Is the Internet good for reaching information? IELTS Task2 #173 It is generally believed that the Internet is an excellent means of searching information but some people suggest that it may not be the best place to find information. Discuss both these views and give your own opinion. Using the internet in order to find information has become more popular. I personally use the internet for finding a good place to eat while outing or traveling as it is time saving and can be done with my mobile phone. Furthermore, I can get to know what kind of food a restaurant has or if it takes credit card in prior to my actual visit. By using the internet to find information, I can travel light and can get to know some related information I was not initially looking for but would need later on. On the other hand, some incorrect information can be out there on the internet because it’s easy to access. Plus, some websites do not have a regulation to make sure the individual content is accurate. For example, some people who are not trained in medicine can make a false statement about a symptom on their blog, which can mislead the readers to treating their symptom with the false cure explained on the blog entries. Users of the internet need to have the internet literacy in order not to believe everything on the internet. For example, the Internet users should make sure the source of information. As for the example of the Internet medical advice previously described, they can conclude that it is trustworthy if the advice is written on a hospital’s official website. Making sure the source of the information is a good way to eliminate doubtful information. In conclusion, using the internet to find information is useful but has a risk of believing some incorrect information. We can avoid trusting wrong information by checking where the information comes from. (276) (The example is from IELTS-exam.net with some modification)

IELTS writing task1 #173 The bar charts below show the percentages of men and women in employment in three countries in 2005 and 2015. Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features, and make comparisons where relevant. The graphs below indicate the rate of employed male and female in three countries in 2005 and 2015. Overall, the employed rates of male were higher than those of female in all the countries in both 2005 and 2015. The percentage of employment was higher in 2015 than in 2005 in both genders and in all the countries. All of them experienced the growth of female employment rates from 2005 to 2015. Sweden had the highest employment ratio in both genders in 2005 compared to other countries. Its employment rate was nearly 80% for male workers and about 45% for female workers in 2005. Yet, Sweden’s percentage of male employment shrank to 70% in 2015 though the percentage of female employment showed slight growth to reach 50% in 2015. South Korea went through a slight improvement of employment rates in both genders. For male, it extended from 70% to just under 80%, for female from 30% to 35%. Canada achieved the largest positive change in the employment rates in both genders over the 10 years. For male, it reached 70% from 60%, for female to approximately 55% from slightly under 40%. Practice example is from ielts-exam.net

The Obon Holiday in Japan The Obon holiday takes three days from the 13th of August to the 15th of August. It is a shinto and buddhism mixed based custom widely practiced among Japanese nationwide. It is said that ancestors' spirits come visit their descendants living today during the holiday. What Japanese normally do for the holiday is to clean their family graves, to make a set of miniature horse and caw with a cucumber and an eggplant respectively, and to decorate their Butsudan with some flowers which is a household buddhist shrine. It is said that ancestors come by riding a horse because they want to see their relatives as quickly as possible and they return to their world by riding a caw because they do not want to go back to where they belong with their descendants behind. If there is a local festival around the Obon holiday, bon dance is performed by locals and visitors of the festival. There are some other traditions related to the Obon festival that are only found in some local areas, but these are some examples of what Japanese do in the Obon holiday.

Trip to Arashiyama, Kyoto I've lived near Kyoto for more than a year, but until very recently, I had never gotten an opportunity to visit Arashiyama district, a 30 min bus ride to North west from Kyoto station. My friend and I visited Togetsukyo bridge, Tenryuji temple, and Bamboo forest :D Ah, also, we tried ashi yu, or foot bath in Araden Arashiyama station. My favorite spot was Tenryuji temple. The temple is famous as one of the Zen temples in Kyoto and for having a beautiful garden, and Tenryuji temple is listed as a world heritage site. The garden has a pound surrounded by rocks and some trees. There were a main building and some other rooms surrounding the pound that are connected with roofed passages, one of which had a little stream going underneath. The day was relatively hot, so it was nice to feel the air ventilation in the old building. Also, one big room with tatami mattresses facing to the garden was open to everyone entering the temple :) It was nice to get our tired legs stretched on tatami and relaxed for a while looking at the landscape with nice wind coming towards us. I enjoyed sightseeing in Arashiyama in addition to our reunion :D

My recent struggle to become smarter I am a subordinate bilingual of Japanese (first) and English (second). I am thinking to start a more intense reading activity not only for having fun, also for educating myself. A friend of mine form Europe I recently started hanging out with knows about the world so much more than me even though we are the same age. Talking to him made me realize how little I know about what’s going on across the world. So I tried to read some articles on serious topics in both languages and encountered some difficulties. As a fast reader in Japanese, I can get much more amount of information in short duration of time if in Japanese. Also, my English comprehension is just not as good. So, I basically feel I am wasting my time to read in English if the contents are also available in Japanese. But then, it would be difficult for me to converse with my intentional friends about what I learned from articles because I will not know the English translations. Also, I am not too sure if I trust Japanese online newspapers or sources as much as English ones… Still figuring out the way that works the best for me...

Japanese English fixed by yummy German English My German friend helped me by polishing my comment on the last entry, but he is not 100% sure about (of?) his corrections for me. So we will appreciate it if you help us :) I didn't think that Taiwanese mandarin is a dying language... is it so? 'is it so' or 'or is it'? or any other ways? I took one semester of Chinese and did really poorly on remembering pinyin at that time. 'really poorly' or 'really poor'? 'on remembering' or 'at remembering'? or another preposition recommended here? Also, I am thinking to visit Taiwan in the very close future but not the main land China. 'thinking to visit' or 'thinking about visiting'? 'the main land China' or 'main land China'? These things made me think 'ok, let's try to learn Taiwanese mandarin with zhuyin'. 'let's try to learn Taiwanese' or 'let's try learning Taiwanese'? Thank you :) Arigato :) Danke schön :)

Language for collecting information　情報収集に使う言語

To Japanese/English bilinguals or of course bilinguals of other languages, which language do you use for searching new stuff or getting general knowledge?

Especially if one of your languages is not as strong as the other like my case (I am a subordinate bilingual), I’d like to hear your opinion. 

日本語と英語のバイリンガルの人は、情報収集の際にどちらの言語を使っていますか？

特に、一方の言語が他方より弱いバイリンガルの方（私がそうです）の意見を聞きたいです。

Dinner with my friend 友達とご飯 I went to a casual restaurant with my friend for dinner. I only had couple hundreds yen in my purse so had to ask my friend to pay for mine. I am listening to some French version of Disney songs just for getting used to the way French sounds. Wonder if I'll be able to pronounce their R in the future.... it sounds soooo different from the English one and seems hard to make a similar sound. I am thinking to start studying French with my first French textbook that I've been keeping in my bookshelf for years (lol) to learn first level grammar, vocabulary, and pronouciation rule. Hope I'll like it as I do for English. 友達とご飯に行って来た。 お財布の中に数百円しかなくて、友達に払ってもらった 笑 今フランス語のディズニーの曲を聞いてる。フランス語の発音に慣れるためだけど、いつかフランス語のRの発音ができるようになるのかといささか不安••• 英語のRと全然違うし難しそう そろそろ何年も仕舞いっぱなしだったフランス語の教科書を使うときかな？笑 まずは基本の文法、語彙、そして発音規則を勉強する。 英語の勉強みたいにフランス語の勉強も好きになれるといいなー。

Taiwan festival in Tokyo 東京 台湾フェス I went to Taiwan festival in Tokyo last Sunday with my friend :D We first attended lychee-seed-blowing competition for its praise, flight tickets to Taiwan. I was far from getting the award but it was so hilarious that I was happy with paying 500 yen and eating two lychee to get the seeds out standing in the middle of Ueno park. Taiwan beer and 小籠包 we got were both amazing. One thing I'm sad about is that we couldn't attend a mini lesson of Chinese spoken in Taiwan. I know Taiwanese and Chinese can communicate without huge problems but there are some differences in Chinese in Taiwan and in China. The famous difference is probably the degree of symplificaiton of Chinese characters. I'd like to visit Taiwan in the close future as well as to understand Taiwanese version of Chinese language someday :) 日曜日に、東京で開催された台湾フェスに友達と行って来た。 まずはライチ種飛ばし大会 笑 優勝すると台湾への航空券が貰えるから、それ目当てで参加したけど、入賞には程遠い結果に終わった。 でもめっちゃ面白かったから、500円払って上野公園の真ん中で立ちながらライチを食べるだけの価値はあったな 笑 台湾ビールも小龍包も美味しかった〜 一つだけ心残りなのは、台湾華語のミニレッスンに出られなかったこと。 台湾人と中国人は問題なくお互いを理解できるって聞くけど、台湾の中国語と中国の中国語って違うんだよね。文字の簡単化の度合いが違うのは有名だと思う。 近いうちに台湾に行きたいし、いつかは台湾華語が話せるようになりたい。 頑張ろう〜