Writing Activity

Acupuncture looks scary especially to young children because the doctor needs to insert thin needles into a body part which is very stressful to children. However to me, when I was ten years old, it had been very helpful and a good thing to me. At first, I was nervous and scared but I trusted my mother who recommended it and brought me to the clinic. The atmosphere seems fine and good. There were a lot of people who were waiting. We also did the same. Finally, after about 30 minutes, it is our turn. My mother explained what happened to my foot.

In 2009, one afternoon, I was walking on my way back to my house from my school. It is a 5 minute walk but I was in a hurry at that time. I needed to get there on time because I had to study with my tutor. I didn’t want her to wait so I half ran and walk but suddenly, my right foot didn’t have a good landing. I tripped it over and it was very painful. After a few minutes, my affected foot became bigger and it doubled in size. I was really very worried. The same with my mother, so after half an hour, she drove me to the place. As a result, we were inside the clinic of an acupuncturist.

The medical practitioner looked nice and friendly. He didn’t scare me with his needles, and I felt strangely comfortable with him. First, he told me to lie down. I got afraid when he was holding some needles, but he instructed me to be calm because it wasn’t painful, so I trusted him. He inserted all the needles into my right foot, yet I didn’t feel any poking sensation which will make it painful. It was kind of cool because the needles are all standing up in my foot. The thing is that acupuncture really healed my swollen foot.
To sum up, acupuncture is a really good treatment for everyone including children. They didn’t need to get scared and the same goes with adults who would like to try it. It’s not really dangerous and scary. It’s just a bunch of needles.

Personal Response (Wall-E)

Consumer capitalism is a big issue that we are facing but we are not exactly aware of it. We just buy things that are convincingly advertised to us by skilled marketers. Buyers don’t realize the big dilemma which is losing their self-worth.

To begin with, they become more materialistic. Technologies changed rapidly. This is what causes people to catch modern products they see to show everyone because of their pride to have it. If they get this, they feel very accomplished and happy. What they don’t know is that they already become greedy.

Furthermore, we tend to rely more on technology especially in doing our own task. For example, in some countries they use robots instead of real people to become a nanny. They made these things with such good equipments in order to function as a person but no matter what they can’t copy it exactly like us. Robots are just machines that require special programs. In addition, it runs out of battery and gets useless if there is no electricity. They are not similar to humans that have feelings and never need electricity to get power.

To sum up, we need more awareness about this issue. We can start by asking ourselves, “Who can do the job better, human or things?” Before we start buying worthless things, let’s consider this as something that we can reflect especially in the future.

'Speak' (a personal response) (stimulus)

Q. Based on the stimulus below, give a personal response and justify it. Choose any text type you have studied in class. Write 150-250 words.

"We are unaware that we are communicating in many different ways even when we are not speaking [...] We are rarely taught about this non-verbal form of communication in school [...] We informally learn how to use gestures, glances slight changes in tone of voice, [...] to alter or emphasize what we say and do [...] we learn these culture bound techniques largely by observing others and imitating them."

I strongly agree with the above stimulus for the following reasons. People usually use non-verbal form of communications, like gestures, glances or slight changes in tone of voice. And this kinds of non-verbal languages help people to communicate with each other much easier. For example, if you see the main character of ‘speak’ which is Malinda, she does not talk that much. Instead of having a verbal communication, she just expresses her emotions by twisting up her face to show that she does not have any interest to talk to the others. Also their ex-best friends did not say anything to Malinda, but when she saw her ex-best friends, she realized that they don’t want to talk to her. So, even people don’t have verbal communication, they can express their emotions. Furthermore, non-verbal form of communications let people express their emotions efficiently, and also they use them to capture the attentions of the audiences. For example, during the speech we can easily find that a lot of non-verbal form of communications like hand gesture and changes in tone of voice. And I think the purpose of the speeches are to show up their own ideas. So I can conclude that the non-verbal forms of communications are really helpful to express themselves.

'Speak' (a personal responce)

Are the pressures fitting in at high school greater than any other point in one’s life? Explain.

I think the pressure of fitting in at high school is greater than any other point in one’s life for the following reasons. First, the pressure of fitting in at high school is connected to the school life of student. To explain, if a student does not fit in at school properly, he or she will not have classmates to play with. So, the student will feel lonely. Second, it can affect other things like grades. If we see the film ‘Speak’, Melinda’s grade drastically went down because she was not able to fit in a clan, and she did not share her problems to the others. Therefore, I think pressures fitting in at high school are greater than other things.

Do parents understand the problems teenagers go through? Explain.

In my opinion, I think parents understand the problems a teenager goes through for the following reasons. Previously, parents were teenagers about 20 to 30 years ago, so I am sure that the parents had similar problems like their children have. I believe that parents will understand the problems. In my case, my parents always listen to my problems, and they even help me to solve them by giving me some advises. Secondly, parents have more experience and are wiser than us because parents lived much longer than we did. For example, if we see our grand parents, they know some more ways to solve the problems. Last but not least, parents know almost everything about their children because they stayed with their children since they were born. Therefore, I think parents can understand the problems that teenagers are having.