Drill
Answer each or some of the
questions below in a sentence or two by using either or both of the following
sentence structures.
○In
my opinion, it is natural to be concerned that / to think ～, but I do not think that …
私の意見では、～を心配する/～と考えるのは当然だが、私は … だとは思わない。
○This
means / does not mean that ～.
これは～を意味する/意味しない。
Questions
1.
Which
would you choose: a high-paying job with long working hours or a lower-paying
job with shorter working hours?
2.
It
is often said that the Earth is being seriously damaged by humans. Others feel
that the ecological damage of human activity has been exaggerated, and that
humans are making the Earth a better place to live. Which opinion do you agree
with?
3.
Agree
or disagree? It is always good to have as much information as possible.
4.
Suppose
that you wish to travel from your home to a place 100 miles (160 kilometers)
from your home. Would you take a train or drive your car, and why?
5.
Agree
or disagree? The best way to travel is in a group led by a tour guide.
6.
Imagine
that you have been given a large area of land to use however you wish. Hoe
would you choose to use this land?
7.
Agree
or disagree? The government should provide a national curriculum for all
children up until college.
8.
There
are people who think that physical exercise should be required activity at
school. Others argue that school should be concerned only with academic
studies, and that physical exercise is something best left out of school life.
Which of these views do you share?
Writing Topic
Consider the
following statement. E-mail has made communication
between people less personal. Do you agree with this idea? Support your response by
including specific reasons and examples.
☆Let’s Think
1.
Let’s make sure what “personal”
means.
Imagine a
movie scene in which a speeding car driven by a bounty-hunter, who is to kill
someone and goes, "This time, it's personal."
Which of the
following do you think is a possible reason for the killing?
a. He is to
kill the person for his client.
b. He is to
kill the person to avenge his friend.
2.
Which do you find more personal, communication in person or
over the phone or communication through e-mail or text message?
3.
Do you think e-mail has made communication between people
less personal?
For reference: E-mail has become so popular
that when you say mail you mean e-mail now. Before e-mail became popular, mailing
meant sending letters or post cards. These means of communication are more bothersome,
time-consuming, and costly than e-mail. Communicating in person was easier,
faster, and cheaper than by mail before. Now, e-mail has taken the place of direct
communication in many cases. Business is often done only through e-mail. Some
think opportunities of personal communication have reduced because of the
frequent use of e-mail. Others think that people are enjoying their personal
communication more than ever by e-mailing and text messaging.
☆An Essay for Ideas and Expressions
A villain in an old suspense movie ― I think
it was Snake Eyes ― says, before
shooting a character who had tried to personally warn the US President of a
danger, "How naive you were, trying to contact the President by e-mail!”
Even deleting such an extreme case of hacking as in the case of this movie
scene, there is an impression that Information Technology has deprived us of
the personal area in our communication. However, I cannot totally agree with
the statement that e-mail has made communication between people less
personal. In some cases, e-mail seems to make personal communication more
possible than before. When I think about whether e-mail has made communication
between individuals less personal from three perspectives: opportunities for intimate
communication, the contents, and openness of the Internet, they lead
me to different conclusions. It also seems that whether communication between
individuals is personal or not seems to be affected not so much by the IT
history as by one’s personal history.
古いサスペンス映画（スネーク･アイズだったと思う）の悪者が、米国大統領に個人的に危険を警告しようとした登場人物を撃つ前に「大統領にＥメールで連絡しようとするなんてひどい世間知らずだったね。」と言う。この映画の場面の様なハッキングという極端な場合を除いても、ITはコミュニケーションにおける個人的な領域を私達から奪ったという印象がある。しかしＥメールが人々の間のコミュニケーションをあまり個人的でなくしてしまったという発言に完全には賛成できない。場合によってはＥメールは個人的なコミュニケーションを以前より可能にするように思える。Ｅメールが個人間のコミュニケーションをあまり親密でなくしたかどうかについて、親密なコミュニケーションの機会、内容、インターネットの開放性の三つの観点から考えてみると、異なる結論になる。また、個人のコミュニケーションが個人的かどうかはＩＴの歴史よりも個人史に影響されるようにも思える。
In terms of intimate communication, the total
time we spend on it seems to have reduced as e-mail has spread. What used to be
done in person, on the phone, or by letter before is now done by e-mail. Exchanges
between family and friends are often made by e-mail. In business, it is not
uncommon that employees in the same company who have never met or talked with
each other have been working on a project together only by e-mailing for years.
In this case, personal touch in communication is extremely rare. As e-mailing
is faster, both good news and bad new are reported before meeting in person. Some
moments of daily life are not directly shared now. A “Going-home call” is now a
“going-home-mail or message”. A typed message of your beloved is less personal
than the voice. If the contents are the same, an old online message is less
precious as a keepsake than an old hand-written memo, which the writer touched
and on which the person fixed ink in their personal character style. At the
same time, it is also a fact that e-mails contribute to intimate communication.
They help people communicate with their family and friends even when they are
away from each other. You can also receive or send personal messages even while
you are at work or in class. This was impossible before the service was
invented.
親密なコミュニケーションという点において、Ｅメールが広まるにつれて費やす時間の総量は減少してきたように思える。以前対面か電話または手紙で行われていたことが今はＥメールでなされている。の家族間や友人間のやりとりがよくメールで行われる。ビジネスにおいては、一度も会ったことのない同じ会社の従業員が何年もメールだけによって一緒にある計画に取り組んでいることは珍しくない。この場合、コミュニケーションに於ける人間的な接触は極端に稀だ。良い知らせも悪い知らせもメールの方が速いので直接会う前に報告する。日常の瞬間が今では直接共有されない。「帰るコール」は今では「帰るメールか連絡」だ。タイプされた大切な人の連絡はその人の声と比べるとあまり個人的ではない。内容が同じなら古いオンラインメッセージは書き手が触りその人の字体でインクが定着された古い手書きの連絡メモほど形見として貴重ではない。その一方で、Ｅメールが親密なコミュニケーションに貢献しているのも事実だ。遠く離れている時でさえ家族や友人とコミュニケーションをとるのをＥメールが助けている。仕事中や授業中でさえ個人的なメッセージを送受信できる。メールサービスが発明される前これは不可能だった。
Contents of communication seem to have become more personal than before the
advent of e-mail. Since it is more casual than a letter, an e-mail can be
written in very rough or friendly ways. Also, it can be written and sent more
readily than a letter. If you include the evolved forms of e-mail like posting
on social media, no one is excluded in learning someone else's, often a perfect
stranger's, personal matter. People upload their personal opinions, personal
pictures, and many other kinds of personal information, which are exposed to
the eyes of people all over the world. I myself have encountered many more
personal messages of the people I have never met over the past ten years than I
had in the previous decades through online messages.
コミュニケーションの内容はＥメールの出現以前よりも個人的になったように思える。手紙よりもくだけているのでメールは非常に雑または親しみのあるやり方で書くことができる。手紙よりも気軽に書いたり送ったりできる。またソーシャルメディアの投稿の様なＥメールの進化形態を含むなら、他人の、しばしば完全に見知らぬ人の私事を知るのを誰も阻害されない。人々は自分の個人的な意見や写真、その他多くの種類の個人情報をアップロードし、それらは世界中の人々の目に曝される。私自身オンラインを通して、過去十年間それ以前の数十年間よりもずっと多くの一度も会ったことのない人達の個人的なメッセージに遭遇した。
When it comes to the openness of the Internet,
it seems that there is little personal realm. The information on it has been
meant to be shared by all since it was developed using the public money.
Although e-mail is encrypted and its messages stay between individuals, carbon
copy (cc) or blind carbon copy (bcc) functions allow the sender to share the
message with many people other than the recipient. Also, a moment of lapse like
hitting a wring key can make your personal messages public. If this discussion
can include social media messages, the exposure will be almost limitless. It is
well-known that personnel managers routinely refer to Twitter or Facebook for
the information of job candidates and employees. Moreover, it is now an
open-secret that the intelligence agents of developed countries read ordinary
people’s e-mails. When you really want to be personal, you have to avoid IT.
インターネットの開放性ということになると個人的領域はほとんど無い様に思える。公費で開発された時からネット上の情報は皆に共有されることになっている。Ｅメールは暗号化されておりメッセージは個人間で保たれるが、写し機能や隠しの写し機能で送り手が受け手以外の多くの人とメッセージを共有することが可能だ。また、キーを間違えて打つ等の一瞬の過失により個人的なメッセージが公開される。もしこの議論がソーシャルメディアのメッセージも含めることができるなら、露出はほとんど限界がない。人事部長が就職希望者や従業員の情報を求めて日常的にツイッターやフェイスブックを参照しているのはよく知られている。その上、先進国の情報局員が一般人のメールを読んでいることは今では公然の秘密だ。本当に個人的にしたければＩＴは避けなくてはならない。
Now, this might be a rather personal view, but
communication between people may not be influenced very much by changes of
means of communication. I feel that communication is always personal on the
individual level. As far as I know, it is when I am interacting with one person
whether in person or through some kind of medium that I feel that I am really
communicating with someone, in other words, having an interaction
open-heartedly. Interaction with more than one person becomes not communication
but something theatrical or political. It makes people play a role, willingly
or unwillingly, wearing a persona provided by the circumstance. Thus, a private
e-mail is more personal than a public e-mail is, while a public e-mail is less
personal than a face-to-face communication between two individuals is. Communication
can or cannot be personal with or without e-mail.
さて、これはどちらかというと個人的見解かもしれないが人々のコミュニケーションはコミュニケーション手段の変化によってあまり影響を受けないかもしれない。個人レベルではコミュニケーションは常に個人的だと感じている。知る限りでは誰かと真にコミュニケーションをとっていると感じる、言い換えれば心を開いて交流していると感じるのは、対面であろうが何らかのメディアを通してであろうが一人の人と交流している時なのだ。一人以上の人との交流はコミュニケーションではなく何か劇場的又は政治的なものになる。それにより人は好むと好まざるとにかかわらず、自分のいる状況に規定された人格を身に着けてある役を果たす。そういう訳で、個人的なＥメールは公的なＥメールより個人的である一方、公的なＥメールは個人間の対面コミュニケーションほど個人的ではないかもしれない。Ｅメールがあってもなくてもコミュニケーションは個人的になることもならないこともあるのだ。
Actually, the above-mentioned impression of
mine about personal communication might not be too personal. Humans are social
animals, and thus they must be, consciously or unconsciously, aware of the
social side of the Internet. A professor who studies phenomena on the Internet
says, based on an experiment in which students are assigned to talk in front of
the webcam in their bedroom and send the video message to YouTube every day,
that, although people are talking about personal matters and showing their very
personal sides, they are kind of playing a role in the virtual world, wearing a
mask which is very intimate but still made up to be shown to the public. If
this applies to all the personal messages and posts on the web, strictly
speaking, they are not really personal. Furthermore, no one, including the
sender of a message, can actually tell whether the person is really making a
confession or not, since our minds are very complex. Therefore, the contents
that seem to be personal might not be really personal.
実のところ、個人的なコミュニケーションに関する上記の私の印象は個人的過ぎではないかもしれない。人間は社会的な動物であり従って意識的無意識的にインターネットの社会的な面を意識しているに違いない。インターネット上の現象を研究しているある教授が、学生が毎日自室でウェブカメラの前で話をしてユーチューブにビデオメッセージを送る課題をする実験に基づき、人々は個人的な事について話しており非常に個人的な面を見せてはいるが、非常に親密だが依然として一般に見せるために作られた仮面を着けて電脳世界におけるある役をある種果たしていると言っている。これがウェブ上の全ての個人的なメッセージと投稿に当てはまるのなら厳密に言ってそれらは本当に個人的ではないのだ。その上さらに私達の精神はとても複雑なのでメッセージの送り手を含め誰もその人が本当に告白しているのかどうか実は分からない。従って個人的に思える内容は実は個人的でないかもしれない。
It is difficult to determine whether e-mail
has made communication between people less personal because it is difficult to
discern what is going on in communication. People interact in many ways and e-mail
is only one of them and might not be so powerful as to make fundamental changes
in our communication. Yet, we all feel that things are not the same as before e-mail
was created. In any case, I would not try to contact the US President by e-mail
if I had to personally warn him.
コミュニケーションに於いて何が起こっているのか見極めるのが難しい為、Ｅメールが人々のコミュニケーションをあまり個人的でなくしたかどうか結論するのは難しい。人は多くの方法で交流しＥメールはそのひとつにすぎないし私達のコミュニケーションを根本的に変える程強力ではないかもしれない。しかしＥメールが生まれる以前と比べて物事は同じではないと皆が感じている。いずれにせよ自分が米国大統領に個人的に警告しなければならないとしたらＥメールで連絡を取ろうとはしないだろう。
☆Your Sample Essay Structure
【Introduction】
【Point 1】
【Point 2】
【Point 3 / Counterargument-treatment】
【Conclusion = Wrap-up】
