Parents today are more involved in children's education than parents were in the past. Education has been the most important role in one's career; every employee who wants to obtain a decent job needs a tertiary education. Thus, more and more parents today are involving their children's education. And there are several reasons why they can do this. To begin with, parents nowadays have more time to take care of their children's study. Nearly all parents now have a regular working time each day, which is different from parents did in decades earlier, therefore they have time to help their children deal with homework after knocking off. For example, my older brother works in a large IT company, and every day he get off work in time. After that, he stays at home with his ten years old son, often helping him coping with mathematics homework. Another reason is that nowadays lots of parents have achieved university education, which enables them to involve in their children's education. In the past, there were very few people who are educated in our country, but this is not the case anymore. Lots of parents having bachelor or master degree are skillful at not only their work but also many subjects children are learning. For instance, both my sister and her husband have master degrees; therefore they are able to teach their children new things in many subjects in interesting ways. Last but not least, nowadays many schools require parents involve children's education to improve it. Teachers believe that there would be a better learning effect if parents can help children acquire knowledge. This is very common in our city. Some assignments even need both a student and his or her parent to finish together. This is really helpful to children's learning as they can discuss with their parents to develop new ideas in the process of doing homework. I concede that some parents still are too busy to involve in their children's education, but this is not the case for most of parents. As most parents have more time to concern their children's study, schools encourage parents to do so and parents involving in children's education can help children acquire knowledge better, I believe that parents will be involving in their children's education more in the future.

Is it better to read a book more than once? Some people often like to read a book only once and then they never read it again because they prefer to read new ones. I, however, would rather read most of books more than once, and I believe that there are lots of benefits by doing so. To begin with, a second reading can help me understand the book better. In reality, I have to do this to acquire knowledge in nearly all of our science textbooks. For example, in a physics book, there are many concepts, mathematics and ideas that are difficult to understand. To really understand behind logic and explanation of those concepts and deductions, we students have no choice but to read them again and again until we really figure them out and absorb the knowledge. Thus, reading these professional books more than once is necessary if we want to understand them better. Furthermore, knowing something does not mean we can apply them to facts or put them into practice. Only by reading a book a few times can we actually know what is the author’s intention, what is the essence of the book and even how to make connections between knowledge and practice. Knowledge is something we can obtain by reading, but the essence of a book and the author's skillful writing need us spend time pondering and reading repeatedly. And then after comprehending everything, we can put them into practice, such as using sentence structures and rhetoric devices learned from the book in our own writings. Last but not least, reading books in a repetitive manner often help the reader comes up with new ideas. When we master everything a book discusses, we might get something not covered in the book. And this is helpful to spark creations. For example, once I read an electronics book about triode a third time; I just hit on a new idea with electronics characteristics of triode. And then I used triode with some other components to develop a device that can automatically turn on or turn off depending on situations it meets. I concede that not every book needs to read more than once because some books are meaningless and therefore not worthwhile to read twice. However, when we choose a good book to read, we should better review it after first reading until we comprehend everything it provides. By doing so we can get the most out of it, as we would understand it better, put the knowledge into practice and get inspirations to develop ingenious ideas.

Should children choose a job that is similar to their parents'? Some people think that children should find a job very different from their parents' job. I however disagree with this contention and instead believe that there are several benefits for children to choose jobs that are similar to their parents'. To begin with, if children want to do a job in the future that is related to their parents' job, their parents can prepare them for the job since they are in schools or universities. This is very helpful to children to develop relevant skills for their future jobs. My cousin Richard, whose father is a physics teacher, wanted to be a teacher like his father after graduation. His father gave lots of good advice when he studied in university. These valuable advice come from his father's teaching experience. Even though he did not have much real experience of teaching, his father's instruction has enabled him to be a qualified physics teacher. Second, children could learn a lot from their parents when their jobs are similar. Parents are always willing to share the best experiences and lessons with their children. For example, I have a friend John, who is an IT engineer, and his father's job is making computer hardware. Both of them are dealing with computers; one is good at software development and the other hardware. Since John was in university, he learned from his father about computer science and knowledge about hardware, and then he majored in software development. After graduation, his father and he set up their own company, and that makes them make a lot of money. Besides, John has become an expert in IT field. Last but not least, children and parents would have a better relationship when they have a common ground. By discussing problems and find solutions together, children and parents could be prefect partner in their work. In history of science, there are many research teams made up of parents and their children, such as Marie Curie and her daughter, Braggs and so on. They made great discoveries in physics and won Nobel price by working together. I conclude that, in some cases, children should choose a job that is different from their parents' because of their different disposition and preferences. However, I strongly believe that children doing a job that assembles their parents' would benefit them in lots of aspects as they can provide valuable advice, they can learn from each other and they can develop an intimate partnership.

Making decisions alone or not? We sometimes inevitably need to make some important decisions in our life. But should we make a decision alone or should we always need to consult with others? Despite getting some advice from others is helpful I think that most of the time we have to make decisions even important ones by ourselves. And there are several reasons for this. To begin with, as a grown up, one has to learn to make important decisions by oneself. In other words, making decision alone means a person is not overly reliant on others and has his or her own mind. And in reality this ability is crucial to our career and life. Since I was a small child, my parents always encouraged me to make decisions by myself, because they thought it could help me to be an independent person. Because of this, I have learned to be a person with independent and critical thinking. This enables me to develop valuable characteristics like thinking carefully and making decision decisively. After entering university, because I was far apart from my parents, I often made decisions alone to go ahead in my study, such as changing my major, and decision to further education overseas after graduating. Second, lots of times we have to make decision by ourselves because we cannot get help or advice from others. As nowadays our friends or relatives do different jobs or in different industries, they are not able to provide professional suggestions to us when we need. My older brother Richard makes money by investing in stocks, which is a risk business that is similar to gambling due to its rapid change in prize. No one can provide him advice and prediction about which stock should he invests, so he has to make all choices according to his own judgment. Sometimes he loses money, but most of the time his own decisions help me make a fortune.

The reasons why we have to work.

Few people have ever stopped to think about what are some other reasons why we have to work besides making a living. By combining our own experience and what learned from those astute philosophers and psychologists, we learned that people need to work because of several reasons – achieving sense of accomplishment, wining recognition of others and natural desires of human being to work. Admittedly, sometimes we really want to pause and have a rest, but this does not mean we want to stop working for good. In fact, one will feel very bored when stopping working or doing something constructive for a long time.

 

What is your idea or reason why people have to work?

Would someone like to join a group discussion via skype?

Would someone like to join a group discussion via skype? Each group needs about 3 to 5 members. The discussion group is aim to improve our oral English by rephrasing articles chosen from magazines or newspapers like Scientific American,

The conversation, and some other famous sources. Generally, the procedure of practice is defined as follows:

1> The host chooses an article beforehand, and sent the link to other members and let everyone knows the article of our upcoming session.
2> One by one, each member reads one paragraph of the article, and then tries to summarize content and information of the paragraph he or her just read.

3> Others who want to give comments to the paragraph could say something then.

The purpose of the group discussion is to help us rephrase and summarize the knowledge we learn instantly, and we will also acquire knowledge and build vocabulary by reading articles from different topics. I believe that we can help each other and exchange views and knowledge during our discussion. We will have two sessions each week routinely, but the time of session does not determine yet. Please add my skype to your contact and send me a message saying group discussion if you are interested in. 

Are students losing basic calculation skills? Students generally are losing basic calculation skills which they need to function in their math and science courses. This has come about, in my opinion, because students are now so over-reliant on calculators and computers. For instance, computers in one form or another perform a variety of tasks and functions that students used to do themselves in their research and study. For example, students nowadays are accustomed to use the software called matlab to find solutions to equations and use calculators to do arithmetic for their homework. As a result, students cannot do complicated even simple calculations by themselves without calculators, which in turn makes them more depend on computers and calculators.

Should we choose a subject that we are interested in or one that is helpful to our future job? When it comes to choosing subjects, some students prefer to choose the subjects that they are interested in rather than the subjects that they need to prepare for a job or a career. As far as I am concerned, it is more important to choose subjects that can be drawn on to find a job; and there are several reasons for this. Even though interests are the best teacher when someone learns something, one of most important aspects of education, especially for someone from a not so wealthy family like me, is to find a good job and make a living after one graduate from school or university. It is obvious that, for most of students, the reason why they spending so much money going to university to acquire knowledge is because they want to learn something useful and valuable, so that they can make more money, climb their ladder of career and ultimately to earn a happier life. Consider students who come from countryside in China as an example. Most of those students do not have a rich family and good background, so they have studied hard since even their elementary school, and by diligently study, they had the opportunity to enter universities or colleges to further education. Hence, they of course consider their future work and career as the first place.

writing practice: Failure often leads to success?

What do you think of this statment?

Fuilure often leads to success.

Give an example of why you think this is sometimes ture. Give another example of why you think this statement is sometimes not ture. Then state your opinion of this statement.