What we read
The authors of Skillful Reading and Writing 4 (Skillful 4), Mike Boyle and Lindsay Warwick, introduce each unit with a discussion activity, that is, an opportunity for us to share our ideas on the topic of the unit in a way that relates it to our own lives, ideas and experiences. Unit 5 of book 4 (Boyle & Warwick, 2014, p.47) does this for the unit titled "Sprawl."
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My response
The research solidly shows that brainstorming or discussion activities for groups are more effective if participants start by working individually (O'Connell, 2010; Markman, 2017). In fact, experts at Harvard University's School of Management and elsewhere are sure that this can be very effectively done using online tools as Chamorro-Premuzic emphasizes in his 2015 article "Why brainstorming works better online" in the Harvard Business Review. Blogging is one effective way to do this, which is one reason I've turned Boyle and Warwick's discussion exercise into a quick blogging discussion.
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Boyle and Warwick's questions
Think about these questions for a minute, then respond in a three paragraph comment.
Write full sentences. You will also need to write a few sentences for each of your ideas, giving explanation, examples and other details to clarify and develop them.
You can answer the questions in any order, for which reason I replaced Boyle and Warwick's numbers with bullets. This is a fluency activity; that is, you want to quickly turn your ideas into sentences one after the other. Whilst the style should be similar to the formality of academic writing, this is not an academic writing exercise. Your aim is to write down as many of your ideas as you can in the allotted time.
Open a new comment box and start writing. You have ten (10:00) minutes.
- Are you from the city or the countryside? Do you like where you live? Why or why not?
- What are the advantages and disadvantages of living in the city? Think of at least three of each.
- What are some of the problems that exist in your city? How do you think they could be solved?
Write full sentences. You will also need to write a few sentences for each of your ideas, giving explanation, examples and other details to clarify and develop them.
You can answer the questions in any order, for which reason I replaced Boyle and Warwick's numbers with bullets. This is a fluency activity; that is, you want to quickly turn your ideas into sentences one after the other. Whilst the style should be similar to the formality of academic writing, this is not an academic writing exercise. Your aim is to write down as many of your ideas as you can in the allotted time.
Open a new comment box and start writing. You have ten (10:00) minutes.
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Reference
- Boyle, M. & Warwick, L. (2014). Skillful Reading & Writing, Student's Book 4. London: Macmillan Education
- Chamorro-Premuzic, T. (2015, April 2). Why brainstorming works better online. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2015/04/why-brainstorming-works-better-online
- Markman, A. (2017, May 18). Your team is brainstorming all wrong. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2017/05/your-team-is-brainstorming-all-wrong
- O'Connell, A. (2010, February 4). Sometimes, it’s better to brainstorm alone. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2010/02/when-its-better-to-brainstorm
1. I live in the city since I was born. I like to live in the city but sometimes in the city is to busy. I think when I retired, I will live in the countryside.
ReplyDelete2. The advantages of living in the city are, you can transport from one place to another place easily by taking public transportation. Second advantages is, if you want to buy something you can go out to department store near your house, it take only 10-20 minutes.
Literally, my hometown is Petchaboon, but I have lived in Bangkok for most entire of my life. I love the spot of my house, since there are not too crowned and still have good facilities, such as fresh market, market, the mall, private hospital and etc. Nevertheless, the main troublesome that ruins my happiness of living is traffic jam. However, there are advantages and disadvantages of living in the city.
ReplyDelete.
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-I'm from the countryside of Udonthani province.I like this place because it's more natural than the city.
ReplyDelete-The famous school,the famous store are advantages.
High pollution,traffic are disadvantages.
-About pollution,I think, we should decrease driving and take the bus, train, taxi instead.
1. I'm live in the capital city for my entire life ,even though my parent are from countryside of Thailand. I never think about leaving here as there's really convenient and comfy place for me somehow. I love how technology grow the city comparing to the countryside. Many important and historical place gathered here.
ReplyDelete2. Advantage
- It's convenient to transport around the city.
Disadvantage
- People and traffic are crowded.
- There's pollution everywhere.
- There's high cost of living.
What are the advantages and disadvantages of living in the city? Think of at least three of each.
What are some of the problems that exist in your city? How do you think they could be solved?
Firstly, I'd like to tell that I'm from a countryside, Chachoengsao province, Thailand. I mostly like my hometown because it's fully with nature and happy family which differed from the city, Bangkok, it's quite lots of cars and traffic problems.
ReplyDeleteConforming to the question 2, in my point of view, a city is very convinced to go anywhere because it has many public transports: monorail trains, subways, buses and boats. Additionally, the city has numerous department stores which people could find anything that they need. However, the city has significantly disadvantages, those is the traffic problems.
The main problem of the city is traffic jams and I think it could not be solved quickly.
- I'm from Bangkok city. I don't like where I live. It's over populated and very busy especially in the rush hour. I prefer the city with empty space and well arranged public area.
ReplyDelete- The advantages of living in the city are infrastructure, easy accessing of all facilities, much higher salary for office worker. The disadvantages are pollution, traffic, high competition in career that cause stress.
- The city that I live in is overpopulated. The air is not fresh. And the people are selfish. The solution is to improve living equality in the countryside.
-I live in Bangkok, the capital city of Thailand. If I could choose where to live, I would live in Munich because I love the weather there. There are a lot of beautiful historical places like churches and old buildings. The public transports' quality is great also.
ReplyDelete-Living in a city has many advantages, for example, better quality of public transports, easier access to good standard of education and the availability of shopping centers. However, living in a city also has many disadvantages, for example, air pollution, heavy traffic and higher competition for jobs.
I come form city , I live since I was born so it hard to tell that I like to live here or not.But if I must make a decision ,I will choose to live in city because city have all facility that I can use and I do not have any idea how to live in countryside.
ReplyDeleteAdvantage for live in city are comfortable , transportation and a lot of facility that we can use.Disadvantage is chaos traffic,population density and a lot of waste in neighborhood area.
I was born in Bangkok and stay in the city for more than 19 years. The most attraction things is the convenience, people from the suburban gathered in the city in order to get more comfortable whether in transportation, education and business etc. The second advantage of the city is that the map are easily understandable, for instance, My family went on the trip last year to other province even though we used GPS, but still lost. The next important thing is the quality of education, if you are surfing through the internet, what you will see what the difference of images which can shows you many things.
ReplyDelete