College Education

    Facing the increasing unemployment of college graduates, more and more Chinese students and their parents start doubting the necessity of college education. An increasing number of high school graduates give up their college education opportunity. Some college students even quit it halfway, encouraged by Bill Gates’ and Steven Job’s great success or for

    some other reasons. As a 20-odd-year’s college teacher, I strongly insist for

    the following five reasons that youngsters should receive formal higher education unless they are genius.

    First, young people have to “be equipped” wit massive “softwares” for

    a future success in work and life. Mankind maybe is not one of the earliest species living on this planet, but compared with others, it is the only species that has most fully developed physically, spiritually and socially. What’s more, this development is still continuing at an accelerating speed due to the hi-tech increasing effects on their life and work, hence forming a more complex society daily. Having no correct understanding of themselves, knowing little about the social management principles such as morality, ethics, customs, and laws, and lacking the knowledge and skills of computer-based production, young people are doomed to fail in this complicated society, let alone their prosperity. In a word, to be successful, young people, have to master many and necessary knowledge and skills, especially in a country like China with huge population, long history and

spectacular culture.

    Second, college is the best place for young people to have the last physical preparation before entering the real tough world. Finishing high school education, young people actually are in very crucial physical transition from end of teenage to full youth. Smooth growth and development in this period can produce a strong body, a physical basis for life-long battles in the real tough world full of pressures. Here in college

    they have comparatively a safe, clean, and nice environment to develop healthily in body. They have PE classes every week and can do many kinds of physical exercises regularly, such as basketball, table tennis, tennis, volleyball, football, badminton. And many colleges even have different kinds of centers or clubs for students to join, such as shadowboxing, judo, yoga, karate, cycling, martial arts and aerobics. And what’s more, playing

    with their peers with good qualities can always give them much pleasure and happiness which they cannot find elsewhere. Here in college, after 4-year self-disciplined and regular life, bodies of young people can always get fully developed.

    Third, college is an ideal place for youngsters to be independent socially before going into real world full of risks and dangers. Leaving home with enough money to live on, young people have to learn to make many decisions on their own, how to spend their spare time, how to make ends meet financially at the end of each term, whether and how to make

    friends with somebody they like, how to keep fine relationship with their fellow students, whether to show or receive passion for or from somebody they fall in love at the first sight, whether to prepare for postgraduate entrance examination, and etc. In this small society of college, four-year trial-and-errors, can gradually familiarize them with social “game rules”,

    and enable them to reasonably and independently think and act socially with other social members, another very important prerequisite for a future successful life. Very often they can harvest genuine life-long friendship, actually to benefit both their future life and career.

    Fourth, college is the best place for promising young people to build up their correct philosophy of life. Here they are offered oceans of knowledge, information and thoughts in print, in audio and video forms, about nature and mankind. By extensively reading and understanding history, literature, sociology, morality, ethics, laws, culture, autobiographies, etc. young people can correctly understand, step by step, the nature of the world and mankind, knowing their operation laws. Being inspired by the famous and successful people in history and in the other parts of the world, they can have better understanding about themselves too, knowing their own strength and weakness. By attending lectures and participating in peer discussions, they can benefit a lot from their classmates and qualified teachers’ direction, and gradually form their own practical values and life goals along with their reasoning power and problem-solving ability

    accumulating. If primary schools and secondary schools have taught kids some basic knowledge and skills for a survival in the society, colleges, better than any-place else, can help young people develop in all-around manner their “compass” for a life-long voyage to success and happiness.

    Fifth, also the last and the most important, in college, young people can be trained systematically and efficiently in their profession. Entering 21-st century, production and research of mankind have been divided into farther specialties. Colleges, especially the ones with a long history, on the one hand, have time-honored wise notions and principles of education and wonderful faculty members with great expertise after having studied and researched in their different fields for a long time and reached very high levels. They do not only have sufficient professional know-how, but also many of them can teach very effectively. On the other hand, such colleges often have a series of complete and high-efficiency curriculums and handy teaching-aid personnel and equipment, excluding massive, extensive and constantly-upgraded reference and teaching resources. Unless they are lazy or stupid, young people can attain here a solid professional basis for their long-term prosperous career, a social and financial basis for a happy life.

    To conclude, through this four-year whole-person education, young people can be prepared physically, spiritually, and professionally, laying down a rocky foundation for their future happy life and brilliant career. (Yao Kuanrang)

发件人;蓝色施洗者

    发送时间;2012-06-11 07:25

    主题;转发;中文学院 09级 汉语言2班 刘晓亮 0927010208 第二次英语作业

    收件人;"yaokr2010"<yaokr2010@163.com>

    抄送;

College Education

    College education is the doorway to receiving higher education, which is distinguished from primary and secondary education. When we set our feet into college, our life is completely changed. On one hand, we can benefit a lot from the productive and flexible college education. On the other hand, we must tolerate the bad aspects caused by the Chinese rigid and inactive college education.

    As we all know, college education can rebuild undergraduates’ quality. At first, we can cultivate our quality of independence on the condition that we should study and live without parents’ care and help. What is more, college education encourages us to be initial and active. Only when we take an initiative to accomplish our jobs, can we take the predominant advantage in the fierce competition. Meanwhile, college education provides undergraduates with a variety of activities, such as student club' activity, voluntary activity and so on, to make us active in numerous areas. Last but not least, college education will make students moral and ethical. According to the survey, the people who have received higher education have less criminal activity and incarceration.

    As every coin has two sides, the Chinese rigid and inactive college education also brings some disadvantages to a large number of students. To begin with, the college education can’t give students a platform to show their best. That is to say, the majority of students can’t make full use of their potentials and talents in college life. Some of them just do the same things as others do. It is the huge pity and failure that college education can’t develop students’ speciality and strength. In addition, college education doesn’t build up a bridge between college students and cruel society. Some college students are not acquainted with the reality of society. When they go out of the ivory tower, they can’t properly handle all kinds of difficulties in society.

    In conclusion, I maintain that college education can give us more benefits than harms. All we have to do is that we should make most of a series of college’ recourses and improve our comprehensive ability.

    This is a well-organized article, but the shortage of sufficient supporting sentences in both body paragraphs weakens its convincing power. When we write an article in English, our potential readers should be foreigners. If you were an average American, generally speaking knowing very little about China, even less about Chinese college education, now you read your composition again to see how many slef-proving messages you could get and how many doubts would remain. For example, how can you just say " the Chinese rigid and inactive college education" without necessary explanation? They would easily think your writing is something like "giving a dog a bad name and hanging it". Their conclusion more likely would be that you are an arbitrary nonsense-talker, a bad guy, haha, you know, compared with sophisticated Chinese, foreigners are sometimes very naive. They probably would not believe any point of your article at all and drop your article into a dustbin angrily. And your concluding paragraph gives a very bad picture to the world about Chinese college students (most of them actually are very clever and creative) who seem too wooden to take any initiative activities to seek advantages and avoid disadvantages of Chinese college education. Let's wish that no Chinese college students would happen to read this article of yours; otherwise you would have millions of haters for this truth-distorting writing. (This is a joke, don't take it too seriously. Many young people share your problems in their writing. So I would like to show your composition with my correction and comments to the other students for both its strong points and weak points, wishing you would not mind. )

    (85 marks)