Writing for an Academic Discussion The strongest influence during formative eyars - revised -

What influences children most during their formative years?

 

 

☆Let’s think

1.        When are the formative years?

(From birth to age 8)

2.        Which influence most in formative years, parents or experiences like reading habit?

 

 

☆Hints for Points

1.        Life environment

Economic status of the family, education level of the parents, development status of the local community, and pollution are some aspects of the life environment.

2.        Discipline and habit children learn from parents and the surrounding community

Like father, like son: habits like washing hands and reading something every day becomes a decisive factor of development.

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

Even after relearning old values, people often think and act according to them.

4.        Books, movies, videos, and social media

Man is but a thinking reed, and therefore media update mental states significantly.

5.        School education

For example, a government propaganda decides the mindset of a child. People who grew up under the government of Imperial Japan kept the fascist mindset even after WWII and having received a democratic education.

 

 

☆Sample Response

I think life environment is the most crucial in formative years. Although I agree with Lian that reading develops a child’s brain, nurturing its emotional, moral, and intellectual beings, the child needs brain capable of learning to read. An MIT research 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 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, permanently damaged the children there mentally and physically. A child who had had no problem with multiplication tables before the pollution cannot remember them correctly now. 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. (235 words)

 

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