Today I had my first Center of English Language Education (CELE, DO NOT PRONOUNCE IT, please!) course. I found it very useful. Unfortunately, that means I have to modify most of my essays, even change them foundamentally.
The marker/reader of your essay will judge your work from such aspects: relevance; understanding of the problem; evidence of reading; critical analysis of reading; awareness of differences of opinion between sources; ability to interpret and synthesis sources; ability to evaluate different views/solutions/etc.; ability to provide support in the form of examples, data, etc.
When doing reading, you should note down the sources, read critically and note your own responses, try to adapt your ideas as you go on.
Before writing, it is very important that you analyse the given question, make sure you know what does the assignment ask you to do. Bear in mind that all that you read should be relevant to the problem.
When writing, first write the body draft, then introduction and conclusion. Again, all the sections should be relevant to the title.
After finished writing, check if all text build towards conclusion; check if the discussion is sufficient; check if you have referred to all the sources; check if you followed the convention of layout. Do a few times of proofread to make sure you have correct content, language and grammar. Focus on one problem in one proofreading session.
2005年10月31日星期一
2005年10月30日星期日
2005年10月29日星期六
Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | EU offers to slash farm subsidies
The EU has demolised trade barriers within its boundary. Now, maybe it is also trying to lower trade barrier to the outside world.
The EU offers to cut its subsidiary to agriculture products export by at most 60%. To fair trade advocators, this is very good news. EU spokesman says that farmers from some poor countries are suffering from US and EU cheap agriculture exports. Therefore they want to change this.
French do not like this decision. This is imaginable. They have a very supportive agriculture and farmers are important political force. This policy may also bring economic loss to UK farmers because UK farming is heavily depending on subsidiary. However, from a environmental aspect, this policy can surely cut excessive agriculture production and make more diversified agriculture economy pattern.
The EU offers to cut its subsidiary to agriculture products export by at most 60%. To fair trade advocators, this is very good news. EU spokesman says that farmers from some poor countries are suffering from US and EU cheap agriculture exports. Therefore they want to change this.
French do not like this decision. This is imaginable. They have a very supportive agriculture and farmers are important political force. This policy may also bring economic loss to UK farmers because UK farming is heavily depending on subsidiary. However, from a environmental aspect, this policy can surely cut excessive agriculture production and make more diversified agriculture economy pattern.
2005年10月27日星期四
Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Wild herds may stampede across Britain under plan for huge reserves
This piece of news can be considered as (1) the sign of a more integrated European conservation framework and (2) a more aggresive step of UK agriculture reform and re-wild of its land.
Most of the land involved in this proposal is land with marginally farming economic value. Therefore it should not pose threat to the country's crop yield. However, there are still people living on the land. The future reserve area will not allow premanent accommodation (the statement here is not clear yet). Therefore some people will need to move. If they choose to continue farming, this could influence other farmers at their immigration destination.
Some new species will be able to enter UK after they extincted in this country due to human activities. Thanks to transbound conservation scheme. However, it remains questioned that whether these species would threat local landscape and species. After all, they have vanished in the wild for up to 800 years, and much of UK landscape is formed in recent 300 years.
Another problem may be the former use of land in the to-be reserves. Is it contaminated? Or too close to human settlements? An EIA should be carried out not only for local farming ecosystem and settlement, but also for the species coming in.
On politics, this proposal will help UK establish a more ecology-active nation image. No doubt that other EU countries will praise and imitate this action. At least this is good for those species which will enter UK.
Most of the land involved in this proposal is land with marginally farming economic value. Therefore it should not pose threat to the country's crop yield. However, there are still people living on the land. The future reserve area will not allow premanent accommodation (the statement here is not clear yet). Therefore some people will need to move. If they choose to continue farming, this could influence other farmers at their immigration destination.
Some new species will be able to enter UK after they extincted in this country due to human activities. Thanks to transbound conservation scheme. However, it remains questioned that whether these species would threat local landscape and species. After all, they have vanished in the wild for up to 800 years, and much of UK landscape is formed in recent 300 years.
Another problem may be the former use of land in the to-be reserves. Is it contaminated? Or too close to human settlements? An EIA should be carried out not only for local farming ecosystem and settlement, but also for the species coming in.
On politics, this proposal will help UK establish a more ecology-active nation image. No doubt that other EU countries will praise and imitate this action. At least this is good for those species which will enter UK.
2005年10月25日星期二
2005年10月24日星期一
[Academic] Sustainability Indicators
In recent case study on Sustainable Indicators, I found Chinese way of implementing Sustainable Development is quite different from that of EU's. In Britain there is already a framework of Sustainability Indicators. But in China, there are only void concepts, reports and proposals. Very little practical work is done. This is disappointing, indeed. The idea of Sustainability Indicators is controversial. It is a reductionist way of assessing complex systems. When simplifying complex relationships between elements some information could be ignored. The interpretation of SIs may also be subjective. However, so far simplication is the best approach we have to assess complex systems. We have enough data for calculating a index indicating the system's state, driver and response. Therefore we can probably just try using simplication, discover problems in using the indicator set, and improve it. I do not think that Chinese policy makers should try to make a perfect framework of SIs, they should get down to work ASAP, set up a initial SI set and see what is its problem.
2005年10月23日星期日
突然觉得自己只是一个人
孙燕姿《相信》的一句歌词。
这种感觉在 field trip 回来之后更加强烈。没有电话留言，没有电子邮件，连信箱里也没有我的信。觉得自己好像被遗忘在这个小岛上了。
当然这也只是自己的一种感觉而已。我相信不一定非要联系一个人才能让他知道自己还惦记着他（她）。不过似乎也是因为我太相信这一点了，所以大概也忽视了许多人被联络的需要吧。
嗯，明天找时间打几个电话。联系一下很久没有联系过的人。
这种感觉在 field trip 回来之后更加强烈。没有电话留言，没有电子邮件，连信箱里也没有我的信。觉得自己好像被遗忘在这个小岛上了。
当然这也只是自己的一种感觉而已。我相信不一定非要联系一个人才能让他知道自己还惦记着他（她）。不过似乎也是因为我太相信这一点了，所以大概也忽视了许多人被联络的需要吧。
嗯，明天找时间打几个电话。联系一下很久没有联系过的人。
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