Disadvantages of watching television.

Nowadays, television has become one of the most popular and necessary media for everyone in the world. People can receive global information and watch news in every house. Having television can help people learn and experience the world outside their view even though they do not have opportunities to see those events directly. However, beside many useful benefits from watching television, it still has some grammatical disadvantages for people such as reducing the social development, lack of physical activities and affecting people health. Those problems are really important to notice in other to help each person get balance in their life with television.
Firstly, when people spend a lot of time to watch television, their social development is reducing. Mostly, people who have habit watching television consistently, they will spend more than 4 hours to watch news, TV shows or sports. Once, they put their eyes concentrate on the content that they flow, they could not stop and do not want to communicate with anyone around them, especially for kids and teenagers. Watching television gradually makes them lazy to interact with their parents and their friends. They become passive somehow, it is difficult for them to make conversations or communicate with one another. Like me, I used to spend most of my time to watch films and dramas on television. I was really interested in those movies, and I could spend my whole they just stay at home and watch the film that I like. I thought I did not need to go out or talk with people because I can see the world and listen to the people’s conversations in those films. It was becoming a routine, even I finished all of things I considered, I still just hold the television remote and put randomly whichever the channel is to find something to fulfill my time. Thus, I realized it was not a good idea to spend so much time with television. Watching television improperly will take away the time for people to communicate with each other.
Secondly, lacking of physical activities is also of the most important disadvantages of watching television. People will spend more time on television rather than take part in the physical activities like playing sports, going out with friends or taking vacations with family. They think that is enough to watch everything on television, it is the same, and they do need to waste time to participate outside activities. However, the real life is different from what they get on television. It is much more fun and interesting. People need to go out and discover the world by themselves. By taking physical activities, they can improve their healthy life, and make more friends, have more meaningful memories. From that they can develop their relationship and get rid of stress. Television is just a media for people to receive information, it is not a place for people to stay and spend all time to be addicted on it.
Finally, as two disadvantages mentioned above, they will lead people to reduce their heath because the more people watch television, the more they get stressful and tired. In front of screen for hours will make their eyes feel tired and unclear. Furthermore, when people seat on the stable place for long time, do not have some exercises, their body will not work well and create illnesses. For example, he just spends time to watch sport all day long and eat food at the same time. He will get fat and will be not healthy. It is not good thing at all. Some people watch too much TV shows or channels which content violent or harmful image; they will not have a real thought about reality and always live in their imaginations. Those are really dangerous because it will affect people mental development. Therefore, everyone should think e and take care of their health when they depend so much on television.
For all of those reasons, watching television too much is s really serious issue right now. It is not a bad idea to have television; however people have to control their time properly to watch it. If people do not know or realize the disadvantages of watching television they will have really difficult times to develop their social skill, take part in outside activities and keep their health healthily. Do not be so depend on media, everyone should consider about the real life.

Friendship

Friendship is a really special gift for everyone. I thought I was a difficult thing to have a real friendship in my life, but then at this moment I have really a great friendship with 2 of my best friends in the US.
I am a person that really hard to make friends or get along with people. Therefore, having good friends or close friends with me rarely happens, when I was in the secondary school, I was lucky to make friends with two classmates, and we are still friends until now. We made friends because we had the same favorite singer in Taiwan. All of us are so interested in him. He had a really sweet voice and he had a lot of albums and nice dramas. We were always talking about him all the time. Day by day, we just got closer and closer. I was really happy when I spent my secondary and high school with them. We studied and played together. We shared everything with each other whenever we had happy or sad things in our student lives. Sometimes, about studying, sometime about of a cute boy that we like or we are interested in schools. Having friends listening to your feeling and give you some advices when you do not know what you should do is really meaningful. I really miss them; they are always by my side, encourage me and help me when i had difficult problems. I thought we would spend the whole high school time together, but my family moved to the big city because of my dad's job. I was really sad when I had to say goodbye to them. We could not often talk and play with each other anymore, I would miss them so much. We were crying a lot at the day I left. My friends gave me a hug and I did not know why the tears were just unconsciously shedding off my cheers. Setting in a car, I had to accept the truth that I left my country side already where I grew up and had a lot of memories with my friends and neighbors. I saw the CD gifts that two of my dear friends made for me, and I could not stop crying. They recorded all of the places we used to hangout, go eating and shopping. They took pictures of our favorites food stores, ice-cream places, and so on...It really touched my heart, I talk with me all the videos that I had to be happy and successful when I went to study in a new place. They hope I could make a lot of friends, be able adjust the new environment and be strong in any difficult situations. They would always support me and give me best wishes in my future life. I also told to myself like that, however I was also afraid that I would not meet anyone like them.
When I moved to new school, which was The International High School in the big city, everything was so new. I saw new friends, new teachers, and a lot of new things. It was really hard time for me to get along with new friends. Compare with friends in the countryside where I lived, they were more active and open. I was just so silent and did not know what should I talk or make a conversation with them. The only way I could communicate with them was the time I showed or helped them to resolve Math or Chemistry homework problems. I knew a little bit more than them because I used to study those science lessons before because both of schools were different educational systems. That was the way I made friends. Later, when I studied with them, I just could make some friends, and I just had only one good friend. He talked, shared and helped me a lot. Because of him I could have some happy memories when I was in my new school. However, we could not study abroad together because of his personal family problem. Then, I went to the US all along to study. Being a college student, I have a lot of things to do, especially with homework and assignments. I do not have many times to hang out with friends. However, I am really happy and lucky now because I found out that 2 of my friends in my school when I moved to the big city are really nice hand friendly. They are not only my friends, but also my family over here. Whenever I had difficult problems, they are always welcome to help and share with me. When I was in the sickness, they were really worried. They drove all the way from Los Angeles to come to my house and took me to see doctor. Having them beside me I feel really safe and joyful. We are all international students, having a chance to meet each other again in the huge country like America is really special. I have so much fun and happy memories with them now. I hope our friendship will keep going on forever.
That is a surprising thing that I have experienced about friendship. Everyone will have their own special friendship. You do not have to worry and look for it. It will come to you naturally without noticing. And it will be really invaluable gift for you.

My childhood

I had really beautiful and unforgettable childhood in my hometown where I was born and grew up. There is really a peaceful and pretty place named Bao Loc town. This place is not so hot and not so cold compare to the hot weather of Saigon (the biggest city in Vietnam) and the cold weather of Dalat (the flowers city in my country). Therefore, I really love the atmosphere in Baloc, it is so fresh and cool. I spent eleven years of my life there. I feel really lucky because I spent my childhood in the countryside and I am pretty sure that whoever has the childhood in the countryside must be happier than the one who lives in the big city.
When I was a little girl, I always went out with my sisters and played around with our neighbors. We had a lot of interesting and crazy games. I had to admit that we were really naughty and annoying at that time. One of the games we liked to play was building the tree house in the garden and then we moved there to live even though in the rainy day. We took pillows and blankets and everything to bring there and slept. It was really fun, but I took a lot of time design and build up the house. After that, we started cooking rice in a milk-can. The milk-can was really tiny; we just put a small amount of rice and spent really long time to make it cooked. Oh my god, I was so tried, everyone had to find dry branch trees and put those under the milk-can to make a fire. And when we finished and had nice rice cooked, our face was so dirty and had a lot of dark spots because we tried to flow up the dry trees to get fired. Everyone looked so funny and ridiculous. That was really good memory of us. The one was playing soccer, it was also a most special and happy memory which me. I and my sitters were probably addicted to this game. We and our neighbors play all day long, in the morning, afternoon, and even at night on the street. Playing soccer is really funny and healthy activity in my opinion. We separated to teams and stared playing. It was serious and competitive. Sometimes, I was a striker and sometimes I was a defender or a goalkeeper. I really tried hard in any positions. We played until which team got 5 scores first would win. Then the punishment would be all of members had to turn back and we kicked the ball to their asses. It sounds ridiculous, isn’t it? But that was the goal of all the game. Whenever we won, we were so happy and shout out loud in the happiness. There was one time that we played in a really heavy rain. It was getting heavier and heavier, but it could not stop us from concentrate on getting scores for our team. The ground where we played was so wet and slippery, so easy to fail down anytime. I was a goalkeeper, and one boy was coming nearly my goal. I was so nervous; I had to stop him anyway from kick the ball into my goal. However he was so fast, how could I stop him? Then unconsciously I closed my eyes and jump out to hold the ball. Yes! I got it, it was amazing, I got it. We would not lose. I was so happy, but then I realized that I completely fail down on the dirty ground and one of my knees was bleeding. Woa! I tried so hard. Eventhough, I got hurt, I was still satisfied with what I did. I really miss the times we played soccer together. It was full of happiness and joyfulness. I will never forget it. Beside that, we also did many crazy and funny things like secretly go to other people’s houses or their gardens and still fruits. Sometimes, when we climbed to the threes try to reach the fruits like guavas; the house owner’s dog came out and bark loudly. He was really scary. We tried really hard to escape in many dangerous situations like that.
Those were some of happy memories I used to have with my neighbors, my friends. I really love them so much since I moved to the big city to study. I wish I could go back the time we were together with joyful memories, the time I did not have to think or care a lot of things like right now. We were just so innocent and had no worries about our future. Whenever I told my friends about my childhood, they said I am really a country girl and I am happy about that. That was the most lucky and special I have ever had in my life.

Analyzing "Confusing Harder with Better" by Alfie Kohn

There are a lot of different issues about the education system which are very controversial in public. One of these issues is nowadays schools concentrate so much on raising standards to assess knowledge for students. Students have been learning really hard to achieve the higher demands on tests. However, asking students to do many difficult tasks in their studies, sometimes it will be not helpful. This matter is demonstrated obviously by Alfie Kohn in “Confusing Harder with better” published in Education Week. As Kohn mentioned, making the standard of the education harder does not mean it better. Considering schools at this time, his opinion is reasonable and realistic. According to Kohn, there are three major points that are expressed effectively in his reading to show that how raising stands affect to the education.
Firstly, Kohn thinks, forcing students to study many difficult tasks will create negative effects in the education. He pointed out the problems of schools is they just concentrate on how students do well on standardized tests. However, they do not know that they are making students lose the opportunities to receive more knowledge because most of student’s time is spent on preparing for these tests. Students have become passive when they have to follow and catch up the high demands of schools. Like Kohn described that students have to memorize almost everything they study and struggle with text books in order to get high scores. It is true when he showed that this old educational method will make the educators under pressure of learning and lose interest in their subjects. Students will be easy to give up because think they are not good or not qualified enough to deal with a lot of difficult assignments and exams. Furthermore, asking students do a lot of stuff will not help them to concentrate on a specific subject. For those reasons, Kohn gave a good argument about how raising standards affects the results of study.
Therefore, Kohn demonstrated that it is essential to focus on improve the quality of teaching rather than just concentrate on raising standards. Kohn mentioned that people cannot judge the qualified schools by looking at the high standards they make for students. He supported his opinion by showing John Dewey‘s idea that letting students think deeply about what they learn is more useful than making them to study forcedly. Thus, the difficult task is just a small part of the students’ success. The more important thing is making students become interested in their studies because students just have good results when they like what they are doing. Some of schools just let their students study exactly all the contents of the texts, and do not care about how much useful knowledge students will get from doing this. Students have to do many homework and assignments without taking a break, even though not all of them are necessary. Kohn wants people realize that the educational system does not have to be hard when students could not have any benefits. Kohn was right when he pointed out the problem of schools at this moment.
Finally, it does not make sense for students to achieve unnecessary higher demand when they can apply those in a real life. Kohn showed that there are a lot of hard examinations students have to pass in order to graduate from schools. They have to study really hard and seriously to have enough the ability to solve the standardized tests. If students cannot pass, schools will make the tests tougher. Obviously, they have to know and remember a lot of difficult tasks, but even the adults cannot. Kohn gave a really reasonable point about Meier’s Mandate statement: “No student should be expected to meet an academic requirement that a cross section of successful adults in community cannot”. This is realistic that in fact, students study a lot of things; however they are not needed in the real life. It does not make sense to accomplish difficult studies when people do not apply in reality. This example is a strong argument of the author.
In conclusion, Kohn gave effective supporting points for his argument about the issue of raising standards in schools. He expressed his idea that raising standards will not be useful if schools do not improve the quality of education. From his argument, people can realize this problem in the method of teaching nowadays. Schools should spend time find an effective way of teaching rather than force students to study a lot of difficult tasks, if those are not necessary.

Tet Holiday

Tet Holiday is nearly coming on this Sunday. It is a big celebration of Vietnamese people for New Year which is based on the Lunar Calendar. It is so special that this year, 2010, Tet has also the same day with the Valentine Day. That is so sweet and meaningful for Vietnamese people to show and transfer their love and happiness to their friends, their family and their lover. Tet Holiday is really similar with Chinese New Year because our customs has many things in common. There are many special and interesting events on Tet Holiday. Vietnamese people are always happy and waiting for Tet Holiday to be celebrated. There are three important periods to celebrate: Tat Nien (before New Year’s Eve), Giao Thua (New Year’s Eve) and Tan Nien (New Year).

Before Tet Holiday, to prepare for welcoming the New Year, we have a lot of things to do such as buying flowers, cooking special traditional food and cleaning the house before New Year’s Eve coming. In every Vietnamese market you can see that it sells plenty of colorful things to decorate for the house, especially flowers and New Year trees. People are so crowded on the streets and excited to have a happy new year with their family. A lot of red slogans “Happy New Year” everywhere, the atmosphere of Tet makes people feel relax and forget about unlucky things during the past year. Tet is the time for family getting together, even though you are working or studying really far from your house. I have really missed Tet in Vietnam, since I came to America to study. Every times, Tet was coming, my mother often took me and my sisters to buy new clothes to dress up on the New Year so that we would be so beautiful and happy to welcome guesses or go around visiting our relatives and friends. Sometimes, my family went to my grandfather’s house and stayed there over night with our relatives to cook “Banh Chung” and “Banh Day” (sticky rice cakes with meat and bean) which are two significant traditional foods in the culture of Vietnam. At that time, we could gather and chat intimately with each other about our jobs and studies; for me it was really a happy and warm moment.

And then, when everything is ready for welcoming The New Year, New Year’s Eve is always the unforgettable time in the year. We display traditional foods and clean the house for the last time to sweeping out of unlucky things in the past year and welcome the fortune things will be arrived at our house. At that night, we either stay together to have New Year’s party or go out to countdown and see fireworks blowing up on the sky which signals for the New Year coming . It is such a miraculous moment in the year. For my family, after the moment of the past year has just passed, my parents will give us lucky money and bless us for the New Year with fortune and healthy life and to be good in our studies. It is always a traditional habit that my family will play cards with each other overnight, and my dad most likely is going to win me, that is really frustrated, but really happy and special with me. We had a lot of fun during that time.

The following day which is the first day of Vietnamese New Year, we just stay at home to welcome guesses and relatives to visit, and whoever is the first person step on your house will be considered as the one who will carry lucky things to your family. The second and the third day of Tet, people just go around to greeting each other and for us, the most special and happy thing is receiving lucky money in the red envelop from elderly people and listening to many best wishes. Furthermore, going to the temples is the custom; people always go there to make a wish for happiness, good health and prosperity. Playing game in the Vietnamese festival market is also really funny and traditional activity in the New Year time. I member we went there to take a try, and if we won a game, everyone looked so happy and satisfied because it is so tough. Those are all most traditional activities we usually do to in Tet Hoiday and It makes me miss my family a lot whenever I think about all of happy memories every New Year we had been through.

This year, Tet is coming again, even though I will not have a chance to celebrate Tet with my family and friends in Vietnam, I always hope they would have a happy and lucky New Year. And I hope I and my sister would also have a special celebration and valentine day in this Sunday. Missing all of them a lot.

Socialization in Homeschooling enviroment

Homeschooling have been becoming the alternative education for children in America and the number of homeschooling kids has been improved in recent years. Many parents in The US consider homeschooling as the best educational method for their children instead of sending their children to traditional schools. However, being homeschooled is not always a good way for children to accomplish their studies because children have a limitation to develop their socialization in homeschooled environments. It is also the significant problem that parents should think about before deciding to give their children the homeschooled education.
Children going to school are not only to improve their knowledge, but also to develop their social skills among their friends and teachers. Therefore, to archive this purpose, traditional schools are still good opportunities for children to study because they have chances to interact with people work in peer groups and learn from each others. In contract, homeschooled students who are educated at home cannot always receive all of those benefits.
Firstly, staying the house and working in a small group or even an individual give children a limited environment to communicate with people. They just study with their parents or private tutors who are not the same age as them. It makes them difficult to talk with their peers because they do not have a social experience to get along with their friends. Furthermore, they do not have a lot of opportunities to participate outside activities with many people like playing sports, taking vacations with class or school and competing with friends in many kinds of events. Those are really helpful for students to make friends and become active person in society. Even though, sometimes they might receive peers pressure, they still can learn and get experience from that. It even makes them stronger and let them learn how to deal with different kinds of people. Homeschooled children do not have to worry about getting hurt by their peers, but they will not know how to overcome it if they are always protected by their parents. Going to schools everyday and having different conversations and activities with friends are really important for children to develop their socialization. I used to meet one girl when I first attended in my college. She was 14 year old, but she studied the third year here. I was really surprised because she received homeschooling method her whole life. However, she was really quite and lonely. She did not talk a lot with people and just stayed in the library to study by herself. I think because she had never stepped out of her homeschooled environment, therefore she did not know how to start the conversation and get along with people. That is really sad for a young girl like her. Thus, comparing with traditional students, homeschooled students mostly become less productive members in society. That is the negative effect homeschooling brings to children. Secondly, working with peer groups is significantly important to develop their social skills. Students in traditional schools have many opportunities to work in groups with their peers when they study or play together. They can show their opinion or argue about a particular problem with their friends or their teacher. They also can help each other to archive the good results or have good processes in class or various activities. All of those thing make students improve their social development and their friendship when they work in a big community. That is a missing point that homeschooled kids desire to have when they are just surrounded by their parents. Furthermore, they do not have opportunities to learn different things from their friends and teachers like traditional schools. When kids go to school they will interact with a lot of people who have different kinds of background and personal beliefs. That will make them learn more about other people, other cultures and have their own idea to develop themselves. They can receive a lot of knowledge and experiences from their friends and teacher. Therefore, they will learn how to be good friends and tolerate to people around them. Homeschooled environment has a limitation about that.For all of those missing points about the socialization those homeschooled children do not have. Homeschooling cannot be considered as a best method for American children. There are a lot of alternative educational methods, but the most important thing is let children receive the best learning environment to accomplish themselves

Playing video games

At the present, human living standards are bettering much; however, there are badly effective issues as well. Playing video games is an interesting activity that help people to entertain after studying or working hard. But with some people, it is more than an activity, it becomes an addiction and lead to many other problems. This essay will discuss some positive and negative ideas of video games that affect to humans.
There are three main advantages of video games. It is really not worth blaming that the sources of adolescents’ rudeness are due to video games. There is not just one, but so many ways that people often enjoy for amusement. Most of them may seriously affect to people because their content might be unwholesome, such as cartoons, television programs and movies. Moreover, people could motivate their ability of solving something by themselves and the kids would be more concentrated when they take part in some activities. Those are owing to video games. For example, one of the most popular classical games is Tetris. People who have serious troubles with stress often feel better if they play Tetris. That is just a simple game yet it can help people forget troubles tiredness for a while. Moreover, many current games have educational characteristic. From children to adults, there are kinds of games that contain appropriate knowledge for each age. In some countries such as US or UK , they use video games as a beneficial tool in teaching and the results are optimistic. Finally, playing games is a great way to have more friends. Actually, some people have found the real relationships in games that affect them much. With them, games are not only for entertainment but also where they exchange relations and learn.
On the other hand, there still have some negative aspects. Clearly, with those kinds of players that consider games as their life, they can sit hours in front of the computer play games. It is a passive life style that may affect badly to their health, As the result, they can be weak because of unusual diet or fatter due to sedentary. When games become an addiction, kids forget homework or stole money and adults ignore working to play. Those behavior will darken the society and hinder the development of the young generation. In addition, rudeness and being savage which is revealed in some activities of a kid is probably the consequence of violent video games. Children often act as what they watch on TV or play in games. That is how they learn. If those things are positive, children can gain many profits. However, many present programmers and video games have the bloody, violent and unsuitable contents. Those poisons spoil young minds and make them wallow in illusions.
In conclusion, video games are not exactly the source of violence. It can improve useful skills in real life and giving much more experience than ordinary textbooks. However, video games can cause some bad effects such as overweight, spoiling the children and leading kids to be brutal. In order to prevent negativeness of video games, people should play shortly after working or studying hard. Especially, parents should manage their kids’ time as well as giving them comfortable and interesting moments with outdoor games and activities. Games are really helpful in some situations and they are becoming a necessary ingredient in our modern life, Video games are as the internet. If people use it cleverly, it is a wonderful invention. In contrast, it is the source of problems.

The single sex education

Although single-sex schools were popular in the old generation over the last 20 years, they were reduced and replaced by common schools with both boys and girls. Those two types of education have their own benefits and hindrances, and that can affect the quality of teaching, studying and people’s attitude as well. This essay will report the major advantages and disadvantages of single sex education. Finally, some comments will be displayed to clarify this topic.
Firstly, in single sex education environment, the tendency of students would be easily captured. That means the educators can guess what their students intend to behave in some specific situations, and they can evaluate the capability of students’ implementation. Therefore, teachers can define the best methods of teaching to satisfy the demands of knowledge that the students want to know. In fact, in an environment where students have same sex, there would be no more to separate or classify the properties of activities for each gender because the environment of single sex education led everything to simplicity. Each gender have their own distinct characteristics, and that environment is very suitable.
Fuuthermore, in single gender education, schoolgirls tend to be rival and make much more efforts than in coed-schools. The evidence of this statement will be explored to prove, that is the comparison between two environment of coed and single sex education. The results of a survey shows that 20 percents of 647,942 students in a mixed school did the exam worse than predicted. On the other hand, approximately 71,286 students in the same sex schools passed the exam well. This is strong evidence of advantages of single sex environment.
Beside the advantages of single sex education, some disadvantages still exist.. The materials and methods of teaching in single gender schools must be changed because they are not very efficient. That means the educators did not clearly define what they should teach and how they do that effectively without any ambiguity to bring more advantages to the students. Almost knowledge that the teachers give students in single sex schools based on their own experience. Additionally, there could be a controversial issue to choose appropriate teachers for each kind of gender. It is probable because gender-relative problems occurance can lead to unexpected situations.
Moreover, studying in a single sex condition may result in furthur troubles. many men tend to divorce or have no happiness in marital life before they are 40 because they studied in an academy which has no any girl when they were children. In the same gender environment, boys do not learn how to treat girls gently and they have very small opportunities to be familiar with girls as well as feel what girls think about them.
In conclusion, there are main advantages and two disadvantages of single sex education. As mentioned earlier, in the environment which is only one gender, the characteristics of students would be easily caught to plan the most relevant methods of teaching, and it would bring students better academic education. In the opposite aspect, single sex education has not enough professional materials and suitable methods to teach. In addition, studying in same gender environment will make students difficult in future interaction when they need to work in normal conditon. Thus, to let children develop better, most of current schools are available for both boys and girls. Gender seperation was one of the reasons that hindered the social development.