December 2018 – Section C (Continued)
Q3.
Good morning to the President of UTAR, staff and students. I am Athena Soong, the advisor
of Student Representative Council (SRC) of University Malaya. I am privileged standing here
to speak to you this morning in conjunction with Teacher’s Day. I believe that all of you have
a few social media accounts, right? Now, I have a question for the students. May I know how
many of you have added your teachers on the social media? You may show me your hands,
thank you. My speech today entitled “Should teachers and students be friends on social
network platforms?”. The purpose of me giving this speech today is to persuade students to
follow teachers on social media with certain boundaries. In my speech, I will discuss on three
topics which are the emergence of social media, ubiquitous online teaching and learning
environment and healthy teacher-student relationships.
First and foremost, I would like to discuss on the emergence of social media. Nowadays we
use many social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Discord and so
on. One advantage of it is we get the opportunity to expose to new things besides connecting
with people around us through different platforms. Besides, we also have the freedom to
follow our teachers on the social media. We can see them updating their personal lifestyle on
social media and get to know them better. Now, here comes the disadvantage. We tend to
start judging our teachers by reasoning that they should behave appropriately all the time
since teachers are role models to students upon seeing their personal posts on social network
platforms.
Next, it is about the ubiquitous online teaching and learning environment recently due to the
Covid-19 pandemic. It is no doubt so convenient if we can use social media like WhatsApp,
Telegram and Google Hangouts to reach our teachers after class for the consultation. This is
because we believe than teachers have the capability to solve our difficulties rather than
asking friends. Sometimes, teachers may also provide us some additional information on the
topics that we do not understand. However, this may cause inconvenience to teachers too as
they need to sacrifice some of their personal time to help the students with their homework.
Besides, I would like to touch on healthy teacher-student relationships. The question is, how
can we maintain a healthy relationship with our teachers on social media? Firstly, we need to
set some boundaries. For instance, teachers should not chitchat too frequent on social media
with existing students as this may let students to have wrong perceptions on their teachers.
For example, a student may think that his or her teacher will bias him or her by awarding
higher marks in the exam. Meanwhile, a student may have different feelings towards his or
her different sex teacher. This may lead to sexual harassment on social media between the
teacher and student. In addition, students should not send messages to their teachers if it is
already late at night as teachers also have their personal things to do.
In a nutshell, I hope that I have pretty much summed up my contents today which are the
emergence of social media, ubiquitous online teaching and learning environment and healthy
teacher-student relationships. In my opinion, teachers and students should be friends on social
network platforms with setting up some clear boundaries. That’s all from me, thanks for
lending me your ears.
December 2017 – Section C (Continued)
Q3.
Good morning to the President of UTAR, staff and students. I am Athena Soong from UTAR
Active Wellbeing Society, and I am honored to deliver a speech at this opening ceremony of
UTAR ‘Eat Smart Month’. Now, students, can I have a show of hands, how many of you here
skip breakfast regularly? Do you know that? Breakfast is often called “The most important
meal of the day”. My speech this morning entitled “Eating Breakfast Daily”. The purpose of
my speech today is to persuade all the students here to eat your breakfast regularly on a daily
basis. In my speech, I wish to bring your attention on three side effects of skipping breakfast
which are bad mood swings, increased weight gain, and increased risk of heart disease.
First and foremost, skipping breakfast will cause bad mood swings. This is because we do not
have enough energy to perform our daily tasks. Studies have also shown that people who
completely skip their breakfast will have utmost fatigue levels and very fewer memory skills.
Thus, this has proven that breakfast plays an important role in providing us energy and good
mood to carry out our daily activities.
Next, increased weight gain is also one of the side effects with skipping breakfast. Yes, you
do not hear it wrong. People usually skip their breakfast to lose their weight but avoiding
breakfast peps up the craving for fatty as well as sugary acids. Thus, being hungry makes you
eat whatever you come across later of the day. For instance, take in food with high calories
which have exceeded the daily recommendations. At the end of the day, skipping breakfast
will increase one’s weight instead of losing weight.
Furthermore, skipping breakfast will cause you to have a high risk of heart disease. Based on
a research done, there are nearly 27% of people who skip the breakfast are prone to heart
attacks when compared to those who have their regular breakfast. Previously, I have
mentioned about weight gain due to skipping breakfast. Hence, people who have unusual
heavy weight can easily have clogging in their arteries, high blood pressure, and have the
potential of getting stroke. So, this shows that eating breakfast daily is very vital for our
health.
In short, I hope that I have persuaded you to eat your breakfast on a daily basis. Eating
breakfast is very vital and this could prevent us from suffering from the three health issues
stated above which are bad mood swings, increased weight gain and increased risk of health
disease. Thank you everyone for your attention. Hope you have a nice day!