final exam

02121155 Illena Knowledge gained from book and from experience We all know that the source of knowledge is not single, it can be from your life experience or from textbooks or other books you learn in school and on your own. One thing for sure is that they are all important to complete our life. But there are two major differences between them. The first difference is the width of the knowledge and the second one is related to selectivity. Our life experience cannot always be so abundant according to the realities, after college we need to find job as soon as possible, and then we need use any means to form and maintain a family; therefore all the experiences and we gained in our actual life may be the most basic and essential knowledge. However, when we read books not only just textbooks in school but also other books like novel, poetry or journals, we can learn a bunch of information. As a reader, we can learn from the writers’ experiences, even though we never truly experiences what them talked about; however, through their words, we are like the writers themselves at that moment. The most obvious example is that, we may not be able to travel around the world, but we can through watching others’ traveling books to learn other countries’ culture. The second difference is that from our own life experience, we cannot actually select what we want to learn or not; instead, most of the time, we learn lessons afterwards, both good and bad knowledge. On the contrary, when we read books we can select what we want to learn; therefore, broaden our own knowledge in whole aspects, not merely restricted in one area. For example, if I want learn about computer-based knowledge, I can go to choose those related books to read. From my twenty years’ experience as a student, it seems for me, the knowledge learn from the books is more useful than knowledge gained from my experience, because they are more broad and profound, helping me to gain the knowledge that I may otherwise have no chance to learn in my whole life. But what I am saying now is based on a point that knowledge gained from books and from life is equally crucial to enable us to live a life more smoothly. So for different people, the priority may change.

Definition(WA4)(VERSION3)

According to Oxford dictionarIda, courage means "the ability to do something that frightens one; bravery and strength in the face of pain or grief." In other words, we can know that courage underlies the ability and the strength to overcome something scary. However, this does not mean you do something impulsively without thinking twice and claim to be courageous. For example, some young folks driving down a steep slope or jump into a waterfall without any secure preparation or life jacket. Throughout history, there are several models of courageous figures we admire, some of them may be the famous historical warriors, others are activists in all fields throughout the world. Among all these different kinds of courage, there is one specific type of courage that I admire the most. One's courage to foster him or her to overcome both physical and mental adversity is crucial and encouraging. It should be one of the goals all human beings pursue. Nevertheless, when it comes to the courage of several compaign leaders, the previous one seems to lose its luster. Those leaders whose courage is not just personal expressing bravely against the injustice and standing out to fight for the well-being of the powerless. The great potential to face physical injuries or life-threatening warnings are clear; however, those activists disdain the threats, concentrating exclusively on the mission. Below, I'm going to use two advocates for example, the first one is Malala and the other is Nelson Mandela.
     Malala is a 17-year old Pakistani girl who actively promotes the women's education right at school. She was a brave girl; nevertheless, misfortune fell upon her; she was shut by Taliban on her way home on a school bus on one day in 2012. She was severely injured, and sent to England to gain a better treatment. Even though after this devastating misery, she still advocates her notion courageously at public occasions domestically or internationally, ignoring the threats from Taliban or the men in her country.
    The other model is one of the most iconic persons in the world, Nelson Mandela, who is an activist against the apartheid in South Africa. This policy denied the basic rights to black Africans and all people of color based on the belief that the white are superior. Under this situation of discrimination, there is one man standing out bravely, Mandela. Like Malala, he faced intimidating challenges, overcoming the fear, he fought for black people's rights and the equal rights for all people. He was the voice of all ethnic people, calling for the basic humans' desire, love and respect. Because of this movement, he was imprisoned for 27 years. If it was not his passion and courage, there will be no democratic, equal South Africa.
     While we are admiring those popular activists across the globe for their courage and spirit of sacrifice, we can forget that at the same time we need to cultivate our own courage. With courage, we can go through everything more creatively, broaden our experience and eventually live a life more smoothly. After being capable of conquering prevailing adversities, then we can start to follow celebrities' steps toward a more generous, more selfless courage.

Argument (WA5)(VERSION2)

02121155

余尹倫 蕭英華

Argument

Version 2

719 words

06/10/2014   

                                                              Fair Trade System

     Why there is a movement developing throughout the world to against the globalization? Isn’t globalization the best movement all human beings have ever had? Undoubtedly, globalization has brought us a bunch of benefits, such as economic growth and cohesive cooperation across nations; however, this movement seems to bring equal bad impacts, too. At some points, it plays the villain role to strike the Third World nations. Here, we are going to argue about why we should use fair trade to replace free trade; fair trade is a movement on the rise to get attention and one of the efforts under alternative-globalization. Free trade has been a system maintained for decades since economic globalization developed but when we stop and look back on the preceding years, a overwhelming fact pop up: the profit all goes to the pocket of those multinational corporations, which created the rules of this global game. Therefore, we want to be a game changer now to describe a more equal and lovely world.

    The benefits of free trade system are going to the multinationals’ pockets, so now we want to propose a better system let allow a fair competition for everyone, which is fair trade system. Instead of using free trade, we should use fair trade system now.

     Many African countries’ economic development is based mostly on agriculture, especially cash crops, such as cotton and coffee. These are work that needed to put much energy and care but only with the result of unjust prices and exploitation. In Ethiopia, most coffee farmers only get 0.1$ dollars per kilo and 1% of the final coffee price sold in the coffee shops. With so little money, they can barely survive even some farmers struggle to get fed every day, of course; they can’t afford their children to go to school. After understanding whole process of producing coffee, we can know that it is really a time-consuming procedure. In general, the coffee farmers will need to wait for four years to receive the first production of coffee beans. Based on coffee bean’s not long-lasting feature, farmers will need to sell the beans as soon as possible before them getting rotten. In terms of this situation, their chance to argue for a reasonable price with corporations declines significantly, eventually leading to their poverty-stricken state. The purpose of pushing fair trade system is to give those coffee farmers enough money to live life and relatively payment to their labor input.

     The demand for reasonable price is just the beginning. Through just price, coffee farmers across Third World, especially in Africa, will enable to provide their children education; therefore, they can increase their bargaining chips in economic globalization world in the future. The spirit of Fair Trade includes that those who benefit from this system should give back to the community. Instead of individual growth, it pays more attention to the communal development. Each communal growth putting together will provide a better groundwork for the future development and prosperity of Third World.

     Last but not least, the essential idea of fair trade is to keep a sustainable production model. By singing a long-term contract with local coffee farmers, which can ensure their livelihood, they will produce coffee beans in an eco-friendly fashion. This cooperation not only boosts economic profits of both sides but also providing the world a better way of living with nature.

     In order to express our passion to display a more just mode of trading, we post three benefits getting from replacing free trade with fair trade. According to our ingrained ideas, the reason why Third World nations is poor should attribute to their own laziness, corrupt government and so on. However, to see the whole situation in a different point of view, we first need to get rid of these prejudices.  Then we will learn that the reason for those resource-abundant countries to be poor are not just their downfall, it is actually caused by the system, the rules which are drawn up by internationally powerful nations, such as U.S.A. and U.K.     

So it is time for us to see their adversity from a justice viewpoint instead of pity. Now that we learn that free trade is not free and cheap, sharpening the disparity between rich and poor; we really need to give fair trade a deep thought.

Argument(version 1)(WA5)

02121155
余尹倫 蕭英華
Argument
679 words
06/03/2014  
                         Fair Trade System
     Why there is a movement developing throughout the world to against the globalization? Isn’t globalization the best movement all human beings have ever had? Undoubtedly, globalization has brought us a bunch of benefits, such as economic growth and cohesive cooperation across nations; however, this movement seems to bring equal bad impacts, too. At some points, it plays the villain role to strike the Third World nations. Here, we are going to argue about why we should use fair trade to replace free trade; fair trade is a movement on the rise to get attention and one of the efforts under 另類全球化. Free trade has been a system maintained for decades since economic globalization developed but when we stop and look back on the preceding years, a overwhelming fact pop up: the profit all goes to the pocket of those multinational corporations, which created the rules of this global game. Therefore, we want to be a game changer now to describe a more equal and lovely world.
     Many African countries’ economic development is based mostly on agriculture, especially cash crops, such as cotton and coffee. These are work that needed to put much energy and care but only with the result of unjust prices and exploitation. In Ethiopia, most coffee farmers only get 0.1$ dollars per kilo and 1% of the final coffee price sold in the coffee shops. With so little money, they can barely survive even some farmers struggle to get fed every day, off course; they can’t afford their children to go to school. After understanding whole process of producing coffee, we can know that it is really a time-consuming procedure. In general, the coffee farmers will need to wait for four years to receive the first production of coffee beans. Based on coffee bean’s not long-lasting feature, farmers will need to sell the beans as soon as possible before them getting rotten. In terms of this situation, their chance to argue for a reasonable price with corporations declines significantly, eventually leading to their poverty-stricken state. The purpose of pushing fair trade system is to give those coffee farmers enough money to live life and relatively payment to their labor input.
     The demand for reasonable price is just the beginning. Through just price, coffee farmers across Third World, especially in Africa, will enable to provide their children education; therefore, they can increase their bargaining chips in economic globalization world in the future. The spirit of Fair Trade includes that those who benefit from this system should give back to the community. Instead of individual growth, it pays more attention to the communal development. Each communal growth putting together will provide a better groundwork for the future development and prosperity of Third World.
     Last but not least, the essential idea of fair trade is to keep a sustainable production model. By singing a long-term contract with local coffee farmers, which can ensure their livelihood, they will produce coffee beans in an eco-friendly fashion. This cooperation not only boosts economic profits of both sides but also providing the world a better way of living with nature.
     In order to express our passion to display a more just mode of trading, we post three benefits getting from replacing free trade with fair trade. According to our ingrained ideas, the reason why Third World nations is poor should attribute to their own laziness, corrupt government and so on. However, to see the whole situation in a different point of view, we first need to get rid of these prejudices.  Then we will learn that the reason for those resource-abundant countries to be poor are not just their downfall, it is actually caused by the system, the rules which are drawn up by internationally powerful nations, such as U.S.A. and U.K.  
     So it is time for us to see their adversity from a justice viewpoint instead of pity. Now that we learn that free trade is not free and cheap, sharpening the disparity between rich and poor; we really need to give fair trade a deep thought.

Definition(WA4)(VERSION2)

According to Oxford dictionarIda, courage means "the ability to do something that frightens one; bravery" and "strength in the face of pain or grief." In other words, we can know that courage underlies the ability and the strength to overcome something scary. However, this does not mean you do something impulsive without thinking twice and claim to be courageous. Like, some young folks driving down a steep slope or jumping into a waterfall without any secure preparation or life jacket. Throughout history, there are several models of courageous figures we admire, some of them may be the famous historical warriors; others are activists in all fields throughout the world. Among all these different kinds of courage, there is one specific type of courage that I admire most. One's courage to foster he or she to overcome both physical and mental adversity is crucial and encouraging. It should be one of the goals all human beings pursue. Nevertheless, when it comes to the courage of several compaign leaders, the previous one seems to lose its luster. Those leaders whose courage is not just personal express bravely against the injustice, standing out to fight for the well-being of the powerless. The great potential to facing physical injuries or life-threatening warnings are clear; however, those activists disdain the threats, concentrating exclusively on the mission. Below, I'm going to use two advocates for example, the first one is Malala and the other is Nelson Mandela.
     Malala is a 17-year old Pakistani girl who actively promotes the women's education right at school. She was a brave girl; nevertheless, misfortune fell upon her; she was shut by Taliban on her way home on a school bus on one day in 2012. She was severely injured, sending to England to gain a better treatment. Even though after this devastating misery, she still advocates her notion courageously at public occasions domestically or internationally, ignoring the threats from Taliban or the men in her country. With her
    The other model is one of the most iconic persons in the world, Nelson Mandela, who is an activist against the apartheid in South Africa. This policy denied the basic rights to black Africans and all people of color based on the belief that the white are superior. Under this situation of discrimination, there is one man standing out bravely, Mandela. Like Malala, he faced intimidating challenges, overcoming the fear, he fought for black people's rights and the equal rights for all people. he is the voice of all ethnic people, calling for the basic humans' desire, love and respect. Because of this movement, he was imprisoned for 27 years. If it was not his passion and courage, there will be no democratic, equal South Africa.
     While we are admiring those popular activists across the globe for their courage and spirit of sacrifice, we can forget that at the same time we need to cultivate our own courage. With courage, we can go through everything more creatively, broaden our experience and eventually live a life more smoothly. After be capable of prevailing adversities, then we can start to follow celebrities' steps toward a more generous, more selfless courage.

Comparison&Contrast(WA3)(VERSION3)

     There is a fact without questioning that both my parents love me equally, but why then after 19 years passed, I tend to feel being closer to my mother rather than my father. I think there are three categories that lead to this difference. The points I want to talk about here are their role in giving birth, parenting style and breadwinning.
     There is a big difference between the role of male and female in the process of bearing and giving birth. The image is very clear that woman is lying on the hospital bed with her face twisted and frowned and trying to give birth while man standing besides the beloved one, giving them strength. We all know this image very well but there may be one thing that we are not aware is that the children’s connection toward mother and father becomes different at this moment. My mother always says that this process of giving birth and also almost ten months of carrying a baby really make a difference, make our relationship much closer than with my father’s.
     Whenever it comes to parenting style, we always have one single stereotype, almost like an instinct popping out in our mind, which is fathers are harsh on children, playing the role as villains; mother tends to be considerate and warm, playing the role as angels. The same situation happens in my family. But what causes this phenomenon I think is more related to my parents’ personalities than influenced by this prejudice popular throughout the world. My mother is a warm and temperate person so she uses encouragement to replace punishment. She seldom gets angry; therefore, she is more easily to get close to and remind me that she will be there whenever I need her. On the contrary, my father’s personality influenced by his career as a soldier is grimmer and colder. He is very strict on our behaviors and manners, asking us to behave well in public and at home. He really cares about our manners. Due to his strict father image imprinted in my mind since childhood, our relationship thus appeared to be distant. Although their parenting is different, one thing for sure is that their care and love for me is the same.
     For almost six years from my childhood, my father wasn’t there with me because of his work. His organizations dispatched him to Russia and China during that period. Though I didn’t really remember those times very clearly, this impact seems to take effect secretly. There were a bunch of pictures taken in my childhood without my father being there, so whenever I watch those pictures, the distance between my father and me seems to be further apart. However, my mother then was a housewife until I went into junior high school, thus she was able to spend most of her time with me. She was by my side at the most important growing period of my life, which makes a huge difference and let our relationship become more intimate than with my father.
     Those factors are all working their roles in affecting my relationship with my parents with my awareness or not. From my experience, even certain tiny part that people usually don’t put on their mind, their influence is still crucial and unexpected. So next time when a couple have a baby, they should really think more carefully about how to raise a kid; therefore, there will not be jealous mother or father. The last but not least, even though I tend to feel closer to my mother, my love for my parents is actually the same.  

Definition (WA4) (VERSION1)

     According to Oxford dictionarIda, courage means "the ability to do something that frightens one; bravery" and "strength in the face of pain or grief." In other words, we can know that courage underlies the ability and the strength to overcome something scary. However, this does not mean you do something impulsive without thinking twice and claim to be courageous. Like, some young folks driving down a steep slope or jumping into a waterfall without any secure preparation or life jacket. Throughout history, there are several models of courageous figures we admire, some of them may be the famous historical warriors; others are activists in all fields throughout the world. Among all these different kinds of courage, there is one specific type of courage that I admire most. One's courage to foster he or she to overcome both physical and mental adversity is crucial and encouraging. It should be one of the goals all human beings pursue. Nevertheless, when it comes to the courage of several compaign leaders, the previous one seems to lose its luster. Those leaders whose courage is not just personal express bravely against the injustice, standing out to fight for the well-being of the powerless. The great potential to facing physical injuries or life-threatening warnings are clear; however, those activists disdain the threats, concentrating exclusively on the mission. Below, I'm going to use two advocates for example, the first one is Malala and the other is Nelson Mandela.
     Malala is a 17-year old Pakistani girl who actively promotes the women's education right at school. She was a brave girl; nevertheless, misfortune fell upon her; she was shut by Taliban on her way home on a school bus on one day in 2012. She was severely injured, sending to England to gain a better treatment. Even though after this devastating misery, she still advocates her notion courageously at public occasions domestically or internationally, ignoring the threats from Taliban or the men in her country. With her
    The other model is one of the most iconic persons in the world, Nelson Mandela, who is an activist against the apartheid in South Africa. This policy denied the basic rights to black Africans and all people of color based on the belief that the white are superior. Under this situation of discrimination, there is one man standing out bravely, Mandela. Like Malala, he faced intimidating challenges, overcoming the fear, he fought for black people's rights and the equal rights for all people. he is the voice of all ethnic people, calling for the basic humans' desire, love and respect. Because of this movement, he was imprisoned for 27 years. If it was not his passion and courage, there will be no democratic, equal South Africa.
     While we are admiring those popular activists across the globe for their courage and spirit of sacrifice, we can forget that at the same time we need to cultivate our own courage. With courage, we can go through everything more creatively, broaden our experience and eventually live a life more smoothly. After be capable of prevailing adversities, then we can start to follow celebrities' steps toward a more generous, more selfless courage.