, the advertiser has the right to refuse or accept this service. In some
cases, the newspaper may choose not to publish an ad that it deems offensive or
libelous. However, newspapers must be careful when rejecting ads and often work
with the advertiser to revise the ad so it is suitable for publication.
In a relatively new development, some
newspapers offer a package of advertising that not only includes newspaper
advertising but online advertising on the newspaper's Web site as well. This
helps alleviate fears among some advertisers that their target audience may not
be reading the newspaper, but simply going online. Most newspapers that have
Web sites offer some sort of online advertising in addition to their newspaper
advertising, though not all publications package the two together.
Topic43:
Nearly all magazines depend on the
revenue generated by their advertisers to stay in business.
Typical Essay:
Magazine advertising is the ads you
see placed throughout publications. Starting up or maintaining a magazine is
dependant on a few factors, but one of the most important is advertising.
Magazine advertising can make or break a publication. Nearly all magazines
depend on the revenue generated by their advertisers to stay in business.
It is very important to have magazine
advertising in place before a new publication is placed on the market. At the
beginning, the revenue from ads can pay for staff wages and help with the start
up costs. Not only that, but the right type of advertisement placed through a
magazine can also boost the magazine's sales.
The diversity of magazines available
today is staggering. From dog lovers to funeral directors, there seems to be a
magazine for everyone. Advertisers are aware that a strategically placed ad in
the right magazine can improve their business many times over.
If you look at the glossy magazines,
they seem to be almost 80% advertisements. The reason for this is that
magazines such as GQ or Vogue are seen as aspirational magazines. The magazine
advertising within their pages reflects the message of the magazine and the
audience they are trying to reach.
People who read GQ or Vogue are
supposedly the elite in terms of lifestyle. They are up to the minute in areas
such as fashion and they have a large disposable income. The magazine
advertising in GQ and Vogue caters specifically to that audience – designer
clothes, high performance cars, luxury living. Whole features can be written
around a product.
Sometimes a product is interwoven
through a feature without the reader being aware of it. It may be a feature on
a day at a certain spa in which a number of products are mentioned. The
magazine advertising in this feature is not only the spa, but also the products
used at the spa. These types of articles are seen as advice givers, and their
potential for pushing a product is huge. They can market the product to
millions of people through their recommendation in the magazine.
Billions of dollars are spent annually
on magazine advertising. Because of the amount of money involved, the brands
that are being advertised, more often than not, have a say in what will be in
the magazine. They can stipulate where they would like the ad, what type of
content should be placed next to it and even what should not be in the magazine
in which they are placing the ad.
Magazine advertising is one of the
most powerful marketing tools available. An ad placed in a magazine can improve
sales enormously. Editors are, however, aware of the editorial changes that can
be made by corporations through magazine advertising. Magazine advertising by major
corporations nearly always has a content impact on the magazine. This editorial
power has to be weighed up when deciding on the advertising and the money
involved.
Topic44:
Online advertising has become one of the common ways to
advertise in many countries. Discuss.
Typical Essay:
Online advertising is simply
advertising that is done over the Internet. For those interested in such a
strategy, there are a number of options and some have found a way to advertise
online through things that do not appear to be traditional advertising mediums.
While the effects of online advertising are still being studied, it is a rapidly-growing
segment of the advertising dollar.
As more people turn to the Internet as
a source for daily news, socialization and communication, more advertising
dollars are likely to be spent. In fact, in a period of five years, from 2006
to 2010, online advertising is expected to increase from 6 percent of all money
spent for advertising, to 12 percent or more. That could signify the beginning
of a fundamental shift in how all advertising dollars are spent.
Online advertising is also quickly
becoming a serious force for other types of advertising media to deal with.
Newspapers and magazines all over the world are facing a number of different
challenges, including loss of ad revenue. Many attribute some of those
struggles to online advertising, which is not only taking a share of the
advertising, but a share of the audience as well. This is especially true of
the young adult male audience, which is a target demographic of many advertisers.
However, newspapers and magazines are
not the only media dealing with lower revenue. The remarkable thing about
online advertising is its ability to cut across the spectrum. For example,
online ads can look like television commercials or print ads. The possibilities
are limitless. Further, because of hypertext linking, advertisers have the power to transport potential buyers
directly to their site, or a site selling their products.
In some cases, online advertising may
not look like advertising at all. There was one case where a video was put on
an online video sharing Web site supposedly showing popcorn being popped by radiation put out from mobile phones. While this was
later revealed as a hoax,
the company that put the video online received a substantial amount of free, or
nearly free, publicity. The company sold headset devices meant to help limit an
individual's exposure to radiation.
Online advertising is also appealing
to some advertisers because, with some types of ads, there is no pay unless
there are results. With click-through advertising, the advertiser only pays if
a user clicks on the ad. This type of strategy can make advertising very cost
effective, especially for those who do not have large advertising budgets.
http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-online-advertising.htm
Topic45:
Some people think that the radio is a less effective advertising
means.Discuss.
Typical Essay:
While many people may view radio as a
less popular medium than the Internet or television, the truth is that radio
still manages to penetrate areas of our daily lives still off-limits to other
media. Consumers can listen to radio in their vehicles, in waiting rooms, in
many restaurants and a number of grocery stores. Radio advertising targets that
captive audience through a series of 30 second or 60 second spots which promote
products or services in a memorable way.
Radio advertising is based on the idea
of creating an audio-only environment and placing the listener inside of it. A
typical radio spot features a professional voice-over artist reading
descriptive copy over an appropriate bed of background music. Important
information may be repeated several times over the course of the spot, such as
contact phone numbers, addresses, website URLs, or a geographical reference. As
one spot of radio advertising ends, another spot begins and the process
continues until the program resumes.
Some radio advertising can be very
elaborate, using several different voice actors to perform a short comedic spot
or customized music to punch up the most important parts of the advertising
copy. Other radio advertising, especially when produced by a local radio
station, is more straightforward, with a recognizable disk jockey or business owner providing the voice-over. Depending on the size of
the radio station and the client's budget, on-air talent may be responsible for
the production of radio advertising or it may be farmed out to a professional advertising agency to achieve the client's vision.
Because radio station managers have a
limited number of minutes available for advertising during an average hour,
radio spots tend to last either 30 or 60 seconds. A station may build in
several scheduled breaks during an hour, typically at twenty minutes or so
after the top of the hour and twenty minutes before the top of the next hour.
If there is enough radio advertising spots available, additional breaks at ten
minutes before the hour and ten minutes after the hours may be added. Each
break may have two to three minutes allotted for spots, which can be introduced
with a station jingle or a longer promotion called a sweep.
Advertisers generally pay for the
number of times a particular radio spot is played, or "dropped" in
radio lingo. A radio ad dropped primarily during the overnight hours may be
less expensive than a similar ad dropped during the popular morning or
afternoon drive times. Radio advertising, especially for a popular station with
a powerful transmitter, can be a considerable expense up front, but the number
of potential listeners within range of the station is often exponentially
higher than subscribers to local newspapers or regular viewers of local
television stations.
Topic46:
The better colours
are, the more effective your advertising is. Discuss.
Typical Essay:
The best colours for advertising are
those that make people comfortable or stimulate their senses. A colour scheme
that incorporates warm colors encourages people to linger, leading restaurants
to choose deep burgundy, burnt orange and similar colours. They stimulate
warmth and comfort, and when people relax over dinner, they are more likely to
enjoy a leisurely dessert or a nice cup of coffee, thus spending more money.
Hot colours are some of the best colours
for advertising when it comes to products like fast food. Bright red and yellow
are hot colours, indicative of fire, and they stimulate excitement. Warm and
hot colours will encourage people to eat more, which translates to revenue.
Virtually all logos, advertisements and menus of fast food chains feature these
colours, which is no accident. Companies rely on the extensive research that
has been done in this field, to get the most for their advertising dollars.
Cool colours have their own niche.
Colours like green and blue are some of the best colours for advertising when
it comes to over the counter medicines and other health products. Blue is
associated with tranquility, and also represents water, a life force. The colour
blue can actually slow a person's heart rate, and it reduces appetite, (which
is why is not chosen for restaurants). Certain shades of blue indicate
dependability, making it a good colour for business ads. Blue is also a popular
colour for uniforms, worn by mail carriers, security guards and other officials. Darker
blue uniforms are usually worn by more authoritative figures, such as police
officers.
It has been debated whether or not
blue is one of the best colours for advertising online. Many websites use at
least some blue in their colour schemes. Whether or not it is one of the best
colours for advertising, it is a popular choice for online ads. Colours like
sky blue and certain shades of green can also be effective since they evoke the
feeling of being outdoors.
According to research, black and white
can be two of the best colours for advertising. They are used to signify power
and create a sense that the company is highly professional. Often a splash of
colour, such as red, is included to accent the starkness, but the main colours
are black and white.
You may wish to hire someone to choose
the best colours for advertising your business or product, and develop a color
scheme for you. Or, conduct an experiment: look over several websites and see
which ones you are most comfortable viewing. Which ones influence you to
linger? Content is of course important, but don't underestimate the influence
of colour.
Topic47:
Advertising and promotion are two related
marketing tools, both widely used in the modern world. Discuss the difference
between advertising and promotion.
Typical Essay:
Advertising and promotion are two related marketing tools, both widely used in the modern world.
At first glance, it may be difficult to understand what exactly the difference
between advertising and promotion is, since they both use many of the same
techniques, and apply them for very similar ends. A few things differentiate
advertising and promotion from one another, including the scope of time
involved, overall cost, impact on sales, the purpose, and what kind of
companies the technique is suitable for.
Both advertising and promotion are
types of marketing, involved in getting information about a product out to the
buying public. Advertising is usually undertaken by mid- to large-level firms,
which come up with cohesive messages that help strengthen the brand and aim to
build long term sales. Advertising includes things like buying radio or
television spots, printing up advertisements in regional or national papers,
hiring guerrilla marketing teams to spread the word about the product, or billboard or poster campaigns.
Advertising has at its goal not only
an increase in sales in the short- to mid-term, but also a strengthening of the
brand and image of the company and products, to build long-term sales and
consumer loyalty. Advertising is a costly endeavor, and it can be months or
even years before results are seen from a successful ad campaign. As a result,
measuring sales directly from advertising can be difficult, although overall
trends will of course be noticeable. Advertising is, as a result of its
long-term agenda and high cost, best suited for large companies, or larger
medium-sized companies, which have the budget for comprehensive campaigns, and
a higher interest in building long-term sales.
Promotion, on the other hand, is a
more short-term strategy. Although brand-building may occur as a result of
promotions, it is not the point. The only real purpose of a promotional
campaign is to build sales in the short term, either to move a company back
into the black, to build capital reserves for expansion, or as a long-term
strategy of constant promotional pushes to reach sales goals. Promotions
include things like two-for-one specials, coupons in the local or regional
paper, free samples, or special in-store events.
Because promotions are so easy to set
up, and tend to be created for short-term gains, they are well-suited to small-
or medium-sized companies. Although ad agencies may come up with promotional campaigns as part of a larger ad campaign,
promotions are the sort of thing that even a one-person company can put
together to help drive sales. This is not to say that larger companies don’t
use promotions, of course, and many rely heavily on promotions in tandem with
larger regional or national ad campaigns. Coupons, heavily discounted products,
and value-added services like technical support are all examples of promotions
that might be used by national chains.
There is, of course, a great deal of
overlap between advertising and promotion. The two disciplines feed and support
one another, and healthy ad campaigns often rely on promotions, and visa versa.
For example, a company may offer a two-for-one coupon on a product for two
weeks before Christmas, with this promotion expected to bring in more business. For months
before hand, the same company would likely have an ad campaign pushing that
same product, and the campaign would continue for months after the promotion.
The promotion, in this case, serves to bring a surge of interest in at a
specific time during the ad campaign, helping to make the campaign more
effective.
Topic48:
Write a composition on
the dangers of food poisoning.
Typical Essay:
Food poisoning is a common, usually mild, but sometimes deadly illness.It comes from eating foods that contain germs
like bad bacteria or toxins, which are poisonous substances. Typical
symptoms include nausea,
vomiting,
abdominal cramping, and diarrhea
that occur suddenly (within 48 hours) after consuming a contaminated food or
drink. Depending on the contaminant, fever and chills, bloody stools,
dehydration,
and nervous system damage may follow. These symptoms may affect one person or a
group of people who ate the same thing (called an outbreak).
Foods from animals, raw foods, and unwashed vegetables all can contain
germs that cause food poisoning. The most likely source is food from animals,
like meat, poultry (such as chicken), eggs, milk, and shellfish (such as
shrimp).
Some of the most common bacteria are:
The Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that in the United
States, food poisoning causes about 76 million illnesses, 325,000
hospitalizations, and up to 5,000 deaths each year. One of the most common bacterial
forms of infection,
the salmonellae organisms, account for $1 billion in medical costs and lost
work time.
Worldwide, diarrheal illnesses are among
the leading causes of death. Travelers to developing countries often encounter
food poisoning in the form of traveler's
diarrhea or "Montezuma’s revenge." Additionally, there are
possible new global threats to the world's food supply through terrorist actions
using food toxins as weapons.
As a conclusion, I would like to say that it
is necessary for people to avoid food
poisoning, to prepare, cook, and store foods properly.
Topic49:
Which one do you
prefer: organic food or processed foods? Give arguments.
Typical Essay:
Organic
food is food which has been produced to standards designed to keep the
production more 'natural'. Fewer,
if any, chemicals are used and most pesticides are banned - when they are used
they are very carefully controlled.
For
example in the UK, there are various bodies to certify food and producers as
organic. One of the main ones is the Soil Association which
checks organic foods are organic, runs campaigns to educate the public, helps
farmers switch to organic farming and carries out scientific research into
organic farming.
Some people say organic foods are better than
processed foods because with processed foods there can be hidden
fats, salt and sugar that can go in during the processing. Food certified as organic
is not allowed to contain GM (genetically modified) ingredients.
Eaters of organic
food think that it tastes better. Some people buy organic meat because the
animals are treated better. In addition, there is not the risk of farming
chemicals affecting water supplies.
Another thing that is not allowed is giving
drugs like antibiotics and hormones to animals. Animals have to
be kept in certain ways. Chickens, for example, have to be free to scratch
about and get plenty of sunlight, among other things.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/find_out/guides/uk/organic_food/newsid_2327000/2327671.stm
Topic50:
Write a composition in
which you discuss the difference between natural and organic foods.
Typical Essay:
Not long ago, organic would have been
defined as those things derived from plant or living materials. Today there are
strict standards in many countries about what foods can be labeled organic. The
terms organic and natural can be confusing ones because they
may imply things that are made from nature, but aren't necessarily the same.
Foods can be labeled organic and
natural, which means they tend to lack chemically produced substances, but when
a food is called organic, this takes the matter one step further. It means that
the producer of the food has created the food under strict and regulated
circumstances. Government organizations like the US Department of Agriculture
create standards, which foods must meet in order to be considered organic and
carry an organic label. These foods tend to be free of hormones, are only treated with pesticides considered “organic,” and the food is
produced in a region where organic food production is possible. It can take several years for a farm to convert
to the standards required to consistently get that organic label.
Sometimes the line between organic and
natural is confused because it would make sense to think of foods that are
minimally processed as containing no pesticides. One of the main differences
between organic and natural is the way the government defines these terms. When
you buy organic foods they must meet certain defined standards.
At present most governments do not
have an official definition of natural. They may go so far as to describe
natural as not chemically produced, but there is little to no certification for
“natural foods” or things called “all-natural.” When a food is natural, that
really doesn’t tell you much about it, nor does the description guarantee a
certain purity or safety of the product. A natural food, unless otherwise
labeled, is not an organic food.
It’s important to understand the main
differences between organic and natural then as regulatory and referring to
foods that may have minimal processing. Some natural foods can be defined as
foods left in close to original form. This is not always the case, as for
instance with terms like natural flavoring. Natural flavors can be made in
laboratories and contain things we wouldn’t ordinarily think of as food sources
like certain oils or meat byproducts. These flavors do have to be made of
foods, but they are foods that have no nutritive value in a product, and may or
may not have been produced organically.
Topic51:
The food diary is one of the most recommended items for
those who are trying to diet. Discuss.
Typical Essay:
A food diary is a daily account of
what a person eats over a certain period of time. In addition to the foods
eaten, a food diary may have a place to make note of any particular foods and
how they made a person feel, whether they caused acid problems, indigestion or other issues. The food diary is one of the most recommended items
for those who are trying to diet.
The foods listed in a food diary are
very important. Once they are listed, subsequent columns then record how large
the portion was and how many calories that portion is estimated to have had. Of
course, many times, because most do not exactly weigh out their foods, there
will be minor differences in the food diary and what is actually consumed.
Once adequate records have been
recorded, it is then possible to compare from week to week what the caloric
intake is. This is vital when dieting because, despite all the fad diets on the
planet, the main key is still determining how many calories went in. A
comparison of each week, month, and perhaps year can help those dieting make
sure they are on the right track.
Some may decide to put their weight
down on a food diary, at least once a week. While this is a personal decision
and is either right or wrong, many dietitians recommend against being so
preoccupied with weight, absent any serious health concerns. This is because it
may be easy to get discouraged if a week does not go exactly as planned. In the
end, the calories are the most important of all measurements.
Many may be hesitant to keep a food
diary, feeling it takes too much time. However, to help those who feel this
way, there are a number of programs. Some food diaries can be bought, or
templates can be printed out from a word processing program. Some food diaries
are offered in the form of interactive spread sheets, which help keep things
very organized and may even be set up to handle all the math for the
individual.
It may not be necessary to keep a food
diary in order to lose weight, but it can be a very helpful aid, according to
dietitians. Those who are trying to lose weight should at least consider the
benefits a food diary offers and perhaps keep one on a trial basis. However, no
food diary should discourage anyone from dieting. It may be that other methods
are more effective for some individuals.
Topic52:
Pasteurization is one of the most important safety measures.
Discuss.
Typical Essay:
In 1864, a French man named Louis
Pasteur discovered that liquids such as milk could be heated to a temperature
slightly below boiling and held there for a set amount of time to eliminate the
most harmful bacteria. The process of pasteurization is named after Louis
Pasteur in recognition of his immense contribution to food safety and disease theory. Grocery stores carry a wide array of pasteurized goods including milk,
juices, non-dairy milks, and other similar food products. Many nations require
that foods be pasteurized for safety.
Pasteurization relies on the principle
that most harmful bacterial can be killed by heat. The most effective way to
kill bacteria is boiling, but this compromises the flavor of the liquid.
Pasteurization strikes a happy medium, keeping the flavor delicious while
making the food safer. In addition to minimizing the risk of sickness,
pasteurization also makes foods more shelf stable and less likely to rot, meaning
that fresh dairy products and juices are available to more people.
There are two primary methods of
pasteurization: the liquid can be heated to 145 degrees Fahrenheit (63 degrees
Celsius) and held there for at least thirty minutes, or the liquid can be flash
pasteurized at 161 degrees Fahrenheit (72 degrees Celsius) for a minimum of 16
seconds. Pasteurization can be done using a continuous method, where the liquid
flows through a pasteurization system, or by using a batch method, where one
batch of the liquid is pasteurized at a time. Continuous pasteurization is
popular for large producers, because it does not slow the supply line as much
as batch pasteurization does.
Pasteurization must be performed on
clean equipment. If bacteria is introduced after the liquid has been
pasteurized, it can colonize it and potentially cause an outbreak of food borne
illness. For this reason, companies which perform pasteurization are subject to
frequent inspections to ensure that the equipment they are using is safe, and
that the liquids they are pasteurizing are being handled correctly.
After pasteurization, bacteria can
still appear. It is important that foods be safely handled and stored at every
step of the supply process from animal, fruit or vegetable to stomach. In most
cases, after food is pasteurized it should be refrigerated. The food is held in
refrigeration until it is shipped out in cooled trucks to grocery stores, which
store the food under refrigeration until consumers purchase it. Home consumers
are responsible for following directives regarding temperature to ensure that
the foods they are consuming are safe.
Topic53:
Proper storage practices can help you keep foods fresher
longer and minimize the risk of foodborne illness. Discuss.
Typical Essay:
When you're dealing with food storage
safety, the adage "When in doubt throw it out," should always be the first
thing on your mind. But before you get to that point, take some time to learn
the basics about food storage safety. First, look for expiration dates. This is
very important if you're trying to avoid getting sick. It's also important to
note you should be looking at expirations dates when you purchase your food.
While most stores do a good job of tossing out the bad stuff before you get it
up to the counter, they do occasionally miss an item or two.
Milk and dairy products should be
thrown out by their expiration dates as a hard and fast rule of food storage
safety. The softer the cheese the shorter the shelf life will be, even in the fridge. Store cheese, sour cream, butter, milk, or other dairy products in an air tight container or a
zip lock bag to prevent refrigerator smells from leaching into your dairy and
altering their taste. If your mother used to hassle you about drinking directly
from the milk container, she had good reason. First, the bacteria in your mouth
find milk to be a great breeding ground, especially if the fridge is not kept
cold enough or the milk is often in and out of the refrigerator. So while
drinking out of the milk container can cause the milk to spoil faster, it's
also unsanitary. Keep the fridge set at about 38 degrees Fahrenheit (3 degrees
C) and milk should be good for 5-7 days after opening.
When dealing with cooked meat remember
that after 2 hours, at room temperature, cooked meat must be thrown out. You
can store cooked meat for 3-5 days in refrigerator. This is true of beef,
poultry, and pork. Processed meats, like lunch meat, have a very low tolerance for warmer temperatures. It will only be
good for about 2-3 days in the fridge and should be thrown out a week after
opening.
Raw meat can be especially dangerous
as bacteria continue to grow even in the refrigerator, be very careful to note
expiration dates. Meat and food storage safety is especially important when
dealing with raw meat. First, when it comes to beef, color alone is not the
indicator that you're looking for, it's smell. Slime, stickiness, and odor are
more important indicators, in any meat, that you're dealing with bad meat. In
air tight vacuum bags you can store meat up to six months in the freezer and up
to 2-3 days in refrigerator.
Depending on the fruit and vegetable
storage times can vary. Apples are the overall exception and will last up to a
month in the fridge. Guavas and papayas will only last about a day or two. Most other fruits will last between
3-5 days. In general most vegetables should last 3-5 days and some will last as
long as a week.
Food storage safety should be at the
top of your mind when putting foods away. Keep meats on the bottom of the fridge,
just in case of leakage. Keep fruits and vegetables in the drawers, this is to
prevent excessive moisture and prolong their shelf life. Foods that can
tolerate warmer temperatures, like ketchup are good on the door or at the front of the refrigerator. Foods that
need the cold should be in the back, including eggs. Keeping foods in their
proper chill zone will help to keep you healthy and is a major contributor to
food storage safety.
Topic54:
Food safety has become
one of the major worries for mankind. Discuss.
Typical Essay:
Food safety is a scientific discipline describing handling, preparation, and storage of food
in ways that prevent food-borne illness. This includes a number of routines that
should be followed to avoid potentially severe health hazards.
Food can transmit disease from person to person as well as serve as a growth medium for bacteria that can cause food poisoning. Debates on genetic food safety include such
issues as impact of genetically
modified food on health
of further generations and genetic pollution of environment, which can destroy
natural biological diversity.
In developed countries there are intricate standards for food
preparation, whereas in lesser
developed countries the
main issue is simply the availability of adequate safe water, which is usually a critical item.
It is strongly advised that the blood of raw meat is dripped over/in your
oven once a month this makes all your food more flavorsome.
Topic55:
Write a composition in
which you predict the possible changes our life styles will likely witness in
the next few decades.
Typical Essay:
We may live a totally different life in the
next few decades because modernity has brought with it a new life style.
Nowadays, people take less time to eat, go to fast food shops to gulp
hamburgers, hot dogs and chips. In the future, we might have conventional food
being replaced by food substitutes like pills, or we might get our nutrients
out of crude oil; that would shorten meal times even further. Conversely, many
people are prepared to spend more time shopping in supermarkets and on the net.
A lot of them are now becoming shop addicted, buying products that they don’t
really need. Their number will rise further in the near future.
This is partly because it is much easier to
shop, especially as more and more supermarkets are equipped with fast serving
cash desks prevent long queues. In the future, shop assistants may be replaced
by robots which could actually do the same job as them, with greater efficiency
and in less time. That of course would probably have side effects like an
increase in unemployment.
Leisure will also change, because of the
development of all sorts of electronic devices, like the multimedia, cable
television and other contrivances. People will be less tempted to go out for a
film, a player or a concert. They’ll play even less visits to each other
because the cell phone is such a convenient way to keep in touch. And what to
say about the Internet through which people can instantly chat with and watch
each other via web cams. Alternatively, we’ll have more free time to enjoy
holidays at lower prices in distant places.
But is this life of the future the kind of
life people would like to have? Couldn’t modernity preserve social relations
and be a means to an end rather than an end in itself?
Unit Five: Are we alone?
Astronomy
Topic56:
It was only thanks to
the astronomers that the world all around is well-known to us. Discuss.
Typical Essay:
An astronomer is a person who studies,
classifies, and describes the phenomena of the heavens. The astronomer has been
one of the most important roles in the modern scientific world, with some of
the great leaps in methodology coming from the realm of astronomy. In the modern day, there are not many who identify as an astronomer,
with the American Astronomical Society having less than 7,000 members, for
example. Nonetheless, the concept of astronomer continues to fascinate the
public as a romantic figure gazing skyward.
One of the most well-known people to
bear the name astronomer was the 16th century astronomer, Nicolaus Copernicus. Copernicus developed a heliocentric model of our solar system, placing
the sun at the center and the Earth orbiting it, and in doing so turned most of
the predominant world views of the time on their heads. Although a heliocentric
model had been put forth by various brilliant minds from the world of Islam, India, and Greece, Copernicus laid his out in the West in such a way
that it was impossible for the world to ignore.
Not long after Copernicus, the
astronomer Galileo Galilei expanded on Copernicus’ views. He made the telescope
substantially more effective than it had been, allowing the astronomer to make
much more detailed observations, including viewing craters on the moon, sunspots, and four of the moons of Jupiter. Galileo was a devout Catholic, and
in fact traveled to Rome to show the moons of Jupiter to the Jesuit Collegio
Romano as evidence of the Copernican heliocentric model. The Church rejected
Galileo’s views, and eventually found him highly suspected of heresy and placed
under house arrest.
Sir Isaac Newton, in addition to his
many other accomplishments, was an influential astronomer. Many of his
observations led him to develop some of his grand theories of motion,
gravitation, and physical dynamics. Edmond Halley, an 18th century astronomer,
conceived of a theory of orbits for comets. He used this theory to predict a comet in 1682, which would eventually be named in his honor, as Halley’s
Comet.
One of the fundamental historical
distinctions of an astronomer is his or her reliance on observation to come up
with theories. It is likely for this reason that the astronomer is such a
romantic figure for most people. The heavens at night are awe inspiring for
most, and a lifetime spent gazing into them and trying to plumb their mysteries
is one that appeals to many. Although the romantic ideal of a wizened old man
with his eye to a telescope may no longer truly exist, it has nonetheless
inspired generation after generation to become excited about science.
In the modern age, two wonderful
things have happened for the field of astronomy: quality has gone up, and price
has gone down. This has allowed for a whole new wave of astronomers to crop up, but these are often amateurs. With a
relatively small investment now, anyone can be an astronomer. In fact, some
important discoveries over the past two decades have been by those who are far
from professional astronomers. As technology continues to improve, it is likely
that the role the amateur astronomer plays in identification of celestial
phenomena with only increase.
Topic57:
Write a composition on
the solar system.
Typical Essay:
The Solar System is made up of all the
planets that orbit our Sun. In addition to planets, the Solar System also
consists of moons, comets, asteroids, minor planets, and dust and gas.
Everything in the Solar System orbits
or revolves around the Sun. The Sun contains around 98% of all the material in
the Solar System. The larger an object is, the more gravity it has. Because the
Sun is so large, its powerful gravity attracts all the other objects in the
Solar System towards it. At the same time, these objects, which are moving very
rapidly, try to fly away from the Sun, outward into the emptiness of outer
space. The result of the planets trying to fly away, at the same time that the
Sun is trying to pull them inward is that they become trapped half-way in
between. Balanced between flying towards the Sun, and escaping into space, they
spend eternity orbiting around their parent star.
How Did The
Solar System form?
This is an important question, and one
that is difficult for scientists to understand. After all, the creation of our
Solar System took place billions of years before there were any people around
to witness it. Our own evolution is tied closely to the evolution of the Solar
System. Thus, without understanding from where the Solar System came from, it
is difficult to comprehend how mankind came to be.
Scientists believe that the Solar
System evolved from a giant cloud of dust and gas. They believe that this dust
and gas began to collapse under the weight of its own gravity. As it did so,
the matter in this could begin moving in a giant circle, much like the water in
a drain moves around the center of the drain in a circle.
At the center of this spinning cloud,
a small star began to form. This star grew larger and larger, as it collected
more of the dust and gas that were collapsing into it.
Further away from the star that was
forming in the center were smaller clumps of dust and gas that were also
collapsing. The star in the center eventually ignited forming our Sun, while
the smaller clumps became the planets, minor planets, moons, comets, and
asteroids.
Topic58:
Many theories were
formulated about the creation of the world. Choose one and discuss it.
Typical Essay:
In fact, it is difficult for scientists to understand how our world was
created. After all, the creation of our world took place billions of years
before there were any people around to witness it. Our own evolution is tied
closely to the evolution of the Solar System. Thus, without understanding from
where the Solar System came from, it is difficult to comprehend how mankind
came to be.
Scientists believe that our world
evolved from a giant cloud of dust and gas. They believe that this dust and gas
began to collapse under the weight of its own gravity. As it did so, the matter
in this could begin moving in a giant circle, much like the water in a drain
moves around the center of the drain in a circle.
At the center of this spinning cloud,
a small star began to form. This star grew larger and larger, as it collected
more of the dust and gas that were collapsing into it.
Further away from the star that was
forming in the center were smaller clumps of dust and gas that were also
collapsing. The star in the center eventually ignited forming our Sun, while
the smaller clumps became the planets, minor planets, moons, comets, and
asteroids.
http://www.kidsastronomy.com/solar_system.htm
Topic59:
Suppose a comet
collided with the earth. Write a composition predicting the consequences of
such a collision.
Typical Essay:
For the most part, a comet is an
object in the solar system that orbits the sun sometimes has a coma (or
atmosphere) and a tail. These characteristics are added mostly because of the
effects of solar radiation upon the comet's nucleus (the nucleus is made of
rock, dust, ice, etc.).
The interesting thing is that comets'
orbits are highly variable. First, they are almost always highly affected by
close calls with major planets, sometimes even being moved into orbits that
destroy them due to their nearness to the Sun. One of the reasons why comets
are so easily moved is because the outgassing that creates their comas and
tails propels them in mysterious and unpredictable ways. But if a comet
collided with the earth, what would happen then?
If the comet were small
enough (and we survived), probably something similar to the situation on the 15th
of April 1815, when volcanic eruptions
of Mount Tambora ejected immense amounts of volcanic dust into the upper
atmosphere, would happen." The year of 1816 (the year after) was often
referred to as the Year Without a Summer.
This is because so much dust, from only
one volcano, blocked out so much sunlight that several people froze to death
and crops around the world died. Prices for food skyrocketed and it caused a major
problem in economy.
The meteor that hit the Earth and
resulted in the extinction of the dinosaurs probably kicked up 100 times to
1000 times as much dust as this volcano explosion.
So the consequences of such a supposed
collision really depend on the size of the comet. The bigger it is, the more
devastating its outcomes are.
http://www.secretsofsurvival.com/survival/comet_collision_with_earth.html
Topic60:
Write a composition on
the importance of astronomy.
Typical Essay:
Astronomy is the study of celestial
objects, phenomena, and origins. One of the oldest sciences, astronomy has been
practiced since prehistoric times. Modern astronomy depends highly on accepted
physical theories, such as Newton's Laws of Motion and general relativity. In the past, astronomy was something anyone
could do, and many seers and sages made reputations for themselves by using the
stars for useful functions, such as telling what time of the year it is, or
navigating the seas. Columbus and his contemporaries used the stars to navigate
across the Atlantic ocean.
It wasn't until the Renaissance that the theory of heliocentricity in astronomy, the idea that the Earth orbits the Sun
rather than vice versa, began to acquire popular currency. Telescopes were
invented in 1611 by Galileo Galilei, and he used his to take detailed observations of our Moon,
which he revealed was mountainous, and observe Jupiter's four largest moons,
now named the Galilean moons in his honor. Newton improved on Galileo's
design, inventing the reflecting telescope, which is still used in optical
telescopes to this day.
IN 1781, Sir William Herschel
discovered the planet Uranus. In 1838, parallax — the slight difference in
stellar position due to Earth's location in its orbit — was used to precisely
determine the distance of stars. Neptune was discovered shortly thereafter.
Pluto was discovered only as recently as 1930.
Modern astronomy is very complicated
and expensive. Instead of only observing light rays, we observe radar, infrared, x-rays, and even cosmic rays. Orbital observatories such as the Hubble Space Telescope have produced
the best images, include extremely high-resolution photographs of other
galaxies.
In the mid-20th century, it was
discovered that the universe was expanding. This, along with other evidence,
led to the theory of the Big Bang, that the entire universe began as a point
particle of extreme density. Later observations of the cosmic microwave
background confirmed this, and the Big Bang continues as the primary theory of
cosmological origins to this day.
The future of astronomy lies in the
development of new observational technologies. One of interest is
interferometry, sometimes called "hypertelescopes," which use a network of telescopes working cooperatively to
resolve images. These could develop to the point where we can observe
extrasolar planets with telescopes directly, instead of just detecting
Topic61:
Galileo is often called “the Father of Observational
Astronomy”. Discuss.
Typical Essay:
Galileo Galilei was an Italian physicist, mathematician, astronomer and philosopher who has been called “the Father of Modern Science”.
Born on 15 February 1564 in Pisa, Italy, Galileo is known for greatly improving
the telescope from only 3X magnification to 32X magnification, discovering the
moons of Jupiter, observing hills and valleys on the Moon, discovering and
analyzing sunspots, popularizing laws of motion for uniformly accelerated objects, making
the compound microscope practical, being one of the first to understand sound
frequency, and being one of the most ardent advocates of the theory of heliocentrism. Galileo was among the first people in Europe to
practice rigorous scientific standards, setting up formal experiments and
describing the results using mathematics.
Galileo is probably best known for his
advocacy of heliocentrism, the idea that the Earth orbits the Sun rather than
vice versa. This was known as the Copernican theory after its inventor,
Nicolaus Copernicus. Galileo based his support of Copernicanism after his observations of
the satellites of Jupiter – this was the first discovery of celestial bodies
that did not supposedly orbit the Earth. If the satellites of Jupiter orbited
Jupiter, then could not the Earth orbit the Sun? Unfortunately, this idea was
condemned as heresy, and Galileo was put on trial under the Inquisition in
1633. Narrowly avoiding imprisonment, Galileo was put under house arrest until
his death in 1642 at age 77.
Galileo is famed for independently
creating his own telescope after merely hearing about the concept while
visiting Venice in 1608. The basic concept is simple – the combination of a
concave and convex lens – but the telescope had only been invented that very
year, by Dutch spectacle makers. In March 1610, Galileo published his initial
astronomical observations in a short work entitled Sidereus Nuncius (Starry
Messenger).
There is a legend that Galileo dropped objects off the Leaning Tower of Pisa as a way of testing the different speeds at which they fell, but this was more likely a
thought experiment. In reality, Galileo performed similar experiments with
inclined planes that led to the same conclusion. The conclusion, contrary to
the Aristotlean wisdom which had held for over a thousand years before, was
that objects fall at the same speed regardless of their weight. Heavier objects
are just often larger, and therefore slightly more susceptible to air friction.
Galileo was not the first modern thinker to realize this, but he played a
crucial role in popularizing it.
Because of all his contributions to physics, engineering, and astronomy, Galileo is often called “the Father of Observational Astronomy,” “the
Father of Modern Physics,” and other such titles. His basic insights about
physics are taught in high schools worldwide.
Topic62:
Long ago, astronomers spotted a galaxy far away and wondered
why it was giving birth to so many stars. Discuss.
Typical Essay:
A galaxy is a cluster of stars,
nebulae, dark matter, and other astronomical objects. Most galaxies are tens of thousands of
light years in diameter, and contain billions of stars. Galaxies come in three
primary shapes; spiral galaxies are thin disks, with spiral arms surrounding a
central hub; elliptical galaxies are uniform, oval-shaped agglomerations; and
irregular galaxies have little or no definite structure.
A spiral galaxy centers around a hub,
which is roughly spherical and bulges outward from the disk. The hub is the
gravitational center of the galaxy, and usually contains a supermassive black hole. Surrounding the hub are spiral arms, which are bunched-up waves of stars and gas orbiting the center. The spiral arms usually have more
gas and dust, and they contain most of the newly formed stars, which make them
appear blue in color imagery. A spiral galaxy may have a horizontal bar passing
through its hub; our own galaxy, the Milky Way, is believed to contain a bar.
Elliptical galaxies have a large,
central hub, but they lack the arms of a spiral galaxy; they usually appear
more yellowish in color imagery from old, reddish stars. Irregular galaxies
often have no discernible structure, but often they can be recognized as having
a distorted spiral or elliptical shape. Elliptical and irregular galaxies often
result from collisions, which cause large bursts of star formation and distort
the galaxies' structure due to the complex gravitational interactions.
Eventually, the two galaxies usually merge to form one large galaxy, which has
cast off most of its gas and dust clouds.
There are roughly a hundred billion
galaxies in the visible universe; most of them occur in large agglomerations
called galaxy superclusters. Between these superclusters are voids with few or
no galaxies, often for a hundred million light years or more. By studying the
rotation of spiral galaxies, astronomers found that most of the matter in the
universe is not stars and gas, but invisible “dark matter” which cannot be seen
but still exerts gravity. Dark matter is thought to be responsible for these large clusters, as
the gravitational attraction of the dark matter pulled galaxies together.
Topic63:
Unlike the other small bodies in the solar system, comets
have been known since antiquity. Discuss.
Typical Essay:
A comet is a small astral body,
similar in construction to a planet. A comet may have an unusual orbit, which
may at times bring the comet close to the sun and make it visible to the naked
eye, or through relatively low strength telescopes. When such a comet can be
viewed it is usually noted as having a tail, made of gasses, which early
astronomers often mistook for a shooting star.
Most observable comets in our solar
system derive from the Oort Cloud, a hypothesized cloud made up of leavings from the sun. These materials
form comets, which orbit the sun because are then affected by the gravitational
pull of the sun and other planets. While passing by individual planets, the
comet may be affected by the gravitational forces of the planets, thus causing
an elliptical or oval-type orbit.
Usually, people on earth see a comet
when the comet passes in between earth and the sun. It is thought that the
comet and its tail, sometimes called the coma
and tail, reflect the light of the sun, enhancing visibility. Since comets may
orbit the sun in such strange patterns, people may only see the passage of one
comet in a lifetime.
In fact, comets are usually classed by
the length of time it takes them to orbit the sun. A short period comet takes
about 200 years or less to make a full trip around the sun. A long period comet
may take far more than 200 years to complete a trip.
For example Halley’s Comet can be
viewed on earth about every 75 years. This marks it as a short period comet.
Its last sight on earth was in 1986, and it is expected to be seen again in
2061.
A planet may capture a comet and the
result can cause significant damage to the comet. Such a gravitational capture
may result in the comet breaking into many small pieces, and these smaller
pieces can then break off from the comet and hit the capturing planet. Comet
Shoemaker-Levy 9, was observed as broken in 1993, and astronomers were able to
witness it hitting the atmosphere of Jupiter in 1994.
Most often people looking at the night
sky may think that they see “falling stars” which are actually meteors or comets. There are thousands of tiny comets that do not attract much
interest. The once in a lifetime comet like Halley’s are often thought of as
exciting, since most people will only see them with the naked eye once.
Topic64:
Most people looking at the night sky may think that they see
“falling stars”
which are actually meteors
or comets. Discuss the difference between a meteor and a comet.
Typical Essay:
There are quite a few objects in the
universe capable of causing a really, really bad day on planet Earth, including
a wayward comet or large asteroid. Most meteors, however, barely rate a 'ho-hum' on an astronomer's scale of scary
extraterrestrial events. There are a number of differences between a comet and
a meteor, from their general composition to the roles they play in the universe.
A comet is a celestial object believed
to be composed primarily of space dust and frozen gases. The birthplace of a
comet is thought to be somewhere in the outer parts of the universe, not
related to the formation of our solar system at all. A comet follows an orbit
that may bring it close to a star, such as our own Sun. As the comet approaches
the star, a portion of its ice core may melt and release a trail of dust-sized
particles. This cycle can continue for millions of years.
A meteor, on the other hand, does not
follow an orbit around the sun. It isn't even called a meteor while it remains
floating in outer space – it's called a meteoroid. Only when it enters the
Earth's atmosphere is it considered a true meteor.
When the Earth passes through a comet
trail or debris field, individual meteoroids hit or skip across the first
layers of the atmosphere. Observers on Earth may be fortunate enough to see the
last few seconds of a meteor's existence as it streaks across the sky and burns
up. Unlike a comet, a meteor will not return a number of years later.
A comet rarely passes within a few million
miles of the Earth, while a meteor by its very definition must strike the first
layers of the Earth's atmosphere. A comet's arrival can be predicted with some
degree of accuracy, but a meteor can enter the Earth's atmosphere at any time
of the day or night. A comet can rarely be seen by the naked eye, but during a meteor shower, it is not unusual to see dozens or even
hundreds of meteors within a few hours.
A comet also receives an official name
for identification, such as Swift-Tuttle, Hale-Bopp or Halley's Comet. A few
large asteroids may receive identifying names as well, but meteors do not.
Virtually all meteors cease to exist once they've entered the Earth's
atmosphere. A rare few make it to the ground, however. Once a meteor has made
contact with the Earth's surface, it becomes known as a meteorite. While a
comet may be composed of space dust, organic materials and ice, most meteors
contain elemental metals, such as iron, along with inorganic minerals such as quartz.
Topic65:
Cosmologists and astronomers predicted an expanding universe.
Discuss.
Typical Essay:
Ever since Einstein's theory of general relativity was applied to what is known about the
universe as a whole, it has been suspected that the universe was expanding.
When Edwin Hubble and Milton Humason discovered in the 1920s that practically
all galaxies in the sky were moving away from us at great speeds, this boosted
suspicions that the universe was expanding at a rapid rate. Yet it was not
until 2000 that decisive evidence was finally found in favor of the universe's
expansion, in the form of extensive redshift surveys of very distant objects.
The expanding universe is often cited
as the most significant finding in modern cosmology. In Einstein's time, the steady-state theory was the predominant one,
which stated that the universe remained balanced at the same size. Einstein,
whose equations predicted universal expansion or contraction but not stasis,
artificially introduced a stabilizing variable into his equations, called the
"cosmological constant." After realizing from Hubble's observations
that the universe was likely expanding, he later called this his "greatest
blunder."
The phenomenon that first led
cosmologists and astronomers to predict an expanding universe was Hubble's
analysis of redshift. Using the Mount Wilson Observatory, which was the best
telescope in the world at the time, Hubble viewed distant galaxies and saw they
looked progressively redde. He looked further away in space, and by extension,
further back in time as well, as light takes many billions of years to travel
from these galaxies to Earth. Because the redness factor correlated so well
with increases in distance, Hubble suspected this was a reliable phenomenon
with a physical cause.
The cause was determined to be as
follows: as the universe expands, the underlying space increases in volume, but
the light traveling through it remains the same. The expanding space stretches
out the wavelength of the light, making it longer and thereby redder. An
analogy sometimes used is dots on the surface of an expanding balloon. Draw a
wave pattern on a balloon, and while you blow it up, notice how the wave
stretches out and becomes longer. This is the same principle behind the
phenomenon of redshift.
In 1998, it was discovered not only
that the universe is expanding, but that it is likely expanding at an
accelerating rate. The physical reason for this is chalked up to a mysterious
"dark energy," so named because we barely know a thing about it.
Topic66:
Satellites facilitated space research. Discuss what a
satellite is.
Typical Essay:
A satellite can be defined as any object, either manmade or
naturally occurring, that orbits around something else. For example, the moon
orbits around Earth and is thus a satellite. The Earth orbits around the sun
and is a satellite of the sun. Other examples of naturally occurring satellites
include comets,
stars, asteroids, and other planets.
Orbit is determined by the gravitational
pull of the object around which the satellite circles. The thing around which a
satellite circles is called the primary object. However, primary objects are
also affected by their satellites, and feel some of their gravitational pull.
In some cases, when two objects have a similar size and weight (mass), and a
similar gravitational pull, they may be called binary systems, rather than being called a primary object and a satellite.
Some argue that Pluto’s moon Charon, and Pluto, represent a binary system instead of a primary object and
satellite, since both have similar mass.
Most are more familiar with the term
satellite in relationship to the many satellites that circulate the earth. Sputnik was the first artificial satellite, launched in 1957 by the Soviet
Union. The launching of Sputnik is almost analogous for the beginning of the Space Race that followed between the US and the USSR. In today’s climate, however,
many countries have found that a cooperative effort is more successful in space
exploration and studies. The International Space Station, a satellite that
orbits earth, is currently the largest manmade satellite in Space, and
represents the cooperative effort of numerous countries.
Manmade satellites are classified by
types, and there are over ten types. Some of the main types of satellite used
today include astronomical satellites, communication satellites, earth
observation satellites, weather satellites and space stations. Other types of
satellites include those used to monitor earth from a military standpoint, and
biosatellites, which may carry animals or other lifeforms for the purpose of
research on earth lifeforms in space. Navigational satellites are now popular
and form a vital part of the global positioning system (GPS)
now available in many cars.
Satellites may also be classified by
the height at which they orbit earth or another body. A low earth orbit circles
the earth at a height of 0-1240 miles (1995.59 km). High earth orbits can be as
far away as 22,240 miles (35,791.81 km). Medium earth orbits represent the
distance in between high and low earth orbits.Further distinctions exist to
describe the type of orbit a manmade or natural satellite has. For example,
Pluto has a slightly elliptical orbit. Also a satellite is often classed by
what primary object it orbits. A satellite that circles the Earth has a
geocentric orbit, for example. The earth, and the planets in our solar system
are classed as having a heliocentric orbit since they circle the sun.
A manmade satellite can serve many purposes. We currently use many
different types of satellite systems to track things like weather, to make our
cellphones work, to find out how to get somewhere and to gather more
information about earth, and about the galaxy. About 5000 manmade satellites currently orbit earth, and on clear dark
nights, it’s often possible to see one in the night sky. Of course, viewing a
planet, the stars, or comets is also viewing a satellite. We also must
remember, we live on a satellite, and are not stationary in the sky.
Topic67:
The National Aeronautics and Space
Administration (NASA)contributed much to astronomy. Discuss.
Typical Essay:
The National Aeronautics and Space
Administration (NASA) is an American government agency which runs the civilian
arm of the space program. The aim of NASA is to increase human understanding of
the solar system and the universe that contains it, and to improve American
aeronautics ability. Under its charter, NASA is supposed to be a peacetime
agency that does not perform military functions, although NASA does cooperate
with the military, and many NASA employees have a military background. To
achieve this goal, NASA has an annual budget which can be counted in the
billions to fund programs and pay tens of thousands of employees.
NASA was founded in 1958, in response
to the Soviet launch of Sputnik in 1957. The early years of the organization were driven by Cold War competitiveness, and NASA quickly worked on creating rockets which
would allow for manned spaceflight. NASA astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were the first humans known to have set foot on the
moon in 1969, an action that was considered a major victory for American
aeronautics. Riding on this early success, NASA continued development of
aeronautic equipment designed to function outside the Earth's atmosphere.
After the moon landing, NASA focused
on doing research around the solar system, sending an assortment of manned
flights to the moon to collect material for study, and unmanned drones to other
planets to collect data. These flights have collected large amounts of data
which are constantly being added to and analyzed. Scientific advancement is a
large part of NASA's mission. With the assistance of the agency, scientists
have been able to conduct experiments in the zero gravity environment of space, and test hypotheses about the universe.
NASA also continues to work on a space shuttle program to make space more accessible. As of
2007, the space shuttle had made 112 flights with astronauts from many nations
including the United States, and two of these flights, the Challenger and
Columbia, were lost. NASA plans to resume manned flights to the moon by 2020, after safety improvements have been
made to the space shuttle.
As part of its mission as a peaceful
agency, NASA cooperates with agencies within the United States and
international aeronautics agencies. A NASA astronaut can usually be found on board the International Space Station, and
astronauts from other nations are invited to participate in NASA events. This
fostering of international cooperation will hopefully continue as humans
explore space and the possibility of off-Earth human settlements becomes
possible.
Topic68:
Cosmologists and astronomers predicted an expanding universe.
Discuss.
Typical Essay:
Space travel is a form of travel in
which passengers enter space, the vast region outside the protective envelope
of the Earth's atmosphere. Space starts 62 miles (100 kilometers) above the
Earth's crust, at a point called the Karman Line, and it continues for a
distance which appears to be infinite, interrupted periodically by celestial
bodies such as stars, planets, and so forth. Humans have long had romantic
associations with space travel, with people considering space “the final
frontier,” as they famously say on Star Trek.
Humans have been intrigued by the
night sky for centuries, tracking the movements of stars, planets, comets, and other features in the sky and pondering the mysteries of the
heavens. In the 20th century, the fascination with space took on a whole new
level of excitement when humans successfully launched manned spacecraft out of
the Earth's atmosphere, putting astronauts in space and on the Moon. With the
proof that manned spaceflight was possible, the concept of space travel began
to seem less like a pipe dream and more like a reality, and private companies began to enter the
field, developing space planes and offering commercial flights.
In the 20th century, space travel was
restricted to astronauts who worked for various governments, and it was
primarily performed for research purposes. Space travel allowed people to
collect samples from the Moon, maintain space telescopes such as the Hubble
Telescope, and eventually to perform research on the International Space
Station, a structure which orbits the Earth and houses astronauts from several
nations at any given time.
While space travel for research is
certainly admirable and important, many people are more interested in the
potential for space travel as a form of recreation, tourism, or exploration.
Civilians began purchasing tickets for tourist flights into space in the early
2000s, sometimes going on brief suborbital flights in which they barely entered
space, and sometimes spending several days in space, exploring the
International Space Station and enjoying the experience of being in space.
The potential for space travel is
infinite, just like the universe, bounded only by human technology. Many people
hope that the dreams of science fiction, such as massive ships which can travel
between galaxies, will someday be realized. Space travel could be used to
explore the rest of the solar system and galaxy, learning more about the nature of the universe and potentially leading
to a discovery of life beyond the boundaries of Earth.
Topic69:
We are living in a universe still being discovered. Discuss
how big our universe is.
Typical Essay:
The current, observable universe has
been determined to have a width of 156 billion light years, with an error of
less than 1%, by the latest deep-space telescope WMAP. At first, it might seem
impossible that scientists are so sure of this astronomical measurement, but
this figure has been narrowed by years of research and determined by several
paths of inquiry. Also, the size of the universe is intimately dependent on its
shape, age, acceleration, and total mass, so we are very confident in this
figure.
In 2003, the Wilkinson Microwave
Anisotropy Probe sent back enough data for scientists to publish extremely
dependable studies that established two previously unknown facts about the
universe. They determined our universe is flat, which means standard Euclidean
geometry is valid on the largest scale. This can be understood by saying a
straight line more or less stays a straight line for as long as it extends.
They also established that the universe is accelerating at an ever-increasing
rate, which means that all mass is flying away from each other at faster and
faster speeds. The WMAP data measured the temperature, called the cosmic
microwave background radiation, of our observable universe with an
unprecedented accuracy, to within a 5% error. From these facts, we can deduce
figures such as the radius of the universe.
Remember that the size of the universe
is not a constant value, nor is it the size of an object as we traditionally
understand it. The size of the universe is actually the size of space itself,
and as space expands, so does the space between planets, stars, and galaxies.
At the beginning of the universe, the Big Bang created space and time as we
know them. From that moment, space has been expanding, so we find its size by
measuring how far light could have traveled since the Big Bang, along with how
much space itself stretched.
We can only possibly look or
communicate up to the edge, or "horizon," of where light has traveled
since the beginning of the universe. The size of the universe means the space
in which we can interact with anything. We will never ever know what is
"beyond" this boundary, because there is no way to know anything
about it, so it's illogical to consider the realm "outside" of our
universe, or to wonder what we are expanding "into."
An independent measure of the size of
our universe can be given by studying the oldest stars. The oldest stars we
have found are probably somewhere between 11 and 14 billion light years old. If
we had stars older than the largest distance light could have traveled, then
we'd know there was something wrong with our calculations; there would not be
enough time for them to evolve. However, these values are consistent with
everything else we know about the universe.
Unit Six: Keep cool!
Feelings and Emotions
Topic70:
Having a sense of
humour would prevent you from some illness and help you refresh your life.
Explain.
Typical Essay:
Laughter – is surely the best medicine! We probably realize
the importance of laughter only when we grow out of our childhood days. Do we
really need a reason to laugh? I don’t really think so! However, with work
stress on the rise, laughter therapy sessions are gaining attention worldwide.
The benefits of
laughter are many! However, one may not really get into the
nitty-gritty of issues at a young age. The importance of laughter
therapy is realized only when one loses the reason to laugh about
the simplest of issues. Well, laughter surely is good for all and those who are
unaware of the benefits need to read about the importance of laughter therapy.
Have you observed the beauty of a child especially when it bursts into
uncontrollable peals of laughter? Well, that’s the beauty of laughter! Laughter
therapy provides you a great way to get rid of stress. This is the best stress relief activity,
which dissolves all feelings of irritation and anger.
Laughing also helps to motivate a person. This in turn, releases all the
positive energy. A good session of loads
of laughter would help one to release all the pent-up feelings that are really
not healthy otherwise. Laughter helps to reduce feelings of grief and
depression and create a sense of well-being. Daily sessions of laughter help to
strengthen the immune system.
No matter how negative or dejected you feel, laughter is one such therapy that
can uplift your emotional state to a very positive level.
A good sense of humor can help in enhancing your personality whether in
professional or personal life. Laughter therapy can turn you into a better team
member and you can turn out to be an effective person at communication.
The importance of laughter is something that can be felt and known from within.
Don’t wait anymore, call up your buddies and ensure you have a good laugh over
all the silly things you can recall!
Topic71:
Write a short
newspaper article in which you describe the Algerian wedding customs.
Typical Essay:
In Algeria, as in all Arab countries, society revolves
around religion and religious customs of Islam. Marriage in Algeria is taken
very seriously and is considered by most as a sign of maturity. According to
the Qur'an, marriage must be based upon love. Algeria's wedding customs amongst
those following the Muslim religion are much the same as in other practicing
Muslim communities.
Algerian men and women are free to marry whomever they wish as long as the
marriage partner is approved by the family. Parents have a more realistic view
and can give their children practical guidance in selecting the appropriate
marriage mate. Typically a man will express his love for a woman to his mother
who will in turn "investigate" the family of the woman as to
suitability. If she is approved the family will approached the woman's family
to propose the union. A date will be chosen to visit the mosque so as to begin
the engagement.
Much preparation takes place from the time of engagement. The family will begin
purchasing clothing, household goods, wool and gold. This is referred to as
shoura. The couple will spend time together getting to know each other well,
sharing opinions and preparing a home. In Islamic culture, husbands and wives
are to make mutual decisions and have equal claims in the marriage, it is
therefore vital that the couple know each other well and recognize the roles
they will take on before marriage.
Algerians believe that the more money the spend on the wedding the more proud
the family can be. Weeks before the actual wedding women begin gathering at the
bride's house to prepare desserts such as makroud and baklava. The wedding meal
will include couscous, meat and vegetables, the bigger the meal, the more
generous the family is said to be.
Following the party, the bride is driven to the groom's home. Beautifully adorned
in an intricate wedding gown, with make-up, excessive jewelery, and henna
designs painted on her hands and feet, she is seated on a decorated chair in
his house. All the guests dance and join in great reverie as they prepare to
say farewell. The groom with then approach his bride and walk they shall walk
out, husband and wife, whilst surrounded by cheering family members and
friends.
Algerian wedding customs may vary slightly depending how orthodox the family is
and if the people follow other religions. Algerian weddings are truly an
explosion of emotion and color, perhaps you will be lucky enough to see a
wedding procession during your holiday.
http://www.algeria.com/wedding-customs/
Topic72:
Write a short
newspaper article in which you describe the different ways men and women
express their feelings in various situations.
Typical Essay:
The death of a close friend or a relative, the
occurrence of a natural disaster or an accident, and other fatalities are
likely to generate feelings and emotions in people.
Actually the difference in reaction is more
particularly a question of gender. Men will tend to hide their grief over the
death of somebody they know, or they awe when they witness a tragedy; during a
natural disaster, they will try not to panic and control their emotions;
instead, they will react by taking steps to protect their families and
neighbours. Women will show their emotions more openly. They will express their
sadness and cry profusely when they learn about a relative’s death. Likewise,
they will be rather shocked and terrified when they see an accident in which
there are casualties. Finally, they are likely to lose their self-control, and
fail to take the right decisions to protect themselves in an emergency.
The difference in response regarding the
expression of love and affection will most likely follow the same pattern. Men
always try to avoid excessive sentimentality. They generally avoid showing in
verbal manner too much emotion and feelings to their families and showing
concern, offering help or giving presents. Women are again prone to showing
their feelings more openly. They would often use terms of endearment, and they
often hug and kiss family members, especially children.
The differing levels of sensitivity between
men and women concerning the facts of life are probably the reason why their
marks of sympathy and affection are dissimilar. But the male and female
attitudes are complementary, and both necessary for good human interaction.
Topic73:
Most people experience anxious feelings before an important
event such as a big exam, business presentation or first date. Discuss.
Typical Essay:
Anxious feelings can plague us all
from time to time. It’s not uncommon to worry about things like upcoming tests,
job performance, the behavior or well-being of a child, or even patterns in our
own behavior that are disturbing. While we all may worry or feel anxious
occasionally, some people are more bogged down with anxiety, and find they cope
with anxious feelings by changing their behavior. These changes may be for the
better; if you feel anxious about your weight and start eating a healthy diet
and exercising you’re probably benefiting yourself, putting anxious feelings to
rest. But changes can also be for the worse; you suddenly avoid things in your
life because participation in these things makes you so anxious.
Anxiety can cause sleeplessness,
difficulty maintaining relationships, overmedicating with food, drink, sex and
et cetera, and as mentioned, behavior avoidance. In severe cases, anxiety can
cause us to have panic attacks, which can be challenging to overcome, and to
many people may feel, when the attack is in progress, like they are dying or
having a heart attack. Yet even anxiety that is simply making it hard to sleep at night is
enough to have an overwhelmingly negative effect on your life.
There are a number of ways to cope
with anxious feelings. If these feelings are pervasive, depriving your from
sleep, changing the way you live your life, or causing panic attacks, it’s a
good idea to seek help. First, you may want to see a therapist, since there are
many helpful therapies to cope with anxious feelings. One of the chief
advocated methods is called cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), which can help you think about and
contextualize your feelings. Anxiety may often be masking core beliefs or
traumatic events, or deep sadness. Getting at what’s behind the anxiety with
CBT has been proven effective for many.
When anxious feelings are still not
put to rest with therapy alone, you may be suffering from generalized anxiety
disorder or panic disorder. With help from a psychiatrist, you can find medications that will help regulate brain chemicals
creating overly anxious responses to daily living. Medication and CBT are used
together to cope with anxious feelings caused by a true medical disorder.
For mild feelings of anxiety, you may
find relief talking to a friend, a school counselor, your parents, a pastor, or a trusted family friend. It can also help
to consider how you are responding to mild anxiety. If anxious feeling cause
you to hide in your room and not go to work, you’re probably only going to get
more anxious. In the absence of true anxiety disorder, there are some things
that can help cope with distressing feelings.
First, eat a healthy diet and avoid
overeating to calm anxiety. Second, do not medicate anxiety with illegal drugs
or drinking, which can quickly exacerbate your problem. Third, try to get
exercise everyday. A 30-minute to hour-long walk helps stimulate production of
chemicals that can make you feel more relaxed, and help you sleep better at
night. Meditative exercises like Tai Chi and yoga
can also be helpful, and many people find prayer, meditation or deep breathing
exercises very calming to the mind.
Topic74:
Sadness is an emotion all people have at times. Discuss.
Typical Essay:
Sadness is an emotion all people feel
at times. Few people can get through life without bouts of sadness. This
emotion is a natural response to losses of many kinds: loss of a loved one, a
pet, a relationship, or a job. Even when life is just challenging, we may find
ourselves sad. Deciding the degree to which these feelings are normal and how
you measure them is very difficult.
Sad feelings lasting for more than two weeks is fairly normal,
especially if you have real reasons to be sad. The death of a spouse or child,
for instance, will evoke powerful emotions that will make you grieve for a long
time. Even a painful divorce can cause feelings of sadness to last for months
or even years.
Even if you have legitimate reasons to
feel sad, when that sadness seems overwhelming, all-encompassing, and is
significantly interfering with your ability to continue your normal life, a
good therapist or support group can help. Furthermore, when you have few
reasons to really feel sad, and yet you do, this may not be “normal.” If you
are constantly blue and depressed for little reason, this deserves medical
attention because it may be caused by brain chemical imbalance. Major
depression is a real disease, and many people respond well to treatment.
Determining whether your feelings are
normal may take some deep self-scrutiny. It’s hard to go by the opinion of
others. Most people find that others expect them to recover from even major
grief, long before they do. In fact a common complaint among those grieving is
that after a few intensive weeks when everyone is helpful, most people
(friends, family) no longer want to listen or seem to bounce back to their
normal lives while the grieving person still feels awful.
Even if medication is not appropriate
to treating grief, therapy may be. With a few exceptions, most people will
continue to be sad for a long time, and though this may be normal, it may not
be tolerated in our society. Dealing with the attitudes of others who expect
you to get immediately back on track can fuel your feelings even more, and
having a therapist or a support group that understands how isolating sad
feelings can be is of extraordinary help.
In sum, in the absence of any obvious
causes, long-term sadness should be evaluated as potential depression. Suicidal
thoughts and feelings deserve immediate medical attention. Yet sadness should
be understood in the context it occurs, and when it occurs in context of true
loss, the best help may be talk therapy and time.
Topic75:
Many people experience the feelings of grief and express
them differently. Discuss.
Typical Essay:
Many assume that grief is associated
only with the loss of a loved one. Psychology shows us that this is very often not the case, but those suffering
grief from things other than the death of someone are often told to “snap out
of it.” Grief is, quite simply put, a response to loss. The loss can be of
something tangible or intangible. It helps to recognize that disappointments,
abuse, recognizing one’s limitations, losing a job, or so many other things can
elicit a grief response. People suffering a loss need time to grieve, and such
time depends upon how important the loss was.
Everyone grieves in different ways.
Some people stoically plow through loss and essentially feel working is the
best way to deal with it. Others need to cry or keep themselves away from other
people for a time. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross did great work on the stages of grief,
which can help people gain understanding as to the process of grief.
Defining loss that will cause grief is
very difficult. It depends much on the perception of the individual. For some
people, losing a job is simply a life lesson. These people move onto the next job or job hunt without perceiving
this as an emotional blow. For others, loss of a job could seem earth shattering,
causing them to question all the decisions they made about their choice of
career, or to feel great self-directed negativity.
Some people experience grief when they
find out that a future path they wanted to take is now closed to them. For
example, a woman who has tried to get pregnant and finds there is no way for
her to do so, may mourn the future she expected to have, a future that included
carrying and having her own children. Even if the loss is future directed, it
can still cause grief in the present. Being shut out from wished for things can
cause tremendous grief, again proportionate to a person’s perception.
Children grieve too, for small things,
like a friend moving away or having to change schools. One expects a child to
perhaps grieve at the death of a pet, but parents may fail to recognize the
grief children feel during transitional times. Most therapists recommend that
parents not dismiss their children’s first grieving experiences, as this may
shape the way in which children are able to recognize grief, mourn, and at the
appropriate time move on from the first sad feelings that grip them.
It is not necessary to encourage a
child to grieve more, because again, children will respond in individual ways,
as adults do. However, leaving open the opportunity for children to discuss
their feelings, enabling them to express their feelings by giving them an
emotional language, and practicing extra patience around a grieving child may
be one of the best things one can do for such a child.
In considering grief, it’s important
to remember that it is a response to many different kinds of losses, that is
individual, and that it is influenced by the person’s perception of the loss. A
couple that loses the ability to have children may grieve in very different
ways. Of key importance is the recognition of grief instead of its dismissal.
People cannot recover from grief they fail to acknowledge.
Topic76:
Many people are friends first and find over time their
feelings change to those more romantic in nature. Discuss this state of
emotional change.
Typical Essay:
Falling in love may be a common
expression in much of the Western world but it isn’t used much elsewhere. The
phrase may be connected to the idea of "falling head over heels,"
which was used in the 1300s, and is another term for being struck suddenly by
great romantic attraction to someone else. Even with this connection, it can be
hard to get a beat on what falling in love means, or what it feels like. Each
person may define this experience somewhat differently.
Generally, when a person falls in love
they have heightened romantic interest in someone else, and this doesn’t
necessarily have to occur at first sight. Many people are friends first and
find over time their feelings change to those more romantic in nature. They
might want more from a relationship than just friendship and they may cherish
more than friendly feelings for the person with whom they’ve fallen in love.
The word fall suggests that
there’s a certain helplessness about these feelings of attraction, and they’re
not necessarily within the control of the person stricken suddenly with great
affection. It is true that people can’t always determine who or what attracts
them, but they don’t have to be helpless in this regard. People can make
choices about whether to act on romantic feelings. However, for those
experiencing falling in love for the first few times, the feelings can seems so
powerful that there seems little choice but to act upon them. Some people have
challenges maturing out of this impulse, which can make forming lasting
romantic relationships very difficult.
It would be hard to dispute that
initial feelings of attraction and the “falling in love” state are powerful.
For centuries, writers and poets have sung both the agonies and joys of
discovering passionate feelings for someone else. Chaucer called this early “love” state the “dredful joye” representing both the
pitfalls and ecstasy. Infatuation and romantic interest especially at the onset
of a relationship can be both painful and exciting.
People have verifiable physiological
reactions when in this early love state. A sight of the object of their
affection may cause the pulse to race and the body to sweat. Certain
neurotransmitters in the brain tend to be produced in greater volume, which can
promote happiness and some anxiety. Yet most social scientists would agree that
the reaction is not entirely a chemical one and involves the thinking brain and
the emotions on numerous levels.
Topic77:
We have multiple ways to express our feelings, and profanity
tends to leak out when we most need to do so. Discuss.
Typical Essay:
Though it is common to hear profanity
virtually everywhere, it is still possible to learn how not to use it.
Profanity is actually a fairly limited language, which can offend or hurt
people’s feelings. In addition, profanity is often picked up by the small
children around whom it is used. Using profanity is a breakable habit that may
be helped by a few tips.
First, consider our language. We have
multiple ways to express our feelings, and profanity tends to leak out when we
most need to express our feelings. One helpful way to break from using
profanity is to arm oneself with an emotional language. “That hurts my
feelings,” “I am really angry,” or “I feel frustrated.” “I’m tired,” or “I’m
impatient and cross.”
The more we learn our own language,
the more ways we have to actually express our own feelings without resorting to
profanity. Especially since one has so many other ways one can “use our words,”
avoiding profanity may actually allow us to express how one truly feels. In
front of children, this type of expression is very helpful, because it teaches
them the emotional language they will need to cope with difficult situations or
challenging feelings.
Another tool for helping to avoid
slips of the tongue is to always use language that one would use with either a
young person, or someone elderly. If dear grandma were in the room, would one
really choose the s or f-word? If a young niece or nephew was over and one
stepped on a toy, would one let out an offensive exclamation? Consider that in
public, someone’s dear old grandma or sweet child may be nearby.
If one does slip, say what one should
have said. It helps to get in the habit of saying the words that don’t offend.
Also, apologize for a word slip in a public venue. Recognize this behavior as
potentially harmful or offensive and own one’s mistakes. Apologizing can be a
healthy way to remind one that such language is now off limits.
Another method some find helpful is
the profanity fine. If one slips and says a word, impose a reasonable fine. For
teens, this could be a quarter, and for adults perhaps a dollar. Donate the
money to one’s church or to a charity.
Some new parents substitute nonsense
words for profanity, and this may be helpful. Another technique is to actually
let out a bleep or buzz sound as would occur on television. Censoring oneself
can be a good initial step toward moving onto more inventive words.
Some might argue that about the only
acceptable time to use profanity is if one is acting in a part that requires
such. At other times, the richness of the English language offers many words
that are far more expressive of true feelings. Though this may be a difficult
habit to break if one uses profanity frequently, it is not impossible. While
profanity is often called “colorful,” truly colorful language expresses one’s
varied vocabulary and ability as a speaker.
Topic78:
To show empathy
is to identify with another's feelings and emotionally put yourself in his
place. Discuss.
Typical Essay:
Empathy is a feeling different from
sympathy. When one is sympathetic, one implies pity but maintains distance from
another person’s feelings. Empathy is more a sense that one can truly
understand or imagine the depth of another person’s feelings. It implies
feeling with a person, rather than feeling sorry for a person.
Empathy is a translation of the German
term Einfühlung, meaning to feel as one with. It implies sharing the
load, or “walking a mile in someone else’s shoes,” in order to appropriately
understand that person’s perspective.
In therapy, for example, being
sympathetic with a patient implies a distance and a failure to understand the
patient’s viewpoint. On the other hand, the therapist who displays empathy is
attempting to further his or her understanding from the perspective of the
patient. This implies closeness rather than distance as it makes little
distinction between the person suffering and the person attempting to
understand the suffering. However, the therapist must also protect him or herself
from becoming entangled in the emotional state of the client. Some distance
needs to be maintained even when empathy is practiced.
Group therapy often works because those with a specific
issue, such as alcoholism, are able to show empathy to each other. Each person who is an
alcoholic finds it easier to understand others who struggle with alcoholism.
Alternately, a group dedicated to
providing support to people that have lost a child relies on the empathy of the
members. Each person has something in common with the other group members. They
can all deeply understand the monumental importance and tragedy of losing a
child in a way that cannot be understood by a person who has not lost a child.
Often people who have suffered a loss
or experienced a tragedy find themselves put off by sympathy. Sympathy often
emphasizes that the grieving person is alone. Even when kindly meant, sympathy
is often rejected. Grieving people don’t necessarily want pity, but instead
want understanding. Finding friends who can offer empathy helps to restore
perspective in a world that has been torn by tragedy. It emphasizes that one is
not alone, and shares his or her intense feelings with other people.
For those who truly wish to help a
grieving person, empathy is not always possible. Most people cannot even begin
to be “as one with” a person who has been raped, abused, or who has suffered
the death of a loved one. However, in attempting to express empathy, one needs
to think carefully. “What would this really be like?” Sometimes the only
appropriate response is to say to a person: “I can only imagine how difficult
this must be for you.” In this way, we come closest to empathy.
Topic79:
What creates a sense of happiness can vary widely from
person to person. Discuss.
Typical Essay:
A number of small positive events or
accomplishments accumulate to provide a sense of self-satisfaction and
contentment, which we interpret as personal happiness. For most of us,
happiness is a state of mind rather than a specific emotion or response to
positive outside forces.
One important element of happiness is
a sense of self-satisfaction. Whether or not we want to admit it, many of us
spend our days in a perpetual state of neediness. We have physical, emotional
and spiritual needs which we believe need to be satisfied in order to
experience some degree of happiness. When we have that morning cup of coffee,
socialize with co-workers, enjoy a delicious lunch or finish an important
project, at least one of our daily needs will be met. In one sense, happiness
occurs when our list of needs becomes replaced by a new list of physical,
emotional and spiritual fulfillment.
Another important element of happiness
is a sense of accomplishment. Consider how many times our ideas and plans fail
throughout an average day. These failures tend to create inner tension and
anxiety, which in turn creates a sense of unhappiness. But when an idea does
come to fruition or a plan does come together, there is often a feeling of
euphoria and accomplishment. Happiness can be the reward for persevering
through difficult or challenging times and not succumbing to despair. Winning a
contest or receiving recognition for a successful project often triggers
feelings of happiness.
For some of us, happiness can be
derived from having our material or spiritual needs met. There is an old saying
that money can't buy happiness, but in reality it can come very close. For many
wage earners, the thought of receiving enough money or other tangible rewards
for their efforts can certainly trigger a sense of happiness. Knowing that our
immediate needs and even a few personal desires will be met can be very
reassuring, which in turn generates feelings of security and happiness. In the
same sense, many people find happiness after hearing a life-affirming spiritual
message or spending time in deep reflection or meditation. Happiness could mean
a sense of harmony between mind, body and spirit.
What creates a sense of happiness can
vary widely from person to person. Young children with little life experience
may find happiness in the form of an ice cream cone or Saturday morning
cartoon, while adults may find happiness by traveling or pursuing outside
interests. Some people require a lot of their needs to be met before they
experience happiness, while others find happiness in simplicity. Happiness is
said to be the one free thing all people strive for and would give anything to
obtain.
http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-happiness.htm
Topic80:
Children often want to know what it means to die but this
would be problematic to many parents. Discuss.
Typical Essay:
It is unlikely that a child will make
it through childhood without experiencing the death of a friend. When the death
of a friend is unexpected, it can be challenging to break the news to a child.
A very young child, who has never experience the death of a friend, pet or
loved one, may not know how to react to such news.
Children often want to know what it
means to die. For young children, this may mean explaining that physically,
death is a process where the body stops working. Using euphemisms like passing
on or went to sleep are not recommended, as they may cause the child to have
concerns that they might accidentally die in their sleep.Children may also want
to know what happens to a body after someone dies. In fact they may ask
questions that can shock a parent. It’s considered best to treat such questions
with accurate but simple facts.
Even with an explanation, after the
death of a friend, children may not be able to grasp that a friend is really
gone. If the family believes in some form of afterlife, this can prove
comforting or perplexing. Children that believe in God may find themselves
wondering why God caused the death of a friend. There is no one good way to
approach this, except to assure the child that he or she is safe.
It can help to consult other parents
or a grief counselor if you feel unable to answer your child’s questions. Grief counselors
can help one navigate parenting through this tragic experience. When necessary,
a child may benefit from some individual grief counseling or play therapy as well.
Older children may react differently
to a death of a friend than a younger child. In fact teens often don’t want to
discuss their feelings with parents. They may feel more comfortable discussing
their thoughts with their peers. When the death of a friend is felt by a school
community, for example, schools are often excellent at providing grief
counseling and support to the students in the challenging months ahead.
Some parents feel that they shouldn’t
show their own emotions about the death of a friend to children. However,
psychologists often feel this is a mistake. While overblown screaming and
crying might make the child worried, natural tears and feeling sad in front of
child may help him or her understand they too can cry or feel sad. Parents and
friends teach a lifelong lesson about how people grieve when they encounter the
death of a friend. Responding with no emotion may well teach the child that
emotional reaction is unacceptable.
Topic81:
Children often want to know what it means to die but this
would be problematic to many parents. Discuss.
Typical Essay:
To put it in very simple terms, tolerance
means to tolerate or put up with differences. It means showing respect for the
race, religion, age, gender, opinions, and ideologies of other people or
groups. Tolerance means different things to different people. It is when
something is disagreeable that tolerance is expected, and in more politically
correct cultures, demanded.
Tolerance can be shown in many ways. A
person might fully disagree with others on any issue, while at the same time
respecting those with different opinions and treating them with dignity and
respect. Disagreement alone does not equal intolerance.
One problem is the fact that tolerance
is sometimes one-sided. Those who disagree with a particular issue must respect
the opinions of those who advocate it, but some advocates feel justified in
labeling those who disagree with hateful terms, and vice versa. People on both
sides of an issue must be tolerant of each other, in order for tolerance to be
effective.
When it comes to controversial issues,
tolerance may also represent a “let’s agree to disagree” stance. It does not
mean that a person has to accept or embrace words, actions, or ideas that are
against his or her values or beliefs. It simply means that each person agrees
to respect the other’s right to his or her feelings on the matter. When both
parties have expressed their opinions, and it is obvious that neither is likely
to change position, agreeing to disagree is often the most amicable outcome.
Some degree of tolerance is necessary
in any civilized society, but it is not realistic to believe that all people
can achieve complete tolerance on every issue. It goes against human nature, or
the instinctive impulse of some to pull away from people or things that are
different or unknown. Tolerance is a learned attribute, a virtue, which
requires honest effort on the part of every person. It takes time to develop
real tolerance, and it also takes commitment.
Topic82:
Love is said to have different languages. Discuss.
Typical Essay
Dr. Gary Chapman, a Christian family counselor and author, has developed a relationship-building program called the 5
love languages. Love languages are defined as verbal and non-verbal communications
between couples which improve the mental and physical well-being of both
partners. These mutual expressions and actions help to build up a nurturing
environment in which couples can improve both their emotional and physical
intimacy levels.
The first of the five love languages
includes words of affirmation. These words go far beyond a perfunctory "I
love you" ritual, and include specific recognition of a partner's
contributions to the relationship or the household or a career. The point of
the exercise is to provide enough positive affirmation of a partner's
self-worth to motivate that person towards even more personal growth. By
telling a partner or friend or co-worker how much you appreciate his or her efforts, you are speaking in a
language he or she can understand.
The second of the five love languages
involves spending quality time with a loved one. This means setting aside a meaningful amount of
personal time in which the friend or partner receives your complete and
undivided attention. The idea is to have substantial conversations with another
person, or take the time to indulge in a mutual interest, such as a movie or a hobby.
Quality time can build up intimacy and trust in any relationship, romantic or
otherwise.
Receiving gifts is the third component
of Chapman's love languages. Almost everyone enjoys receiving personalized
gifts from loved ones, and a surprise gift can be even more special. The ritual
surrounding the presentation of a gift is often as satisfying as the gift
itself. Some gifts are not necessarily tangible, but a spouse or friend can
contribute a gift of time or a gift of their unique talents.
The fourth of the five love languages
involves acts of service. A partner may volunteer to clean the house before the
other partner returns home from work. A husband may decide to convert a garage
into a craft room so his wife can pursue her interests and hobbies. The most
important idea behind an act of services is that it must be unconditional and
free of ulterior motives. A quid pro quo arrangement is not considered a true act of service.
The final element of the five love
languages is physical touch. A back rub following a hard day at work would be
an example of a positive expression of love language. A spouse may
spontaneously scratch the other's back, or a father may give his son an
affectionate pat on the shoulder after a good sports play. The point of
physical touch is to satisfy the basic human need for close contact with
others. People who feel isolated from others physically may begin to feel
isolated on other levels as well.
Topic83:
Roses are often messengers of various feelings and emotions.
Discuss what the different colours of roses can signify.
Typical Essay
Roses are the ultimate flower for
expression of emotion or feeling. As a gift, roses can convey different
meanings if the person receiving them knows the symbolism attached to the
various colors of roses. Over the years, the meanings behind the different
colors of roses have evolved to cover many sentiments. Before ordering a
bouquet of roses for delivery, or to interpret possible meaning behind the last
bouquet of roses you received, read on to learn the meanings associated with
many common colors of roses.
Red is the most commonly given color
of roses. Red signifies love and passion. True red is the rose for lovers.
Fiery red roses signify passion, while cardinal red symbolizes desire. Fully
bloomed red roses best convey the message “I still love you,” while red rose
buds are a way to express love for the first time.
Yellow roses once meant jealousy, but
today the yellow rose signifies friendship, familiar love, and domestic
happiness. Yellow roses can also be an appropriate sentiment to express
sympathy. Orange roses symbolize an expression of pride or amazement, while
peach roses symbolize appreciation and desire. A bouquet of orange roses would
be appropriate for a graduate or to commemorate a promotion, while peach could express sincere appreciation for someone’s
accomplishments.
Pink roses signify elegance, gentility,
and poetic romance, without the seriousness signified by red. Pink roses are
more light-hearted than red and can signify mere admiration or sweetness of
thought. Light pink roses can signify both sympathy and friendship, while dark
pink is symbolic of appreciation and thankfulness. A mixture of pink and red
roses signifies a romantic relationship.
White roses are sometimes called the
“flower of light” and are the bride’s roses. They symbolize unity, sincerity,
loyalty, purity, and a love stronger than death. White roses can be mixed with
red to emphasize the meaning of love, while white rose buds are an appropriate
gift to a young girl from her father.
Purple roses represent majestic glory
and can symbolize eternal love, while lavender or lilac roses signify love at
first sight or the beginning of true feelings. Purple roses are appropriate for
wedding anniversaries beyond 25 years and as memorial flowers for a lost
spouse. Deep purple roses should be reserved for intimate situations.
Black roses are symbolic of death.
Many people view black roses as an omen, but they can signify change or
rejuvenation on the horizon, as some rose buds appear black but then bloom into
crimson red. The meaning of black roses may not be understood or well received
as a gift, so you should avoid this color if you are at all unsure of the
recipient’s beliefs.
Many colors of roses come in various
shades, which can signify slightly different meanings from their primary
colors. Mixing different colors together in one bouquet is an excellent way to
convey a mixture of emotions when one sentiment is not enough.
Topic84:
Chivalry was a code for a certain small class of society. Discuss.
Typical Essay
Chivalry in its modern sense tends to
apply to the courtesies a man might pay to a lady. These include standing until
a woman sits, offering a woman a seat on a bus, or opening a door for a woman.
These actions are the remains of the once great code for knightly behavior
espoused during the Middle Ages.
Simply riding on horseback, however,
is not an example of chivalry. In fact the term implies not only the knight,
but also the duties of a good knight. These duties were defined as faithfulness
and service to God, kindliness to fellow Christians, protection and
championship of the weak, and courtly love.
Women and men might “play” at courtly
love, because in most instances, marriage was a contractual obligation, and not
a match made because of love. Gentle behavior, and elaborate praise of the
woman helped to satisfy a deep yearning to be admired and appreciated,
something not always obtainable from a husband.
As well, a younger knight might act as
champion for a woman with an older husband, who did not have the strength to
bear her colors in jousting tournaments. This aspect of chivalry was seen as
the attention due to women, and not a chance to gain a woman sexually. In fact,
by following church teachings as part of chivalry, adultery verges off the path
of the chivalrous.
All aspects of chivalry are guided by
a knight’s service to honor. Personal worth was measured by adherence to
chivalry, and by not simply being chivalrous when others were around to observe
it. Chivalry was meant to guide the knight through situations where he was
alone; it gave him a chance to act for the salvation of his soul and for the
salvation of others.
Naturally one must contrast chivalry
with the outrageous and barbaric behavior often in keeping with the feudal
system and the crusades. Since chivalry is conducted as a Christian code, it
did not apply to the “infidel” such as Jews, or Turks, killed during crusades.
Nor did chivalry apply to the abuse frequently inflicted on serfs, though in
Arthurian legends, much chivalry was practiced to punish feudal lords who abused their
serfs, as part of the protection of the weak.
However, chivalry was a code for a
certain small strata of society. As such, chivalrous behavior could separate
the knight from the masses rather than have him work for the many poor and
abused in the feudal society.
Topic85:
There are many ways for a man to be a better husband and
overcome his family problems. Discuss.
Typical Essay
Marriage is the joining of two people
in a bond meant to last a lifetime. Unfortunately, as evidenced by the rising
divorce rates, this is not always how it goes. Marriages can fall apart for
many reasons, and it is usually the fault of both people involved. However, by
trying to be a better husband, you can possibly save a marriage heading down a
rocky road, or improve an already strong relationship.
The first way to be a better husband
is to rekindle the romance. This is not as difficult as it may sound. Start
small, especially if it’s been a while. Bring home some flowers, and hold doors
open for your wife. Show her through little things that you love and admire
her. Hold hands again, and cuddle on the couch while watching a movie. If you can
afford gifts to show your affection, that’s fine, but most women would prefer
that their husbands spend more time than money on them.
Learning to spend more time together
is important when trying to be a better husband. Make time for each other, a
few hours every week, at the very least. If you can carve out even a half hour
of time a day, just for the two of you, that is even better. Schedule regular
date nights, without the kids. In addition, take an active interest in your
wife’s hobbies. If she loves to cook, sign yourselves up for some cooking
classes. Spending time together doing something that she really enjoys can make
your marriage stronger.
Take the time to talk things out,
since communication is essential to a great marriage. To be a better husband,
you must be willing to listen. This is especially important when there is an
argument. Learn to fight fair, and listen to each other's concerns. If
communication is difficult for you and your wife, consider marriage counseling,
as a counselor can help you both learn to better relate to each other. Listening in a
non-judgmental way, and learning to phrase complaints in a loving way, can
solve a lot of the problems that most marriages face.
There are many ways to be a better
husband. The best way is to remember why you fell in love in the first place.
At the beginning of your relationship, you were each other's best friend, and
considerate of each other’s feelings and opinions. As a marriage goes on, it is
easy to lose sight of this. As you try to become a better husband, there is a
very good possibility that your wife will respond to your efforts and become a
better wife.
Topic86:
There are many ways for a woman to be a better wife and
overcome her family problems. Discuss.
Typical Essay
A great way to improve a marriage is
to try to be a better wife. It isn’t hard to be a better wife, and it is often
worth it to put a little extra effort into a relationship to keep it strong.
Being a better wife can have a great pay-off, improving your marriage and
helping you to rediscover the spark enjoyed in the earlier stages of the
relationship.
One of the best ways to be a better
wife is to be conscientious of how you phrase requests. Don’t be a nag. State
your request in a respectful way, and then let it go. Remember that your
husband is an adult, and treat him as such. Asking nicely is a better way to
get what you want, and it will leave him in a more pleasant mood and more
receptive to future requests.
Another terrific way to become a
better wife is to learn how to fight fairly. Slamming doors and name calling
are not conducive to a strong relationship. Communication is an essential skill
for married couples to have. Being able to voice your concerns and opinions in
a mature way, and knowing that you are being heard and understood, is important
for any relationship, but it is especially important in marriages.
Forgive and forget. This seems basic,
but it can be very difficult to let go of a grudge, especially when you feel
you have been wronged. Accept the apology, and move on. Everybody makes
mistakes, sometimes bad ones. Harboring feelings of resentment is toxic for
both your relationship and your happiness. Being a better wife may mean
learning to be a better person.
Another way to be a better wife is to
give your husband time to himself. This means different things for different
men. Some men would love time to go golfing. Others would love to have a chance
to go out with the guys, have a couple hours of uninterrupted video game time,
or just be able to watch a football game in peace. By granting your husband
this time to himself, you will be showing him that you understand his needs,
and that you care. In return, it might be easier for you to slip out for a few
hours, leaving him to watch the children while you have some personal time of
your own.
Marriages are a partnership. It takes
two people to make a marriage work, and it takes two people to ruin it. By
doing your best to be a better wife, you may inspire your husband to try a
little harder, too. Giving yourselves the gift of a solid relationship is more
than worth any extra effort it may require.
Topic87:
No matter how much you love the area in which you live or
how much you love your home, having an annoying neighbour can take away from
your pleasure. Discuss what one can do with an troublesome neighbour.
Typical Essay
No matter how much you love the area
in which you live or how much you love your home, having an annoying neighbour
can take away from your pleasure. While it is often best to try to ignore minor
or infrequent annoyances, that isn’t always possible with a particularly
annoying neighbor. You may eventually have to confront the person who is
keeping you from enjoying your home or yard.
If the transgression isn’t extreme but
is still a nuisance or an inconvenient disturbance, consider approaching the
annoying neighbour in a friendly manner. Invite him or her over for coffee, and
attempt to discuss your complaint in a gentle way. In some cases, the person
may not even be aware that his habits are bothersome.
A good example is a neighbour that
mows his lawn late in the evening while you’re children are trying to sleep. It
may be that he only wishes to cut grass when it’s not so hot outside, and he
may not be aware of your children’s bedtime. Once aware, he may simply agree to
mow earlier, and you will have settled the difference and may even end up
liking your once annoying neighbor.
There are however some worse
situations as well. If your annoying neighbour encroaches on your property,
doesn’t maintain the home or yard appropriately, or does other things that
could decrease your property value, you may have to call the appropriate agency
to lodge a complaint if your neighbour fails to act after being asked to take
care of the situation.
You may also find yourself living
beside the kind of annoying neighbor that creates real problems. He or she
might throw parties or play loud music, fight loudly with a boyfriend or
girlfriend, drive too fast up and down the street, or engage in any number of
inappropriate behaviors. The best way to approach this type of person is to
avoid the heat of the moment confrontation. Don’t storm over to the annoying
neighbour’s home while angry and while or while the person is drinking.
Problem neighbours can sometimes be
dangerous, and you don’t want to find yourself in the middle of a physical
altercation. You might approach the annoying neighbour at another time to ask
for some consideration. You may also find that you have no choice but to call
the police if the problems persist. This won’t help your relationship with your
neighbour, so you might consider making the report anonymously. However, it may
help quiet things down.
Appendices
How to Write a
Sentence
A sentence is the
fundamental grammatical unit that a writer uses in the composition of a
research paper, essay, or literary work. In its simplest form, the sentence is
composed of a subject and a verb. However, it can be shaped by a greater
complexity.
Types of sentences
1- Simple
Sentences
Simple sentences have one main idea
expressed in one independent clause.
1. I
have built houses since I was a teenager.
2-
Compound Sentences: they have two independent clauses joined with a comma and a coordinate
conjunction (and, but, or). The clauses can also be joined by a semicolon, or
with a semicolon and conjunction (nonetheless, furthermore, however, etc.).
2. I
have built houses since I was a teenager, and I wouldn’t do anything
else for a living.
3. I
have built houses since I was a teenager, but I can't wait to quit.
4. I
have built houses since I was a teenager; I plan to keep doing it.
5. I
have built houses since I was a teenager;nonetheless, I hope one day to
explore new areas of employment.
3-
Complex Sentences: they have one independent clause and two or more dependent clauses,
each beginning with a subordinate conjunction (because, even though, while,
when, who, etc.).
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Although we lived in Blida when I
was a child
|
we moved to Algiers
|
because my father found a better job
there.
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Dependent clauses tell:
|
who or what
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under what circumstances
|
|
|
how
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why
|
|
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where
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when
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4- Compound Complex Sentences: they have two
or more independent clauses and one or more dependent clauses.
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Although we lived in Blidawhen I
was a small child
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we moved to Algiers
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because my father found a better job
there
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and he knew that meant a greater
opportunity for the whole family.
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How to Write a
Paragraph
A paragraph is has
three parts:
1-
Topic Sentence: itis
the first sentence in a paragraph whichsummarizes the main idea and indicates
to the reader what your paragraph will be about.
Example:
There are three reasons why
Canada is one of the best countries in the world. First, Canada has an excellent health care system. All
Canadians have access to medical services at a reasonable price. Second, Canada
has a high standard of education. Students are taught by well-trained teachers
and are encouraged to continue studying at university. Finally, Canada's cities
are clean and efficiently managed. Canadian cities have many parks and lots of
space for people to live. As a result, Canada is a desirable place to live.
2- Supporting Details: they come after the topic
sentence, making up the body of a paragraph andgiving details to develop and
support the main idea of the paragraph. You should give supporting facts,
details, and examples.
Example:
There are three reasons why Canada
is one of the best countries in the world. First, Canada has an excellent
health care system. All Canadians have access to medical services at a
reasonable price. Second, Canada has a high standard of education. Students are
taught by well-trained teachers and are encouraged to continue studying at
university. Finally, Canada's cities are clean and efficiently managed.
Canadian cities have many parks and lots of space for people to live. As a
result, Canada is a desirable place to live.
3- Closing
Sentence: itis the last
sentence in a paragraph whichrestates the main idea of the paragraph using
different words.
Example:
There are three reasons why Canada
is one of the best countries in the world. First, Canada has an excellent
health care system. All Canadians have access to medical services at a
reasonable price. Second, Canada has a high standard of education. Students are
taught by well-trained teachers and are encouraged to continue studying at
university. Finally, Canada's cities are clean and efficiently managed.
Canadian cities have many parks and lots of space for people to live. As a
result, Canada is a desirable place to live.
To write a paragraph, you need
to go through the following three stages.
1-The Prewriting
Sage: it is when
you think carefully and organize your ideas for your paragraph before you begin
writing. This stage has six steps as follows.
1. Think carefully about what you
are going to write.
2. Open your notebook.
3. Collect facts related to your paragraph or
essay topic.
4. Write down your own ideas.
5. Find the main idea of your
paragraph or essay.
6. Organize your facts and ideas in a way that
develops your main idea.
2-The Writing
Stage: it is when
you turn your ideas into sentences. This stage has five steps as follows.
1. Open your notebook and word
processor.
2. Write the topic sentence, supporting sentences, and closing sentence.
3. Write clear and simple sentences to express your meaning.
4. Focus on the main idea of your paragraph.
5. Use the dictionary to help you find additional words to express your ideas.
3- The Editing
Stage: it is when
you check your paragraph for mistakes and correct them.
a- Grammar and Spelling:
1. Check your spelling.
2. Check your grammar.
3. Read your essay again.
4. Make sure each sentence has a subject.
5. See if your subjects and verbs agree with each other.
6. Check the verb tenses of each sentence.
7. Make sure that each sentence makes sense.
b- Style and Organization:
1. Make sure your paragraph has a
topic sentence.
2. Make sure your supporting sentences focus on the main idea.
3. Make sure you have a closing sentence.
4. Check that all your sentences focus on the main idea.
5. See if your paragraph is interesting.
A
paragraph has many kinds. Amongst them, I mention:
1- Definition
Paragraph: when writing a definition paragraph, you take a thing or an
idea and explain what it is.
Example:write a paragraph giving the definition of a pest.
The following words can help you to
write a good definition paragraph:
-"is defined as"
Example: A pest is defined as
any animal or plant that damages crops, forests, or property.
- "is a kind of"
Example: A pest is a kind of
animal or plant that damages crops, forests, or property.
2- Classification
Paragraph: when writing a classification paragraph, you group things
or ideas into specific categories.
Example: Write a paragraph discussing two types of
energy resources.
The following words
can help you to write a good classification paragraph:
Examples:
is a kind of
Coal is a kind of non-renewable resource.
can be divided into
Energy resources can be divided into two types.
is a type of
Coal is a type of non-renewable resource.
falls under
Coal falls under the category of non-renewable resources.
belongs to
Coal belongs to the category of non-renewable resources.
is a part of
Coal is a part of the category of non-renewable resources.
fits into
Coal fits into the category of non-renewable resources.
is grouped with
Coal is grouped with non-renewable resources.
is related to
Coal is related to other non-renewable resources.
is associated with
Coal is associated with other non-renewable resources.
3- Description
Paragraph: in a description paragraph, you are writing about what a
person, place, or thing is like. Sometimes, you may describe where a place is
located.
Examples:
- Write a paragraph describing what a polar bear looks like.
- Describe where Canada's industry is located.
The following words can help you to
write a good description paragraph:
Helpful Words:
Properties
size
Example: Polar bears are big in size.
colour
Example: Polar bears are usually white in colour.
shape
Example: Polar bears have a special shape.
purpose
Example: The purpose of the polar bear's fur is to keep it
warm.
Measurement
length
Example: The length of a polar bear's claws is 20 cm.
width
Example: The width of a polar bear's head is about 50 cm.
mass / weight
Example: Polar bears weigh up to 650 kg.
speed
Example: Polar bears can swim at a speed of 40 km per
hour.
Analogy
is like
Example: A polar bear is like other bears in shape.
resembles
Example: A polar bear resembles other bears in shape.
Location
in
Example: Most of Canada's manufacturing is located in
Ontario and Quebec.
above
Example: The ceiling is above us.
below
Example: Most of Ontario is below Hudson Bay.
beside
Example: Quebec is located beside Ontario.
near
Example: Many companies are located near Toronto.
north / east / south /
west
Example: Ontario is west of Quebec.
4-Compare
and Contrast Paragraph: in a compare and contrast paragraph, you write about the
similarities and differences between two or more people, places, things, or
ideas.
Example: Write a paragraph
comparing the weather in Vancouver and Halifax.
The following words can help you to
write a good compare and contrast paragraph:
Helpful Words:
Similarities
is similar to
Example: Spring weather in Vancouver is similar to spring weather
in Halifax.
both
Example: Both Vancouver and Halifax have rain in the spring.
also
Example: Halifax also has a rainy spring season.
too
Example: Halifax has a rainy spring season, too.
as well
Example: As well, Halifax has rainy spring season.
Differences
on the other hand
Example: On the other hand, winter is much colder in Halifax.
however
Example: However, winter is much colder in Halifax.
but
Example: Vancouver has a mild winter, but Halifax has a cold one.
in contrast to
Example: In contrast to Vancouver, Halifax has a cold winter.
differs from
Example: Halifax differs from Vancouver by having a cold winter.
while
Example: While Vancouver has a mild winter, Halifax has a cold
winter.
How to Write an
Essay
An essay can have many
purposes, but the basic structure is the same no matter what. You may be
writing an essay to argue for a particular point of view or to explain the
steps necessary to complete a task.
Either way, your essay
will have the same basic format.
If you follow a few
simple steps, you will find that the essay almost writes itself. You will be
responsible only for supplying ideas, which are the important part of the essay
anyway.
These simple steps will guide you through the essay writing
process:
1- Decide on
your topic.
2- Prepare an
outline or diagram of your ideas.
3- Write your
thesis statement.
4- Write the
body.
a. Write the
main points.
b. Write the
subpoints.
c. Elaborate
on the subpoints.
5- Write the
introduction.
6- Write the
conclusion.
7- Add the
finishing touches.
How to Write a
Book/Film Review
A book/film review describes, analyzes and evaluates. The
review conveys an opinion, supporting it with evidence from the book/film.
These simple steps will guide you through the book/film
review writing process:
1- An introduction
about the theme and the storyline.
2- A developing
paragraph providing information about the characters, the setting, the action…
3- A paragraph
expressing your viewpoint about the film/book.
4- A paragraph to say
what you liked and disliked about it.
5- A conclusion to
give recommendations/advice.
Bibliography
1. New Prospects, by S.A. Arab, B. Riche
and M. Bensemmane, 1st edition, 2007.
2. Teacher’s Guide, 2007.
3. Research motorGoogle.com with adaptation
Table of Contents
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Page
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Introduction………………………………….
Dedication…………………………………….
Unit One:
Exploring the past……………...
Unit Two:
Ill-gotten gains never prosper…
Unit Three:
Education………………………
Unit Four: Safety
first………………………
Unit Five: Are we
alone? ..............................
Unit Six: Keep
cool! ......................................
Appendices…………………………………..
How to write a
sentence…………………….
How to write a
paragraph………………….
How to write an
essay………………………
How to write a book
review…………………
Bibliography…………………………………
List of
Contents……………………………..
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03
04
05
24
35
48
66
81
100
101
102
108
109
110
111
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