Integrated Writing
Both the reading and the listening content about communal online encyclopedias. The reading thinks the communal online encyclopedias are less valuable than traditional, printed encyclopedias. However, the professor disagrees and gives three explainations.
To begin with, the professor in listening thinks there are references in communal online encyclopedias to make them more scientific and accurate, though the reading states that contributors to a communal online encyclopedia often lack academic credentials. Besides, the professor also says that the online encyclopedias are easier to correct if there are any mistakes in the online one than the traditional one.
The second point of difference concerns the hacking. The lecture asserts that online encyclopedias have ways to protect the article from hackers or vandals. The first one is to allow readers only have abilities to read and there is nobody can build or change the encyclopedias. The second one is to allow special editors to change the article.
Finally, the reading believes that the communal encyclopedias creates a false impression of what is important and what is not, while the professor in lecture disagrees. She thinks that the reason of the traditional one only provides a considered view is limiting by the space of paper. But in online one, there is not such problem.
Independent Writing
Life today is easier and more comfortable than it was when your grandparents were children.
21:00
There is a general discussion about the quality of life. One of this question under debate is which is better, the quality of life in 60 years ago or now. Some people believed that life today is easier and more comfortable than it was when sixty years ago, while others hold the opposite opinion. As far as I am concerned, the front one is much convincible. There are three points from living, education,(!!)and welfare explaining to my agreement as follows.
First, now people need not think about how to survive in hunger, illness or lacking living shelter, which feels easier about their difficult life. As time goes by, the technologies of planting and pharmacy developed a lot. Those disasters or illnesses which people could not get rid of won’t be any problems now. Although the number of population in the world is in a rising stage, new grain species guarantee the product by the biological improvement. Besides, people now don’t bother with the residence. The government in China, for example, provides with charity houses for civil servants and settling buildings for peasants. Therefore, life today meets the physiological needs of people.
Second, when people want to be a better man, they have the great convenience to learn. For students in school, they have the more comfortable environment and more advanced equipment. Now students are allowed to use iPad in class to do the homework or exercise in the class. To our surprise, while teachers are writing on the board, notes are sending to students’ iPad automatically. Similarly, for those people on the work and they have less time to take courses at school, they can learn using the online learning website, MOOC, via Internet. There are alternative sources for any kinds of learners.
**Third, people today have greater welfare even when people become old. **Old people have a great number of subsidies from the government. Such as my grandmother, she earned less when she was at the working age than the pension she got today. Furthermore, they also have opportunities to learn new skills such as using of PC and reading at special universities opened to the aged. In addition, the aged now have more chances to enjoy. They don’t need to pay for the tickets of many parks and even buses. They have money and time, they could go anywhere in the world.
**From what I have discussed above, it is obviously that life today is easier and more comfortable than it was when my grandparents were children. **People today not only easily have the need for physiological satisfied but also try to achieve their psychological goals as many as possible.
