Fun Fun Debate Class Assignment: What Is 'Gender Equality'

I'm now joining the Fun Fun Debate Class of my school. Fun Fun Debate Class is one of the free Saturday after school classes. I do some debates with other participants there but the way and the roles of the debates we are doing in the class are a little bit different from the parliamentary debate I used to do during the GLPS camp. However, the obvious thing is that both of them are interesting and enjoyable.

For the first two weeks, we learned some fundamental skills and knowledge for a successful debate. For instance, on September 1st, the first day of the debate class, we did some activities related to 'listening' so that we could concentrate on our opponents' speeches and catch the major points in their speeches easily. Moreover, on the last Saturday, we  practiced 'speaking' and 'reading' since speaking clearly and in time is one of the crucial thing in a debate. Truth be told, I wanted to debate rather than doing the speaking and listening practices but I conceded that speaking and listening well were the most useful and important skills when it comes to debate

During the third week, the debate class participants had to prepare for the '100 Seconds Speech'. The '100 Seconds Speech' is a kind of short presentation and my debate teacher said that it would help us speaking in time.

Anyway, here is my speech. The speech was actually in Korean but I translated it into English. Doing this speech took about 2 minutes and 3 seconds.

Ladies and gentlemen, who are doing house chores such as cleaning and cooking in your home? Well, most of you may say, "my mother is doing all the house chores you mentioned!" Mostly, in Korea, mothers are doing house chores while their husbands and children are relaxing and playing. Can we say, "Korea has achieved gender equality"?

Hello, my name is Eujin Jo. Today, I will first give you the definition of 'gender equality'. Next. I will take a brief look at the treatments for women in history and the gender equality in today's society. 

First, I'd like to define the term, 'gender equality'. I define the term 'gender' to mean the two different sexes -men and women- . Also, I define the term 'equality' to mean 'no regulation to women/men when they are doing a specific action'. Thus, 'gender equality' means 'no discrimination among men and women'.

Unfortunately, our ancestors did not achieve gender equality. During the Josun Dynasty, most of the Korean women could not go out freely but had to take care of their husbands and children until they eventually died. The discrimination against women was more severe in other countries.Women did not have voting right in America until a fews decades ago. Also, during the Victorian era of England, husbands and boyfriends had a ligitimate right to beat up their wives and girlfriends.

Luckily, we eventually achieved gender equality with the efforts of many people. However, we still have to put more efforts on making our society more equal. If there were only men on the earth, human beings could not have developed that much. We can live better lives only when we achieve gender equality.

My Debate Script: THBT Human Overpopulation Is A Global Crisis.





It's unbelievable but the small dots in this picture are actually people.



  These days, I'm attending an English academy to do some parliamentary debate. In fact, there are only two people in the class but we are pretending that there are enough people to do parliamentary debates. I started attending the academy last Friday. The topic was that 'This House Believes That Human Overpopulation Is A Global Crisis' and I was the Prime Minister. Here is my speech:

Ladies and gentlemen, because of the advancements in medication and increasing of food, global population is increasing over and over every year. According to Wikipedia, the world's population continued increasing after the Black Death of Europe. As of September 2012, the world population reaches 7.039 billion people and it will increase more and more as time passes by.

Hello, my name is Eujin Jo and I'm the Prime Minister of the governement side. Today's topic is that 'This House Believes That Human Overpopulation Is A Global Crisis' and our team strongly supports the topic. That is because, first, many people all over the world are starving. Second, if the world population increases, crime rate will increase, too. And, finally, because of overpopulation, environmental problems are increasing these days.

Today, as the Prime Minister of the Government Side, I will give the split, define the terms and state the first three arguments of our team. Besides, the Deputy Prime Minister will state the other two arguments of our team and rebut some points of Leader of the Opposition. Lastly, our whip will rebut the points of the Deputy Leader of the Opposition and tell you the reason why our team definately win this Debate.

Now, I'd like to define the terms. I define the term 'overpopulation' as 'too many human beings living on the earth'. Also, I define the term 'crisis' to mean 'causing a lot of global problems such as some environmental problems and crimes'.

I'll state the first three arguments of our team from now on. First of all, many people all over the world are starving nowadays especially in Africa. That is mainly because we can not prduce enough foods for all the human biengs even if we are farming and cooking over and over. According to FAO, about 925 million people are starving or can not eat enough food. The earth is too small to feed every human being on it.

Moreover, if there are more people, there may be more crimes. It is an obvious fact and we can know it through the example of these two countries-America and Korea-. American population is more than 300 million. On the contrary, Korean population is only about 50 million. American crime rate is absolutely higher than Korean. In America, more than 1.2 million crimes are taking place every year while only 1082.0 crimes are occuring in Korea a year. This example tells us the fact that crime rate will increase if the global population increases and overpopulation will cause more serious crimes on the earth.

Third, overpopulation will cause several environmental problems and shortage of natural resources. 'More people' means 'more creatures which need fossil fuels, energy and food to live'. They make numerous trashes everyday and the trashes will pollute the earth. Moreover, the green house gasses and other pollutants from their cars and factories will result in more serious environmental problems which will cause a lot of disasters.

So far, I, as the Prime Minister, defined the terms, gave the split, and stated the three arguments of our team in detail. Ladies and gentlemen, somebody even said, "humans are 10 thousand times more common than we should be". Overpopulation is one of the most serious global problems these days and it will effect all the human beings on the earth. Thank you very much.

I think that this speech is a little bit better than the speeches I wrote during the GLPS. But my debate teacher who came from America said that I had some things to improve and change in the speech.

 He said that I had to let the audience know about the specific associations and places I mentioned in my speech. As you can see in the speech, I cited one of the reports of FAO, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, but did not explain about the organization in detail. That was because I expected that almost every people all over the world might know the famous organization. However, the teacher said that I should not expect every people to know FAO but should explain about it during the debate.

He also said that my second argument was not that logical. My second argument was that 'there would be more crimes if there were more people on the earth'. The teacher said that stating the argument was very similar to saying " if the counsumption of icecream increased in the summer, there would be more flies." Increasing of flies and icecream consumption are mainly because of hot weather. However, the two things themselves do not have any relationship. Likewise, even if increasing of crimes and people are because of the big size of the country, we can not say that they have a cause-and-effect relationship.

In fact, I did my second debate in the English academy yesterday night with a topic that 'This House Believes That Music, Movies And Video Games That Glorify Violent And Criminal Behaviours Should Be Banned' and I was the Leader of the Opposition this time. The speech for yesterday was much longer than the previous speech. I'll upload it later.

English Gifted Class Assignment: The Person I Admire The Most

As I mentioned in another post, I am joining the local English Gifted Class and studying English with other gifted students every Wednesday. My second gifted class assignment was 'writing about the person you admire the most' and I had to submit it to the gifted class teacher today. In fact, I almost forgot the assignment until yesterday. However, fortunately, I could remember the fact yesterday afternoon and started to scribble the essay. The essay was...

Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Titus Andronicus and Julius Caesar. These are the famous plays and novels the people all over the world including the gone generations love to read and watch. You, who are now reading my essay, maybe a great fan of the plays and novels. Then, do you know the author of the pieces? Yes, he is William Shakespeare. As you may all know, William Shakespeare was a famous play writer who lived several centuries ago. Also, he is the person I admire the most.

I was in the 4th grade. I liked reading books so much and always stayed in the school library for almost an hour every day. Thus, I read almost every fairy tales in my school library at that time and was looking for something new. So I decided to read the fantasy novel series-The Harry Potter series-I found on the bookshelves for older students. Soon I found that the fantasy novel series were amazing, interesting,  fantastic and awesome. And one day I thought, "It will be great if I can write fantastic fantasy novels like the Harry Potter series later on!". Since then, I dreamed of being a writer in the future.



This is the history book I used as a reference
for my final history presentation.
In fact, Shakespeare lived in Stratford -Upon-Avon.



And, as time passed by, I became a 6th grade student who would soon graduate from elementary school. I  became too old to read the Harry Potter series which were the books I liked the most when I was young and started to think that the books were a little bit childish.  Also, my future dream had changed a little bit into a professor in the English department who not only taught students but also wrote novels . And, during the last summer vacation as an elementary school student, I participated in the Global Leadership Program for Students camp held in the Korean Minjok Leadership Academy. I learned how to do effective and persuasive presentations there. The class was called 'history presentation class' and I had to do three history presentations during the camp. William Shakespeare was the topic for my final history presentation. Before I did research for the presentation, I did not have any specific feeling about William Shakespeare. However, while doing the research, I came to know that he was a very awesome play writer. Since then, William Shakespeare become the person I admire the most.





Titus Andronicus



William Shakespeare wrote so many plays, including the four plays I mentioned. All the plays were interesting but somewhat scary. It was because Shakespeare liked to put unusual ways of killing in his plays. Thus, in Titus Andronicus, Chiron, who was a very tragic and miserable character, was stabbed and baked into a pie. To make the matters worse, the pie was served to Chiron's mother. In Romeo and Juliet, Juliet killed herself with a sword at the end of the play. Besides, Lavinia, who was the daughter of Titus, was even cut out her tongue and hands. They are so horrible, aren't they? However, if Shakespeare had not added the horrible scenes in his plays, Shakespeare's plays might not be so fascinating and exciting.

But, the fact that William Shakespeare put some unusual ways of killing in his play made me curious. As I mentioned, in Shakespeare's play, somebody was stabbed, somebody killed himself or herself with a sword and somebody was even baked into a pie. I wonder how Shakespeare could create all the scenes and how his actors could play the scenes successfully. Therefore, if I meet Shakespeare for real, I want to ask him about the horrible scenes in his plays.

There is no doubt that William Shakespeare's plays are great. The fascinating plays are blowing many people's mind. Moreover, the plays entertained the ordinary people of the middle ages who got so much stress from hunger and hard work. William Shakespeare was a really awesome play writer. I hope that I can write fantastic writings like Shakespeare someday.

Review Of The GLPS Camp

On the first saturday of last July, my mother, who was in her workplace, called me at 12:30 or so. She said that I got the chance to join the 18th GLPS camp. It made me feel ecstatic since I looked forward to participating in the GLPS camp.

It all started last year, when my father showed me a site related to the Global Leadership Program for Students(GLPS). He said that we would apply for the GLPS camp after a few months. When we visited the GLPS site, we could know the way to join the camp more in detail. First, I should write my self introduction about my English ability, the things I want to do in the GLPS camp and how I have studied English. Second, I had to send them a recommendation from the teacher who was teaching me English. On May, everything was prepared and my parents sent the documents to KMLA.

On July 22nd, I finally arrived Korean Minjok Leadership Academy. As soon as I arrived the school, I saw huge Korean traditional houses that I could hardly see before. The houses made me so surprised and I became much more surprised when I came to know that the Korean traditional houses were actually classrooms. I'm sure that everyone will feel like me if they never been to KMLA and do not have much knowledge about the school.

However, the most surprising thing was that the students and teachers always said 'Hello' when they met each other. We often do not care about or sometimes ignore the people we do not know that much or not familiar with. Meanwhile, KMLA students always said 'Hello' to their peers and elders even if they did not know much about the people. I always heard PAs' and TAs' voices saying 'Hi' to each other everytime I took a walk or hung around the school. The attitude of  KMLA students made almost every GLPS participants say 'Hi' or 'Hello' to each other, PAs, TAs and teachers everytime.

                                           

Besides, as for the classes I joined during the GLPS camp, I joined the History Presentation class, the Debate class, the Writing class, the Math class and the Physical Education classes -the Archery class, the Kendo class, the Yoga class and the Golf class-. Among them, the class that impressed me the most was the Writing class.

During the Writing class, I learned how to wirte various types of essays and poems such as a reflective essay, an argumentative essay, diamente poems, a metafiction and an ode. Mr. Garrioch, who taught writing to the students of Class 14, Class 15, Class 16 and Clasa 24, was my writing teacher. Class 14, including me, had five hours of writing classs each week and covered one or two topics every week. At first, Mr. Garrioch showed us some videos related to the topic. For example, we watched a video that dealt with the benefits of using blogs when we first made our own blogs. Besides, we even watched Kony 2012 when we were writing argumentive essays about Joseph Kony. After watching the videos, we usually found some key words related to the topic such as 'ethos' or 'ode' and Mr. Garrioch told us the most important points we should make in our essays. Sometimes we had some discussions for a long time since our opinions and viewpoints were very different. After we finished all the process, we eventually got the 'computer time' to write our essays on our blogs. Most of my classmates finished their assignments during the computer time. However, everytime I tried to post something on my blog, I couldn't post it during the computer time. I always spent too much time on researching and prewriting my essays and sometimes spent all the precious computer time doing the things. As a result, I had to go to the Myeon Hak room for the second self study almost everyday to finish my essays and even spent all of my dinner time writing essays instead of going to the cafeteria for dinner-my roommates thought that I was too enthusiastic-. But, anyway, the time I did prewriting, researching and writing made me the best blogger among  the studetnts of Class 14 as well as among the Level 1 elementary school students.

Now, looking back, the month I spent in KMLA was one of the most enjoyable times for me. Almost everything was interesting though all the classes, especially the Physical Education classes and the math class, were a little bit challenging. I'm sure that I will not forget the memory about KMLA even after several years. And I hope that you can get great memorys about KMLA or GLPS if you go there.

How I Participated In GLPS

Today is the first day of September. These days, I sometimes feel as if several years have passed since the day I first arrived KMLA, Sometimes, I feel as if I did not go anywhere but just stayed home during the last summer vacation. However, even though I sometimes can not remember the days I spent in KMLA, I can remember the days I prepared for participating in the GLPS camp, still.

I first came to know the existence of Korean Minjok Leadership Academy last year. It was Saturday night and my family watched a television documentary called  'What Is A School :The Best Highschools All Over The World'. The documentary introduced three high schools which were the best high schools all over the world. Surprisingly, one of the highschools was KMLA. The documantary showed the daily lives of some KMLA students (one of them was my History TA in GLPS) and I thought that attending the high school would be quite nice.

One day, my father told me about a camp which was held by KMLA. It was called 'Global Leadership Program for Students'. He said that we would apply for the 18th GLPS camp to get the chance of participating in the camp on the next summer vacation. We searched the GLPS site to find some information. It seemed that the process to join the camp was very challenging amd it made me somewhat depressed.

But during the winter, I did not have much things to do. So instead of preparing the documents and self introduction to join the camp, I entered the local English Gifted Class and worked on the assignment I got in the class. In fact, I started preparing on April, 2012.

I first started to write my self-introduction. I had to write a self introduction which had some information about my English ability, the things I wanted to do in GLPS and  how I had studied English.  Writing the introduction which was only about 450 words took several weeks since I had to write it while doing other things such as school homework or reading books. Also, they required the recommendation from the teacher who was teaching me English. Since I did not attend any private academies, I asked my English Gifted Class teacher to write a recommendation for me. She kindly wrote a recommendation which dealt with my personality and English ability. On May, my parents sent my self introduction and the recommendation to KMLA.

Writing a self introduction was not that easy. But something more challenging was waiting for me: it was 'preapring for the GLPS placement tests'-the writing test and the speaking test-. As for the writing test, I had to write two essays about different topics. One topic changed every year but another one didn't. The camp participants had to write a review about books or movies every year. I had to prepare for writing the review but, truth be told, I never wrote any review in English. I learned how to write a good book review when I was the third grade student at shcool. However I was not that good at writing a review at that time and came to dislike writing a review -in fact, I wasn't good at writing at all-. So I did not write any book review except the duty assignments which I sometimes got at my school. Overall, I wasn't that confident in writing a review.

How I came to write quite good book reviews after a few months was a mystery. Also, why they allowed me to participate in the camp was a mystery. But the obvious thing was that they DID select me as one of the GLPS camp participants. It was the first Saturday of July when I first heard that I was accepted and, at the moment, I jumped for joy.

I was very happy to participate in the 18th GLPS camp and learn a lot of things. Time will pass very fast and I will forget almost everything about my life as a sixth grade student soon. But the things I will not forget in the future may be the days I spent in KMLA as well as the time I prepared for taking part in the camp which was much longer than the time I actually spent in KMLA.