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Why hold our discussion online?
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 116. The authors 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.
For a more detailed explanation of the benefits for us of written discussions, see the blog page "For better discussions", which is included on the menu bar below the blog title. You might like to read that and the other pages on that menu outside of class.
Warwick and Rogers' question 1 (Skillful rw4, p. 152)
Since we might reasonably have different answers to Warwick and Rogers' first discussion point question, we naturally want to present our supporting reasons, and perhaps explain why the other challenges presented in the infographic are, while serious, not the most serious challenge facing our species at this point in our history.
Can you persuade your classmates to agree with your?
The slightly expanded question
- Of the threats listed in the infographic, which do you think poses the greatest challenge?
- Why?
- Explain why you think this challenge is greater than the other four.
Time: 16:00 minutes
I suggest you manage your time to spend:
- 3:00 - 4:00 minutes planning (choosing topics, getting ideas, and organizing those ideas)
- 9:00 minutes writing. Write quickly. This is response writing, where the purpose is to quickly communicate your ideas in writing, so although you should write complete sentences organized into paragraphs, you are not writing an academic essay.
- 2:00 - 3:00 minutes editing (review, revise, and proofread what you have written).
A useful 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 your reader. Because your writing should make sense independently of the question it might be answering, it is usually helpful to give background, which can typically be done by paraphrasing the question into statements that begin your responses.
Reference
- Warwick, L. & Rogers, L. (2018). Skillful 4: Reading & Writing, Student's Book Pack (2nd. ed.). London: Macmillan Education
Because it's in the news so much, especially this week with the COP26 meeting in progress, it's understandable that a majority would think that climate change is the greatest challenge facing our species today. But is this right?
ReplyDeleteTechnology seems benign. It helps us. We can have online classes to cope with Covid lock downs. Technology has also given us vaccines for Covid. That's one side of technology, but as we are told in the infographic "Top 5 Challenges Facing Humanity", invasive technology is also a real threat. It is, as Yujin pointed out, also a major contributing factor to rising income inequality within nations, where increasingly a small group controls more of their nations wealth, mainly thanks to technological advances that have invaded traditional manufacturing sectors, such as AMerica's once flourishing automotive sector.
This growing inequality fuels political divisions and pushes many to look for someone to blame for the loss of the jobs they once had. This in dissatisfaction with the existing political system, which is seen as failing to protect many to enrich a few, was arguably the major reason for Donald Trump's election as US President in 2016, and that was disastrous for response to climate change. Trump withdrew America from various agreements to combat climate change, and allowed increased oil drilling throughout the US. In effect, the invasive technology that has disrupted traditional social classes and income patterns led to a serious blow to climate change.
If we cannot cooperate to solve it because of the consequences of an increasing economic divide fuelled by invasive technology, that suggests that both of those challenges are in fact more fundamental than the very real challenge of climate change.
If we talk about wealth inequality and invasive technology, that likely affects growing inequality. I agree with you that invasive technology and the increasing economic divide are serious problems for humanity. In my opinion, I think invasive technology can have massive effects on us by causing people to lose their jobs. But this problem can be coped with more easily than climate change by empowering workers or improving policies. So, I think climate change is the most serious issue that we should be concerned about.
DeletePhum, what policies do you think governments should implement to deal with rising wealth inequality? Perhaps more importantly, are governments doing that?
DeleteThe use of the adjective invasive is very emotive, making technology sound like an invader attacking humans. I can understand that, but although I think that what Skillful, following others, calls "invasive technology" is not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, I think more technology makes possible far more wealth creation for humans, but that wealth has not been shared equally for the past four decades or so. The challenge, I think, is that technology that frees humans from the need to do traditional jobs such as repetitive, boring factory work or back-breaking work on a rice farm, or mind dulling work on a supermarket checkout, or tedious paperwork in an office, is extremely disruptive to society. If humans are no longer going to be employed in a range of jobs that once gave respectable work to many, perhaps most, people, what are they to do?
I think we should embrace technology, not resist it, but because it affects our lives at the deepest level, threatening the sense of worth we get from being productive members of society, which self worth used to come from working a job that added to the national wealth, I also think that our accelerating use of technology poses massive challenges to human society, and I'm not sure we have worked out how to constructively respond to those challenges that coming faster every year.
Although many people think that climate change is the greatest threat to humanity, I think that food production is the most challenge that we are facing. I have had a chance to attend a seminar on UN Sustainability and Development Goals and one of the researchers pointed a good point on how to look at the definition of 'sustainability'. As I listened to him, he pointed out that the world's system itself is sustainable which means that nature itself can adapt itself to changing environmental conditions. However, human's systems, agriculture, fishery and so on, are not sustainable because they cannot adapt to that chances. For example, plants in nature can grow and reproduce in new climates, but farmer's crops and trees cannot. So I think people should rethink and redo about how to produce our foods and consume rather than climate that has been changing.
ReplyDeleteI like Emma's idea that our food systems "cannot adapt to that chances" resulting from global warming, making them a more serious challenge. But I don't have time to write a proper response now.
DeleteIn terms of food production, I also agree that problems related to this might be the biggest concern in the future if there is no measure to solve.
DeleteHowever, I do think that many scientists found out some primary solutions such as systhesized food from laboratory or protein from insects, some of them are quite effective.
Therefore; I would like to persuade you to agree with me that increasing ecomomic divide is the most serious problem in our modern world if you have read my comment about that below this.
Hi Good, thank you for your comment. After reading what you've mentioned here, I agree with you that there are some potential solutions to solve problems on food production. I also agree with you that economic divide is the hardest issue, because there is no easy solutions to deal with it. In fact, many governments, organizations and economists have been working to solve it for long times. The worst thing is the poor is poorer, but the rich is richer.
DeleteAlthough it is clear that climate change is a serious problem in our society, I do think it is not the most concern as more and more green policies such as a reduction in carbon emission have been implemented.
ReplyDeleteIn contrast, I do believe that financial inequality is much more disturbing at the moment as there is no clear and transparent policy to control a gap between the poor and the rich. Thailand, for example, around 1% of the richest people controls more than 67% of the national wealth and this trend is similar to most countries and getting worse without trying from the government.
If we take this problem for granted, it is inevitable that the situation is going to create winner-take-all systems meaning the poor cannot bridge the gap even if they work hard.
I agree with you that we face a huge gap between rich people and poor people in Thailand, which is a serious issue for us as a whole country. Even if the poor work as hard as they can, the poor are still poor. That was terrible.
DeleteI have read some theories that say increasing the rich people's tax and providing poor people with a better welfare benefit should be the way to solve the inequality issue.
Based on this data, I think there is the way that the inequality issue can be solved. It might be difficult to deal with corruption, which plays a big part in the inequality issue, but it is not impossible.
I agree with you that the climate change is the most challenging issues for our species but it is well awared that many policies are implemented to deal with. Financial inequality is one of the neglected problem which can lead to serious result like revolution and robbery. I think that it’s impossible to wish everyone would get the same incomes. How much people get depends on their individual skills to work. It’s a good idea to think about self development rather than to wait for some supports. It’s unfair too,if the one who study hard and delicate themselves to job get the same income with the one who do nothing,addicted to drugs and games. The only things that I think remain unfair in the developing country is the availability of education for every social classes supported by the government. I think that government should take attention and spend more budget to the sectors of education more seriously and they used to,especially in my country.
DeleteHi, as Yok's mentioned here, I agree that the income inequality is the toughest problem for mankind, as it is challenging to create fair education and employment opportunity, fair distribution on income.
DeleteIn my opinion, climate change is the greatest challenge. People have been addressing this problem for a very long time. However, there are still some consequences from climate change going on at present, for example, melting of glaciers, heat wave, unusual weather and storms.
ReplyDeleteClimate change has many consequences, and each consequence leads to one another. With the lack of natural habitats for animals and plants, the agricultural and food production sector will soon be affected. The rising water temperature also affects the quality of water we are drinking. In addition, some part of the world are suffering with drought and the lack of fresh water, these impacts are also caused by climate change.
Even a little part of your daily routines, such as driving cars and using fertilizers help increase climate change.
I do agree with you that climate changes is the most challenging issues. Its effects is so irreparable that many influential countries have to generate new innovations to dealt with. The toughest part of this issue is that our behaviors which make us more comfortable mostly are the causw pf climate changes. Nevertheless, I this this problem has been well addressed globally. If some less severe issues are neglecting, they can be more serious than this issue. I think invasive technology is a silent danger which can bring drastic problems to our society, if not manage properly at first.
DeleteFrom my opinion, climate change is the greatest challenge that we are facing right now. It effects every living things not only human and it is also the starting point for the many following problems. For example, only in this year,2021, there are flooding in many areas around the world. As people were facing the flood, the other problems came after, the agricultural sector, the water cover all the land and the plants died. Another reason that I think climate change is the greatest challenge is that it is prove that the way we live are wrong and we have to change the habits that we used to do.
ReplyDeleteSea, what habits do you think we need to change?
DeleteI'm also wondering if we might be able to keep our habits if we changed the way we do them, especially how we get the energy needed for them. For example, could we keep our cars in a way that was not harmful to the climate? I have never owned a car and have not driven since I was in high school some decades ago, but that's because my habits living in a city do not require owning or driving a car, but many people choose lifestyles different to mine, and I don't think that my family living in rural areas could so easily manage without cars. Might there be a way that the very popular habit of using cars could be made environmentally friendly?
I think the other challenge is the consequences of climate change, such as the lack of freshwater that is directly affected by climate change. It might be because the temperature has increased and led to a lack of fresh water.
ReplyDeleteEven food production might become a challenge for humanity because of climate change. We cannot produce as much food as we used to, so we cannot meet the demands of the population.
Furthermore, I think other challenges that do not harm to human as climate change, such as increasing economy divide or invasive technology, it is just cause somebody to lose their job, but do not affect all humans directly.
Climate Change is the most challenging problem to solve, in my opinion. Although it is a spotlight in the media (Greta Thunberg etc.), I think the scale of the problem and the lack of prioritizing the problem in some countries makes it hard to solve, especially in second or third world countries, where there is no room to look at climate change with their economic or food crisis. Therefore, it is hard to unite all people and stop them from using fossil fuel, and start using electric cars, which are only noticeably effective to the environment in first world countries. While lack of water can be solved by inventing new innovations, and food production itself is not the problem, in my opinion the problem is over-consumption, and even if invasive technology can make economic divide worse, the government can fix it by providing equal education, which reaches to all social-classes, which is also challenging but at least it can be fixed in a smaller scale compared to climate change.
ReplyDeleteThis opinion is reasonable, although I am more than concerned about increasing economic divide.
DeleteHowever, I feel that climate change cannot be solved unless we mitigate financial inequality relating to people's wellbeing first.
To illustrate, it is difficult to imagine that when most citizens in many countries are struglling to earn more income to survive and still have lower amount of money of 1% of the rich, the environment problems seem to be out of their interests including the government.
To Good's point, I would add that it is not reasonable to tell the people of India, China, or Africa that they cannot develop economically to match the standard of living enjoyed in countries like my own, or the US or western Europe because they need to protect us from climate change.
DeleteIf the rich world expects the poorer part of the world to do what is required to save all of us, they need to pay for that. Are they?
The world has been challenges facing with many issues. For example, water shortage, food production, increasing economic divide, or invasive technology. However, the greatest challenges is climate change because it is hidden by our ignorance and unawareness. The rest of the problems seem to be close to us and the results seem more vividly since it affects us directly. In contrast, Global warming seem to be a problem that happen little by little and it changes our life bit by bit. Not many people that will really concern how it would affect their life. People in the antarctic see malting gracia every days and they have consider that this problem lead to another problems. For example, polar bears extinction, flooding. But people in the tropical country may not recognize that how this would affect their life. As I told you this problem is hidden under our ignorance and unawareness. To solve this problem people have to be unify and understand the big picture that climate change affects all on us not only people in particular areas. Climate change is the greatest fear that we need to face and fix it as soon as possible.
ReplyDeleteWhen I first read Num's comment about climate change that "it is hidden by our ignorance and unawareness," I disagreed. But reading on, I understood the point she explains very well: unlike obvious things such as a drought in my country where the lack of fresh water leaves barren land with the bodies of dead sheep and cattle lying around dried up streams and dams, climate change and our contributions to it are not so vivid. When I enjoy my salmon sashimi, it does not occur to me to think of how much greenhouse gas was created to get that delicious snack to me. And my air conditioner keeps my home pleasant, while using electricity that I believe in Thailand comes from burning oil or coal. It appears that I'm a major contributor to global warming! I don't know what my carbon footprint is, but having reflected on Num's ideas, I suspect it is high. As she says, the results of my own behaviour are "hidden under [my] ignorance and unawareness."
DeleteI wonder what impact my fresh-brewed morning coffee that I'm enjoying as I type these words has? Again, ignorance and unawareness.
In 2000s,world population is going to expand rapidly that lead to many issues followed.
ReplyDeleteClimate changes may be believed to be the most serious effect, but I think that, recently, many influential companies start to care about this issue. They change their commonly used products into the more eco-friendly versions such as cars, electronic devices and also our meal as well. I think freshwater deficiency is the most drastic one. We live in thailand, the area which locate near the river banks so it is easy to access there and its price is fairly cheap. This can make us neglect one of the most seroous global issues. In fact, freshwater resources cover for less than ten percentage of the global water resources. Saltwater is useless for consumption and agriculture. More than 50% of population in the far remote area in africa believed to cannot access the freshwater. The situation is getting worsen in the last decade as the expenes of population turn the natural resources of limited freshwater into urban area for dwelling. I think this should be global issue and every developed country should respond for working new innovations to provide freshwater more accessible.
I also thought that lack of freshwater is a serious problem. In Australia, my home country, this has always been an issue. Most of Australia is dry, with large deserts covering much of central Australia. But even in the coastal areas, there are often droughts, which are disastrous for farmers, and sometimes threaten supplies of drinking water.
DeleteAs with other issues, I don't think it's possible to separate the challenges from each other. Over the past ten years or so, Australia has become even hotter and drier, a symptom of global warming which has not only raised temperatures but also changed rain patterns. A couple of years ago, this resulted in my family's properties near the coast being shrouded in smoke when dry bush lands went up in flames. It was very eerie seeing everything through smoke, with a bright red sun shining through. The same drought meant many farmers, especially sheep farmers, lost most of their stock because there was no fresh water for them to drink and no fresh water raining down to enable grass to grow for food. There was just vast areas of dry , brown land with a few trees losing their leaves, and dead animals lying around dried up creeks and dams.
As Yok points out, "saltwater is useless for consumption and agriculture." One solution is desalination, removing the salt from the Earth's effectively unlimited supply of sea water. But this requires a lot of energy, and getting that energy by burning fossil fuels is only going to worsen the underlying problem of global warming. It seems to me that the solutions to at least three of the "Top 5 challenges facing humanity" that Skillful lists in the infographic on page 152 are related to the supply of energy. If we had enough energy that did not involve burning anything, we could easily grow the food the world needs, and provide abundant water, and stop pouring carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
But where is that energy to come from?