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TOPIC: ISSUE153 - "Students should bring a certain skeptical to whatever they study. They should question what they are taught instead of accepting it passively."
WORDS: 550 TIME: 00:45:00 DATE: 5/21/2011 1:54:27 PM
Skepticism in study is a disputable issue in academic field. Some people think we should have questions about everything we learn while some others do not. In my opinion, I essentially agree what the author states in this issue. As students, we are encourage to raise our questions in the study to get better knowledge.
First, having skepticism in the study will help us know our career goal clearly. With a clear goal, you will know how to study more efficiently or in a creative way. For example, Bill Gates dropped his study in Harvard and started his business when he was in college. Years later he became the most wealthy man in the world. Bill said in his biography that he used to argue a lot about how to study with his roomies and found that the courses he studied was not what he was interested in. In this case, skeptism helps Bill Gates know his career goal early and make right decision when he was young.
Besides, even if you are sure that your study is on the right track of your career goal, skpeticism will help you understand the content of your course better. In my own case, I found a question when I studied Network course, the question was that one network model the instructor told me could not be used to explain the mechanism of the mobile network. I discussed this question with my instructor and finally found that the structure of mobile network is different with the model he told me before. Thus raising problems helps me avoid confusing
the idea of two types networks.
In addition, questions from students will help instructors improve their teaching. By given such feedbacks, instructors will know which flaws they have in their teaching activities. My department collected many questions on its feedback session every semester. These questions helped teachers a lot on how to improve their teaching for the next semester. Teaching and study can help each other mutually.
On another hand, too much skepticism will be harmful for learning. Sometimes the reason we are not clear why we should study certain things is that we are lack of certain background knowledge. You will find some knowledge you are unwilling to learn may be very helpful in your future life. For example, when I was in college, I found that programming was a thing very hard for me. I spent a lot of time on it but did not seem to learn well. However, when I worked in a company after I was graduated, I found that the knowledge which costed me a lot of time was very useful for my job. At that time I knew that I did not like programming just because I did not know how important it is.
In conclusion, skepticism has both positive and negative effects for your learning. Raising questions will help you find flaws in your learning and thus learn the knowledge better. Further more, it can help you identify your career goal so you do not need to spend too much time on knowledge and skills which you will not use in your work. But in the meantime, you should not be too suspicious about what you learn, which will make you hesitate and thus waste time too.
TOPIC: ARGUMENT203 - The following appeared in a newspaper feature story.
"At the small, nonprofit hospital in the town of Saluda, the average length of a patient's stay is two days; at the large, for-profit hospital in the nearby city of Megaville, the average patient stay is six days. Also, the cure rate among patients in the Saluda hospital is about twice that of the Megaville hospital. The Saluda hospital has more employees per patient than the hospital in Megaville, and there are few complaints about service at the local hospital. Such data indicate that treatment in smaller, nonprofit hospitals is more economical and of better quality than treatment in larger, for-profit hospitals."
WORDS: 409 TIME: 00:30:00 DATE: 5/21/2011 1:54:27 PM
In this argument, the author claims that the treatment of patients is better in smaller, non-profit hospitals than that in larger, for-profit hospitals. To support his claim, he presents a comparison between a small non-profit hospital in town of Saluda(S) and a large hospital in City of Megaville(M). However, the author 's deduction has several logical flaws, the fatal one is the changing scope, which means that he cannot use only one comparison to represent the situation of all hospitals.
First, the conclusion the author makes is for the situation of the hospitals, however, he only use one pair of small and large hospitals to support his idea. Perhaps there are lots of hospitals in this region. If so, the hospitals in M and S will not be representative. To make his conclusion more persuasive, the author should provide the statistics of the healthcare situation of the hospitals all over the region.
Besides, since the author does not provide the information of the number of the patients in these two hospitals, it is possible that the hospital in M has much more patients every day than the one in S. Thus it is acceptable that the average patient stay in M is longer than the one in S. There would be fewer complaints in S because of fewer patients there. Thus, without the information of the total number of the patients in these two hospitals, the comparison is not fair and thus not convincing.
In addition, the author neglects some other elements which are related with quality of healthier. From his quotation
we know that the average patient stay in M is longer than the one in S, but maybe the patients in M get better healthier. In common sense, patients who have serious health problems need to stay much longer in hospital than the ones who get minor problems such as cough. It is possible that the hospital in S does not have the capacity to treat patients who have serious problems so it transfers them to the hospital in M to get better care.
In general, the author should be a very careful person who identifies minor differences in the treatments between those two hospitals. However, without some key information, such as the total number of the patients, his deduction is not convincing. To better support his claim, he should make a comparison without missing the number of the patients in these two hospitals, and the treatment situation of all the hospitals in this region.作者: winnieywu 时间: 2011-5-26 10:46:54