Monday 20 April 2020

Skillful 3: Reading and Writing, page 134 - Discussion point 3

What is it? 

In their concluding question to the discussion of the infographic on page 134, Rogers and Zemach invite us to follow up their examples with our own opinion about a more general question that unit 8 will be exploring (2018).

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Response 

As we have before, we will discuss Rogers and Zemach's third discussion point question in blog comments, which is likely to generate a wider variety of ideas in addition to giving us a more permanent record of our ideas while also getting in some practice writing for fluency in a less academic style, but still writing our ideas in grammatically complete sentences that clearly state our ideas. 
 
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Question

After thinking about it for a minute or two, write down your response to Rogers and Zemach's  question in a comment below. 

  • In your opinion, whose responsibility is it to decide what is right and what is wrong? 

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You have nine minutes to plan and write a response to the three questions. I suggest you divide your time roughly as:
  • planning = 2:00 minutes
  • writing = 6:00 minutes, and 
  • editing = 1:00 minutes.

Remember, your writing should make sense independently of the question it might be answering, so it would be useful to give background, which can often be done by paraphrasing the question into statements that begin your answer.  
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Reference

  • Rogers, L. & Zemach, D. E. (2018). Skillful 3: Reading & Writing (2nd. ed.). London: Macmillan Education 

13 comments:

  1. I think it's really hard to decide who is best qualified to decide what is right or wrong, that is, to make the rules or law for a society. As we have just seen in the survey about different behaviours, our class disagrees about what should and should not be punished, so we appear to have different ideas about what is right and wrong.

    But to function smoothly, society does need clear rules. I think that everyone should have a say in what rules are made, which is why democracy demands free speech, especially free speech for ideas that offend other people. If everyone is expected to follow the laws that are made up, they must have an equal voice in deciding what is punished and not. This is why good societies need a strong constitution so that the government and the majority cannot do what they want against minorities or people who have opinions that the majority hates. For example, people must be free to say that gay sex should be punished, or that gay men must be allowed to marry each other. Both opinions must be allowed to be stated. And the more controversial an opinion is, the more important is strong legal protection for the opposite ideas.

    So, I think the society should decide, but giving everyone a chance to have input into the laws that govern them; otherwise, it is not just.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Some groups should not get any special say: not lawyers, not priests or monks, not rich people or any ohter group. The politicians should represent the people, and sometimes a referendum must be held after a lot of free argument where everyone has been able to say what they think on a topic.

      Delete
  2. I think it's the responsibility of judge but they depends on certain conditions. For example, the judge should be justice, concern the ethic and moral standard. They also are under the law and constitution.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. At first, I didn't agree with Kun's comment, but when I thought about it more, her explanation does make sense. I'm not sure that it's really the judge deciding what's right or wrong, but I like Kun's explanation, which tells us that the judge (n.) judges(v.) whether something follows the law or not, and their job is to apply that law.

      I really like the idea of the judge acting under a constitution. That's like my idea that a constitution is also needed to stop majority opinion attacking minorities, but for that, democracy is a necessity.

      Delete
  3. In my opinion, it depends on situation and location. In governmental sectors, it is clear that corruption is the serious crime and the sector chief is the one who has to decide and give punishment. On the contrary, bribery may be one of the measures that private sectors use to accomplish the goal

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It's very interesting idea. Do the private sectors judge under the country's law?

      Delete
    2. I think that your opinion is quite interesting, leading to having a question about justice. What would we do if the most powerful system has a lot of doubt?

      Delete
  4. For me, it's responsibirity of someone lies to hide their mistakes is wrong because it seem to be that mistakes are hided and the bigger problems will be happened, so they should be punished to be not do it again. Therefore, to lie in every situation it is going to be a criminals.

    ReplyDelete
  5. The responsibility to judge the action is right or wrong should depend on the level of its mistake. In our society, there are many classifications of the rule for shaping our society manner, law or culture. If such action again the law of that country, it should be the job of the police or judge and jury to define that mistake.
    On the other hand, some actions might break just old traditions or social norms. It will be the responsibility in that society or that organizes.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. After I have read your opinion it related to my idea and I decide to change my idea about the function of our social norms. I also agree with you that punishing someone should depend on their level of mistake.

      Delete
  6. Moral is the frame helping people define what is right or wrong. Every one should rely on societies's norm or moral which screens people's action in a right direction in their societies such as human should not have sex with animal it is wrong. Moral and norm are the beginning of the idea to create a law or principle to control human's behavior to follow the rule so then they can not harm others weather intentionally or not.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I agree with you that we should rely on social norm and moral. so that, we will have the criteria to decide which one is right or wrong and who have to be responsible to judge.

      Delete
    2. I really like the ideas that moral can help people to screen people to action right or wrong.

      Delete

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