又是一個等29/3/08考的GT復議結果的日子。。。今天收到SYDNEY U的信，在想應該是關于IELTS復議的。于是我拿着信在手，播着handset裏的一首歌:"Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want"。打開一看，以前Writing的6.5變成7.0暸。哈，有4個7or above. 我在想，如果成績是關繫到一個人的未來，Markers會給一點臉子的。因為我有attach一封親筆信說明4個7對我的重要性。Thank God, I succeeded. Good luck to those who have made enquiry on their results!

PS: 想問大傢，Appeal成功是不是有refund的？
PS2: 送上這兩天為準備22/5 UTS GT IELTS寫的作文，可惜考试不能cancel掉。題目來自“2008年5月10日翡翠冰糖雅思考试预测”。希望對大傢有幫助。

Q: Some people suggest when people move to a new country they should accept the new culture as their own, rather than have the separate minority groups which has their own different cultures. To what extent do you agree?
The growing immigrant populations in Western societies have caused much debate on national unity in the past decades. In my opinion, minority cultural groups have the rights to preserve their traditions and religions, but with the obligation to mix with other ethnic groups.

A good society is hard to sustain if its citizens become increasingly diverse. For example, certain essential values of Australian culture, such as ‘mateship’ and ‘fair go’ are not widely adopted by the non Auglo-Celtic Australians. What is worse, some of them do not speak English which makes it hard for them to bond with the community. As a result, the diversification had caused the separate development of community with one nation; a country without loyalty but a federation of ethnic cultures. To resolve this disintegration issue, the Australian government has commenced the ‘Australian citizenship test’ to assess new migrants’ knowledge of English skills and Australian values, as a remedy to maintain its national identity and unity.

A good society is also difficult to maintain if its economy is weak. In fact, in some Western countries, the growth of its economy is closely correlated with the support of skilled migrants. To let them feel comfortable in the new country, policy makers seem to accept and recognise the cultural heritage of minorities. For instance, government provides funding to newspaper, television and radio in minority languages; multilingual customer service in governmental departments and so on.

Yet, a very good society is formed with every individual’s mutual respect towards each other, in regards to their cultural, ethnic or religious differences. However, this optimistic concept of human society maybe impossible to achieve, but what matters is the attempt to make a difference. Currently, some European countries have introduced policies for better social cohesion. The policies include: compulsory courses/tests on the constitution and the legal system; campaigns that promotes national unity and individual identification with the nation. Hopefully, education will promote openness and tolerance towards the national beliefs and values.

The problem of social integration is not easy to resolve. To find balance between the majority and the minority cultural groups, the world tends to favour on promoting the idea of acceptance and tolerance to the majority’s culture.

Q: There are social, medical problems associated with the use of mobile phone, what form do they take? Do you agree that the problems outweigh the benefits of the mobile phone?
The use of mobile phone in recent decade has caused concerns over its safety to human body parts and etiquette. Yet, I still believe that mobile phone brings lots of benefits to our life, and the health risk and social discourtesy factors cannot tumble the development of this wireless phenomenon.

In any modern societies, convenience plays a very important part. Fortunately, thanks to the creator of mobile phone, it provides portability for our daily voice and data communication. Indeed, mobile phone users have the option to communicate with others no matter where they situated, as long as they are in the coverage zone. Imagine if you want your partner to get certain groceries on his/her way home, or giving your children mobile phones for the sack of emergencies, our living had certainly became more convenient than 10 or 20 years ago.

The enormous development of handset has created more functions or features to suit customer demands. For instance, most handsets in today’s market have entertainment features; such as mp3 applications, games, watching shows or viewing your Facebook account via the internet. The prospect of the development of mobile phone is unlimited, and of course, the safety concerns will also be eliminated as technology evolves and thus it becomes more reliable to users.

The evidence that shows the health and social effects to human from the use of mobile phone is not comprehensive. As a matter of fact, no research have found direct link between the cause of brain tumor and the interaction of radio frequency form mobile phone. Moreover, most schools have banned the use of mobile phone to avoid class disruption; also, many jurisdictions have made the practice of using mobile phone while driving illegal. Most of these social problems emerge from using mobile phone have properly controlled by the authorities.

The advantages of mobile phone undoubtedly outweigh the uncertain health and social risks. Its convenience and various amusing features should not provoke us to avoid using it because of some unclear claims about its potential risk to our body parts and society.

Q: Computer is widely used in education, and some people think teachers are not playing an important role in the classroom. To what extent do you agree?
Generally speaking, computer technologies have certainly improved classroom performance. However, teachers are still the primary source for students to adsorb knowledge and skills from.

In education, teachers facilitate student’s learning processes. In fact, teachers not only teach students the fundamentals of literature, science or art, they also encourage students to explore things by themselves, teach appropriate study or research methods which have inspired many great discoveries in the past. Moreover, teachers with charisma are widely respected by students; pupils pay more attention to teachers that seem ‘intelligent’ or ‘knowledgeable’ during their lecture, and thus it motivates them to learn voluntarily.

Why young children or teenagers cannot study by themselves and unsupervised? Because students in primary and secondary schools don’t have the capacity to take initiative to learn, they need proper guidance from teachers to put them on the right track. Indeed, a classroom without a teacher is disastrous. I suspect nobody will incline to think that youngsters will gaze at the monitor to practice their mathematic calculations, or read a textbook about biology all day long, in a classroom that without any authority. Indeed, they will probably go out to play with others which bring them more excitement than studying. In essence, youth are immature; they lack the self-discipline to guide their own actions.

Computer can be rather more correctly define as a tool for teacher and student to utilise; it assists us to transfer information effectively in a digitalised environment. For instance, PDA can make life easier for students; it can store textbooks electronically; type notes in class; exchange data with others and so on. Not only for students, teachers are also benefiting from educational technologies like a PowerPoint projector, which supports lecturer to explain things more clearly with documented information on the screen.

Without a doubt, teachers play an indispensable part in the education industry, because of their skills that facilitate learning and the responsibilities to instruct youngster. Yet, computer is also an integral element for the convenience of our learning and teaching.