Abc 13

01. Do you think that homework should be abolished?
Discuss its value

Homework is a bitter pill for many students. Teachers always give homework. They are given to help students to revise what has been done in the class and also the finish task set in school which the pupil could not finish on time.
Education and mastery of knowledge, is a matter of skill so the more practice one has the better skill. There are skill subjects and knowledge subjects. Both these categories require drill and repetition. The teacher, to some extend, drill the student in the class but each individual student cannot be expected to do the same amount as skills of students vary from each other.
Homework need not necessarily be repeating what has been done in the class, it may be more study. The student goes through references and acquires more and better knowledge. The world of knowledge is so wide that the class alone cannot bring everything into the grasp of the student. So the student must take up some initiative of his own. This is one of the purposes of homework.
The school also must see that the students are overburdened homework. The teachers must see to it that the homework is distributed evenly throughout the week. Still there are subjects like mathematics or transcription in the lower classes which require daily attention. There are other aspects of school work which can be attended to during the weekend, for example, map making and drawing diagrams.
Simply because some boys find homework too much to cope up with, it cannot be abolished. The school should provide some facilities, so that the boys can conveniently attend to their home work and the teachers can come willingly forward to help such boys.

02. Nowadays environmental problems are too big to be managed by individual persons or individual countries. In other words, it is an international problem. To what extent do you agree or disagree?

An essential problem of the 21st century is world pollution. Currently the environment is so much contaminated that urgent measures should be taken. The single individual cannot be blamed for the world pollution, however every person should take care of his or her habitat. In addition, it is vital that environmental issues should be treated internationally.
Lately, many presentations, conferences and international summits are held regarding waste treatment, recycling, soil and water contamination. Surely joint efforts and consolidation can only help in the mutual war against the environmental disaster, which is going on. For instance, governments should offer support to companies and organizations, involved in manufacturing, industry or agriculture in order to find environment friendly approaches. These could be special law regulations, recycling programs, helping courses in order to implement ISO certificates and many more.
However, the influence of individuals over environment should not be ignored. If we do not confess that our planet is our home, we will never be able to take adequately care of it. We have to contribute every day to the preservation of nature and environment. For example, always remember to save energy by switching off lamps, computers and everything that we do not use. Our next obligation is to separate waste and throw bulk only in the designated areas. Driving vehicles can also be environment friendly. For example, we have to avoid accelerating the engines too rapidly or using the air condition in the country, where it will be better to save energy and simply open the windows. To sum up, environmental problems should be handled by local and international authorities also. Every single person should take care of environment and moreover we have to bring up our children to be conscious citizens of a clean and preserved planet.

03. The difficulties in learning English and how to overcome them
Beginners of foreign language always meet difficulties from the outset. For me, I had to overcome these problems when I started learning English.
English pronunciation is my first obstacle. The pronunciation in English puzzles me a lot because the same letter has different sounds. For example the letter “a” in “bath” is not pronounced in the same way of that in “bathe”. The “ou” in “South” is also different from “ou” in “Southern”. Generally verbs and nouns are pronounced differently although they are written the same. Record is a good example to illustrate it.
In order to solve this puzzling question I carefully study The A.P.A (The International Phonetic Alphabets) which helps me pronounce English words correctly.
In order to have an accent just like the native speakers, I often listen to tapes and repeat after them, trying to imitate them. Moreover, my everyday conversation with the foreigners I meet in the street will enable me to acquire a proper accent.
Compared with French, English grammar is much easier. However, this does not mean that learners meet no difficulties in learning it. It took me a long time to learn how to master the tenses in English grammar, to endeavor to do as many grammar exercises as possible and read various grammar books.
In writing English, English language has its own style. In order to drill writing skills, I have tried to