IELTS writing practice - Line Graph

Write a report for a university lecturer describing the information in the graph below. 

The graph compares the men and women smoking in Someland between the years 1960 to 2000. It can be clearly seen that the rate of smoking for men and women both is currently declining and the the fewer women have smoked throughout the period.

In 1960, 600 men in every 1000 was smoking. The number decreased gradually to 500 by 1975 and continued to fall but more steeply to 250 in 2000. In contrast, the rate of women smoking in 1960 was very low at only 100  in every 1,000. However, the number was increasing shparply and reach its high as 300 in every 1000 by 1975. Afterwards, the number started declining gradually and had dropped to 200 in 2000. 
[ By 1968 this increased to 170, and increased again but more steeply to 320 in 1977. The rate of female smokers then remained stable at 320 until 1984 at which point the figures began to decline and had dropped to 200 by 2000. ]

In conclusion we can see that the rate of smoking in men dropped throughout the whole period but was always at a higher level than the female figures. The rate of smoking in women increased until 1977 but then dropped for the rest of period. 

Sample answer is from:
http://www.ielts-exam.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=101&Itemid=69

Restless

My mind can't rest. It always chases around the past. Why you've been come back and  bothering me again and again? I don't want to visualize our past - seeing that you wore your red top and were watching TV ; seeing you waving me goodbye in front of the coffee shop; seeing us gentely look into each other's eyes. All these went vanish.

I want to stop asking myself why my efforts all went in vain; why you didn't see that how much sacrifice I had done for you. Love is meaningless. Or even the love I had given you shouldn't be called love. It's just a trade-off. I can't get what I want from you and you can't, neither. History repeats itself, including the mistakes. I repeat my own mistakes and wrongly place the so-called love on you even at our very beginning I knew clearly that you were a wrong man for me.

Never never again love someone without realizing who he really is; without reckoning who I am; not give him my heart totally just because of my loneliness. Even knowing so much principle about love, I still ask myself if I really know what love is, or it's just something existed in our head, not in reality anymore. In the end, it's more like the song sung by Foreigner - I want to know what love is. I think I can't search outside the world to get the answer of that question. The only way to get the answer is to keep asking myself, look into the inner of myself. I need to discover myself before I really give my love to someone who is worthy.

A book review on '賴聲川的創意學'

My friend - Maggie has this book. I read few pages of the book at her place and quite like the ideas presented in this book. So I checked out the book from the library and just finished reading it yesterday.

The main idea - 'how to learn to be creative' presented in the book is illustrated in the bleow picture.

The author basically believe the creativity can be learned structurally as above illustration. The author divides the learning into two main parts - the life and the art. Through the life, we learn the wisdom of creativity. Through the art, we learn the method of creativity. Only we learn these two parts and connect them well, then we can master the creativity gradually. He points out that unfortunately, the most schools nowadays only place the importance on the right side - the art, the artistic skills themselves and left out the left side nearly completely.

There are so many points I agree with the author completely. I would like to list the the points I agree the most in bleow.

1. The person who always search things from outside the world dreams all the time; the person who looks inner self may feel his/her calling one day.

2. The three elements which play the main role to decide whether we would be creativity or not. They are the database in our mind, our habits and movitation. If we place them well in our life, they could be assets for our creativity. Whereas, they would be the obstacles. The most important one among these three is the motivation. We've got to ask ourselves honestly to see through the true motivation before we want to be creative or even just simply trying to figure out the major decision for our life.

3. It's so important that how we see the world and the elements which are mentioned in the previous point. Do we really see or we just simply look? When we really see the world, it's the starting point we can really sense the world.

4. We need the space in our mind to embrace more things. We need to empty our mind, not categorize the people or things so easily and try to see their origins. We need to learn to see things beyond our concept, mindset and expectation. Only that we can truly see them by their own meaning and own shape.

5. No matter whether we are religious or not, our viewpoints of this world is the starting point of our wisdom. Our world is getting wider and wider or getting narrower and narrower?  It doesn't matter we travel a lot or not. It matters whether we have complete view towards to this world.

6. How to live in present and how to enter the presence spontaneously? If we know how to master the present moment, our creatvitiy would come freely.

7. When we create something, we need to look for the form for our content and the form needs to match content as well. Being structure and able to see the content entirely is the way to help us find the appropriate form.

8. For the novice, there are so much possible forms and content; for the veteran, there are only few possible forms and content.

9. The creativity itself is organic but also completely. It's the same difficulty of doing a small piece of work or a master one. Through doing more, we would be able to master the difficulty better.

After reading this book, I began more aware how I see the world, knew how my own obstacles blind me to be more creative. But knowing is one thing, doing is the other. Raising my own awareness is just a very first step to be creative. There are so much I need to learn and I hope I won't give myself excuse easily. I need to work on the things I learn from the book - be more open-minded, learn how to live in present and really see the origin of the things and people without judging them such easily. Release myself and start to see the world and things going around me.

 

The true motivation of being a teaching of Chinese

Why you want to be a teaching of Chinese?
I think teaching Chinese to foreigner is interesting.

Why you think it's interesting?
I enjoy it so I think it's interesting.

Why you enjoy it?
I like teaching the things I know well but others don't know well.

Why you like teaching the things you know well?
It gives me the sense of achievement.

Why teach foreginer, not local?
I want to work and live abroad.

Why you want to work and live abroad?
I want to retain my English ability. Living in an English-speaking country is a good way to keep up my English ability.

Why retain your English ability is important to you?
Having a good English ability helps me see this world more and makes me be a little bit different among the Taiwanese crowds.

Why you want to be different?
I like to be different and this difference brings me higher self-esteem and confidence.

Why you need the higher self-esteem and confidence?
I think these two elements can guide me through this difficult life easier and smoother.

Why you think the life is difficult?
Because of my past experience. I learn the lessons from my past hard and I never see myself being successful regarding to my future fortune and relationship.

Why you being so pessimistic about your life?
I am not sure why. Probably it's all in my genes. 

So in conclusion, the movitivation of pushing you being a teaching of Chinese is because you are pessimistic about your life. And you are looking for something different to do which will help you be more positive towards to the life. Can the positive benefits the society in the end? I think I can make it. I teach kids and they learn the things from me. Good teaching is such nobel thing to do and if I make it excellent. I do the good to this society.

Touch-less

I touch myself and I cry..............
I thought I should reach the happiest moment but I didn't
Sadness came to my mind and I can't get rid of it

Why you turn my life so miserable? When I think of you, I just can't go on.

I know I can't cry but I can't stop myself, neither.

I wish you come to pat my shoulder and tell me 'you are my girl' but my thoughts won't change anything between you and me. All my efforts and time on you went in vain completely. I can't face this cruel reality but can't escape it, neither.

I cry out to the God and wish so much He will help me. But I know He won't. I deserve all of these punishments - He said. When I see the lights in the other end tunnel? I don't know. I hope once time goes by, I will be better and better. I'd be better off without you - I thought naively. But life without you, it's so hard.

A book review on '有品社會' written by 黃昆嚴

I spent an afternoon to finish this book. The book is all right, not brings too much inspiration for me. However, I do agree with the some points mentioned by the author. The author basically talks about the several ethics issues in Taiwan. He thinks we Taiwanese people should aware the low ethical standard in our society and take actions to fix it which undoubtedly include to start the action from ourselves.

The author reviews the ethical issues from different parts of the society, including from our education system and policy, politicians, cultural tolerance and even from our public toilets. Firstly, let's talk about our education system. In our education system, the educators take too much notice on teaching skills instead of teaching humanization. Consequently, after graduation, people only know how to earn money but don't know how to respect other people's rights or treat people well and fairly. The author also said that sadly that on most universities' graduations, the host schools usually invite the speakers who are successful in their career to give graduates the lectures, but the universities are unlikely to invite someone who is famous for his/her humanization and earn his/her credits on promoting the fairness and humanization or doing the good for the people. The whole education system seems to send the wrong message to the students that the people who earn more money is more respectful.

Secondly, regarding to Taiwanese politicians. I can't be disappointed more on those people. Before the election, Most of them never give voters their structure political views. What they do just to blackmail other candidates or say which party they come from and if our people really love Taiwan, we should support them not other party's candidates. Ironically, most of our people support this kind of candidates. Some people even vote the candidate who came to their wedding parties or their relatives' funerals or something like that. Once those candidates been elected, they become our politicians who are in charge of our legislation and law system. How ridiculous that can be. No doubt our society is falling since we are leaded by those unqualified and shortsighted politicians.

Thirdly, cultural tolerance. Or I should put the words in other way - respect people who are different from you. We are not doing that very well. We people look down the people who are originally from South-East Asian countries. We can see the news reported that how our local people treated the foreign labors badly or even abuse their basic human rights. Those abuser turn our society became a living-hell to those foreign labors. I feel so shameful as the same nationality of those abusers. But honestly, sometimes I see those foreign labors on the train, I was thinking whether in my head I think they are as same as regarding to the human beings or I think I am superior than them. I tell myself that I need to watch out my unconsciousness and don't let them effect my behaviours and attitudes towards to those people.

Finally but lastly, the topic of public toilet. Probably some people wonder what that has anything to do with the ethic. But from the author's viewpoint, it does play a part in our ethic. When people have higher ethic, they would respect the public property more and they would urge government to build more aesthetic public infrastructures. We can apply this theory to the big infrastructure project, such as highway or a very very small project - the public toilet in the park. If the government can raise the standard on building the good public toilet for the public to use which should include the consideration for disabled people, then our people would learn to use the public property appropriately and carefully. The uglier property makes people carefully less.

In summary, after reading this book, I expect I can put my ethical thoughts into action. I want to be more like a whole-person, doing what is right and what should be done. In addition, I should be quitting judging others. Don't judge someone simply because they are shallow. Respect someone if who really knows and put the ethics into the actions. I know sometimes saying is much easier than doing it but at least have awareness on my wrong behaviours is a good head start.