01 April, 2005
Good evening bloggers!
As you notice, I've left you to your own devices today and most of yesterday. Well done to the "famous five" who went down on Thursday and helped themselves.
Tomorrow you will:
- get back your marked / mistake highlighted work from Tuesday
- find 16 National Geographic magazines [cheers Ekaterina!]
- do a Listening exam and transfer your answers to the answer paper, then mark them before we analyse where you went right / wrong.
- after that I plan to get you to discuss some task 2 titles orally in groups before you write me a Task 2 essay of your choice. If you can't face that (Waiel) then maybe the Learning Zone can amuse you for 40 minutes or so...
So here is the promised model task 2 essay which took me 20 minutes to plan and write on paper, then 20 minutes to type / edit. It was an interesting exercise, I'm not sure how it can help you [please let me know!] Oh, by the way, I will give you a proper print out of this superbly crafted essay tomorrow as well.
The title was:
"Do we become used to bad news? Would it be better if more good news was reported?"
Model Essay: Argument Essay Topic # 40
Time spent planning: 5 minutes
Time spent writing: 15 minutes (to IELTS standard)
Time spent typing / editing: 20 minutes
Number of words: 387* [*Absolutely no comment from you, Mr AlBraiki!)
It has been suggested in some quarters that the news is always bad. People should have more good news. The issue is quite complex and in this essay, I will propose a balanced approach.
It cannot be denied that we tend to become bored with the same old news stories. Wars, famines and natural disasters bore us. The threat of terrorist outrages sends us surfing through the TV channels. We have a short span of attention and constantly seek fresh news stories. However, I do not accept the argument that we get ‘used to’ bad news. The implication of this statement is that we do not care about the suffering of other people. This is certainly not the case, in my opinion. I contend that we should be given a fair, objective news coverage that informs us of the real state of affairs in the world. We do not need to have news ‘dumbed down’. Who has the right to decide that ‘bad’ news is unpopular? It is an undeniable fact that we tend to lose interest in stories that regularly hit the headlines. Nevertheless, this is not to say that we should neglect ‘hard’ news in favour of ‘soft’ news.
Other people might argue that the world is a depressing place. We need to be cheered up and given more ‘good’ news stories. Such individuals want to be entertained and inspired by cheerful stories about human achievement. There is a place for such ‘Disney-style’ happy endings. Cases spring to mind such as the baby rescued after five days underground following an earthquake. We forget about the 1,000’s killed and massive destruction caused. Most news programmes on TV and in the newspapers like such ‘human interest’ stories. As I see it, there is no place for insisting on good news at the expense of reality. Just look at the US newspaper which printed only good news. Its first bad news story was to announce that it was going out of business!
In conclusion, therefore, I would like to stress that we are mature enough to handle good and bad news in equal measure. Too much of either extreme is not acceptable, in my opinion. I want the freedom to see, hear and read what is going on in the real world – either for the good or bad.
