In 11th July 2022, 6 people participated and 4 people finished writing. There are our essays.
Participant-Jay
Topic
The principal of the college you attend has the funds to develop a new app for mobile learning and has asked students to write a proposal for a new app. In your proposal, you should explain how the app would help students with their learning, evaluate the subjects which would be best suited to the app, and suggest ways of promoting the app to other students.
Essay
Dear Principal,
I’m glad to have the opportunity to make a proposal for this app. From my observations, language ability is affecting students’ studies and careers. So I think this app should be made to help students learn English.
My preset goal is to attract 50% of the students to be users, and make 30% of them improve their English. To achieve these goals, the app should provide the following functions:
– Vocabulary memory system, helps students learn words more easily and effectively.
– Podcasts and audiobooks, improve people’s listening.
– Shadowing reading and voice recording, highlight weak parts so that users can correct their mistakes and level speaking up.
Regarding promotion, I believe a leaderboard and point system are great tools to motivate students. People like to compare with others and desire high rankings. At the end of each semester, the top three rankers will be awarded scholarships. In addition, high-level students can upload learning materials and self-made lessons to earn points, and get a higher rank.
If you would like to move forward with my proposal, please send me an email so we can begin discussing and planning the next steps right away. Thank you kindly for reviewing our proposal.
Sincerely,
Jay
Participant-绘苏
Topic
Sleep cycle and melatonin
Essay
Nowadays, sleep problems are becoming common. Due to high strength work, mental pressure and other reasons, young people especially the office workers can not ensure their sleep quality. The primary function of sleep is to maintain the balance of our body’s system. It’s affects our breathing, blood circulation, body growth, even hormones and mood.
Today I want to give you some tips about how to sleep well. Those tips are based on two elements associated with sleep quality: sleep cycle and melatonin.
- One sleep cycle is about 1.5 hours, the beginning and the end of the cycle are the period of light sleep, and the middle part is deep sleep. if you weak up at the end of one cycle or the beginning, you will be sober more easily. So it’s better to keep the sleep duration at the multiples of 1.5 hours, like 7.5 hours or 9 hours.
- Melatonin’s primary function is regulating the sleep-wake cycle. Some people will take the pills as a supplement, but it’s not a health way. Because our body can secrete melatonin by its own, long-term extra supplements may cause our bodies to produce less melatonin, then it’s will be a bad cycle. there are two methods can keep the melatonin in a balance. Frist, exposure to sunlight helps us establish a good body clock and increase vitamin D, which can promotes secretion of melatonin. If you can’t assure it, you can take the vitamin D pills which is not harm. Second, sleep at a cold circumstance, because low temperature also can increase the secretion of melatonin.
When our bodies are tired, a good sleep can help us refresh. But the damages caused by bad habits chronically, such as staying up late and having an irregular sleep schedule, is irreversible. Once the damage is done, part the nerve cells are gone and can not be repaired. The reason is that early human beings did not have such a high-pressure lifestyle, they just go to rest whenever they feel tired. And the phenomenon of intense work only appeares few hundred years, adapt to high pressure environment is not something we were born with. So, prevention is always better than cure.
Participant-Sirius
Topic
Book Review — Altitude, 《格局》吴军
Essay
The book, Altitude, is the third in Dr. wu’s trilogy of self-improvement and life advancement works, followed by Insight and Attitude. For most of us, it’s easy to achieve accidental success. The difficulty is to transform success from accidental to inevitable. In this book, the author will teach readers how to identify their own position, find the right direction, do things in the right way, improve the speed of progress, at the same time, grasp the pace, and finally reach a higher level in the way of life.
This book review will briefly summarize several points I read in chapter 1.
The first idea is that God only favors those who take the initiative. In most cases, whether things can get done or problems can be solved depends on how proactive the person is. At work, initiative is not only reflected in doing their own jobs well, but also reflected in taking the initiative to communicate with leaders, take the initiative to take on more and more important tasks, and timely seek help from superiors when necessary. This is also so-called management.
The second idea is to learn to share benefits. This is a habit that must be developed in the workplace and can help a person gain synergy in an organization and on a team. For example, if a colleague’s work helped you directly or indirectly, or you discussed a project together, be sure to thank him or her or mention him in the final product share. The truth is, no matter how good a person is, those around him will eventually leave him if he is reluctant to share the benefits.
The third idea is to make independent decisions. Although we say benefits should be shared, in most cases the decision should be made by the team leader alone. Sometimes a team doesn’t need democracy, because democracy means inefficiency, meaning that the pros and cons of a project can be debated so many times that it can’t be implemented.
These are some of the main points I made in the first chapter of the book, and some of the methodologies I think are very effective and worth practicing in the workplace.
Participant-Lyra
Topic
Random thoughts, Dairy
Essay-1
This week I have decided to write down some of my actual feelings, in order to make the whole serious down to earth, for a bit.
It has been a really tough day for me. After a weekend I tried to cut all my connections with human beings around(especially people who connect me through Wechat), I have to face the issues in my life. I know stayed up till 5am won’t help anything, it is just my nightly routine.
Began with a “morning call” from my dad at 11.30am, I woke up with underslept eyes. My dad felt sorry for me being fooled by people in my company and worried that I am in a super embarrassing situation, which was sweet for sure. But I still felt offended after hearing him blame me for things you need to consider not doing only in hindsight. Of course I know that he couldn’t help himself as he customary thought I am still that young girl who needs parental guidance. The good thing was he realized I was unhappy about that and soon called back to make it up. And our relationship got even better after I called him and updated the confusing and unpleasant information of today just now. This could be my story of getting along with traditional parents today. Not bad, to be honest.
Essay-2
Hey, guys. Happy Tuesday. I am actually using this speech recognition so there might be some mistakes I haven’t correct yet in between. But as this is still the first draft, I feel it’s okay to have this kind of typos.
Yeah, I remember I had said things like “this is a tough day for me” yesterday? But I have to say because today is the worst day of my entire career till now. So the bad news came after I had speak to one of the department head in my company this afternoon. The message he presented hurt me badly, but I did successfully take it in a decent way with no breakout immediately. Though the whole thing was totally unfair to me, I still managed to describe all the things subjectively and did evaluation and summary to this with my colleagues. Not surprisingly, we all came to a conclusion that is their lake of responsibility and communication has taken the whole story to this consequence. And you know what? This doesn’t cost any trouble for them. On the contrary, it turns me to a really embarrassing and Passive situation, which is totally unnecessary.
On the way home, I called my dad and explained what had happened. I found himself couldn’t stop blame me for doing nothing wrong again. After not much arguing, we had came to the agreement that we need a face to face conversion.
Cause I am already in a bad mood, I decided not to be a couch potato today. I quickly booked my laser treatment, planned to have something nice to eat and go to my favourite supermarket to do some grocery shopping. And I did it all above. The laser treatment was hurt but today’s nurse was professional as I was good with it. after that I went to eat Hai Di Lao alone. The food their was fine but the reason why I was there still pointed to the warm atmosphere and their unquestioned customer service. After that I went to the huge supermarket by Hema and bought a blanket of groceries, mainly snacks and cakes. Holding a huge hippo toy back home, I found myself still unhappy as I had given a lot thoughts to the matter and planned for months and now they are completely nonsense.
My friends and colleagues were asking me for what I am going to do next. I really don’t know.