Maos Cultural Revolution :: Chinese China History

Mao's Cultural Revolution Dressed in the drab military uniform that symbolized the revolutionary government of Communist China, Mao Zedong's body still looked powerful, like an giant rock in a gushing river. An enormous red flag draped his coffin, like a red sail unfurled on a Chinese junk, illustrating the dualism of traditional China and the present Communist China that typified Mao. 1 A river of people flowed past while he lay in state during the second week of September 1976. Workers, peasants, soldiers and students, united in grief; brought together by Mao, the helmsman of modern China. 2 He had assembled a revolutionary government using traditional Chinese ideals of filial piety, harmony, and order. Mao's cult of personality, party purges, and political policies reflect Mao's esteem of these traditional Chinese ideals and history. Mao was born on December 26, 1893 in Shao Shan, a village in Hunan Province. 3 His family lived in a rural village where for hundreds of years the pattern of everyday life had remained largely unbroken. 4 Mao's father, the son of a "poor peasant," during Mao's childhood however, prospered and become a wealthy land owner and rice dealer. 5 Yet, the structure of Mao's family continued to mirror the rigidity of traditional Chinese society. His father, a strict disciplinarian, demanded filial piety. 6 Forced to do farm labor and study the Chinese classics, Mao was expected to be obedient. On the other hand, Mao remembers his mother was "generous and sympathetic." 7 Mao urged his mother to confront his father but Mao's mother who believed in many traditional ideas replied that "was not the Chinese way." 8 Mao in his interviews with historian Edgar Snow reports how during his childhood he tried to escape this traditional Chinese upbringing by running away from home. The rebellion Mao claims to have manifested might have distanced Mao physically from his family but, traditional Chinese values were deeply ingrained, shaping his political and personal persona. His father's harshness with dealing with opposition, his cunning, his demand for reverence from subordinates, and his ambition were to be seen in how Mao demanded harmony, order, and reverence as a ruthless dictator. Yet, Mao, was also the kindly father figure for the people of China, as manifested in characteristic qualities of Mao's mother: kindness, benevolence, and patriarchal indulgence. The China that Mao was born into was fast becoming a shell of its former past.

Legalization of Marijuana Essay

BODY PARAGRAPHS: I. Topic Sentence that supports the thesis: Making Marijuana legal will save the U.S. government and the average tax payer a lot of money.  ­Ã‚ ­Ã‚ ­Ã‚ ­Ã‚ ­Ã‚ ­Ã‚ ­Ã‚ ­Ã‚ ­Ã‚ ­Ã‚ ­Ã‚ ­Ã‚ ­Ã‚ ­Ã‚ ­Ã‚ ­Ã‚ ­Ã‚ ­Ã‚ ­Ã‚ ­Ã‚ ­Ã‚ ­Ã‚ ­Ã‚ ­Ã‚ ­Ã‚ ­Ã‚ ­Ã‚ ­ Example: Billions of dollars are spent every year to arrest and lock up Marijuana users. Example: Taxpayers have to bear the cost for the expenses: food, housing, health care, attorney fees, court costs, and other expenses for these people. Example: In addition, if marijuana were legal, the government would be able to collect taxes on it, and would have a lot more money to pay for effective drug education programs and other important causes. Closing or Transitional Sentence: We would have more money to spend on more important problems if marijuana were legal. II. Topic Sentence that supports the thesis: Legalization of this drug would reduce drug-related crimes. Example: All illegal drugs are expensive because their production, transportation and sale are very risky. Example: People with drug addictions must often resort to theft and other crimes in order to generate the funds necessary to purchase these types of drugs. Example: Legalization would reduce the risks, the prices, and, therefore, the crimes. Example: In addition, crimes related to drug disputes would also be reduced once Marijuana becomes a legal drug. Closing or Transitional Sentence: Not only could the legalization of Marijuana save the lives of drug dealers and their clientele, but it could also save many terminally ill patients from suffering. III. Topic Sentence that supports the thesis: Marijuana can be used as a treatment for certain medical conditions. Example: Marijuana could be  used to treat terminally ill AIDS patients by stimulating their appetite so they can resist emaciation (drastic weight loss). Example: Smoking this drug will alleviate the severe nausea that is a common side effect of chemotherapy. Example: In addition, Marijuana has been known to ease the pain of severe migraine headaches. Closing or Transitional Sentence: Since it is evident that Marijuana could be a valuable drug in the fight against many terminal diseases, it should be legalized. CONCLUSION: Repeat the idea of your thesis: By lifting the ban on marijuana use and treating it like other drugs such as tobacco and alcohol, the nation would gain immediate and long-term benefits. Summarize/Reinforce the outline of the body: Marijuana, a common and easily produced wild plant, could be beneficial to many if legalized. Return to a general level of the subject: Prohibition does not work. Education and treatment are better to address the drug problem in this country.

Celta

CELTA P/T Karolina Szybinska Assignment 3: Skills Related Tasks -1I decided to use the â€Å"Metro† article on Big Brother for my skills related task. I think it is an appropriate text for English language learners, because the article was published in â€Å"Metro† – a free newspaper which students will immediately recognise (proven that they have lived in London for more than 2 weeks). I also think that the use of an â€Å"authentic† text could be hugely appreciated by the students; the ability to read and understand a newspaper they see daily is an enormous confidence booster for them.The article deals with contemporary issue, and the topic is not culturally biased as the concept of Big Brother will be known to European students and possibly to other students with a little bit of an interest in the western culture. But, most of all, this article is perfect for a reading activity, as the topic is known to be a very controversial one and would make it a gr eat discussion/ productive skill extension.I would use it with an intermediate/upper intermediate level students (depending on the individual students too, trying not to match the level to the strongest students, but also making sure the students are not bored or unchallenged because I focus too much on the weaker ones). -2– I think a good starting point for this lesson would be playing a trailer of The Truman Show movie and start from there. Many students will be familiar with the movie already and if they are not, the trailer provides a good explanation of the problem in the movie.The idea of being invigilated 24/7 is put across quite bluntly in the trailer alone. The trailer is also a good aid to use, should any Assignment 3 P/T Celta Karolina Szybinska 1 students have problems with a sentence in the text â€Å"The Truman Show-style concept†. Students could first discuss with partners whether or not they have seen the movie, how they feel about being filmed, do they know any other movies/books/TV programs where this idea is explored . After eliciting Big Brother, ask some additional, personalised questions like â€Å"Have you ever watched BB? , â€Å"Would you like to be one of the contestants? †, â€Å"Have you ever applied for the show? †. Then I could move to the first reading activity. -3Although there are plenty of new vocabulary items in the article, I think students would not have any significant difficulties with grasping the overall meaning of the text. I am not a fan of pre-teaching vocabulary, I agree with Jeremy Harmer here, who claims that â€Å"by giving them some or all of those words we deny them [a chance to practice tackling authentic texts]† (Harmer, 203) i.I think that students get the better grasp of the word if they work themselves towards the meaning, e. g. from the context, and in this article I would only preteach key vocabulary, such as contestants, to air sth, to screen sth, pittance. I would us e pictures/movies and CCQs to convey the meaning. For the remaining vocabulary issues I would count on the students to try and convey the meaning from the context or give them a matching exercise of words and synonyms to be completed in pairs in the pre-reading stage of the lesson. 4I would use this article to practise skim reading. It is not long, but consists of enough paragraphs to cater for the teacher to set up skimming activities. My activities for practising skim reading through this article would be as follows: ? Match the paragraph with the heading ? Put the scrambled paragraphs in order. Assignment 3 P/T Celta Karolina Szybinska 2 I would remind/explain to the students that skim reading is a skill that require quick reading and ability to choose only important information.After instructing activity, give them the handout to match headings with paragraphs and give the students quite conservative time limit (2 minutes), as they need the push to read quickly and finish before the time is up, otherwise the students tend to focus too much on unknown vocabulary instead (Riddell, 102)ii. After that, pair and then group feedback. Then give out another handout with scrambled paragraphs and give them another 3 minutes to put them in a correct order, followed by pair and group feedback. For this task I prepared two various copies.If the group is energetic, I would just ask the students to number the paragraphs from 1-6. If the group is low on energy and needs some kinaesthetic and personalised activities, I would give them scissors, glue and a blank sheet of paper, so they would have to cut the paragraphs up and glue the correct order. -5For the more detailed understanding task, I would use 2 activities, which I think will be suitable. ? a set of questions with multiple choice answer. ? a True/False questionnaire about the article, each followed by â€Å"why? so the student can also identify the fragment of the article containing the relevant information. Davi d Riddell says that answering multiple choice and T/F questions required scanning the text for specific informationii but I truly think that this activity could be used as the detailed reading task. Because students would have already skimmed the text by then, additional scanning would supplement the initial task Assignment 3 P/T Celta Karolina Szybinska 3 and together it could form a comprehensive and detailed reading activity. Particularly if the questions were not too easy with an obvious answer. 6For the last part of the lesson I would put pictures of Big Brother contestants engaged in various activities in the house (sleeping, cooking, working in the garden, cleaning, dancing etc. ) around the classroom. I would also play a short clip of Davina McCall reporting from a Big Brother house. Students will be put in pairs and told that they are news reporters broadcasting from outside the Big Brother house and that their producer gave them 10 minutes to prepare the topic and wants th em to mention specific items (new vocabulary from the lesson, put on the board).The students can walk around the classroom and decide what information they would like to include in the broadcast. After ten minutes each pair stands in front of the rest of the classmates and â€Å"broadcast† their story on Big Brother. Assignment 3 P/T Celta Karolina Szybinska 4 i Harmer, J. The Practice Of English Language Teaching. 3rd Edition. Longman, 2001. Riddell, D. Teach Yourself Teaching English as a Foreign/Second Language. McGraw-Hill, 2003 ii