Monday, 10 May 2021

Skillful 4: Reading and Writing, page 62 - Discussion point 3

Discuss (v.) & discussion (n.) 

page 62
In every unit of Skillful 4, authors Lindsay Warwick and Louis Rogers make frequent use of the verb discuss (2018). The noun discussion is in fact the very first word of every unit, and the third word in every unit is the verb, for example on page 62. Rogers and Zemach almost always collocate the verb discuss with the object noun partner, or put them in close proximity. They clearly intend the discussion to be spoken, which is what we sometimes do, but in many cases, it helps our reading and writing class more to have a written discussion of the questions the authors ask us to discuss.

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Why hold the discussion on an online forum? 

Apart from the fact that ours is a reading and writing class, there are several solid reasons for holding at least some of our discussions online. 
  • It practices response writing for fluency. Unlike in more formal academic writing, the goal is not to do research or even to plan carefully, but to quickly communicate your own ideas on a topic or in response to an issue. You should still write complete sentences organized in paragraphs, but we are not looking for a carefully planned piece of work that was extensively reviewed and revised after it was first written and posted. Response writing is not academic writing; it does, however, practice the fluency that is also important in more formal work.  
     
  • This sort of response writing is common at universities today. As part of their assessment, students are often expected to participate in online discussion forums that explore issues raised in lectures, seminars, or tutorials. This sort of response writing is a common component of academic work. 
     
  • Brainstorming and sharing ideas independently of face-to-face group discussion typically produces a wider and more thoughtful variety of responses, which is good for the group. See, for example, the articles on this in the Harvard Business Review by Art Markman (2017), Andrew O’Connell (2010), and Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic (2015). (If you are interested, read some of the sources I've cited here after our class. They are all short.) 

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Warwick and Rogers' question 

Financial risk taking

We have already shared our ideas on the first two discussion point questions, which relate to your own county's energy production. The third question asks asks for our own ideas on a related issue. We will hold this discussion online, here on our class blog.  

Warwick and Rogers' question is: 

  • What risks do people take in their family life, social life, work life, and leisure time?

You have 9:00 minutes to write your answer in the comment box below. 

I suggest you spend 2:00 minutes to plan your answer. (Planning is usually a good idea.) That will leave you another 6:00 minutes to write your response to the question, stating and explaining your ideas, perhaps with relevant examples. The remaining minute can be used to edit your writing before you click the blue "Publish" button. 

 

A helpful strategy

Imagine you are writing for someone who has not seen the question you are answering. Your job is to clearly communicate your response to that reader. Because your writing should make sense independently of the question it might be answering, it is usually helpful to give background, which can often be done by paraphrasing the question into statements that begin your answer. 
 

Remember: sentences in paragraphs 

This is response writing. You want to communicate your ideas fluently as if you were speaking for a few minutes to someone actively listening. However, that person can't stop you to ask questions or clarify, so it's important to state your ideas in complete sentences organized into paragraphs. 

 

Follow up

Finally, before you publish your comment, check "Notify me" below the comment box. You want to get updates on new contributions to the discussion.  

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References



26 comments:

  1. There are multiple risks that people have to take in their daily life. The couple has to take risk that they will stay together forever or divorce. The factors that humans should be aware before choosing their work are the working environment, and the collaborators which is considered the risk. Making new friends, there is a chance that friends can become an enemies. In their freetime, if they choose to watch movies, they bought netflix. They may like or dislike it, but they are already paid for it.

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    1. I like your examples of love, collaborators, and friends. We are exposed to one of these or even all of them and sometimes do not realize how fragile it is.

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    2. your idea very interesting, you can give the example like the same as when we buy lottery we don't know if we win or not? but we paid it already. For me have a thing can help me control my own feeling is try to not expect too much and do the best as I can in my condition.

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  2. Sorry, Pueng and I were busy, so we did not write comments. But that's not a problem, we'll do it for homework like everyone else.

    My first idea was that in relationships we take risks when we trust others: we don't know if they will keep our trust or betray us. But I'm out of time.

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    1. And the intensely annoying jackhammering in my soi right now reminds me of another type of risk. My home is on Silom Road, where I've been very happy to live for many years, but a few months ago, the demolition of the old Surawong Road head office of the Bank of Thailand, which is almost opposite my home, began. This has turned my usually quiet soi of long term residents with street stalls and a market next door into a very noisy place between 9:00 AM and 5:00 PM six days a week.

      It was a large, solid building, but after a few months of serious jackhammering, it is almost gone. I imagine that the next thing coming is a couple of years of construction work as something bigger goes up to replace the old bank building.

      Progress and development also come with risks.

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  3. People do take risk everyday. With the current situation of pandemic, we all take risk of being infected by COVID-19. Waking up, taking the skytrain, and buying breakfast are all the risk we face. Coming home and re-join with family also bring risk of infection to your family members. However, we cannot escape the truth of taking-risk in our daily lives.

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    1. I agree with Aom. In this situation, we take risk in every stop in our life. Going outside is not normal because we want to save ourselves and our family. I could see people are respect to the society by wearing mask and preparing alcohol gel. I hope we will pass this together.

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    2. I agree with Aom and Pueng that the risk of contracting Covid now seems unavoidable. I've modified my own behaviour a lot over the past year, but it's the last month or so that has worried me most, as the number of infections has sharply increased in Bangkok. Short of locking myself up in my room and not seeing anyone, I can't think of anyway to eliminate the risk, and there are also risks in extreme social isolation.

      Now, I've just finished my morning routine of coffee and catching up on the news. It's time to put on my mask and go for a walk to buy some groceries, hopefully without catching Covid, which is a risk I think has to be accepted if life is to go on.

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  4. Risk is a threat that poses problems for life especially in the rapidly changing globalization era. At the same time, if living without risk at all it may lead to more problems. Therefore, we should understand the risks and the level of risk management that the activities have achieving the objectives.
    Risk in the meaning of daily life is something that could happen by accident. Or unexpectedly, for example, walking around in a public park anyway, a floating object dropped onto our head, or perhaps we had no way of avoiding it. For example, in the case of rural life walking barefoot in a secluded place, it might be snatched by a snake. But he had no money to buy shoes and need to find food to eat. they need to took a risk.

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    1. I totally agree with you. Even though we try hard to avoid risks, they can occur and cause both benefits and dangers to our life. I saw news from a few years ago about a family who lived in their house as usual. However, a car from somewhere else smashed their home and killed all of them. In general, no one thinks living in their own house would lead them to die, but this news showed it could. That is why risks are so common in our life.

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    2. I definitely agree with both of you. Sometimes, you cannot know what is going to happen with you. You just have to be aware all the time so that the accident did not hurt you badly. For instance, if you were walking in the garden, and you noticed that the branch is going to fall down, you will have time to run away and be safe.

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  5. Although risks may provide drawbacks to them, several people still challenge themselves and take risks. Someone says he or she never take a risk in his or her life. Personally, taking risk is not a big deal as various theories said. People always deal with risk in their daily life even if they do not realize. For instance, when the sky looks a little dark in the morning, people had to decied whether they need to prepare an umbella or not. If people choose a wrong decision, they will wet because of the rain. That is an example of common risk which we can meet in our daily life.

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    1. I like your example of the umbrella on a cloudy day. I don't like carrying an umbrella, so if it's not actually raining when I leave my home, I don't normally take an umbrella. I know this is a risk, and often if does rain, which means I have to buy another umbrella. I have a collection of about seven umbrellas at the moment! (I just counted them.)

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    2. I just read my comment again - "about seven" sounds a bit odd. There are in fact exactly seven. One of the risks I take when writing quickly is that I sometimes change my mind half way through a sentence, and then fail to revise the the first part to match the revised second par. In this case, I had started to write a rough guess, hence "about," before deciding to quickly count, hence the specific "seven." The risk of not reviewing your work before clicking "Publish" is that you will sometimes sound a bit silly, but in a quick piece of response writing, that's not something to worry too much about. And we can always reply to it to clarify something we've previously published.

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  6. For risks in their family life, I think people could face uncertainty in their relationships. A good example is getting divorce, especially in nowadays. Divorce can affect mental health of the people in family. For risks in social life, I think people have to deal with many kinds of social problems such crime, injustice, income inequality.

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    1. That reminds me of my own family's experience. Three of my sisters married them men they were in love with, and subsequently divorced. One of my sisters has remained in a strong relationship with a guy she has never married.

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    2. Yeah, life is not what we expected. Uncertainty is a certainty and certainty is an uncertainty...^^"

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  7. I think that everyone face with risk everyday such as, travelling to work. Family life can risk by some relationship is not successful. However, no one want thier family do not success. Next, sometime which people choose their work is not suitable for them or some company that they choose is not stable so they have some risk about their financial. Moreover, nowadays, a great deal of people do not spend time with their family and friends because they spend all of their time on internet that is risk for relationship in family and friends. The last, that I told before nowadays people spend time with their gadgets result in making some problem for their health such as, eye damaging.

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    1. I really agreed with Jam. We don’t know when we will face the risk and the risk is everywhere. I think we should be careful in our daily life. But sometimes we can’t prepare for every risk. The risks come out unexpectedly. The thing that we can do is accept it if it’s already happened and fix it.

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  8. I think the risk that people have is health problems. Health problems are very important in our life. Sometimes we have health problems that make us unable to do anything that we want. Health Problems make me sad and spend more money. We will not know when we have health problems and accidents. We should be careful about our life and our health.

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    1. Totally agreed with you! Illness is an unpredictable situation that could risk your life and your family.

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    2. I agree with Nam. Nowadays, a great deal of people face with health problems and it make some risk for people because this problem cannot predict such as, covid-19. Therefore, in the present, everyone should be careful for everything in their dailylife.

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  9. From my perspective, I believe that risks play a crucial role in every aspects of our life. In social life, Making new friends can be considered as risky action, especially in the internet. Moreover, in family life, evey decisions you take can be a risk as it may affect all of your family members such as moving house. In work life, business owners have to take risks in order to expand their business such as selling their stocks.

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    1. Wow, it's such a great example of what we are facing on everyday risk! I'm 100% agree with you.

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  10. In my opinion, the risk that involved in everyday life is doing something without considering it. For example, we always talk to other people without thinking and it might course some trouble later on. Some people say the word is the most powerful weapon on Earth that could raise a war or peace.

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    1. I am totally agree with you that words have a huge impacts on our life. Saying what we think may be risky since we don't know if it will cause positive or negative impacts. So, I think that everyone should choose the appropriate words for their own conversation.

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