Academic Discussion and Writing What influences children most during their formative years?

Question   What influences children most during their formative years?

 

 

☆Let’s think

1.        When are the formative years?

2.        What influences are expected from bad experiences during these years?

 

 

☆Hints for Points

1.        Life environment or life circumstance

2.        Parents

3.        Community

4.        Cultural factors such as religion, custom, and social norms

5.        Books

6.        School education

7.        Government propaganda

 

 

☆Sample Response

I think life environment is the most crucial in formative years. Although I agree with Lian in that reading develops a child’s brain, nurturing its emotional, moral, and intellectual beings, the child needs brain capable of learning to read. A research at MIT has found that “a brain region dedicated to reading has connections for that skill even before children learn to read.” Thus, a bad life circumstance in a child’s first few years will predetermine its later growth no matter how good caregiving and education it may receive later. Factors such as food and water security, shelter, protection from violence, and protection from pollution will affect a child’s physical and mental development. For instance, poverty affects brain structure, cognition, behavior, and mental health. The ongoing Flint Water Crisis, which caused lead-poisoning in the drinking water of the city of Flint, damaged children’s brain permanently as well as affecting other parts of their body. A child who had had no problem with multiplication tables now cannot remember them correctly. 80 percent of the children in Gaza, where attacks from Israel have been going on daily and bombing periodically for decades, have mental trauma such as depression, not to speak of physical ones. Even when no such drastic disadvantages are seen, air and water pollution could be harming the healthy neurological development of children in today’s society. It is the most important to preserve a child’s environment intact for its growth. (240 words)

 

 

 

Your Sample Response

【Thesis = Outline】

【 Point 1  】

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  Example 2

【 Point 2  】

  Example 1

  Example 2

【Conclusion = Wrap-up】

 

 

 

Write your response in 10 minutes. Show each other your responses. Write down questions or suggestions to each other’s response.

 

                                               DRAFT