Measuring Progress in Second
Language Proficiency
A concise study on progress with lexical and
grammatical complexity in written proficiency
tests of students of English
By Joyce Calis
3513793
June 2012
BA Thesis
Utrecht University
Supervisor: Dr. Merel Keijzer
2
Table of Contents
1. Introduction
3
2. Theoretical Framework
5
2.1 Lexical Complexity
6
2.2 Grammatical Complexity
8
3. Methodology
12
3.1 Participants
12
3.2 Materials
12
3.3 Procedure
13
4. Results
16
4.1 Lexical Complexity Results
16
4.2 Grammatical Complexity Results
18
5. Discussion
21
6. Conclusion
25
7. Works Cited
26
Appendix A: The Original Participants’ Papers
29
Appendix B: Additional Statistical Analyses
106
3
1. Introduction
Over the past decade, being able to express thoughts and opinions in English has become
increasingly important, due to the language’s rise as an international language (Kasuya,
2001). More proficient English second language (ESL) learners are able to express
themselves more clearly and completely than less skillful ESL learners. This study has
researched on a small scale how improvement in second language proficiency can be
measured. For example, the following two sentences are both written by the same student, but
at different stages of university-level ESL instruction. Sentence A: “Our world has been a
place for men for a very long time.” Sentence B: “On the contrary, the use of new
technologies such as mobile phones and especially the Internet, [sic] has resulted in an
extended social life which allows people to participate more in society.” (Student 1, see
Appendix A) Both sentence A and B voice opinions, however, the latter provides much more
information than the former. When comparing these two sentences on grammatical and
lexical complexity, sentence B scores higher on both accounts. This example demonstrates
exactly what this study focuses on; does progress in lexical and grammatical complexity
occur through proficiency courses.
Improvement by means of proficiency classes is central to the entire discipline of
second language acquisition. Progress in second language learning is mostly taken to mean
advancement in lexical and/or grammatical proficiency. The importance to second language
learners of being well-educated in grammar is already widely acknowledged (Kameen 1979,
Flahive and Snow 1980). Vocabulary, on the other hand, has been grossly neglected and
undervalued in the field of second language acquisition and especially language teaching,
says Cheryl Boyd Zimmerman (1994). Recently, however, researchers have started to show
an increased interest in the acquisition of vocabulary by second language learners (Coady &
Huckin, 1997; Cook, 1991; Nation, 2001). It is highly interesting to investigate the
improvement in lexical and grammatical skills at tertiary level, especially within English
language programs, as students enrolled in such programs are generally very skilled from the
outset in their language proficiency and, as a consequence, will most likely show only
minimal progress or progress at a much slower rate than lower-level learners.
Many Universities have a range of proficiency classes that have been designed to
ensure progress in language proficiency, among which the English Language and Culture
degree of Utrecht University. First year students of English at UU are obliged to take
proficiency courses. At UU these courses are called, Taalvaardigheid 1, 2 and 3 (Proficiency
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1, 2 and 3) and will be referred to in the rest of this paper as TV1, 2 and 3 respectively. These
courses are taught in consecutive order over a time period of seven months, with an average
of an estimated two months per course. The TV courses focus on enhancing the written and
oral performances of students of English. So far there has been little discussion about whether
or not students actually make progress regarding lexical and grammatical complexity in their
writing products as a direct consequence of these proficiency courses. Students could, in
theory, pass the first proficiency course with a high mark, and conclude the last proficiency
course with a considerably lower mark. In other words, students could still pass the
proficiency courses, but seemingly without making any progress, or worse, their language
proficiency could even decline. Thus, no research has been done that surveyed papers of
consecutive proficiency courses on grammar and vocabulary, even though grammar and
vocabulary are two important criteria on which students’ papers are graded. This paper seeks
to remedy these problems by determining whether or not students enrolled in English
Language and Culture at Utrecht University become progressively better at using an academic
register in papers and creating increasingly more grammatically complex sentences
throughout the TV courses.
Average students of English should become more confident in their writing skills as
they advance in their studies. Growing confidence can lead to a more daring writing style
which can consequently lead to the creation of more complex sentences. As the curriculum
also includes studying vocabulary, one would expect the active use of academic words to
increase. Expectations are that the TV3 essay results will show a significant improvement in
both the usage of academic register and lexical variety as well as the manifestation of more
complex sentences as compared to TV1 essay results. TV2 papers will most likely show an
improvement over the TV1 papers, but not necessarily a significant one.
For the benefit of this study ten students were randomly selected and longitudinally
followed throughout their proficiency classes in order to establish not only if there is general
progress in language proficiency, but also individual progress. Subsequently, a total of thirty
papers, ten papers from each of the three proficiency courses taught at UU, were critically
examined on the basis of grammar and vocabulary. The papers were checked on the frequency
of academic word usage and the length of complex sentences, among other measures, to
ascertain whether or not general and individual had improvement occurred.
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2. Theoretical framework
The term second language acquisition (L2A) can be used both for groups and individuals
studying a language subsequent to their mother tongue. The use of the word second is perhaps
misleading, however: second can refer to any other language learned outside of the first
language. It can therefore actually be the third or eighth language someone is learning. L2A
incorporates formal learning that takes place in classrooms and informal learning which takes
place in a naturalistic context as well as a combination of both (Saville-Troike, 2006). Since
this study monitors progress in written proficiency throughout courses taught in University
setting it will solely deal with formal L2A.
One of the fundamental questions when investigating L2A must be: how is a second
language acquired? There is no unilateral answer to this question, but a frequently mentioned
phenomenon is that of L1 transfer (Saville-Troike, 2006; Meng, 2011; Wang 2009). L1
transfer means that some influence or knowledge from the L1 is reproduced in utterances in
the L2. A distinction is often made here between two types of transfer: positive and negative
transfer. Positive transfer occurs when L1 influence results in a grammatically correct
utterance in the L2. Negative transfer occurs when an L1 structure or rule is used incorrectly
in the L2 and is perceived as an error by native speakers. Positive transfer is more likely to
occur when the L1 and L2 are typologically similar such as, for example, Dutch and English.
As opposed to L2 learners, it is an absolutely necessity for children to interact with L1
speakers because otherwise the L1 cannot be learned. L2 learners can achieve a high level of
proficiency even without native speaker interaction (Saville-Troike, 2006). On the other hand,
where L1 learners' final state is typically full native linguistic competence, L2 learners are
often unable to fully master a second language. The highest competence level L2 learners can
reach according to Saville-Troike is near-native or native-like (p. 21). This is because most L2
learners become stuck in their learning process when they have achieved native-like
competence (or even before that) and fossilize. This leaves them unable to make further
progress in mastering their target language. Towell and Hawkins (1994) observed that:
If we are past the age of around 7–10 years the acquisition of an L2, in marked
contrast to the way we acquired our first language (L1), can turn out to be rather
slow, laborious and, even in talented L2 learners, tends to stop short of native-like
proficiency. This “stopping short” has been referred to as fossilization (Selinker
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1972) or incompleteness (Schachter 1990). It is one of the noticeable characteristics
of second language acquisition.
Consequently Towell and Hawkins have explicitly established a connection between
fossilization and L2 final attainment. Zhaohong Han states that: “[m]ost researchers … are of
the view that the term ‘fossilization’ should be reserved exclusively for non-target-like
forms.” Hyltenstam (1988) gives the following example:
Fossilization – according to observations – is a process that may occur in the second
language acquisition context as opposed to first language acquisition. It covers
features of the second language learner’s interlanguage that deviate from the native
speaker norm and are not developing any further, or deviant features which –
although seemingly left behind – re-emerge in the learner’s speech under certain
conditions. Thus, the learner has stopped learning or has reverted to earlier stages of
acquisition.
2.1 Lexical Complexity
A considerable amount of literature has been published on the acquisition of vocabulary in the
realm of second language learning. Several researchers have concluded that vocabulary is
often neglected in second language teaching (Coady, 1997; Levenston, 1979; Richards, 1976;
Sinclair & Renouf, 1988). They mention a variety of reasons for this phenomenon. One of the
first serious discussions and analyses of vocabulary acquisition emerged during the 1970s
with Richards (1976), who claimed that the neglect of vocabulary is closely related to certain
trends in linguistic theory. In the seventies, for instance, vocabulary had to give way to
grammar and sound oriented linguistics. Furthermore, Levenston (1979) stated that applied
linguistics has disregarded vocabulary in favor of syntactic development. Conversely, Sinclair
and Renouf came up with a different theory. They stated that “it is exceptionally difficult to
teach an organized syllabus of both grammar and lexis at the same time” (p. 143). According
to Coady, the neglect of vocabulary teaching can be ascribed to the assumption of many
teachers that “words are going to be learned naturally from reading and do not need to be
taught” (p. 274). According to Levenston and Richards, grammar and syntax are considered
the most important factors in second language learning by many teachers.
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In recent years, an increasing number of researchers have stressed the importance of
vocabulary in second language acquisition. Vivian Cook (1996), for example, is of the
opinion that “grammar provides the patterns, [but] vocabulary the material to put in the
patterns” (p. 49). According to him, using a word entails more than solely knowing the
meaning of it. In order to effectively use a word in a sentence, a person needs to know how
the word relates to other words and with which other words it is associated (pp. 49-50).
Correspondingly, Linda van Mourik stated that “[v]ocabulary acquisition is generally thought
to be a very important, if not the most important, aspect in the acquisition of a foreign
language” (2001, p. 5).
In his edited volume, Coady (1997) compares several research projects that have been
conducted on vocabulary instruction in both L1 and L2. Coady does not distinguish much
between L1 and L2 acquisition and focuses on how both can be improved. He discerns four
main positions in these studies, briefly summarized below.
The first position Coady detects is “Context Alone” (p. 275). Researchers who agree
with this idea believe that there is “no need or even justification for direct vocabulary
instruction” (p. 275). Krashen (1989) argues that vocabulary and spelling are acquired
through reading. However, what needs to be mentioned is that none of the studies mentioned
by Coady in the Context Alone position focus on second language acquisition.
The second position Coady (1997) discerns is “Strategy Instruction” (p. 276) and
proponents of this position also believe that context is the most important source of
vocabulary learning. Contrary to followers of the Context Alone position, however,
proponents of Strategy Instruction believe that second language learners need some reading
instructions. Some scholars have claimed that “for students with academic goals, no matter
how intuitive the appeal, natural learning will not provide the literacy skills necessary for
coping with academic demands” (p. 277). According to these scholars, skills in academic
literacy can only be learned through instruction and training (Carrell, Devine, & Eskey, 1988;
Dubin, Eskey & Grabe, 1986). For that reason, Sanaoui (1995) stresses the importance of
assisting second language learners so they can master adequate learning strategies. Oxford
and Scarcella (1994), similarly, argue that it is vital to teach students specific strategies for
learning vocabulary. Moreover, they state that learners should be taught how to improve their
vocabulary on their own. It is important to note, however, that these scholars have typically
dealt with advanced second language learners and, consequently, their proposed strategies are
designed for relatively proficient learners who wish to become even more proficient in
academic language usage.
8
The third position Coady (1997) mentions is “Development plus Explicit Instruction”
(p. 278). Proponents of this position believe that it is very important to introduce the teaching
of words at an early stage (Coady, 1993; Nation, 1990, 1993). It must be said that such studies
have mainly dealt with elementary learners of English, who are mostly taught in a nonEnglish speaking environment. Nation suggests that second language learners master the
2,000 most frequent words as soon as possible. Coady furthermore emphasizes that learners
should learn these words to automaticity. What is more, an empirical study conducted by
Paribakht and Wesche (1997) concluded that contextualized learning through reading was
productive, but that reading combined with vocabulary instruction resulted in a greater
increase in vocabulary knowledge.
The fourth position Coady (1997) points out emphasizes “Classroom Activities” (p.
280). In Coady’s edited volume researchers describe a very traditional line of vocabulary
teaching. They mention different practical exercises teachers can use to improve vocabulary
in class. Allen (1983) divides second language learners in three categories: beginner,
intermediate and advanced. She proposes several exercises per group. For example, she
suggests that beginners can best expand their vocabulary through classroom activities such as
playing games and discussing pictures. On the intermediate level Allen suggests dividing
students into small groups and presenting them with task work, many activities and simplified
reading. For advanced learners she recommends dictionary work, training in morphology and
comprehension work on reading passages.
2.2 Grammatical Complexity
Another important part of learning a language is grammatical competence. To be able to
produce unambiguous and understandable sentences, a language learner not only needs lexical
knowledge, but also grammatical knowledge. Within the field of grammar there are still many
aspects that can be researched. Hirano (1989) has, however, proposed that so-called T-units
are an accurate means of measurement to gauge syntactic maturity, especially in writing
skills.
The first serious discussions and analyses of T-units emerged during the 1970s after
Kellogg Hunt discussed them at length in several of his papers (Hunt, 1965, 1970, 1970,
1977). The term T-unit is derived from Minimal Terminable Unit, which is, in itself, a clear
indicator of what the term entails. Every sentence contains at least one, but more often several
T-units. Hunt (1970b) defined it as “a main clause plus all subordinate clauses and nonclausal
9
structures attached or embedded in it.” A T-unit can be used as “a measure of syntactic
maturity in the writing of … schoolchildren.” (Hirano, 1989) There is a simple calculation to
measure the mean T-unit length: words/T-units: word number divided by number of T-units
in a text. Below is an example to illustrate how this is done:
This boy did not steal. I’ve known him for a long time, so I think he is trustworthy.
3 T-units, 18 words; mean T-unit length (words/T-units): 18/3 = 5
This boy, whom I’ve known for a long time and think is trustworthy, did not steal.
1 T-unit, 16 words; mean T-unit length: 16/1 = 16
First language vs. second language and the use of T-units
In his paper Hirano mentions that several first language researchers (e.g. Hunt 1965,
O’Donnell et al. 1967, O’Hare 1973, Loban 1976, O’Donnell 1976, Freedman 1980) have
concluded that measuring the mean T-unit length is a more reliable way of assessing syntactic
maturity than other measures such as subordination ratio, length of clauses and the length of
sentences. Hirano also remarks that the mean length of T-units increases as language
proficiency increases. This makes measuring the mean T-unit length a reliable way of
establishing progress in language proficiency (also found by Flood, 2005; O'Donnell, Griffin
and Norris (1967)).
There are also second language researchers (e.g. Kameen, 1979; Flahive and Snow,
1980; Present-Thomas et al, 2012; Ortega, 2003) who have conducted research into T-units.
Their research focused on (amongst other things) whether or not the T-units had significantly
improved in mean length. Kameen (1979) graded fifty papers of college-level L2 learners in
two categories. A total score of one hundred could be achieved and, depending on the score,
students’ papers were either labeled ‘good’ or ‘poor’. Kameen found that there were
statistically significant differences between twenty-five poor writers and twenty-five good
writers in T-unit length, clause length and incidence of passive voice. Flahive and Snow
(1980) investigated three hundred papers to measure the number of errors per T-unit in each
paper. They made use of compositions from six different proficiency levels. Flahive and
Snow concluded that there was a significant distinction between writers from the different
proficiency levels based on the length of T-units and the clause per T-unit ratio. Flahive and
Snow were, however, unable to prove that there was an increase or decrease in the numbers of
errors made per T-unit.
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Present-Thomas et al. (2012) also made use of T-units as a means to measure progress
in syntactic complexity. Present-Thomas compared three different writing assignments,
produced by incoming University students, with one another: a reading summary, a listening
summary, and an essay. Comparisons were made on the mean length of T-units (MLT).
According to Present-Thomas, however, MLT on its own “does not provide enough
information to determine which strategies (e.g. coordination, subordination, nominalization,
or phrasal modification) contribute to any differences.” (p. 37) Therefore, to provide the
missing information, Present-Thomas adds three additional measures:
First, in order to measure the coordination sub-construct of syntactic complexity,
coordinate phrases per T-unit (CP/T) was [sic] selected. Next, the T-unit complexity
ratio (C/T) was chosen to represent syntactic complexity achieved by means of
subordination. Finally, mean length of clause (MLC) was included in order to shed
light on the sub-construct associated with nominalizations and/or phrasal pre- and
post-modifications. (p. 37-38)
In her conclusion Present-Thomas mentions that the nature of the task has an enormous
influence on the outcome. Summaries written in one sentence had the longest mean length of
T-units. Summaries written after the listening task generally had the shortest MLT and the
essays were somewhere in between.
Ortega (2003) conducted a meta-analysis involving 21 cross-sectional studies of
syntactic maturity in L2 writing proficiency. Ortega compared the different studies on
instructional setting: e.g. English Second Language learners (ESL) vs. Foreign Language (FL)
learners and compared program level vs. holistic rating using the proficiency criterion
employed by Wolfe-Quintero et al. 1998. When a language learner has spent more than six
months immersed in the target language he/she is usually referred to as a SL learner, whereas
people who have not lived in a country where the target language is spoken are commonly
referred to as FL learners. Ortega states that she:
treated the proficiency sampling criterion as a study variable of interest in the
synthesis because [previous research] … concluded that proficiency is probably
related to increases in syntactic complexity in L2 writing only when the former is
defined by programme level, but not holistic ratings. (p. 498)
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In her conclusion Ortega claims that ESL learners in the studies synthesized tended to write
papers of higher syntactic complexity than FL learners. Moreover, studies that measured
group differences by means of holistic ratings revealed a smaller standard deviation and a
tendency to yield a narrower range of observed syntactic maturity measurements.
Furthermore, Ortega proposes four “critical magnitudes” (p. 512) for between-group syntactic
complexity comparisons:
1. 4,5 words per sentence (MLS)
2. 2 or more words per T-unit (MLT)
3. Slightly over 1 word per clause (MLC)
4. At least 0.20 difference in clauses per T-unit (C/T)
Whenever these magnitudes applied in Ortega’s research the magnitudes signaled a
noteworthy improvement or decline when comparing the different groups to each other.
Therefore, these magnitudes are extremely useful when interpreting results even though they
are not statistically significant. Finally, Ortega suggests that two to three months of
university-level instruction would result in only minor changes in syntactic maturity;
however, a yearlong observation might substantially improve the MLT in written texts by
ESL learners and FL learners.
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3. Methodology
The proficiency courses explained
A case study approach was chosen to allow thorough analyses of possible grammatical and
lexical progress made by students in their writing products. These writing products were
produced for Utrecht University’s English Language and Culture proficiency courses. Each of
these courses has a specific focus. TV1 (Written English), mainly focusses on developing
argumentative writing proficiency. This course was taught for eight weeks, eight hours per
week. Four of these hours were lectures on grammar and argumentation and the remaining
four were tutorials split up between two hours of speaking, and two hours on writing skills.
The writing tutorial took a process writing approach where students presented their paper at
various stages and received feedback from their peers and instructor. Vocabulary was not
actively taught in any of the proficiency classes, but students were tested on vocabulary
throughout the TV courses. This was done via the computer where students had to pick
synonyms or antonyms for a selected word. All the vocabulary questions are multiple-choice.
Moreover, it should be noted that vocabulary does not make up a large part of the students’
grades in any of the TV courses. Students’ writing skills were assessed based on the
argumentative papers they wrote for each of the TV courses.
TV2 was taught six hours per week, for eight weeks. Two hours per week were
reserved for lectures on phonetics; the other four hours were tutorials. Two hours on listening,
pronunciation and ear training and the remaining two hours dealt with writing and presenting.
As in TV1, writing skills were tested through argumentative papers. Furthermore, speaking
skills were graded through presentations and phonetics skills were tested by means of a
general exam.
As with TV2, TV3 also has a total of six classroom hours per week over a period of
eight weeks. The grammar and writing lectures, which are taught two hours per week, focus
on pedagogical grammar and practical rules for writing academic research papers. The other
four hours were tutorials. The classes were divided between two hours of speaking and
listening, and another two hours spent on developing writing skills. The course exams
consisted of a general exam, a presentation and a paper. While the aim of each TV course was
not further specified, the outset was to improve students’ English listening proficiency,
pronunciation, writing skills, English vocabulary and knowledge of Anglophone culture.
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3.1 Participants
The participants for this research were all enrolled in the proficiency courses (see 1.) of the
English Language and Culture degree of UU and were chosen randomly from a database
made available by the UU. The only requirements the participants had to meet were that they
had to have taken the three proficiency courses in the same year and they had to be native
speakers of Dutch learning English as a L2. Also, the same ten people were chosen from each
proficiency course. This way not only a general, but also an individual development could be
measured. The chosen students were not informed of their participation in this research,
thereby guarantying an honest representation of their abilities. Moreover, since all papers
examined were unmarked, no information on grades was available. Furthermore, all the
papers were anonymized to protect the identities of the participants. The TV1 papers were
written after approximately two months of university education within the English
department. The TV2 papers were written after an estimate of five months (Christmas break
included) and TV3 papers were produced after circa seven months of university education.
Out of the ten participants, nine were female and only one was male. This is not surprising
because the number of female students is substantially higher than the number of male
students enrolled in the English Language and Culture degree of UU.
3.2 Materials
For the purpose of this study, ten random papers from each respective proficiency class were
made available by a proficiency teacher for analysis. It was considered that ten papers per
course were sufficient for the present purposes. All thirty papers can be found in Appendix B.
The proficiency courses are divided into different categories: Written English (TV1),
Spoken English (TV2) and Accurate English (TV3). While all three courses thus have a
different focus, they all require students to write papers. In the first proficiency course, TV1,
the main focus is on writing structured argumentative papers. TV2 continues to build on the
English writing skills acquired in TV1. In TV3 students are provided with practical rules for
writing academic research papers. They are also taught to recognize and correct mistakes in
papers. Throughout these courses students are expected to study vocabulary, mostly by means
of self-study on the basis of set course literature. The nature of self-study is different,
however. TV1 and 2 mainly focus on academic and formal words, whereas TV3 mostly deals
with collocations. The papers produced by the participant were all argumentative essays in
14
style and genre. Moreover, the students had to pick their topics from a list provided to them
by their proficiency teacher. The topics ranged from political debates to religious scandals to
ethical arguments. The students could pick a topic they felt most interested in, as long as it
was on the list. The number of words differed per paper: TV1 had a word limit of 500 words,
TV2 of 650 words and TV3 of 1000 words.
3.3 Procedure and Data Analysis
In an effort to diversely assess improvement in language proficiency, a variety of methods
was used. In order to measure the extent of academic register, the papers were each
individually entered into an Academic Word List (AWL) Highlighter created at the University
of Nottingham. The AWL Highlighter is a very useful tool which can be used to highlight
words from the core academic vocabulary. The AWL itself contains a total of 570 words and
is constructed by Averil Coxhead in New Zealand. To create the AWL, Coxhead
made a corpus i.e. a computerised collection, of over 400 written academic texts,
equalling about 3.5 million words in total. Coxhead used a range of different types of
texts: journal articles, www articles and university textbooks, covering 28 different
subject areas from 4 disciplines: arts, commerce, law and science. (Haywood)
As a next step, the number of different academic words were counted per paper, and then
added up to form a general impression per course (see Table 1 in the results section).
In order to measure the lexical variety, a Type Token Ratio (TTR) analysis was
conducted on all papers. The TTR indicates how many different words were used in each
paper. The results are shown in Table 2 in the results section.
To establish whether improvement in grammar has occurred and more specifically if
the mean length of T-units (MLT) has increased, the papers were run through Xiaofei Lu’s L2
Syntactic Complexity Analyzer. However, a total of four syntactical complexity measures
were looked at: the mean length of T-unit MLT, also the mean length of clause (MLC), T-unit
complexity ratio (C/T) and coordinate phrases per T-unit (CP/T). Subsequently, the results
were counted per individual essay, as well as per course, see Tables 3.1-3.4 in the results
section.
The Academic Wordlist Highlighter
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The method adopted by Coxhead, to develop the Academic Word List (AWL) involved
counting how “frequently and widely” (Haywood) various words are used. From these results,
the core academic vocabulary was selected. Words that occurred at least a “hundred times in
the corpus as a whole and at least ten times in each of the four disciplines [Arts, Commerce,
Law and Science],” (Haywood) were included in the AWL. This ensured that no discipline
specific words would be added to the AWL.
Each essay investigated in this study was submitted to the AWL Highlighter. This tool
allows for a text up to 2000 words to be analyzed on the occurrence of academic words as
derived from the AWL by Coxhead. The tool scans the text and then changes the occurring
academic words from normal script into bold script. For the purpose of this research only
different highlighted words were counted towards the total number of academic words.
Effectively this means that highlighted words that occurred more than once were counted only
as single occurrences. Moreover, words that occurred both in the singular and plural, e.g.
network and networks, were also counted just once. Likewise, any reoccurring verb,
regardless of the inflection, e.g. communicates and communicated, was counted only once.
This was decided because the property of the word is still the same, e.g. a noun or verb. On
the other hand, if a word such as network occurred both as a verb, to network, and as a noun, a
network, it would be counted twice, since the property of the word is different.
Type Token Ratio
The type token ratio is a means to measure lexical variety in written texts. Every word in a
text is called a token, and type stands for different types of tokens, or words. In an effort to
measure lexical variety, this study makes use of a so-called “word counter” (CSG) to distill
how many different types of words were used in each paper. This word counter permits the
user to insert a text for analysis. The program will then scan all the words and provide the
number of unique words as well as the total number of words in the text.
As opposed to the method used in counting academic words, different types of tokens
here do include verb deviations. For example, they networked and he networks have the same
property, which is why multiple occurrences were excluded from the final count towards
academic word usage. In the case of type token ratio, however, both different forms of the
same verb were seen as different types and therefore did count towards the type token ratio.
This decision was stipulated by the automatic count of the word counting program.
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L2 Syntactic Complexity Analyzer
To analyze syntactic complexity in written English texts of learners Xiaofei Lu has created
the L2 syntactic complexity analyzer. Lu explains that:
“L2 Syntactic Complexity Analyzer is designed to automate syntactic complexity
analysis of written English language samples produced by advanced learners of
English using fourteen different measures proposed in the second language
development literature. The analyzer takes a written English language sample in
plain text format as input and generates 14 indices of syntactic complexity of the
sample.”
For the purpose of this study it was decided that analyzing four of the aforementioned indices
would suffice. The chosen measures were: the mean length of T-unit (MLT), the mean length
of clause (MLC), the number of coordinate phrases per T-unit CP/T and the T-unit
complexity ratio C/T. MLT and MLC were chosen to measure the mean length and CP/T and
C/T were chosen to measure if students used a specific strategy such as coordination (CP/T)
or subordination (C/T). Subordination is, furthermore, considered more complex than
coordination (Quirk et al, 1988).
Statistical Analysis
To establish whether the results from the performed research were statistically significant or
not, the program SPSS was used. A so-called paired samples t-test was performed on the
collected data. This test compares two means and calculates the statistical significance of
these means.
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4. Results
Both lexical and grammatical complexity results are presented in this chapter in table format
for an overall view of the results. However, graphs are also provided to create a more visual
and course specific understanding of the results.
4.1 Lexical Complexity Results
Firstly, the vocabulary results of the Academic Wordlist Highlighter are presented in Table 1.
Table 1 shows the progress students made in their use of academic register. The table
provides a clear overview of both the individual progress and the general group performance.
The number of different academic words used is shown per course. Individual performances
can be read from left to right for each student. The group average per course can be found at
the bottom of each column. This will allow for comparisons to be made from each individual
against the group average. For visualization purposes the average vocabulary results are
processed into Figure 1.
Table 1: AWLH Results for TV1 (Std. Dev. 4.92), TV2 (8.38) and TV3 (11.50)
Vocabulary TV 1
TV 2
TV 3
Student 1
18
24
49
Student 2
15
17
35
Student 3
19
42
21
Student 4
24
22
25
Student 5
19
21
44
Student 6
17
19
32
Student 7
19
30
22
Student 8
26
21
36
Student 9
15
13
48
Student 10
30
15
52
Average
20,2
22,4
36,4
Table 1 showed that the group as a whole showed a gradual increase, in their usage of
academic words from TV1 to TV2. As can be seen in Table 1, however, the group’s increased
performance from TV2 to TV3 is much more remarkable.
A closer look at the individual performances shows that more than half of the students
out performed themselves in TV3 compared to their earlier results in TV1 and 2. Some
inconsistencies are noticeable too, however. For example, student 3 and student 7 both scored
18
highest on TV2. Contrarily, student number 10 scored much lower in TV2 than in both TV1
and 3. These individual discrepancies notwithstanding, in 80% of the cases the results from
TV3 were higher than the results from TV1 and 2.
Average number of Academic words per proficiency course
Average Number Academic
Words per Course
40
35
30
25
20
Average
15
10
5
0
1
2
3
Figure 1
Statistically the increase in academic word usage from TV1 to TV2, although showing an
upward trend, was not significant. In other words, the students did not use significantly more
academic words in their TV2 essays than in their TV1 papers.
There was, however, a statistically significant increase in the number of academic
words used in the TV3 essays when compared to the TV2 essays: t(9) = -2.417, p < .05.
Nevertheless, it should be noted that the length of the papers students had to write increased
as well (see 3.2). Therefore, it can be argued that students had more space available to use
academic words.
Secondly the Type Token Ratio (TTR) results are shown in Table 2. The TTR is
calculated by dividing the number of unique words by the number of total words. Again a
calculation of the group average per course was included.
19
Table 2.1: Results TTR TV1 (Std. Dev. 0.018), TV2 (0.029) and TV3 (0.032)
TV1
Student 1
Student 2
Student 3
Student 4
Student 5
Student 6
Student 7
Student 8
Student 9
Student 10
Average
TV2
0,4
0,39
0,43
0,4
0,41
0,37
0,38
0,41
0,41
0,42
0,40
TV3
0,45
0,35
0,42
0,42
0,4
0,38
0,38
0,4
0,4
0,43
0,40
0,36
0,30
0,33
0,31
0,38
0,36
0,34
0,34
0,38
0,40
0,35
Student 1 and 2 are the only students in TV2 that deviated more than 5% from the average
with Student 1 scoring 5,27% above the average and Student 2 scoring 5,63% below average.
All in all, a fairly balanced outcome.
In TV3 relatively more students (compared to TV1 and 2) deviated a little from the
average percentage. None of them, however, deviate more than 5% from the average
percentage. Surpisingly, students scored lower overall in TV3 than they did in TV1 and 2.
So, not only did the group score lower in TV3, but each individual student scored lower as
well. The decline (when calculating the average scores) from TV2 to TV3 was statistically
extremely significant t(9) = 5.026 p < 0.001.
Table 2.2: Academic words per unique words
TV1
TV2
TV3
Academic Unique Percentage
20,2 240,8
8,39
22,4 272,9
8,21
36,4 378,5
9,62
Even though the TTR decreased in TV3, the number of academic words used per course
increased in TV3. Therefore, it was decided to run an additional analysis to see if the number
of academic words per number of unique words increased throughout the TV courses.
As can be seen in Table 2.2, the percentages show that of the unique words,
increasingly more words are academic. So, although lexical variety decreases, more academic
words are used per number of unique words.
20
4.2 Grammatical Complexity
To establish the level of grammatical complexity, four measures were used: MLT, MLC, C/T
and CP/T (see 3.3). Tables 3.1, 3.2, 3.3 and 3.4 below show the results from the Second
Language Syntactic Complexity Analyzer (L2SCA) per measure. Furthermore, Appendix B
includes a comparison between the average of each measurement and the median of the
students’ results.
Table 3.1 MLT Results TV1 (Std. Dev. 3.61), TV2 (2.63) and TV3 (2.38)
TV1
Student 1
Student 2
Student 3
Student 4
Student 5
Student 6
Student 7
Student 8
Student 9
Student 10
Average
15,86
26,88
15,77
21,74
17,66
16,42
19,25
22,44
17,37
21,59
19,50
TV2
18,85
22,97
24,55
17,19
20,50
17,42
19,74
20,32
16,24
21,52
19,93
TV3
20,38
23,52
22,04
21,52
19,49
19,02
16,33
16,43
18,66
17,69
19,51
Assuming that TV3 level students are more proficient, based on the fact that they have had
more exposure to, and classes in English, one would expect the MLT to increase throughout
the TV courses. As can be seen in Table 3.1, the average of MLT is 19,50, which is, when
compared to the MLT TV3 results, already rather high. There are, however, mitigating
circumstances that could explain the relatively high average for MLT in TV1. This is most
likely caused by one outlier in the form of student 2 who produced a disproportionally high
MLT score as part of his TV1 essay. Overall, none of the MLT results were statistically
significant. This means that there were no clear signs of progress.
21
Table 3.2: MLC Results TV1 (Std. Dev. 1,41), TV2 (1.30) TV3 (1.38)
TV1
Student 1
Student 2
Student 3
Student 4
Student 5
Student 6
Student 7
Student 8
Student 9
Student 10
Average
TV2
11,08
14,27
10,79
13,98
10,87
10,63
11,41
11,00
10,15
12,04
11,62
TV3
9,16
12,49
11,57
10,15
9,24
10,34
12,50
9,18
10,03
9,73
10,44
12,47
12,78
10,02
11,87
10,87
11,02
8,36
10,36
9,25
10,99
10,80
As shown in Table 3.2, MLC dropped by little over one word from TV1 to TV2 and
this was proven to be statistically significant t(9) = 2.465 p < 0.05. The difference between
TV2 and TV3 were not significantly different.
Table 3.3: C/T Results TV1 (Std. Dev. 0.19), TV2 (0.27) and TV3 (0.20)
TV1
Student 1
Student 2
Student 3
Student 4
Student 5
Student 6
Student 7
Student 8
Student 9
Student 10
Average
TV2
1,43
1,88
1,46
1,56
1,63
1,55
1,69
2,04
1,71
1,79
1,67
TV3
2,06
1,84
2,12
1,69
2,22
1,68
1,58
2,21
1,62
2,21
1,92
1,63
1,84
2,20
1,81
1,79
1,73
1,95
1,59
2,02
1,61
1,82
Contrary to MLC, C/T significantly increased by 0.25 from TV1 to TV2 t(9) = -2.606,
p < .05. This means that more students used subordination strategies in their papers.
22
Table 3.4: CP/T Results TV1 (Std. Dev. 0.18), TV2 (0.15) and TV3 (0.16)
TV1
Student 1
Student 2
Student 3
Student 4
Student 5
Student 6
Student 7
Student 8
Student 9
Student 10
Average
TV2
0,49
0,69
0,23
0,59
0,31
0,12
0,31
0,60
0,55
0,41
0,43
TV3
0,56
0,42
0,64
0,39
0,34
0,29
0,37
0,25
0,12
0,45
0,38
0,81
0,30
0,32
0,50
0,46
0,37
0,29
0,27
0,47
0,41
0,42
The CP/T scores have not showed any remarkable changes throughout the courses.
This means that there was no significant increase or decrease in the number of coordinate
phrases per T-unit.
23
5. Discussion
This study set out with the aim of assessing progress in language proficiency in written texts
by ESL learners at university level. The assessment was based on progress (or lack thereof) in
grammatical and lexical complexity.
On the question of academic register, this study found that overall students scored a
little higher in TV2 than they did in TV1. The most interesting finding, in this respect, was the
sudden increase in academic word usage from TV2 to TV3. The difference was found to be
statistically significant. It should be noted, however, that the length of the papers increased
from TV1 to TV2 and TV3. Consequently, the students had more opportunities using
academic words.
In order for a more complete picture to be formed, it was decided that a Type Token
Ratio needed to be carried out as well. The TTR would indicate the lexical variety by
counting the number of unique words per text.
It is interesting to note that none of the four measures of grammatical complexity in
this study show a unilateral increase or decrease in their results. Contrary to expectations,
both MLT and C/T exhibited a rise and fall in their results throughout the TV courses. MLC
and CP/T displayed an opposite curve where a decline and a rise were spotted.
Prior studies that have noted the importance of vocabulary teaching in L2A, (Coady &
Huckin, 1997; Cook, 1991; Nation, 2001), claimed that vocabulary teaching was extremely
neglected in classrooms (Coady, 1997; Levenston, 1979; Richards, 1976; Sinclair & Renouf,
1988). Perhaps the TV courses taught at UU are different in this respect, as they do all contain
a vocabulary component. In all TV courses vocabulary was part of the exams and since all
exams had to be passed with a 5.5 or higher in order to pass the course, it is expected that
students were inclined to study their vocabulary. The vocabulary component on the exams,
however, was so small that the tests could still be passed even if students failed the
vocabulary component. So, whether the students studied their vocabulary at length, or even at
all, remains an open question.
A strong relationship between the mean length of T-units (MLT) and the proficiency
level of language learners, both FL and L2, has been reported in the literature (Hirano, 1989;
Hunt, 1965; Kameen, 1979; Flahive and Snow, 1980). In contrast to these earlier findings,
however, no evidence of an increased MLT was detected throughout the proficiency courses.
Furthermore, Ortega (2003) stated that although 2-3 months of university-level language
training would show almost no increase in MLT, a year’s worth of university-level instruction
24
may substantially increase MLT. However, the observed differences between the TV1 results
and the TV2 and 3 results in this study were not significant, even though they did span nearly
one academic year. The main reason why these findings deviate from previous work can be
attributed to the fact that the examined participants were an extremely proficient group of
students who decided to study English and so their language aptitude levels will probably also
be high. As a consequence of their high proficiency though, it takes a great deal more time to
show progression in advanced learners compared to more beginning or intermediate learners.
Similarly, unlike Present-Thomas, this study has been unable to demonstrate a
correlation between more proficient L2 learners and the MLT and MLC. In the PresentThomas research both MLT and MLC showed monotonic increases from the lower
proficiency levels to the higher proficiency levels. The MLT results from the UU students,
however, increased slightly in TV2, but fell back in TV3 to almost the same level as TV1. It
must be said, however, that Present-Thomas looked at all incoming students, where this study
solely focused on English language studying students. Therefore, comparisons between the
two studies are difficult if not unsuitable. The MLC results, additionally, did not resemble the
results in the Present-Thomas research regarding essays. A comparison with the essays
Present-Thomas mentions seemed most appropriate in this case because her essay format
resembles the papers discussed in this study the most. Another unanticipated finding was that
MLC dropped by more than one word from TV1 to TV2. According to Ortega (2003), this
meets the requirement of her critical magnitude for MLC, suggesting that the drop in MLC is
an essential finding when comparing between-groups on syntactic complexity. Furthermore,
the results were indeed found to be significant.
From TV1 to TV2 the C/T score improved with 0.25. Following Ortega’s (2003)
critical magnitude for the T-unit complexity ratio, this increase was noteworthy. Moreover,
the findings of the current study are consistent with those of Present-Thomas (2012), who
found her mean C/T ratio for essays to be 1.88 with a standard deviation of 0.38, since all
three C/T score averages are within the boundaries of the standard deviation.
The CP/T finding is in agreement with Present-Thomas’ (2012) findings which showed
that the mean lay around 0.39 with a standard deviation of 0.21. The CP/T results in this study
reside within these boundaries and are quite close to the Present-Thomas average.
Krashen’s (1989) believed that no formal education on vocabulary acquisition was
needed. The lexical complexity results found in this study might be interpreted as opposing
Krashen’s theory, since there was no formal schooling in vocabulary in any of the TV courses
(only self-study) and the TTR results even showed a significant decrease in lexical variety.
25
These results are, however, broadly consistent with more contemporary beliefs (Coady &
Huckin, 1997; Cook, 1991; Nation, 2001) that vocabulary should be actively taught in
classroom settings.
As expected, the use of academic register increased throughout TV1, 2 and 3. What is
more, the increase from TV2 to TV3 proved to be statistically significant. This would indicate
that students improved in their academic register; however, this is not necessarily true. When
interpreting these results caution must be applied because students were allowed to use more
words in TV3. To be able to better interpret the lexical maturity, the TTR was determined per
course. When comparing the TTR results from each course, the current study found that there
was no increase in lexical variety from TV1 to TV2. It is somewhat surprising that no
increase in lexical variety occurred from TV1 to TV2, but what is more surprising still is that
the lexical variety dropped in TV3. Where the TTR results showed a significant decrease in
the lexical variety in TV3, the AWLH results showed a significant increase in the use of
academic words in TV3. Further research showed that the number of academic words per
unique words (as explained in Table 2.2) actually increased in TV3. This means that a larger
percentage of unique words was academic.
It seems possible that these poor lexical results are due to fossilization as mentioned
by e.g. Saville-Troike (2006), Towell and Hawkins (1994), Selinker (1972) and Schachter
(1990). That would mean that most of the students would have reached their peak before or
shortly after starting their university education. Another possible explanation for this
stagnation might be ineffective teaching methods. The way vocabulary is supposed to be
acquired is solely based on self-study, which requires a great deal of discipline on the
students’ part. Vocabulary is also only a small part of one exam per course, so, students
probably feel less inclined to learn vocabulary, since they are hardly graded for it. Another
viable reason for these results might be that the creativity is forced out of students because of
restrictions such as that only argumentative papers are accepted as writing genre and papers
need to be academic. These constraints may result in well formulated arguments, but are not
necessarily lexically varying ones.
In general, the expectation that MLT and MLC would increase throughout the three
proficiency courses was not met. MLT did not increase and MLC scores were even
significantly lower from TV1 to TV2. Since a longer MLT is directly linked to more
proficient writers, and the results show that the MLT does not improve throughout the TV
courses, it can be argued that the tested students do not become more skilled throughout the
proficiency courses. There are several possible explanations for this result. First of all, the
26
results might present themselves this way due to a natural stagnation where students are
unable to progress further towards native competence. Secondly, it might be due to the
teaching program where students are not stimulated to write increasingly complex sentences.
For a case study, following ten people was deemed enough, however, with a small sample
size, caution must be applied, as the findings might not be transferable to the entire first year.
Contrarily, C/T scores significantly increased from TV1 to TV2. This means that the
students used more subordination strategies in their writing products. Since subordination is
generally viewed as more challenging, this finding might indicate an increase in language
proficiency on the students’ behalf. The CP/T scores were also conclusive with the C/T
findings. Even though the decrease in CP/T score from TV1 to TV2 was not found to be
significant, there was indeed a decrease that corresponded with the C/T increase in TV2.
It seems that the way vocabulary is taught in the proficiency courses now is
insufficient to guarantee increasing lexical variety. Furthermore, the combination of findings
on lexical complexity provides some support for the conceptual premise that being permitted
to write different genres e.g. journalism, creative writing, research writing, might stimulate
the creativity in students and thereby increase their lexical variety.
Moreover, the findings on grammatical complexity have important implications for
developing new proficiency courses at the English department of UU. Overall, this study’s
results would indicate that the current curriculum does not stimulate students to write
increasingly complex sentences.
27
6. Conclusion
The purpose of the current study was to determine whether or not students enrolled in English
Language and Culture at Utrecht University become gradually more proficient in using an
academic register in papers and producing increasingly more grammatically complex
sentences throughout the TV courses. The most obvious finding to emerge from this study
was that lexical variety did not improve throughout the TV courses. The second major finding
was that the use of academic words did increase in TV3. Another important finding was that
generally students did not produce more grammatically complex sentences.
Several limitations of this study must be examined. Even though, as a case study, this
research had an adequate subject pool, a larger subject pool might give a better representation
of performances of all the first year students. Furthermore, the papers differed in length,
which might have tainted the results somewhat.
Future research might explore a larger subject pool in order for the results to become
increasingly representative of the entire group of students. Also it might be interesting to
compare argumentative papers with other genres as well because expectations are that other
genres might have increased students’ creativity more, so results might be different.
Therefore, not just looking at argumentative essays but also research writing, creative writing,
journalism etc. It would be especially interesting to compare papers across years, to see if
students improve their writing skills throughout the years and it would be interesting to see if
specific other courses help to increase lexical variety and grammatical complexity.
28
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31
Appendix A
In this appendix, all the original students’ papers can be found. After the student number an
additional number is included. This number stands for the course that the paper was written
for. For example, student 10.1 means that this paper was written by student 10 for TV1. The
underlined sentences are the sentences used as examples in the Introduction section of this
paper. Sentence A can be found in Student 1´s TV 1 essay and sentence B can be found in
Student 1´s TV 3 essay.
Student 1.1
Education: Equality or separation?
Our world has been a place for men for a very long time. Women have always been inferior to
men, considered servants, slaves and for quite some time even animals. Fortunately, in the last
century, equality between men and women has greatly improved. Women have almost the
same opportunities as men these days, earn roughly the same salary and can receive the same
education. Most schools have mixed classes with both girls and boys. This in contrast with
older times, when girls went to girl schools and boys went to boy schools, especially in
secondary schooling and higher education. There are still some same-sex schools, but with the
emancipation of women, they disappeared more and more. By means of mixed classes,
schools strive to give girls the exact same opportunities as boys. However, research has
shown that boys and girls perceive knowledge in very different ways. Also, children from
same-sex schools achieve better results than children from a mixed class. Gender roles can
be inverted, with boys pursuing the arts and girls studying mathematics and science.
Therefore, it is beneficial for children to go to a same-sex school.
First, there is a vast difference between the ways boys and girls obtain information
and process it. Their brains develop in an entirely different way, with girls mostly developing
their languages section first, after that developing their spatial relations and
geometry section. With boys, it is the exact opposite. Their brains are wired differently.
Girls process their emotions in the language section, hence it is easy for them to talk about
their feelings. In a boy's brain, the emotions are processed in an entirely different part of the
brain. Because of this, boys commonly have great difficulties expressing their feelings.
Another important dissimilarity is the fact that girls have a better sense of hearing than boys.
All those oppositions lead to conflict and irritation, while in same-sex classes, it can lead to
harmony.
Second, dr. Leonard Sax points out that there is a chance that the original positions of
the genders will swap. Boys will be more interested in the arts and languages, while girls
follow the road of science and mathematics, because they don't have to compete with each
other. For instance, in a mixed class, the boys will likely outsmart the girls in science-like
subjects and the girls will become less motivated. However, in a single-sex class, a girl
doesn't have to compete against a boy, that has the talent for the subject in his veins, and she
is more likely to develop herself in a different direction, and not follow the usual pattern that
is expected of girls.
32
Last, several studies have revealed that the results of children from
single sex schools exceed those of the children from coeducational schools. This is likely to
be explained from the fact that on single-sex schools, there is more attention for the way a
particular gender achieves knowledge. As said before, there will be more harmony in the
classroom because the students think in a similar manner.
To conclude, children gain a lot by going to a same-sex school. This is because their brain
works differently and in same-sex classes, there is less conflict between the dissimilar kinds
of thinking of girls and boys. There is a great chance that the children will develop in different
directions because they don't have to compete with another gender, and as a result
the achievements of the students in same-sex classes will vastly improve.
1. achieve
2. beneficial
3. conflict
4. contrast
5. exceed
6. gender
7. hence
8. instance
9. motivated
10. obtain
11. perceive
12. process
13. pursuing
14. research
15. revealed
16. roles
17. section
18. sex
Unique words: 239 Total words: 597
WORKS CITED
Ferarra, 2005. The single gender middle school classroom: A close-up look at gender
differences in learning. The Australian Association for Research in Education
http://www.aare.edu.au/05pap/fer05090.pdf
http://privateschool.about.com/cs/choosingaschool/a/singlesex.htm
http://www.ncgs.org/researchshowsgirlsschoolgraduateshaveanedge/Sax_SingleSex_1ddFIN
AL.pdf
http://www.whygendermatters.com/
http://education.uncc.edu/ncare/Preceedings2008/Abstracts/NCARE_2008_Proceedings_Ford
.htm
http://www2.edc.org/WomensEquity/pubs/digests/digest-singlesex.html
33
34
Student 2.1
Sound Judgment: A Matter to Study
Lady Justice, the blindfolded woman holding a weighing scale in her left hand and a sword in
her right hand. Lady Justice or Iustitia, the Roman goddess of justice. Justice: so important the
Romans had a goddess to bring it. In the current legal system however, the position of Justice
of the Peace is occupied by unqualified citizens, these unqualified Justices of the
Peace require relatively expensive assistance and they lack sufficient correctional powers.
That is why the legal system would be better off without the use of Justices of the Peace in
the magistrates' court.
The first reason to support the claim is that "the Justices of the peace come from all walks of
life and do not usually have any legal qualifications" (HMCS, par. 3). This means that every
citizen can decide to apply for a position of magistrate. Fortunately, in order to obtain the
position of magistrate, the applicant "will often be required to attend training sessions"
(Directgov, par. 2) and "will need to have: a good character, strong communication skills,
sound judgment, commitment to the work" (Directgov, par. 2). These qualities and training
sessions do not make up for the fact that a law degree is not needed to become a magistrate.
An applicant for the position of magistrate could have never before even seen a courthouse or
even have met a professional, such as a solicitor or even a clerk, and still obtain the position
of magistrate. A position with great responsibilities that in the current system is occupied by
amateurs.
Secondly, as in the current system the Justices of the Peace are not required to be in the
possession of a law degree, the magistrate has no idea as to what would be
the appropriate punishment if the defendant would be found guilty. As such "they are
advised on points of law by their clerk, who is a legally qualified, full-time official and
a professional element in the system" (Oakland 136). This costs more time and money as the
magistrate will constantly have to consult his or her clerk. These costs can be reduced by
abolishing the use of unqualified magistrates and replacing them with qualified personnel. In
this way, the clerk would solely have to practise its own profession, to look after the records,
and it would take the magistrate less time to pronounce the proper punishment
which, eventually, would result in more criminals being brought to justice in less time.
Lastly, in the current system "magistrates have limited powers of punishment" (Oakland 136).
The magistrates are only allowed to "impose fines up to £5,000 for each offence, or send
people to prison for six months on each offence up to a maximum of one year" (Oakland
136). This presents a great problem as this undermines the task of a magistrate, which is
to impose punishment on the defendant and thus discourage any future criminal offences.
However, in the recently re-published statistics bulletin from the Ministry of Justice
Sentencing Statistics, 2007 England and Wales, it became apparent that "the average
fine imposed on persons for all offences by magistrates' courts increased by 3.4 per cent from
£149 to £154 between 2006 and 2007" (81). These £154 are but a small fraction of the limit of
£5,000 that a magistrate is allowed to impose on a person. Another example of lack
of sufficient punishment, is the average length of imprisonment for an assault on a constable,
which is a mere 2,6 months in England and Wales (Ministry of Justice, par. 4.4). It goes
without saying that these findings show that in the current system the magistrates are not able
to properly impose punishment on the defendant.
35
In conclusion, because the system does not attribute the magistrates with enough power to
bring criminals to justice, the use of Justices of the Peace who must be assisted by a qualified
official such as a clerk is relatively expensive as it costs both time and money and the fact that
the Justices of the Peace are amateurs, it is clear that the current system which uses Justices of
the Peace in the magistrates' court, should be abolished.
1. appropriate
2. assistance
3. commitment
4. communication
5. constantly
6. consult
7. element
8. found
9. legal
10. legally
11. obtain
12. occupied
13. professional
14. require
15. sufficient
Unique words: 266 Total words: 680
Works Cited:
Ministry of Justice. “Sentencing Statistics, 2007 England and Wales: Ministry of Justice
Bulletin.” Ministry of Justice. 26 June 2009. Web. 29 Oct. 2009.
Oakland, John. British Civilization: An Introduction. 6th ed. London: Routledge, 2006. Print.
“Become a Magistrate.” Directgov. N.p. N.d. Web. 28 Oct. 2009.
“Magistrates and Magistrates’ Courts.” Her Majesty’s Courts Service. N.p. 2 April 2009.
Web. 28 Oct. 2009.
“Proceedings in Magistrates’ Courts: Data for Individual Petty Sessional Areas.” Home
Office. Ministry of Justice, 9 May 2007. Web. 29 Oct 2009.
36
Student 3.1
The British Energy Crisis
"Across Britain, cities are plunged into darkness. In London, the Underground grinds to a halt,
leaving panicked commuters stranded in oppressively hot carriages. In office blocks, lifts stop
operating and the air-conditioning shuts down. Employees swelter in stifling conditions"
(Ringshaw, 1). It is an apocalyptic vision, but one that cannot be ruled out.
Britain's energy needs are fast outstripping production capacity and the British Government
is ill prepared to deal with the consequences. Furthermore, other energy alternatives are
not promising or feasible. If the situation does not change, the United Kingdom will be facing
an energy crisis.
The demand for electricity will soon outstrip production. At the start of 2009, Britain's
electricity demand reached 59 Gigawatts (GW), of which 45 came from "power plants fuelled
by gas from the North Sea"(Bacon, 1). Despite the fact that the credit crisis has slowed down
Britain's economic growth, it is expected that its electricity demand will continue to grow to
"around 64GW" in 2015 in order for the United Kingdom to be able to "to cope
with similar conditions" in 2015 (Bacon, 1). This would not be a problem if the gas reserves
in the North Sea were infinite, but the gas reserves are not. The North Sea gas fields are
reaching their maturity state and production will have dropped "by two-thirds" by 2015. This
will eventually leave many of the gas-driven power plants with no gas to run on.
The British Government is making the wrong decisions to avoid the energy crisis. It has been
known for several years that the United Kingdom would be having energy problems in the
near future. However, the government has done little to avoid the problem. It has
not invested in new nuclear power plants, of which four are scheduled to be closed down
within the next ten years (Bacon, 2). Nor has the government invested in other types of fuel
for non-nuclear power plants. The government has so far only talked about importing foreign
gas and has invested some money in renewable wind energy. It is doubtful if the goals for
renewable wind energy will be met, but the decision to rely on imported gas is more
worrying. Not only is importing gas, mainly from Russia, going to cause problems in Europe's
political climate, it also guarantees that no investments will be made in clean coal
or nuclear power plants. If the government invested in those two options, the situation would
result in "a balanced mix ofenergy sources" (Arnott, 4). Furthermore, the government
would also be able to meet their carbon emission goals, which were to be slashed "by 20 from
1990 levels by 2020" (Ringshaw, 4).
Other energy resources will not solve the problem at hand. Britain is "famously well
endowed with wind, wave, and tidal resources"( MacKay, 8). Yet, it is questionable if these
characteristics will save the country from its energy crisis (MacKay). Britain could
start investing in solar panels and wind energy, but renewable energy has
two major drawbacks. To gain energy from renewable energy sources is very expensive and
the amount of energy gained is very small. If Britain were to rely on renewable energy, the
entire country would have to start using solar panels and massive offshore wind farms would
have to be built to sustain the United Kingdom's energy need. Unfortunately,
these projects are not feasible in the current economic climate.
37
In conclusion, due to rising energy demands and declining energy production, bad political
decisions and the expensive alternatives for which there is no money, the United Kingdom
will be confronted with an energy crisis within the next decade.
1. alternatives
2. capacity
3. consequences
4. credit
5. Despite
6. economic
7. energy
8. eventually
9. Furthermore
10. goals
11. guarantees
12. infinite
13. invested
14. maturity
15. nuclear
16. rely
17. scheduled
18. similar
19. vision
Unique words: 259 Total words: 599
Works cited
Arnott, Sarah.”CBI demands an overhaul of Britain's energy policy.” The Independent. The
Independent, 13 July. 2009. Web. 14 Oct. 2009
Beacon, Derek. “How long till the lights go out?” The Economist. The Economist, 6 Aug.
2009. Web. 14 Oct. 2009
MacKay, David. “Yes, we can solve the energy crisis.” Times Online. Times online, 10 May.
2009. Web. 14 Oct. 2009
Ringshaw, Grant. “Fears over Looming Energy Crisis.” Times Online. Times online, 20 May.
2009. Web. 13 Oct. 2009
38
Student 4.1
Faith Schools
The term “faith school” was first introduced in the United Kingdom in 1990 after the
demands by Muslims for an Islamic version of the existing church schools. The number of
faith schools in the United Kingdom is increasing steadily. Since 1998 there have been an
average of seven new faith schools a year with an all-time high in 2004 with fourteen new
faith schools (“Dossier” 15). There are several disadvantages to faith schools. The subject
Religious Education that is taught in faith schools is restricted to the specific faith of that
school and therefore excludes other religions. Also, faith schools tend to discriminate against
pupils and employees with other beliefs than that of the school. On top of that, faith schools
are disruptive for the social cohesion in the schools. It is for these reasons that the increase of
the number of faith schools should be prevented.
The subject Religious Education (RE) should include all major religions to ensure
that children are well informed. Dr Rob Berkeley stated that the RE curriculum of faith
schools pertaining to other religions was insufficient (“Dossier” 6). Many faith schools focus
entirely on the religion of the school during the subject RE. Other religions are merely a
footnote and are mostly only mentioned when they associate with the main religion. The
National Union of Teachers explained that “schools must make provision for religious
education to promote education about religion and learning from religion and to encourage
respect and mutual understanding” (“Dossier” 2). By only teaching children about one faith,
other faiths are being neglected and therefore leave children with an incomplete
understanding of the other religions of the world.
Children need people of other cultural backgrounds and beliefs in their surroundings
to develop well rounded views of the world. The National Union of Teachers (NUT) stated
that “in order to foster community cohesion it is vital that schools with a religious character
are inclusive of all faiths (and none)” (“Dossier” 7). NUT went on to say that “equal
employment rights within schools are paramount to social cohesion” (“Dossier” 8). By
discriminating against potential employees of a different faith, no faith or those who have a
different sexual preference than the majority of the public, the schools are depriving children
of a social cohesive and diverse study period (“In Good Faith” 6, 8). A diverse group of
pupils and employees would give children the opportunity to interact with people outside of
their normal atmosphere, in order to broaden their horizon.
By only admitting children of one particular faith, faith schools are interfering with the
social cohesion in the schools and communities. The School Report by Stonewall showed that
three in four gay pupils at secondary school have encountered “homophobic bullying” and of
those pupils, only four per cent felt comfortable that they could tell their teachers about the
bullying (“The School Report” 4, 12). Traditionally, unconventional behaviour in a
religious environment, such as a faith school, is undesirable. There is more tolerance for the
different sexualities and backgrounds of their pupils and teachers in schools that do not have a
specific religious character.
All in all, Religious Education should encompass all forms of religion to offer children
a better understanding of the religions in today’s society. In addition, schools with a diverse
student body and staff will provide the children with a well-rounded view of the world and
mixed schools are better for the social cohesion in schools and communities. To conclude,
faith schools should be prevented from multiplying.
1. community
2. conclude
3. cultural
4. discriminate
39
5. diverse
6. ensure
7. environment
8. excludes
9. focus
10. insufficient
11. interact
12. major
13. majority
14. mutual
15. normal
16. period
17. potential
18. promote
19. restricted
20. sexual
21. specific
22. Traditionally
23. unconventional
24. version
Unique words: 229 Total words: 577
WORKS CITED
Accord Coalition. “Dossier of Independent Evidence on Faith Schools”. 2009. PDF. October
27th 2009
Hunt, Ruth & Jensen, Johan.“The School Report”. Stonewall. 2007. PDF. October 27th 2009
The National Union of Teachers. “In Good Faith: The Report of the Executive’s Task Group
on Faith Schools”. 2008. PDF. October 27th 2009
40
Student 5.1
Independent Schools: Dream Or Nightmare?
A great number of British parents dream of sending their children to private schools. These
independent schools are generally well-respected and their graduates have a good chance of
being admitted to universities such as Oxford and Cambridge. However, there are several
downsides to independent schools as well. Most independent schools are boarding, they have
extremely high tuition fees and the inspection of such schools is sorely lacking. These
matters are so serious, that the independent school system must no longer be allowed in
Britain.
When children are sent to pre-preparatory or preparatory schools, they are taken away from
their parents and placed in an entirely new environment with many people their own age, but
no parental figures. This is meant to make the pupils more independent. The result is,
however, that these children, who are as young as four to eight years old, feel lost, scared and
left behind by their parents (Riding). This has great consequences for their later life. A large
number of people who went to boarding schools as a child have more trouble showing and
expressing emotion in later life. In addition, the percentage of divorces is much higher for
people who went to boarding schools in comparison with people who went
to comprehensive schools (Woods).
Another concern is that independent schools are considered to be elitist because of the high
tuition fees (Oakland 219). These schools are not financed by the state, which means they
have to make money by asking for tuition fees. However, these amounts of money are so high
that only a small percentage of parents can pay this fee. As a result, only children of
extremely rich parents can attend these private schools. In recent years, Britain has tried to
make sure that schoolchildren of all backgrounds get equal chances at good education, but the
independent school system does not seem to fit in with these ideas (Oakland 216).
Independent schools do not distinguish between students on basis of their academic level but
on basis of their parents' income (Oakland 219).
The most important issue concerns the matter of child abuse. The percentage of cases of
child abuse, sexual or otherwise, is much higher in independent schools than
in comprehensive ones. This is not only because parents do not see their children during
terms, but also because the state does not have enough influence in these schools. The
Independent Schools Council, a not-for-profit organisation that is meant to inspect private
schools to detect cases of child abuse, is despite its noble intentions not sufficient as an
inspectorate (Lyscom). Abuse cases in private schools are notoriously difficult to detect
because most pupils suffering from abuse do not dare to breathe even a single word about the
matter (Questions 4 Schools). Whereas children at comprehensive schools are more likely to
tell their parents, children at private schools have no one to tell (Woods).
It is extremely important that these issues are taken seriously and addressed as soon as
possible. Not only do pupils that go to independent schools grow up in
an environment without parental support, they are also selected on basis of money instead
of intelligence and the risk of child abuse should not be neglected. The independent school
system is unfair and damaging for many pupils' mental well-being. For these reasons, private
schools have to be abolished from the United Kingdom.
41
1. academic
2. comprehensive
3. consequences
4. despite
5. detect
6. environment
7. fees
8. financed
9. income
10. inspect
11. inspection
12. intelligence
13. issue
14. mental
15. percentage
16. selected
17. sexual
18. sufficient
19. Whereas
Unique words: 232 Total words: 566
WORKS CITED
Lyscom, David. Independent Schools Council. Independent Schools Council. Web. 27
October 2009.
Oakland, John. British Civilization, An Introduction. 6th ed. Oxon: Routledge, 2006. Print.
Riding, Peter, ed. Prep Schools: Directory And Guide. Independent Schools Directory.
November 2008. Web. 27 October 2009.
Questions 4 Schools. Chosen. April 2009. Web. 26 October 2009.
Chosen: Selected, Groomed And Abused. Dir. Brian Woods. True Vision, 2008. Film.
42
Student 6.1
Improving the Quality of the NHS.
In the United Kingdom health services are provided by the government. Medical treatment is
free for citizens, although they pay for some of it through their taxes. The National Health
Service however is not working properly. The waiting lists at the hospitals are too long,
rationing is being done too much and the quality of the treatment is not the highest the
hospitals can give. Taking all these points into account it will be better for the quality of the
care if the private sector is involved in the National Health Service.
Nowadays the waiting lists at the hospitals are so long that patients are suffering because of it.
To prevent the suffering the NHS has to help their patients before 18 weeks of waiting
has occurred. In order to make sure that the patients get treated on time the government has
recently decided to involve the private sector in helping with that. Press Association
has released the following news: "Patients forced to wait 18 weeks for treatment on the NHS
will be given a new legal right to receive it from the private sector." In this way the patients
will still have the advantages of free medical treatment but will never have to worry about
suffering from their illness because of the long waiting lists.
A lot of rationing is going on because the local NHS trusts do not have much money to spend
on all medicine; the only downside of rationing is that patients are suffering because of it.
A survey among doctors and GPs by Doctor Magazine revealed that "more than half" of the
doctors "said patients had suffered as a result." This is not positive for the NHS and there
are negative stories about rationing in the media. A way to change
these negative associations with the NHS is to get the private sector involved. With extra
money in the NHS trusts, which they can receive from the private sector, the NHS can cover
for more medicines for the patients.
One of the other problems of the NHS is the quality of the care. The NHS hospitals do not
have the, mostly expensive, equipment that they sometimes need to give the patients the
treatment they deserve. This is mostly due to shortage of money on the side of the
NHS. Involving the private sector can clear this problem. By sharing equipment with private
hospitals NHS hospitals could provide better care for their patients. This is already being done
by the Labour government, but as Oakland in British Civilization states: "But the scale of
private practice in relation to the NHS is small." (p.198). If they were to broaden their horizon
and co-operate more with the private sector the care of the NHS could become so much
better.
As is stated in the paragraphs above there already is a bit of involvement from the
private sector in the NHS and there are also more plans to involve the private sector. But to
really improve the quality of the care the NHS delivers, the private sector should be
more involved. To make waiting lists shorter, to lessen the rationalizing and
to guarantee that they are giving the best possible care to their patients.
1.
2.
3.
4.
equipment
guarantee
involved
involvement
43
5. Labour
6. legal
7. media
8. Medical
9. negative
10. occurred
11. operate
12. paragraphs
13. positive
14. released
15. revealed
16. sector
17. survey
Unique words: 200 Total words: 540
Works Cited
BBC News. NHS rationing rife, say doctors. September 24 2007 Par. 2
< http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7010413.stm>
Oakland, John. British Civilization. Abingdon: Routledge, 2006.
Press Association. Waiting List Pledge Rushed into Law. October 31 2009 Par. 1
< http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/feedarticle/8781916>
44
Student 7.1
Nuclear Energy or Fuel Cells: The Solution to Britain's Energy Crisis
After years of extravagant use of fossil fuels provided by its own offshore oil platforms, the
British government has become trapped in a self-provoked situation of an inevitable oil and
gas shortage because of the North Sea's limited supply of fossil fuels. The government has set
a target to supply 15% of its electricity needs from alternative, renewable sources. The
shortage of alternative sources is Britain's main concern. The government has relied on their
fossil fuels for too long, which causes a stagnation in the development
of alternative sources. According to statistics, within eight years Britain might have a
shortage of energy to support the growing demand. The government's plan to increase the
number of nuclear power stations is not the best resolution to reduce the demand for fossil
fuel and carbon emission. This leads to the conclusion that Britain is in an energy crisis.
A solution to the depletion of fossil fuels could be an increase in nuclear energy. Today 22%
of Britain's electricity is provided by nuclear power stations. The Labour Party
already indicates that it wants to replace old nuclear reactors and build new ones (Oakland.
pag. 36). Nuclear energy is believed to be the answer to global warming, because
it releases fewer greenhouse gasses compared to energy produced by fossil fuels. According
to Friends of the Earth, energy produced by nuclear power stations produces 12 times fewer
greenhouse gasses than gas power stations and 30 times less than coal power
stations. Despite these promising statistics, there is a drawback to the use
of nuclear energy. Although nuclear energy itself produces less greenhouse gasses, in other
stages of the nuclear process, such as mining, and the storage of nuclear waste, much
more energy is needed. Most of this energy comes from fossil fuels, which means
that "nuclear power indirectly generates a relatively high amount of greenhouse gas
emissions" (Friends of the Earth).
Although there are many new alternatives to the sources of energy, they are barely used to
provide for Britain's energy. Britain's third source, hydro-electric power, is used for only a
small amount of the country's energy supply. There is a new alternative however, which has
the capability of diminishing the need for most current sources of energy. According to
Marguerite Lamb, the best alternative to fossil fuel and nuclear energy are fuel cells. Fuel
cells are "devices that make electricity from hydrogen and oxygen, emitting as byproducts
only pure water and heat" (Lamb). The theory of fuel cell electricity was invented some 150
years ago, but because of the convenient use of oil and gas, its development has stagnated.
Development, production and research all cost a considerable amount of money. Because of
this, the government prefers to exploit its supply of fossil fuels over the use of
cleaner alternatives.
If the government fails to realize its plan to reduce the need for fossil fuel by 15 %, the
demand for energy might outgrow Britain's energy supply. According to Grant Ringshaw, a
study by a consultant Logica CMG has concluded that the demand for energy might outstrip
Britain's energy supply by 32% within eight years.
The concerns regarding Britain's energy crisis are justifiable. Nuclear energy is not the
answer and governmental investment in renewable energy is needed to prevent a shortage
of energy. If more active research is done on alternative sources such as fuel cells, these
45
could be in use within British households before Britain runs out of fossil fuels. These
renewable energy sources are the only way to save Britain from its energy crisis.
1. alternatives
2. capability
3. conclusion
4. Despite
5. diminishing
6. energy
7. generates
8. global
9. indicates
10. inevitable
11. Labour
12. nuclear
13. reactors
14. releases
15. relied
16. resolution
17. sources
18. statistics
19. target
Left out the word ‘grant’ because it was a name not a verb or noun.
Unique words: 227 Total words: 605
Works cited:
Friends of the Earth
Author unknown. Nuclear power and greenhouse gas emission. Web. Access: October 24,
2009
Lamb, Marguerite. October/November 1999. Power to the people; Fuel cells will change the
off-the-grid electricity landscape forever. Web. Access: October 24, 2009
Oakland, John. British Civilization, An Introduction. Routledge. 2 Park Square, Milton Park,
Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Ringshaw, Grant. Sunday Times. May 20, 2007. Fears over looming energy crisis in UK.
Web. Access: October 24, 2009
46
Student 8.1
Religion, Secularization and Moral Judgement
Secularization in the twentieth century has made people more individualistic and the church
less powerful (Oakland, 272). In Britain, different polls and surveys show a sharp decline in
membership of the mainstream Christian Churches, but little decline in belief in the existence
of a God (Oakland, 271-72; Storry and Childs 241). This suggests that although religious
believe as a whole is not declining, religious practice, and in particular Christian religious
practice, is diminishing. This decline in religious practice is often linked to an alleged
deterioration in moral standards (Storry and Childs 266). A serious weakness with this
argument, however, is that moral intuition does not come from religious practice. In addition,
most people have the same moral judgement, regardless of their religious backgrounds.
Moreover, secularization has led to a change, not a decline, in moral standards. This is why
a link between a decline in religious practice and deterioration in morals cannot be made.
First, moral intuition can be explained by evolution, rather than religious practice. As Charles
Darwin, a British evolutionary biologist, explains; being good to anyone who shares much of
the same genetic information (i.e. a family member) increases the change of these genes
to survive (238). Second, helping someone in order to receive help in return also increases the
changes of survival as an individual, and consequently increases the change of passing
genes to the next generation (Dawkins, 238). In regard of this last reason, it is also important
to note that human beings have the ability to think about the future in a way no animals can
(Semeniuk). This is why human beings have a more evolved way of moral judgement than
animals do (Semeniuk). That we also give charity to anonymous people is, according to
Richard Dawkins, a by-product of this process (240). The evolutionary roots of morality
suggest that moral intuition is an instinct all human beings share, regardless of religious
practice.
Second, tests about moral dilemmas have shown that most people share the same morals, and
that religion does not play a part in this. Marc Houser, biologist at the University of Harvard,
has shown by a couple of thought-experiments that most respondents tend to answer the
same when asked about moral dilemmas, regardless of their religious or non-religious
backgrounds (Dawkins 242-243). This further authenticates the notion that religious practice
does not play a part in moral judgement.
Last, a decline in religious practice has changed our view on what is moral and what is not,
but this does not equal moral deterioration. Nowadays, more people tend to depend upon their
own sense of morality, rather than the morals set out for them by the Church and the Bible,
which often leads to a greater tolerance. In Britain, people have become more tolerant towards
homosexuality and other alternative lifestyles (Oakland 273). However, judging whether
these changed standards mean a decline or an increase of morality is itself a matter of
opinion.
In conclusion, it has become clear that moral intuition is the result
of evolutionary processes, not of religious practice, that regardless of their religious
backgrounds, people tend to make the same moral decisions and that although moral
standards have changed, they have not changed for the worse. It is now possible to state that
there is no link between an increase in secularization and deterioration in morality.
47
1. alternative
2. conclusion
3. consequently
4. couple
6. decline
7. declining
8. diminishing
9. evolution
10. evolutionary
11. evolved
12. generation
13. individual
14. individualistic
15. link
17. linked
19. notion
21. process
22. processes
23. respondents
24. surveys
25. survival
26. survive
5.
16.
18.
20.
Unique words: 230 Total words: 555
Works Cited
Dawkins, Richard. God als Misvatting. 2nd ed. Amsterdam: Nieuw Amsterdam Uitgevers,
2006. Print.
Oakland, John. British Civilization: An introduction. 6th ed. London and New York:
Routledge, 2006. Print.
Semeniuk, Ivan. “How we tell right from wrong.” New Scientist 193.2593 (2007): n. pag.
Web. 21 Oct. 2009.
Story, Mike, and Peter, Childs. British Cultural Identities.3rd ed. London and New York:
Routledge, 2007. Print.
48
Student 9.1
Britain's Beasts of Burden
Mick Jagger, Keith Moon and Paul McCartney are names that most people are familiar with.
These are the bands they belong to: The Rolling Stones, The Who and The Beatles. Bands
that changed the music scene in Europe forever by introducing new ways of making music
and new clothing styles. These bands came from Britain, and were some of the most
influential bands in Europe. They attained this status because they created new music
genres. Furthermore, they had many followers in other countries, even though people that
spoke a different language did not always understand the lyrics. Lastly, they caused people to
imitate their dress styles. Taken together, these reasons lead to one conclusion: Britain has
produced the most influential bands in Europe.
Firstly, one of the most significant reasons is that many British bands
have created new music genres. An example includes Pink Floyd and Genesis creating
progressive rock, a successful music genre in Europe (Frith, 97-98). Next to Pink Floyd and
Genesis, however, there were other bands that created music genres. Jerry Eberle writes:
"Such bands as Blur, Pulp, Suede, Elastica, and especially Oasis represented a brief but
noteworthy renaissance of British rock music (coined Britpop) that placed a high premium on
commercial success"(par. 3). Another music genre, Heavy Metal, derives from Led Zeppelin
and The Yardbirds. At the same time, The Stranglers, The Clash and The Sex pistols stood at
the beginning of Punk Rock. Many music styles were created in England, and followed all
over the world. Consequently, Britain produced the most influential European bands, because
the bands developed genres that were popular all over the world.
Additionally, British bands had an immense fan base abroad. Even though people did
not always understand the words, they decided to buy the albums and appreciated the music.
Subsequently, after all these years, there are still many people that like the music of bands
like The Rolling Stones and The Beatles. In an article about who attained Platinum Europe
discs in 2002, Paul Sexton writes: "Two more all-time giants win Platinum Europe discs, as
the current Rolling Stones and Elvis Presley compilations mount the winners' rostrum" (par.
3). After so many years, The Rolling Stones still manage to acquire a Platinum. Naturally,
The Beatles could not stay behind and released The Beatles Box Set on the ninth of
September in 2009, which caused a huge Beatlemania, showing that these old bands still have
many fans.
Lastly, fans of British bands took over their clothing style. This did not occur much,
but the influence British bands had on their fans was exceptional. One of the styles that stems
from British bands, says Timothy E. Scheurer, is the Mods style: "...the Mods style was
created around Carnaby Street fashions and rock groups such as The Who and The Small
Faces" (221). In other words, The Who was famous enough to set a fashion trend. This is
something not many bands can say. As a result of the number of fans of these bands and the
success they had, their dress styles became fashion trends in Europe. Another band that had
success in this department was The Beatles. Scheurer writes: "Others bought collarless jackets
and a type of leather boot which came to be called, appropriately enough, ‘Beatle
boots’"(152) Subsequently, the rivals of The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, had to create a
fashion trend as well with their, as Tommy Hilfiger says,"bell-bottoms, exaggerated shirts,
jackets and footwear"(qtd in Manlow, 67). These trends were followed all over Europe, so
British bands were the most influential bands in Europe.
In conclusion, Britain produced bands that had more influence than other bands in
Europe. This is a result of the fact that the bands created new styles in the music area.
Furthermore, the huge number of people that liked the bands and still do and, lastly, because
they created fashion trends all over Europe.
49
1. acquire
2. appreciated
3. attained
4. conclusion
5. Consequently
6. created
7. derives
8. Furthermore
9. occur
10. released
11. significant
12. status
13. styles
14. Subsequently
15. trend
Unique words: 265 Total words: 652
Works Cited
Frith, Simon and Horne, Howard. Art into Pop. Taylor & Francis, 1987. Web.
Manlow, Veronica. Designing Clothes: Culture and Organization of the Fashion
Industry. Transaction Publishers, 2009. Web.
Scheurer, Timothy E. American Popular Music: The age of rock. Vol. 2. Popular
1989. Web.
Sexton, Paul. “Sinatra, Elvis, Stones Go Platinum”. Billboard; 11/30/2002, vol. 114
Issue 48, p53, 2/5p, 2bw. Web.
Eberle, Jerry. “New Art Books”. Rev. of: Britpop! Cool Britannia and the
Spectacular Demise of English Rock, by John Harris. Da Capo Vol. 101 Issue
5 (2004). Web.
Press,
50
Student 10.1
A Fair Balance Between State School and Private School
All people should have equal chances to attend education. In Britain, this is not the case. A
group of privileged children have the possibility to attend the fee-paid private schools. Private
school pupils are advantaged because of better schools. They have more chances of gaining a
place at university and they have better career options, which is unfair to state school pupils.
To provide all children with equal opportunities, the gap between state and private schools
should be diminished.
Private school children are favored due to a wider range of extracurricular activities, as well
as smaller classes and better qualified teachers. Research by the Independent Schools
Council has found that children involved in numerous extracurricular activities tend to score
better on their GCSEs (BBC Activities). Private schools have larger budgets to spend on
sports, music and drama lessons. State schools, which are funded by the Government, often
lack the ability to provide a wide range of these activities, especially after the "earlier
spending cuts in education" (Oakland 220-221), resulting in less money for schools to
improve affairs other than the standard curriculum (Oakland 220-221). Private schools tend to
have fewer children in a class, with teachers paying more individual attention to these
children, resulting in better grades. The high-quality teachers have a positive influence on the
children, since they can explain the curriculum more competently.
Children from state schools are facing more problems when applying for university. The
moment they apply for a top university, such as Oxford and Cambridge, several aspects are
taken into account, such as the A level grades children managed to achieve during their
school career. Due to the fact that private school children generally have grades that are of a
higher level, they have a better chance of attaining a place at a top university. Attention is
also focused on different skills and abilities. Proficiency in "teamwork
and communication" (Observer Revealed) is very important. According to former minister
Alan Milburn, private schools stress the importance of teamwork and communication skills
that are trained by attending extracurricular activities. Now that more children from state
schools receive grades that qualify them to attend university (Observer Revealed), private
school pupils "get ahead because of their more rounded CVs and confident presentation"
(Observer Revealed).
The head start children from private schools have in future jobs, is discriminating against
state school children. Researchers from the University of Kent and the London School
of Economics have found that people who were educated at a private school earn
thirty percent more money than those people who attended state schools (BBC Pupils). The
professions private school pupils are in are the reason for these money benefits. Although
only some seven percent of all children attend private school, these children are a large part
of the better earning professions (Guardian Britain's), for example "75% of judges, 70%
of finance directors, 45% of top civil servants and 32% of MPs were privately educated"
(Guardian Britain's). Moreover, this pay gap seems to have widened over the past 50 years,
clearly indicating that very few measures have been taken to prevent the gap from widening.
Head of research Professor Francis Green said: "Given this finding, it seems that today's
pupils might expect to see even greater benefits" (Telegraph Students).
51
In summary, because of the benefits children have from the opportunities private schools
offer, the difficulty state school children face when applying for a top university and the better
career prospects for private school children, it can be concluded that the educational breach
that exists between state schools and private schools should be made smaller. All children
must be able to reach the top, not only the elitist.
1. achieve
2. aspects
3. attaining
4. benefits
5. civil
6. communication
7. concluded
8. diminished
9. discriminating
10. drama
11. Economics
12. finance
13. focused
14. found
15. funded
16. grades
17. indicating
18. individual
19. involved
20. jobs
21. options
22. percent
23. positive
24. prospects
25. range
26. research
27. Researchers
28. Revealed
29. stress
30. summary
Unique words: 261 Total words: 617
Works Cited
“Activities ‘improve exam results.’” BBC News. BBC, 3 June 2009. Web. 20 Oct. 2009
52
Hinsliff, Gaby. “Revealed: the hidden benefits of a private-school education.” The Observer.
The Guardian, 19 July 2009. Web. 15 Oct. 2009
Oakland, John. British Civilization: An Introduction. 6th ed. Oxon: Routledge, 2008. Print.
“Private school pupils ‘earn more.’” BBC News. BBC, 11 June 2009. Web. 22 Oct. 2009
“Private school students earn a third more than state pupils.” The Daily Telegraph. The Daily
Telegraph, 11 June 2009. Web. 23 Oct. 2009
Wintour, Patrick. “Britain’s closed shop: damning report on social mobility failings.” The
Guardian. The Guardian, 21 July 2009. Web. 20 Oct. 2009
53
Student 1.2
Outing: Out Of The Question
Over the past few years, the concept of ‘outing’ has been widespread in the media. Outing is the
common term for involuntarily make public that someone, preferably politicians, celebreties or pop
stars, is a gay, lesbian or transgender(Storry&Childs.295). There is a lot of debate going on the topic.
Outing, in the way we know it now, is a phenomenon from over the past few years. The Pagan
Greeks considered sodomy as perfectly normal. An older man would take a young boy in his care and
teach him, not only sexual things, but also philosophy, maths and other knowledge worth knowing
for a man. In the Middle Ages and the Reformation, the church considered sodomy a sin and used
some sort of outing. Nevertheless, the objective from outing in those ages was only to be able to
prosecute the victim and to use the execution as an example to terrify others. During the periods
that followed, the Enlightement, the Revolutionary and Romanticism, the laws on sodomism were
partly abolished but the social taboo remained. (Johannson and Percy.2) The subject of outing has
attracted many different views and perspectives. Though many people, especially they who actually
carry out the outing, consider outing as a fair practice, there can be a good reason for hiding one’s
sexual preferences. Moreover, telling the world that you are gay or lesbian is something personal
and is part of your privacy. Therefore, I think outing should be prohibited.
First, many people consider outing a fair practice to prove the hypocracy of, for example,
politicians that carry out an anti-gay policy but who do have a homosexual preference themselves.
Charles Kaiser published in The Advocate:
“In our own time, some activists have argued that gay Republicans who actively work against
gay causes are also guilty of a kind of hypocrisy that deserves public exposure. I don't think
there is any good argument for outing a closeted politician who supports gay rights. But any
secretly gay person who uses his bully pulpit to vilify his own people deserves the treatment
gay blogger Michael Rogers is now meting out in the nation's capital”(Par2-3)
What Kaiser does not think of, and probably most pro-outing people do not, is that a politician, or
anyone for that matter, can have a perfectly good reason for hiding his sexual preferences.
Admitted, he does seem very hypocritical if he argues against something he is himself, but perhaps
he is not content with his homosexuality. Because you can not adjust your predilection, it is perhaps
your nature, you can not help how you feel. This does not have to mean that you like the way you
are. Moreover, the concerning man or woman can have a happy heterosexual marriage and children
and does not want to ruïn that all by stepping out of the closet.
Second, coming out of the closet is very personal. ‘Closeted’ men or women should have the
opportunity to express their sexual oriëntation in their own time and manner, if even at all. It is
considered a violation of privacy when someone else exhibits your sexual preferences without
permission. However, there is no precise law that prohibits the practice of outing. Therefore, people
can do whatever they want withouth being hampered by any law of some sort. The privacy law as it
is now is insufficient.
54
To conclude, the notion that outing is legitimate to prove hypocracy disregards the possibility that
some people have a very good reason for hiding their sexual preferences. Furthermore, exhibiting
the sexual oriëntation of someone else is in fact a violation of privacy. Therefore, the practice of
outing should be prohibited. This can be accomplished by means of adjusting the current privacy
laws so, that they cover the concept of outing.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
adjust
concept
conclude
debate
exhibiting
Furthermore
insufficient
media
Nevertheless
normal
notion
objective
periods
perspectives
phenomenon
philosophy
policy
precise
prohibited
published
sexual
topic
violation
widespread
Unique words: 291 Total words: 640
WORKS CITED
Childs, Peter. Storry, Mike. British Cultural Identities. Second Edition. London: Routledge.
2007
Johansson, Warren; Percy, William A. Outing: Shattering the Conspiracy of Silence. Haworth
Press, 1994. William Percy. Web. 6 januari 2010
<http://www.williamapercy.com/wiki/index.php?title=Outing:Shattering_the_Conspi
racy_of_Silence>
Kaiser, Charles. “When Outing Works”. The Advocate (The national gay & lesbian
newsmagazine) October 12, 2004. The Free Library. Web. 6 januari 2010.
<http://www.thefreelibrary.com/The+Advocate+%28The+national+gay+%26+lesbia
n+newsmagazine%29/2004/October/12-p518>
Student 2.2
55
Money Grabbers
The House of Commons, part of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. A democratically
elected government body from which most government ministers and Prime Ministers are
drawn (House of Commons). A respectable and important government body, however in a
news article Reuters stated that "the reputation of parliament has been scarred following
newspaper disclosures of outlandish, taxpayer-funded expenses claims by Members of
Parliament." (Falloon and Holden, par. 2) Because of these false expenses, Members of
Parliament can be suspended from Parliament, can be charged with criminal offences and can
severely damage their reputation. Since being a Member of Parliament is a respectable
position, a Member of Parliament shown to have made false expenses should
be excluded from standing for election.
Firstly, if there are strong indications that a Member of Parliament has made false expenses,
the Member of Parliament in question is suspended from the House of Commons. Such
a suspension is, in itself, decent punishment for the misbehaviour of a Member of Parliament.
However, as it was up until six months ago, the severity of punishment was
not sufficient enough. In 2003, when Michael Trend, a Windsor Member of Parliament, "was
accused of being muddled and naive' by the House of Commons Committee on Standards and
Privileges, he was punished with a two-week suspension from Parliament." (Woolf, par. 3) In
a more recent event, Scunthorpe Member of Parliament Elliot Morley, "was suspended from
the parliamentary Labour Party until further notice' following allegations he Morley claimed
£16,000 for a non-existent mortgage." (Brown Suspends, par. 1) In both cases, the severity of
punishment was not sufficient and therefore both Members of Parliament should have
received additional punishment in the form of being barred from standing for election.
Secondly, in June 2009 the new Parliamentary Standards Bill was launched. This bill makes
"knowingly making a false claim for an allowance, failing, without reasonable excuse,
to register relevant interest and contravening, without reasonable excuse, the rules on
paid advocacy" (MPs Who Fiddle, par. 2) a criminal offence. This means that Members of
Parliament can "face going to prison for up to 12 months." (MPs Who Fiddle, par. 1) A prison
sentence would indeed be sufficient punishment for making false claims as, according to the
June 2007 Electoral Commission Factsheet, this would mean the Member of Parliament in
question would not be able to stand for election as convicted prisoners are not eligible to
become a Member of Parliament (1). However, "failing to register relevant
financial interests and breaking rules that ban paid advocacy could result in a fine of up to
5,000 pounds." (Falloon and Holden, par. 4) This again is insufficient punishment
and exclusion from standing for election should be added as additional punishment for
Members of Parliament who fail to abide by the new Parliamentary Standards Bill.
Finally, a Member of Parliament should be barred from standing for election the moment he
or she is rightfully accused of making false expenses as the Member of Parliament has broken
the promise to serve the people who voted for him or her. A Member of Parliament has a duty
to serve as an example for the people and by making false expenses the Member of
Parliament in question fails to set the right example. Moreover, since Members of Parliament
are elected by the people to represent a county, they should be trustworthy. When Members of
Parliament are rightfully accused of having made false expenses, their reputation is severely
damaged and the people will feel betrayed and therefore will not trust them any more. This
should be sufficient reason to make it impossible for a Member of Parliament to stand for
election as he or she cannot be considered as trustworthy any more.
56
In conclusion, a Member of Parliament should be barred from standing for election if shown
to have made false expenses since making such false expenses results in a damaged reputation
which leads to distrust by the people towards the Member of Parliament. Moreover, with the
new Parliamentary Standards Bill making false expenses is a criminal offence and lastly,
the sole punishment of suspension from the Parliament is not punishment enough and
therefore a Member of Parliament shown to have made false expenses should
be excluded from standing for election.
1. advocacy
2. Commission
3. conclusion
4. excluded
5. exclusion
6. Finally
7. financial
8. indications
9. insufficient
10. Labour
11. Prime
12. register
13. relevant
14. sole
15. sufficient
16. suspended
17. suspension
Unique words: 242 Total words: 700
Works Cited
“Brown Suspends MP Over Expenses Claim.” SkyNews. 14 May 2009. Web. 7 Jan. 2010.
“Candidates at a UK Parliamentary election.” The Electoral Commission. June 2007. Web.
7 Jan. 2010.
Falloon, Matt and Michael Holden. “False parliamentary expense claims to be outlawed.”
Reuters UK. Thomson Reuters Corporate, 23 June 2009. Web. 7 Jan. 2010.
“House of Commons of the United Kingdom.” Wikipedia The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia
Foundation Inc., N.D. Web. 7 Jan. 2010.
“MPs Who Fiddle Expenses Face Prison.” SkyNews. 23 June 2009. Web. 7 Jan. 2010.
Woolf, Marie. “Senior Tory MP suspended over false expenses claim.” The Independent UK.
14 Feb. 2003. Web. 7 Jan. 2010.
57
Student 3.2
Dead dreams of material gain
Originally the American dream was something different than a from rags to riches story. The
term was coined by James T. Adam in 1931. In his book The Epic of America he stated that
the American dream was: "that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and
fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement. It is a
difficult dream for the European upper classes to interpret adequately, and too many of us
ourselves have grown weary and mistrustful of it. It is not a dream of motor cars and high
wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able
to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others
for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position." (214-215)
Despite James Adams intentions, the American dream has become a dream
which constitutes nothing more than those "high wages" and material gain (215). In an age
where every economic crisis seems to be followed by the next, social issues such as
unemployment and poverty are still rampant, and the possibility of a dying planet seems ever
more likely, the American dream has done more harm than good. Consequently, the current
American dream of material gain is in need of revision in order to keep it from doing more
harm.
It harms the economy of the United States. William Greidner, a political journalist, states that
"the old economic problems of scarcity and survival have been solved, at least for developed
nations"(8). Though his statement is right, the survival mentality of gaining as much as you
can has not changed. The developed nations still hoard resources as if they might run out if
they do not. The same happens in the business world where bigger companies are favoured by
both businessmen and the government. However, these big businesses have big drawbacks.
Large companies, especially those in the United States, often manage to gain single rule of a
market through takeovers. This eventually causes a lack of competition on the market, which
will lead to a lack of innovation and places unions in a weak position when it comes to
negotiations. Furthermore, when these businesses go bankrupt, due to faulty policies, or bad
management, it becomes apparent that they have become too big to fail, resulting in a
continuance of the same faulty policies for the sake of social welfare, which solves nothing
on either short or long term basis.
It harms society. The current interpretation of the American dream has created a society
which is focused on personal material gain, which as a result has created a laisserfaire attitude. The American government employed this for many years, by not interfering
too heavily with either the economy or social welfare. The consequence of which is that
when the economy goes through a recession the lack of social welfare, such as
unemployment benefits, causes great problems among nearly all levels of
society. Furthermore, because of a lack of market regulation from the government, the
chances of creating a healthy and sustainable economy in order to prevent another recession
are very slim
It causes harm on a global level. Christopher Jencks, professor of social policy, states that
he's "afraid reinventing the American Dream really means trying to wean ourselves from the
illusion that we all need and deserve more stuff"(27). Many of the items and services which
58
are perceived as being necessary to survive cause great damage to the planet.
Certain items, such as oil, do not just affect the planet on an environmental level, with the
depletion of resources, climate change due to pollution of the air, and deforestation, but also
on a social-political level when it comes to the wars fought about the natural
resources needed for continuing the global economy of consumerism.
In conclusion, the American dream as it is currently interpreted needs to be revised in order
to revise the mentality of the people adhering to it. As it stands it causes harm to
the economy of the United States, which in itself has great effect on
the global economy. Furthermore, it also harms society, due to a lack of social welfare and
good market regulations. Lastly, it causes harm on a global level by impacting both
the environment and social-political relations.
"An American Dream that doesn't destroy the planet will have to involve a moreequal distribution of basic material goods. It will also have to involve more emphasis on the
quality of the services we consume than on the quality of our possessions. Perhaps most
important, it will have to involve more emphasis on what we can do for others and
less emphasis on what we can get for ourselves" (Jencks, 29).
1. achievement
2. adequately
3. affect
4. apparent
5. attain
6. attitude
7. capable
8. circumstances
9. conclusion
10. consequence
11. Consequently
12. constitutes
13. consume
14. created
15. Despite
16. distribution
17. economic
18. emphasis
19. environment
20. environmental
21. eventually
22. focused
23. Furthermore
24. global
25. impacting
26. innovation
27. interpret
59
28. interpretation
29. involve
30. issues
31. items
32. mentality
33. perceived
34. policy
35. regulation
36. resources
37. revise
38. revision
39. survival
40. survive
41. sustainable
42. welfare
Unique words: 336 Total words: 808
Works cited
Jencks, Christopher. “Reinventing the American Dream.” Harvard Kennedy School: John F.
Kennedy school of government. Harvard College, 2008. Web. 4 Jan. 2010
Adam, James.T. The Epic of America. Simon Publications, 2001. Print.
Greider, William. “The Future of the American Dream.”Come Home, America: the Rise and
Fall (and Redeeming Promise) of Our Country. New York: Rodale books, 2009. N.
pag. Web. 4 jan. 2010.
60
Student 4.2
Metal Evolution
Metal music has always consisted of different genres, but recently new sub genres of metal
have arisen which have moved so far away from the original music that they are hardly
recognisable. By origin metal is against organised religion so by having strong religious
influences in their music, Unblack and Eastern metal are not authentically metal. Also, early
metal was a way to protest against the establishment, but nowadays various sub genres only
make convivial music. Additionally, many sub genres use electronic or acoustic instruments
to create the music, instead of the traditional instruments. Therefore, the newest sub genres
of metal are inauthentic because they are so distant from the root form of metal that they have
become a branch of music in itself.
Unblack and Eastern metal focuses primarily on religion in their music which contrasts with
original metal which is essentially anti-organised religion. Instead of writing about the darker
things in life, unblack metal bands write about Christian themes. Jonathan Selzer of the
British Magazine Terrorizer stated that: "Black metal is about your humanity, not about
giving your humanity over to a God" ("Murder Music"). Many unblack metal bands do not
want to be associated with black metal either because it is also a genre that in the early
nineties was heavily associated with satanism ("Murder Music"). Israel's Orphaned Land calls
their music "Jewish Muslim Metal" ("Global Metal") in order to create a bridge between the
Islamic and Jewish community. Their music has been so deeply influenced by the Islamic
and Jewish culture that it has been transformed into an almost Middle Eastern folk band
rather than a metal band. By using religious lyrics and native instruments and
vocal styles, unblack metal and Eastern bands have outgrown metal and have become a new
genre unto it's own.
Modern sub genres of metal concentrate on making mainly entertaining music while metal
by nature is a means to rebel against society. British band Napalm Death has taken a actively
political stand since the nineteen eighties. Writing mostly about the political regime in the
United Kingdom and how that effected the lower classes. Napalm Death's song "I Abstain" is
about the pressure that they feel to fit into society and the lower class to which they belong
(Darklyrics). Young Scottish band Alestorm who call their music "Scottish Pirate Metal"
(Metal Archives) have grown in popularity over the last couple of years. Alestorm writes
pirate themed songs which are mostly about having fun and drinking beer. Bands like
Alestorm know that this fun loving themed music is what sells nowadays since teenagers love
the cheerful music. Alestorm is just one of many bands who have abandoned the rebellious
nature of metal and have become something of a party band instead.
Nowadays many sub genres tend to use more electronic or indigenous instruments rather
than traditional metal instruments to create their music. Numerous bands start to use
electronic devices in their music. American industrial bands such as KMFDM have taken this
so far that they hardly use traditional metal instruments anymore (Myspace). Almost all of
their music is created with a computer which is very different from standard metal. Folk
bands like the British band Skyclad have taken metal on a different route. They still use
the traditional instruments but they add acoustic historical instruments that dominate the
music.
61
Metal will always evolve into new sub genres, but not all of these genres still count as metal.
Changes to the lyrical style, political stance and even instrument choice take metal away from
it's original roots. Change is necessary but it is not always for the best for it can take the
authenticity of the music away.
1. community
2. computer
3. concentrate
4. consisted
5. contrasts
6. couple
7. create
8. culture
9. devices
10. dominate
11. establishment
12. Evolution
13. evolve
14. focuses
15. Global
16. primarily
17. regime
18. route
19. style
20. themes
21. traditional
22. transformed
Unique words: 263 Total words: 620
WORKS CITED
“Alestorm”. Metal-archives.com. Metal Archives. 2008. Web. 5 Jan 2010
Global Metal. Dir. Sam Dunn, Scott Mcfayden. Serville Pictures, Warner Home Video, 2008.
Documentary. 21 Dec. 2009
“I Abstain”. Darklyrics.com. Dark Lyrics. Web. 4 Jan. 2010
Murder Music: A History of Black Metal. Dir. David Kenny. Rockworld TV. 2007.
Documentary. 27 Dec. 2009
Official KMFDM Myspace. KMFDM. Web. 06 Jan 2010.
62
Student 5.2
The Ethics of Outing Gays
Publicly disclosing someone's sexual orientation, better known as %91outing', has recently
become a highly controversial subject. These outings, often of high-profile people, happen
for several reasons. One main reason is to make people understand that homosexuality is
actually normal even amongst celebrities, that it is not something to be scared of. However,
although this may be a noble cause, there are several reasons why one might disapprove of
these methods. Not only do such outings show no respect for privacy, they may also
have negative consequences for the outed person's personal life and career. In addition,
public outing might actually drive other homosexuals further into the closet. For these
reasons, public outing must no longer be permitted.
The matter of privacy is a very important issue in relation to outing. Where should one draw
the line of things that are too private and things that can publicly discussed, that is a question
that immediately arises. As Ramon Johnson said: "How far are we willing to dig into people's
private lives to disclose their sexuality? And I must ask, for what reason and to what end?
Coming out is an intensely personal and often traumatic time in the lives of most samegender-loving people." Many homosexuals want to take their time to learn to accept
themselves for who they are and want to take their time telling other people, doing it when
they feel ready for it. That is why forcing the decision upon them is extremely disrespectful. It
forces them to acknowledge a part of their lives that they might not want the world to know
about yet. Consider the situation of a gay football player who lives in a world where being
homosexual is not normally accepted. Outing someone is thus a breach of their right to
privacy.
Closely related to this is the problem that the outing of public figures may have
bad consequences for their personal lives and careers. Coming to the realisation that one is a
homosexual is often a very emotional and difficult process which many people prefer to go
through on their own. When one's homosexuality becomes public knowledge, especially
where it concerns celebrities, there are bound to be many negative responses. Many people,
mostly the more religious and the elderly, are still reluctant to accept homosexuality and as
such not everyone will be supportive. It may even destroy family relationships. To come back
to the example of the gay football player: being outed can also be harmful for someone's
career, although this depends on the job one has. A football player who is outed may count on
a lot of opposition from fellow players and from football fans, to the point where he may be
forced to stop playing (Duffy). This could be avoided if public outing were forbidden.
The aim of outing is often to help make people aware that there are many gays in this world,
even amongst celebrities, and to assure other homosexuals that their situation is
only normal (Kenney). However, this practice may actually drive gays further into the closet,
rather than helping them to come out. When they see the result that public outing has on other
people, when they see their image being destroyed by rumours and gossip, which is
something that still frequently happens, especially in the United States of America, they are
far more likely to decide that coming out is a bad idea, which is the exact opposite of what
people try to achieve with the outing of celebrities. This is yet another reason not to out
famous people.
63
Outing celebrities is a practice that shows no respect for someone's privacy and which is
likely to have negative consequences for their personal lives and work careers. It may also
serve to discourage other gays from coming out. For these reasons, publicly disclosing
someone's sexuality must no longer be allowed.
1. achieve
2. acknowledge
3. assure
4. aware
5. consequences
6. controversial
7. Ethics
8. image
9. intensely
10. issue
11. job
12. methods
13. negative
14. normal
15. normally
16. orientation
17. process
18. reluctant
19. responses
20. sexual
21. sexuality
Unique words: 266 Total words: 659
WORKS CITED
Duffy, G. “Gay Brazillian Footballer Richarlyson Outed: Judge In Case Called Homophobic”.
GBMNews. 8 May 2007. Web. 18 December 2009.
Johnson, R. “Should Gay Celebrities Be Outed?” Gay Life. 18 November 2006. Web. 22
December 2009.
Kenney, R. “The Ethics Of Outing Gays In The Media: A Communitarian Perspective”.
AllAcademic Research. 25 May 2009. Web. 5 January 2010.
64
Student 6.2
Time for a New Allowance System.
In 2009 Britain was in upheaval because of a major political scandal. In that year a list of
expense claims from MPs (Members of Parliament) was made public through different
media. The list with claims was not surprising in itself; it was the misuse of allowances and
claims that shocked the entire country. The published facts showed that many MPs and even
Government Ministers had misused the allowances for MPs and had claimed expenses that
were unjust to claim. The uproar that followed from all the information was quickly followed
by the question: How to prevent misuse in the future?. Many MPs that were caught have been
giving sanctions but that is simply not enough. Firstly, barring MPs from future elections will
not prevent other MPs to make the same mistakes. Reconsidering the allowances however and
checking every claim that is made will prevent the reoccurrence of misuse in the future.
Therefore, an independent body should be assigned to regulate the allowances of MPs.
By barring MPs who have made a false expanses claim from future elections the main
issue of misusing the allowances is not resolved. Simply because loopholes still exist and
other MPs are able to use such loopholes in the future. Loopholes such as the newspaper the
Telegraph reports about on their website: “Parliament’s failure to demand proof of purchases
for items costing less than £25 led to an abundance of claims for household goods and bills of
£24, or just under.” Many MPs have used this loophole repeatedly, claiming bills just under
£25 in order to cover up what bills they are actually claiming. Sanctioning MPs who have
already done wrong will not resolve the problem of claiming false expenses. In order to
achieve better results more measures have to be taken.
One of the measures to amend the allowance system which has caused all the
problems in the past is by arranging an independent body that will analyze what is wrong
with the current system and subsequently will change the system into a working code. By
altering the system and replacing loopholes future MPs will be refrained from misusing their
allowances. Plans have already been made for such a body, but it has not yet started with their
reforms. The Chair of that body -The Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA)is however clear on what he wants to achieve with the IPSA in his written statement on the
IPSA-website: “The Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority must now establish a
new system of MPs' allowances. It must be fair and effective, and also respond to the public's
concerns.” He knows something must be done and an entirely new system must be created to
prevent ill-treatment of the allowance system by the MPs.
Nevertheless, only renewing the system is not enough. When the new system has
started working all bills claimed should be checked by an independent committee –which
could be the IPSA but it is also possible to form another body- to ascertain that all the rules
are being followed. In the past this has presented to be the hardest part. MPs could easily
claim allowances for second houses in which they hardly lived or claimed bills on renting an
apartment which belonged to someone of their family. Even if there are no loopholes in the
system, it will still be possible to claim false expenses. For those few occasions it is important
to have a body that will investigate such claims.
In conclusion, to prevent from false expense claims to be made again in 2010 a
change has to be made. Sanctioning MPs at fault in the past however is not enough, because
new MPs will find the same loopholes. Therefore the system of allowances should be revised
and when that system is done the claims have to be inspected by an independent party. For
these reasons an independent body should be assigned to regulate the allowances of MPs.
1. achieve
2. altering
3. amend
65
4. analyze
5. assigned
6. code
7. conclusion
8. created
9. inspected
10. investigate
11. issue
12. major
13. media
14. Nevertheless
15. published
16. regulate
17. resolved
18. revised
19. subsequently
Unique words: 249 Total words: 658
Works Cited
MPs' expenses: MPs exploit loophole to claim thousands without receipts. Rayner, Gordon.
11 December 2009. Accessed on 5 January 2010.
<http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/mps-expenses/6790246/MPs-expensesMPs-exploit-loophole-to-claim-thousands-without-receipts.html>
Written statement from IPSA Chair designate, Professor Sir Ian Kennedy. 4 November 2009.
Accessed on 6 January 2010. <http://www.parliamentarystandards.org.uk/news.html>
66
Student 7.2
Bilingual Education in Jamaica
The controversial debate on the subject of Jamaican Creole as a functioning role within
education is evermore present. Many linguists agree that Jamaican Creole is a language in its
own right; it is provided with its own grammar structure, and its development into its current
state can be compared to that of any other language. Standard English is still Jamaica's official
language, yet an increasing amount of Jamaican teachers and linguists pledge for the
introduction of Jamaican Creole within the curriculum; not to replace English but in addition
to English. If equal prominence is given to English and Jamaican Creole, Jamaican students
will learn to distinguish between the two languages, which will preserve both. The option for
students to study in their native tongue might also improve the amount of graduated people in
general. Many are still under the impression that their spoken language is a form of broken
English. An official acknowledgment of it as a language on its own might improve
this negative image. Because of the fact that gradually more people agree that Jamaican
Creole is a language in its own right, it should be regarded as equal to English as a national
language and should be included within the school curriculum.
In order to obtain a high level of English, students need to learn to distinguish
Standard English from Jamaican Creole through clear linguistic rules. It is generally believed
that the use of English as an official language is required to prevent economic isolation from
the rest of the world. Yet the English which many educated middle class Jamaicans speak is a
mesolect; a mix between English and Jamaican Creole. Some educators believe that if
Jamaican children study their own language, learning to cope with English is easier: "others,
like Mervyn Alleyne, Hubert Devonish and Pauline Christie have, for decades, explained that
it is known all over the world that if your home language (Jamaican, for instance) is
recognised and respected, you will learn a target language (English, for instance) more
easily" (Maxwell). Through transition of the educational system from English-only to
bilingual, or perhaps even with Creole as the first language, the level of English will improve.
The option for students to follow any course in their native tongue might increase the amount
of graduates. Many students struggle to follow a course in a language which is not their own:
Stephanie Tame-Durrleman states:
"The respect of the child's mother tongue in the classroom may ultimately take us a
step further. That is, it may even prove beneficial for certain students who are, for
example, very strong in maths or art, but struggling with English, to ultimately have
the opportunity of having the subject explained in their mother tongue, without
having to face the obstacle of learning it in a foreign language" (Rose).
The rule counts for most young children and students around the world: any subject is best
understood when it is explained in their home language. Jamaican children are not an
exception to the rule; therefore there is no valid reason to insist upon them receiving
education in a second language.
Through educational acknowledgement, Jamaican Creole might finally lose
its negative image. Jamaican Creole is still regarded by many as a broken language,
stigmatized as poor and illiterate. According to Marriot this image is kept alive by many of
the country's rulers and decision makers, who have a disrespectful and condescending
attitude towards Jamaican Creole (Marriot). Yet with the rise of literary works written in
Jamaican Creole, including the Dictionary of Jamaican English (Cassidy, LePage), and also a
regular grammar and lexis system, such an attitude towards the language is outdated. TameDurrleman maintains that "We need to recognise that Jamaican Creole is a full-fledged
language for various reasons. First of all, it is simply not accurate to define it as anything
else" (Rose).
67
Jamaican Creole can only be fully recognized as a language on its own, with the potential to
become a national language, when people are educated in the language.
To conclude, the inadequate English speech produced by most Jamaicans is a clear
sign that the current English-only educational system is a failure. Jamaican students need to
learn a second language, or any other subject, the same way people from other countries do;
they need to master their native language first. Furthermore, an educational
acknowledgment of the language might open a door to national language status. Therefore,
Jamaican Creole should be included into the school curriculum.
1. accurate
2. acknowledgement
3. attitude
4. beneficial
5. conclude
6. controversial
7. debate
8. decades
9. define
10. economic
11. finally
12. functioning
13. Furthermore
14. image
15. inadequate
16. instance
17. isolation
18. maintains
19. negative
20. obtain
21. option
22. potential
23. required
24. role
25. status
26. structure
27. target
28. transition
29. ultimately
30. valid
Unique words: 288 Total words: 755
Works Cited:
Marriot, Louis. The Jamaican Language Issue-part 2. Jamaica Gleaner. September 17, 2006.
Web. Web access: 07-01-2010
68
Maxwell, Peter. This language business ... Teaching in J'can creole?. Jamaica Gleaner. July
13, 2008. Web. Web access: 07-01-2010
Rose, Dionne. Tame-Durrleman- Exploring the unique Jamaican Creole. Jamaica Gleaner.
December 16, 2005. Web. Web access: 07-01-2010
69
Student 8.2
Forced out of the Closet: Outing Public Figures
Back in the time that Oscar Wilde was convicted of sodomy, the act of disclosing someone's
homosexuality, nowadays known as outing, was still a legal affair. In recent years, gay right
activists have used outing, as a way to improve the position of homosexuals in society, by
outing public figures that are popular, or openly anti-gay. This practice is very controversial
in the gay community, however, because it allegedly means an invasion of someone's
privacy. A serious weakness with this argument, however, is that outing does not violate
someone's privacy. In addition, the right-to-privacy argument has been used as an excuse for
homophobia, and lesbians and gay men should not hide behind a right-to-privacy argument.
This is why a closet case's right to privacy should not be used as an argument against outing.
Someone's privacy is not necessarily destroyed after his or her preference for the same
sex becomes a matter of public record. Disclosing someone's sexual orientation, without that
person's permission, means violating that person's secrecy (Mohr 15). However, if that
information is gained without spying our in any other way intruding that person's private life,
then it does not violate privacy (Mohr 16). In other words, as long as the information that is
outed is gained by means of deducing from public signs, for instance because that person
visits gay bars regularly, posed for a gay magazine, or participated in gay pride parade, it is
not illegal (Mohr 15-6). In that respect, it is also important to differentiate between calling
someone gay and talking about that person's sex live (Mohr 16). It is quite possible to find out
about someone's sexual orientation, by concluding from the examples given before. Sexual
preference is therefore not protected by privacy rights (Mohr 17). Someone's sexual acts,
however, are, because gathering information about this means having to invade that person's
private life.
The privacy argument has been used to conceal what is actually homophobia. In the
past, suggesting someone's homosexuality in the media was a great taboo (Singnorole).
Whereas they reported shamelessly on someone's personal life, without the subject's
permission, they lied about the public figure's homosexuality, and even made up stories about
them having heterosexual affairs (Signorole). Arguing that they were protecting the privacy of
homosexuals, while they were willingly denying other, heterosexual, people their right to
privacy, is rather illogical. Not privacy, but homophobia, led the media to conceal these
people's sexual preference (Signorole).
Homosexuals should not hide behind a right-to-privacy argument. Living a gay live
but using your publicly straight image to undermine the rights of homosexuals is hypocritical
("Ins and Outs"). In that case, hiding behind the argument of privacy is simply a way of
protecting yourself from being portrayed as two-faced. However, other gay public figures
should not hide behind this argument either. By objecting to being outed, homosexuals
actually admit of being ashamed of their sexuality, which they should not be.
In conclusion, publicly declaring someone homosexual does not equal invading that
person's privacy, the right-to-privacy argument has been used to cover for homophobia, and
there is no good reason for homosexuals to hide behind the argument of privacy. Taken
together, these arguments show that a homosexual's right to privacy is not a good argument
against outing.
1. community
2. concluding
3. conclusion
4. controversial
5. deducing
70
6. denying
7. differentiate
8. illegal
9. illogical
10. image
11. instance
12. legal
13. media
14. orientation
15. participated
16. posed
17. sex
18. sexual
19. sexuality
20. violate
21. Whereas
Unique words: 230 Total words: 574
Works Cited
Mohr, Richard D. Gay Ideas: Outing and Other Controversies. Boston: Beacon Press, 1992.
Print.
Signorole, M. “Outing by any other name.” Advocate: America’s Leading Gay News
Magazine. 0,817/818 (2000): 64-67. Web. 15 Dec. 2009.
“The Ins and Outs of Outing.” Economist (London). 320,7722 (1991): 54-56. Web. 15 Dec.
2009.
71
Student 9.2
Dream On, America
Humans have tried to get away from their own world for a long time. Some humans invented
their own places, like Neverland, and others went out into the world to discover new places.
On one of these journeys, America was discovered. The continent was seen as a new world
and during the seventeenth century the American dream came into existence. The situation in
America back then, however, differs from the situation in America now. Because of these
changed circumstances, the American dream has become unrealistic. This is because
unemployment numbers are extremely high these days. Furthermore, even though Barack
Obama is now President of America, inequality remains. Lastly, safety in America has
lessened ever since the ninth of September 2001.
Firstly, unemployment numbers have never been higher in the United States. In the
last few years, unemployment has gradually gotten more and more, according to graphics in
Economic Indicators (“unemployment”11). Now, an estimated 15 million people in America
have no job at all. This is a new record, and a new peak in the American unemployment
history since 1983. In 1983 there was another unemployment peak due to the bad economy at
the time. The current high rate of unemployment, however, makes the idea of getting up
higher in society unrealistic because most people do not even have a job or a field they can
get higher up in. So because of the great number of unemployed people, the American dream
has become unrealistic: most of them can barely get a job, let alone climb up higher in
society.
Subsequently, even though Barack Obama, a black man, has now been elected as
President of the United States of America, racial inequality has not disappeared. His election
does not mean that equality suddenly exists in the United States, because, as Metzler writes,
“The reality is that America was built literally and figuratively on the backs of
enslaved Africans and on the dispossession of Native Americans whose only crime
was the color of their skin. Thus, any substantive legislative solution to this crime
would require an elimination of the legacy of White supremacy that is built into the
American psyche. For White supremacy has not been excised from our national core,
and the election of President Obama, without more, will not accomplish this” (397)
Racial equality will only exist once the people of the United States acknowledge this factor,
and if not, there will be no equality. And if there is no equality, there will never be the
opportunity for every citizen to make the “American Dream” happen, because not all of them
will be able to get a job. Therefore, racial inequality makes the American Dream unrealistic.
Furthermore, America has become less safe after the ninth of September in 2001,
when two aeroplanes each hit one of the two World Trade Centres. This was organised by
terrorists, both members of Al Qaida. This muslim group is fundamentally against America
and tries to sabotage many of their plans. Many terrorists were sent by them and security
around America has tightened. Still, barely a week ago, another terrorist tried to blow up an
aeroplane flying towards America. This shows that being in America is not safe; apparently
many countries harbour hatred towards the United States. If America is the main target of
terrorist attacks, however, this is a dangerous place to be. If that is the case, America is not a
place where everything can happen without consequences, like in the earlier days. So the
American dream, which basically states that anything can happen in America without
consequences, has become unrealistic because there is less safety in America now.
To sum it all up. Firstly, unemployment numbers have reached a new peak in the
American history. Furthermore, the fact that Barack Obama has become President of the
United States does not mean that racial inequality has gone away. Also, America has become
a place where consequences with regards to other countries have to be considered. Because
72
of these three changed circumstances in the United States, the American dream has become
unrealistic.
1. acknowledge
2. apparently
3. consequences
4. economy
5. estimated
6. factor
7. fundamentally
8. Furthermore
9. job
10. security
11. Subsequently
12. sum
13. target
Unique words: 267 Total words: 675
Works Cited
“Employment, unemployment and wages.” Economic Indicators, June 2009. Vol.
. Graph.
Metzler, C. “Barack Obama’s Faustian Bargain and the Fight for America’s Racial
Journal of Black Studies. 40.3 (2010): 397. Print.
114.6
Soul”
73
Student 10.2
Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes
In 2009, it came to light that several Members of Parliament misused the granted allowances
and expenses and that they had been defrauding with tax payers' money. This resulted in a
number of de-selections, sackings and so on. However, the vast majority of the guilty MPs
are still at work and ready to stand for election whereas every other employee
caught committing a crime would be disciplined immediately. Moreover, MPs need to set the
right example. If it is legitimate for them to steal money and not be punished, the public will
be tempted to do the same. Lastly, if MPs cannot be trusted, neither the Government
and eventually the British democracy can be. For these reasons, MPs who are found guilty
should be barred from standing for election next time.
In virtually every line of work, employees who are caught committing a crime are
fired or at least disciplined harshly. This should not be any different for MPs. The false
expense claims made by MPs can be considered as fraud or an attempt to commit fraud.
However, it is difficult to determine to which extent MPs are actually guilty. According to the
Serious Fraud Office fraud can be described as "an act of deception intended for personal gain
or to cause a loss to another party. The general criminal offence of fraud can include
deception whereby someone knowingly makes false representation, or they fail to disclose
information, or they abuse a position" (SFO). Various Members claim they were unaware of
breaking the rules or state they were simply following the Green Book. As proof cannot be
easily found, the least the Government could do to keep the trust and support of the public is
to not let these MPs stand for election.
Various MPs have been disciplined for their actions. Some are asked to step down or
have made the decision to do so themselves, others are asked to repay a part of or the entire
amount of money they unlawfully claimed. Examples are Gordon Brown, who is asked to pay
back "£12,450, mainly for cleaning" (Prince) and "Alistair Darling, Chancellor who isasked to
repay £554 towards the cost of a chest of drawers which cost £1,104" (Telegraph pay back).
However, there are Members of Parliament who are accused of committing fraud who
are declining the repayment they were asked to perform. Some 80 MPs are fighting against
the request from Sir Thomas Legg, who "was asked to review all MPs' second home claims
since 2004 after the expenses scandal broke in May 2009" (BBC), to repay money on false
expense claims. The problem now is that when MPs, the leaders of Britain, are not persecuted
for this crime the public sees no point in breaking the rules either. A simple fact of if they can
do it, so can we'. This will make it considerably more difficult to fight fraud in Britain
because the public is merely following the example the leaders are giving.
Finally, Members of Parliament are elected on a basis of trust with people believing
that these men and women will act in their best interest. That is exactly what these MPs failed
to do as they had no scruples filling their pockets with tax payers' money over the
past couple of years. This gross violation of the confidence of the public can never be fully
undone and the British public can never fully trust their MPs again. Moreover, if MPs cannot
be trusted neither the parliamentary democracy can be. In the end, this could lead to a total
lack of faith in the entire British democracy when regarding the fact that right now "Public
confidence in, trust in, faith in our MPs is at rock bottom" (Anstiss).
Concluding, when looking at the facts that firstly, fraud is a crime and that each and every
person without exception should be accordingly punished, further, that MPs should set the
right example for the public and lastly, that this scandal has severely decreased the trust of the
public in the British Government, it can be argued that those MPs that are guilty of making
false expense claims should be punished by not letting them stand for election.
1. commit
74
2. Concluding
3. considerably
4. couple
5. declining
6. eventually
7. Finally
8. found
9. granted
10. majority
11. unaware
12. violation
13. virtually
14. whereas
15. whereby
Unique: 297 Total: 698
Works Cited
Anstiss, Paul. “Public confidence shattered in UK”. Radio Nederland Wereldomroep. Radio
Netherlands Worldwide, 20 May 2009. Web. 6 Jan. 2010.
“More than 80 MPs challenge expenses repayment demand”. BBC News. BBC, 17 Dec. 2009.
Web. 30 Dec. 2009.
“MPs expenses: what the MPs have been asked to pay back”. The Daily Telegraph. The Daily
Telegraph, 15 Oct. 2009. Web. 1 Jan. 2010.
Prince, Rosa. “MPs' expenses: repayments will top £1 million following audit by Sir Thomas
Legg”. The Daily Telegraph. The Daily Telegraph, 31 Oct. 2009. Web. 6 Jan. 2010.
Serious Fraud Office. “What is fraud?”. The Serious Fraud Office, n.d. Web. 6 Jan. 2010.
75
76
Student 1.3
The impact of communication technology on society
In the past decade, community-life has experienced a huge development. People used to
communicate by mail, face to face and later by telephone. Recently there has been a massive
growth in communication by mobile phone and especially the Internet, the latter with a
growth of 380.3% between 2000 and 2009 (Internet World Stats). Not everyone is thrilled
about this new development. Archbishop Vincent Nichols argues that a boundless occupation
in texting and mailing provides a major threat to community life; since we would be losing
our social skills in day to day life and forget how to behave appropriately to other people
(par. 3). On the contrary, the use of new technologies such as mobile phones and especially
the Internet, has resulted in an extended social life which allows people to participate more
in society. Firstly the internet as a global network, allows unlimited contact with people all
over the world. Secondly, the internet and mobile phones make it possible to keep a close
connection with friends and family without having to physically meet. Furthermore, the
internet is ideal for people who find it difficult to engage in physical social contact or to be
socially active in person. Moreover, internet and mobile phones help the chronically ill or
people confined to their homes to take a part in their community. Lastly, developments in
communication have enabled people to work at home so that they can spend more time with
their family and friends and to be more active within their communities.
The invention of the Internet has caused a huge transformation in community life. As quite
a notable portion of world's population now having access to the Internet, respectively
25.6%, the potential for people to meet new people has risen quite significantly (Internet
World Stats). Contact is no longer limited to being face to face as it can now be done in a
number of electronic ways. This is in contrast to the way social contact was conventionally
done before the rise of the Internet. For instance, originally people were bound to their
village or neighbourhood for social contact. Nowadays however, it is equally simple to have
a conversation with the neighbours as it is to talk with someone on the other side of the world.
Geography now no longer forms an obstacle to social networking; it is now possible to
extend a social network beyond all borders. The internet also provides a cheap substitute for
the telephone. All that is needed is a microphone and possibly a webcam, and people can call
whoever they want without needing to worry about the cost.
The use of mobile phones and the Internet enables friends and family to keep up-to-date more
frequently and easily. For instance, a mother can get a text message from her son when he is
delayed. She can then pass this message on to her husband, who will then know he does not
need to rush to leave work. By way of social networking sites such as Facebook and
MySpace, friends are able to share thoughts and events with each other and maintain their
friendship this way, even when they do not see each other often. Making appointments is
effortless; one message can notify a virtually unlimited number of people. Classmates do not
need to meet up if they have to do an assignment, but can get the work done in their own
homes via an instant messaging service and e-mail.
There are many people who have difficulty with forming social contacts in real life. This
could be for a range of reasons such as they are being bullied, self-conscious or shy. The
arguably safe Internet allows them to have contact with others without having to meet them
face to face. This is one of the major advantages of the Internet; participating in an online
community can be entirely anonymous. Nobody will judge on appearance, background or
skin-colour, if these features are unknown.
The internet and the use of cellular telephones are an excellent way for the chronically ill or
people that are confined to their homes to still take part in society, although they are not
77
physically present. Through social networking sites and gadgets such as a microphone and a
webcam, it is unnecessary for these people to neither feel like they are missing out on having
a social life nor to feel deprived of contact with others. They can join in discussions, follow
lectures and stay up-to-date on world news and events. Moreover, the chronically ill can find
similar people and talk about their problems, or even find solutions they might not have
thought of before to help alleviate their issues. Also, as Ayers and Crone point out: "Those
that have multiple chronic illnesses will have more uncertainty regarding health status and
may need help to re-establish their personal sense of health. Health information seeking on
the Internet could be the method that those with chronic illnesses employ in order to reduce
uncertainty and gain a personal sense of health." (4).
Finally, technological advances have enabled more and more people to work at home. This
in turn may cause people to miss the social contact with their colleagues in a normal
workplace. However, they gain the advantage of being able to spend more time with their
family and friends. Lastly, they do not have to travel to and from work, which also saves a lot
of time which can be spent with their family.
In conclusion, the application of technologies such as the Internet, mobile phones in day to
day life results in an enhanced social life. This is firstly shown in the increased ability of
people to participate in society, due to the Internet and mobile phones enabling an infinite
amount of connections with people from all over the world. Secondly, the Internet and mobile
phones permit people to keep strong contact with friends and family. Thirdly, the Internet is a
solution for people that have difficulty with real life social connections. Fourthly, today's
advanced technologies enable people whom are chronically ill or confined to their homes to
participate in society even though they cannot be physically present. Lastly, the rise in the
use of mobile phones and the Internet has enabled an increasing amount of people to work at
home.
1. access
2. appropriately
3. assignment
4. colleagues
5. communicate
6. communication
7. community
8. conclusion
9. confined
10. contact
11. contrary
12. contrast
13. conventionally
14. decade
15. enable
16. enhanced
17. features
18. Finally
19. Furthermore
20. global
21. impact
22. infinite
78
23. instance
24. issues
25. lectures
26. maintain
27. major
28. method
29. network
30. networking
31. normal
32. occupation
33. participate
34. physical
35. physically
36. portion
37. potential
38. range
39. seeking
40. similar
41. sites
42. status
43. substitute
44. technological
45. technology
46. text
47. transformation
48. via
49. virtually
Unique: 382 Total: 1058
WORKS CITED
Ayers, Stephanie; Kronenfeld, Jennie. “Chronic Illness and Health Seeking-Information on
the Internet”. All Academic research. N.p. n.d. Web. 23 Mar 2010
“Facebook and MySpace have ‘dehumanizing’ effects, Archbishop Nichols warns”. Catholic
News Agency. Web. 23 Mar 2010.
<http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/facebook_and_myspace_have_dehumani
zing_effects_archbishop_nichols_warns/>
Internet World Stats: Usage and Population Statistics. Web. 23 Mar 2010.
<http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm>
79
Student 2.3
Unfriend To Make Friends
In a world with fast evolving technology and where people no longer have time to sit down
and meet with their friends and family, a new medium is breaking through: social
networking sites. However, the use of social network sites creates a individualistic society.
Firstly, it is harder for people to join a group if they are not subscribed to a social network
page. However, the time people spend on social networking sites is but a fraction of their
time. Thirdly, the use of social networks on mobile phones creates public places with less
interaction between people. Finally, the anonymity created by using social network sites
leads to a self-centred view of the world.
First of all, for an individual in modern society it is harder to be part of a group that is
outside of work relations, if this individual is not subscribed to a social network. The first
reason is that to become a member of a group, a social network page is all but compulsory.
Much information about activities of such a social group is shared no longer via email, but
more and more via a group's social network page. As a result of this, modern society
becomes more individualistic as individuals no longer meet in person but communicate
with their peers via their computers. Another reason is that the use of social network sites is
becoming more main stream (Perez, par.5). A survey by IAB Europe about "the online
behaviour and attitudes of 32,000 people" (IAB Italia, par. 1) showed that "52%25 of all
internet users surveyed had updated or viewed a profile on a social network in the last
month" (IAB Italia, par. 4). This indicates the popularity of social network pages. Where
people used to think of social networking as uninteresting and difficult (Perez, par.5), it has
now become an important way of staying in touch with friends, making it harder to be part of
a group if an individual does not subscribe to a social network.
However, the time people spend on social network pages is but a fraction of their
time. According to a recently published report by The Nielsen Company, the "time spent on
social networking sites has increased from 3 hours per month to 5.5 hours per month in the
last year alone, representing a staggering 82%25 increase in the use of social media"
(CNNMoney, par. 1). Even though the increase in time spent on social networking sites is
substantial, these figures imply that the remaining 726.5 hours of a month are used for
activities other than browsing the internet on social network pages. This would mean that at
this moment the use of social networking sites does not create an individualistic society.
The increase in use of social network sites, however, does suggest that in the future it might
create a more individualistic society. If the increase were to continue at the current rate, in
five years time, time spent on social network pages would be 110 hours per month. Should
this happen, the 15%25 of time per month spent using social network sites, would suggest a
society where communication takes place from behind a screen instead of a face to face
meeting. Furthermore, according to the same report, "social web sites such as Facebook are
now the most common homepages for users" (CNNMoney, par. 4).
A second reason why the use of social networks would contribute to a more
individualistic society, is the use of social network sites on mobile phones. According to a
study, carried out by Ruder Finn, "Americans are spending nearly three hours per day on their
mobile phones" (Perez, par. 1). In those three hours, "45%25 are posting comments on social
networking sites" (Perez, par. 2) and "43%25 are connecting with friends on social
networking sites" (Perez, par. 2). As a result of this, people who use their mobile phones to
browse social networking sites isolate themselves from the rest of society. This leads to
people paying less attention to their surroundings which in turn results in public places with
people not interacting with one another, but rather focusing on their mobile phones where
they communicate with their peers via social networking sites. Moreover, when witnessing
80
an emergency, rather than helping, people tend to record the situation on their mobile phones
in order to share it on their social network pages. An example of how people no longer care
for the well-being of others, but rather focus on their appearance on social networking pages.
Thirdly, the use of social networking pages leads to more anonymity.
Communication on social network sites is done via the computer, which results in people
interacting with another person's profile without having the guarantee that the person they
are socializing with is truly who that person claims to be. This may result in sexual
harassment and blackmailing. Another effect of anonymity is a form of misplaced confidence.
People no longer meet in person to interact but are separated, and thus protected, by a
computer screen between them. This makes it much easier to criticise the person on the other
side of the screen because that person will not be able to confront the critics with their claims.
Ray William Johnson, a YouTube celebrity, commented in his daily video-log on a userquestion regarding criticising other people by saying the following: "Don't stop trollin'
man/That's what the internet's about. Be anonymous and talk shit to people who you would
never talk shit to in real life. Do it man/. . . Absolutely criticise people for attempting to do
shit that you could never-ever do in your life" (BreakingNYC). Even though Johnson was not
completely serious, this does capture what happens when people feel secure behind their
computer screen: they are right and if anyone does not agree with them, that person is
ignored, and if people see something they do not like, they criticise it without giving
constructive feedback. The anonymity leads to a self-centred view of the world.
In conclusion, the use of social networking pages contributes to a more
individualistic society because people meet less in person. Firstly, it is more challenging for
people to join a group if they do not have a profile on a social networking site since
communication is more frequently done via this medium. Secondly, even though, people
spend less than 1% of their time per month on social networking pages, the increase in use of
social networking sites is substantial (CNNMoney). Thirdly, a study by Ruder Finn claims
that people spent more time using their mobile internet connection to communicate via social
network sites (Perez, par.1), which results in public places with less interaction between
people. Finally, since people no longer meet face to face but rather communicate using their
computers, the anonymity creates a sense of misplaced confidence and a self-centred view of
the world. These effects of using social network pages create a more individualistic society.
1. attitudes
2. challenging
3. commented
4. communicate
5. Communication
6. computer
7. conclusion
8. constructive
9. contribute
10. create
11. creates
12. evolving
13. Finally
14. focus
15. Furthermore
16. guarantee
17. ignored
81
18. imply
19. indicates
20. individual
21. individualistic
22. interact
23. interaction
24. isolate
25. media
26. medium
27. network
28. networking
29. published
30. sexual
31. sites
32. survey
33. surveyed
34. technology
35. via
Unique: 349 Total: 1151
Works Cited
BreakingNYC. “STALKERS!!” YouTube. YouTube, LLC, 20 Feb. 2010. Web. 24 Feb. 2010.
“Eastern Europeans Embrace Online Content And Social Networking.” IAB Italia. N.p. 24
Feb. 2010. Web. 24 Feb. 2010.
Perez, Sarah. “Social Networking Now More Popular On Mobile Than Desktop.” Read Write
Web. N.p. 18 Feb. 2010. Web. 24 Feb. 2010.
“Social Media Use Up 82% Worldwide.” CNNMoney.com. Cable News Network, 22 Feb.
2010. Web. 24 Feb. 2010.
82
Student 3.3
Heroic Patriots versus Foolish Individuals
Rupert Brooke's poem "The soldier" and Keith Douglas' poem "Aristocrats" were written in
different times, 1914 and 1943 respectively, and consequently about different wars. During
the start of the First World War, warfare was seen as a glorious endeavor. However, as the
war progressed, and more and more men died for seemingly senseless reasons, the atrocity of
warfare became known to both those who were fighting in the trenches and those at the home
front. Because of this, those who were to fight in the Second World War were aware of what
a war of this magnitude could do to the world as they knew it. Consequently, the two poems
present different views about warfare. Firstly, "The soldier" speaks about patriotism,
"Aristocrats", on the other hand, emphasizes individual soldiers. Secondly, "The Soldier" is
unrealistic about warfare, whereas "Aristocrats" presents a more realistic view of warfare.
Lastly," Aristocrats" portrays those fighting a war as fools whereas "The Soldier" does not.
"The Soldier" shows clear signs of patriotism. The speaker in the poem says that in the event
that he dies, presumably while fighting for his country, the audience should not think of him,
but rather of England. Everything the speaker is, or will be when he dies for his country, is
connected to England. He refers to himself as "A dust whom England bore, shaped, made
aware" and later on even calls himself "A body of England's, breathing English air" (line 57). Even the speaker's final resting place will be "forever England" (3). This denotes that
during the first stages of the First World War there was a prevailing sense of patriotism
among the fighting soldiers. The speaker in "Aristocrats", as opposed to the speaker in "The
Soldier", does not talk about his country, but about individual soldiers instead. The second
verse names a man called "Peter" and in the first verse the speaker talks about a man who
"looks up at a shellburst"(2-5). He also mentions a "noble horse" in the first verse, which is an
analogy for one of the fighting aristocrats (1). Not only are the individual soldiers
mentioned, the speaker also shows that those fighting in the Second World War no longer
think about their home country when they see the effects of war. This can be seen in the first
verse where, when the man sees the "shellburst", the "images of the shires fly away" (2-3).
Furthermore, the difference in the level of patriotism between the two poems can also be
found in the usage of personal pronouns in both poems. In "The Soldier" the speaker only
references to himself in line one. The rest of the lines only contain pronouns which refer back
to England. In the Aristocrats, however, the speaker references not only to himself in every
stanza, but also to various men.
The speaker in "The Soldier" is unrealistic about warfare. The image presented in this
poem is that of a rather genteel war. Save for the single reference to the speakers own possible
death nothing else is mentioned besides the glory of dying for your country. According to
Bruce Meyer, the poem is written "from the perspective" of somebody who has not yet
experienced the reality of war. Seeing as the poem was written at the start of the First World
War, it can be assumed the author had at that point not yet seen a lot of combat action. It is
therefore not surprising that it consequently "fails to embrace the horrific realities that were
World War I," seeing as how those "horrific realities" had not yet taken place (Meyer). The
speaker in "Aristocrats" appears to be more aware of the reality of war, which can be seen in
the imagery. He starts by mentioning "shellburst", which is another term for exploding
artillery shells, and goes on to talk about the death of "Peter" who "was unfortunately killed
by an 88", in which 88 refers to the 88 mm gun used by the Germans during the second World
War (2-5). The words "obsolescent" and "fading" in the following lines: "obsolescent breed of
heroes, and not weep?/Unicorns, almost,/for they are fading into two legends," suggest even
more death (10-12). He also speaks about the demise of several other soldiers in the fourth
stanza, by saying that "tremendous drop fences brought down some of the runners," in which
83
brought down is to be taken as an euphemism for killed (16-17). The word "dispose" in the
line: "under the stones and earth they dispose themselves," also seems to suggest that the
soldiers are dying at an alarmingly high rate (18).
"Aristocrats" presents a negative view about heroism. The third stanza shows that the
speaker believes that "they", which can be taken to mean the aristocrats in the army, as the
title seems to suggest, or as all of those soldiers who are heroic, "are fading into two legends/
in which their stupidity and chivalry/are celebrated"(12-14). The speaker goes even further
than using the word stupidity and in the next line says that "Each, fool and hero, will be an
immortal"(14). What the speaker is trying to suggest with these lines is that being a hero is not
necessarily a good thing and can in fact be seen as stupidity when it comes to warfare,
because it might lead to your death. "The Soldier", on the other hand, is not negative about
heroism. The poem presents such a patriotic view of warfare that it might even be considered
to be proclaiming that dying for your country is heroic. According to Bruce Meyer the poem's
first line: "If I should die, think only this of me," stands for an act of martyrdom (1). This act
of dying for refusing to let go of one's beliefs, or in this case dying for your country's moral
values, can be taken to be heroic when the phrase "A body of England" is taken into
consideration (7). This line suggests that when the soldier willingly sacrifices his life he
becomes an embodiment of both England and English values (Meyer).
In conclusion, the speakers in Robert Brooke's and Keith Douglas' poems have
opposing views on warfare. Firstly, the speaker in "The Soldier" talks of patriotism, while the
speaker in the "Aristocrats" focuses on individual soldiers. Secondly, "The Soldier" is
unrealistic about warfare, while the imagery in "Aristocrats" presents a more realistic picture.
Lastly, "Aristocrats" shows that heroism can be seen as stupidity, "The Soldier, on the other
hand, is more positive about heroism.
1. analogy
2. assumed
3. author
4. aware
5. conclusion
6. consequently
7. denotes
8. dispose
9. emphasizes
10. final
11. focuses
12. found
13. Furthermore
14. imagery
15. images
16. individual
17. negative
18. perspective
19. positive
20. presumably
21. whereas
Unique: 354 Total: 1082
84
Works Cited
Brooke, Rupert. “The Soldier.” Norton Anthology of English Literature Volume 2. Ed.
Stephen Greenblat, Jon Stalworthy and Jahan Ramanzi. 8th ed. New York: W.W.
Norton & Company, 2006. 1955-1956. Print.
Douglas, Keith. “Aristocrats.” Norton Anthology of English Literature Volume 2. Ed. Stephen
Greenblat, Jon Stalworthy and Jahan Ramanzi. 8th ed. New York: W.W. Norton &
Company, 2006. 2458. Print.
Meyer, Bruce. Poetry for Students Volume 9. Gale Group, 2000. Web. 18 Mar. 2010.
<http://www.answers.com/topic/the-soldier-poem-8>
85
Student 4.3
Wind of Change
Recently, there have been repeated news reports about child abuse in the Catholic Church in
Europe and the United States. However, no country has been struggling so much with its
history of church abuse as Ireland. Claims of abuse have been surfacing in Ireland for almost
two decades, but not since the Ryan Report of 2009 have the abuse claims been put forward
on such large a scale. Over 2,000 claims were investigated by the Commission to Inquire
Into Child Abuse and were later published as what is now known as the Ryan Report
("Endemic"). The consequences of the Ryan Report are still unfolding, but many of the
victims feel that the consequences for the Catholic Church are not severe enough. Clergy that
are guilty of child abuse should be prosecuted not by criminal law instead of canon law.
Furthermore, the Irish government should impose stricter rules on the Catholic Church and
its organisations so abuse can be prevented in the future. Lastly, a new government-initiated
investigation should be undertaken so that the findings of a new report can be presented as
evidence in court. The Irish government should investigate and prosecute the guilty parties
mentioned in the Ryan Report and administer stricter rules for the Catholic Church.
Claims of abuse made by victims should be investigated by criminal law instead of canon
law so that guilty parties will be prosecuted. During the sixty year period that the Ryan
Report investigated, claims of abuse that were put forward by either the victims or concerned
external parties were handled mostly within the Catholic Church itself, according to canon
law. Although child sexual abuse is a serious crime in canon law as well as in criminal law, it
was not treated as such by the archdiocese. According to the Ryan Report: "the archdiocese
did not implement its own canon law rules and did its best to avoid any application of the law
of the state" ("Legacy"). The archdiocese wanted to protect its own reputation. Therefore
secrecy was their top priority, and not the children's well-being ("Legacy"). The victims were
either bribed or beaten into silence ("Cover-up"). Canon law code states that the punishment
for sexual abuse of a child is "decreed deprivation of office and/or benefice, or expulsion
from the clerical state" ("Legacy"). The church's response to the abuse claims, however, was
to relocate abusing priests to another parish were they were free to abuse again. If the sexual
abuse cases had been immediately investigated by criminal law instead of canon law it would
have prevented the guilty clergy from being able to abuse again in another parish.
Stricter rules should be enforced by the Irish government on church-run organisations so that
future abuse can be prevented. One of the main focal points of the Ryan Report was the
industrial Catholic school Artane, run by the Christian Brothers. Especially the Christian
Brothers are marked by the Ryan Report as being responsible for some of the worst cases of
abuse. Artane was for the most part unsupervised by the state and thus the abuse remained
unnoticed. Another part of the problem was that physical abuse was accepted by the
community and the church as long as the educational success rate of the school remained
high ("Brothers"). Because the Christian Brothers were accepted to such a degree by their
local community, they were able to keep their abuse going for years. Had industrial schools
such as Artane been supervised properly and inspected regularly, abuse would not have been
as severe as it is now. Currently ninety per cent of Ireland's primary school are church-run
schools, most of which are Catholic schools ("Public School"). Parents do not have the choice
to send their child to a secular school because they hardly exist. If the government were to
convert a part of the church-run schools into secular schools, parents would have the option
to send their child to a church run school or not. The governing of Catholic schools could also
be handed over to external parties so that there would be more supervision in the schools. All
schools, whether secular or church-run, should be inspected and supervised on a regular basis
so as to prevent future abuse.
86
The Irish government should launch a new investigation to look into the abuse claims, which
is admissible in court and therefore will not have the same restrictions as the Ryan Report.
There have been several restrictions on the Ryan Report, the main consequence of those
restrictions being the absence of prosecutions for guilty clergy. One of the victims John
Walsh told the press that the report: "has devastated me and will devastate most victims
because there are no criminal proceedings and no accountability whatsoever." ("Endemic").
In 2004 the Christian Brothers succesfully sued the commission to ensure that the names of
any of their members, dead or alive, were not mentioned in the report. This lawsuit is one of
the main reasons that the report cannot be used for criminal prosecutions ("Endemic").
Another reason for the Ryan Report not being admissable as evidence in court is due to
another lawsuit by the church. If victims want financial compensation, they must waive their
rights to sue. Therefore, the church cannot be sued, or be held accountable for their crimes
("Thousands"). If a new investigation would be launched by the Irish government, these
restrictions could be avoided since it would be an entirely government-run investigation and
no more lawsuits would be able to provide guilty parties with anonymity. Persons found
guilty of abuse could also be prosecuted immediately while the rest of the investigation is
still running.
In conclusion, parties that are guilty of child abuse should be prosecuted by criminal law. In
addition, new rules for the Catholic Church and church run facilities could prevent abuse in
the future. Lastly, a new investigation that was undertaken by the Irish government would
ensue that the findings can be presented as evidence in court and the guilty parties cannot
hide behind anonymity. The Irish government should enforce stricter rules upon the Catholic
Church and investigate and prosecute the guilty parties concerning the child abuse cases.
1. code
2. Commission
3. community
4. consequences
5. convert
6. decades
7. enforced
8. evidence
9. external
10. Furthermore
11. implement
12. impose
13. inspected
14. investigated
15. investigation
16. option
17. period
18. physical
19. primary
20. priority
21. published
22. relocate
23. response
87
24. sexual
25. undertaken
Unique: 319 Total: 1035
WORKS CITED
Barkham, Patrick. “The Brothers Grim”. The Guardian. The Guardian, 28 Nov. 2009.
Web. 12 Mar. 2010.
BBC News. “Irish Church Knew Abuse 'Endemic'”. BBC News. 20 May 2009. Web. 15
Mar. 2010.
Belfast Telegraph. “Thousands raped in Ireland's Christian Brothers schools”. Belfast
Telegraph. 20 May 2009. Web. 15 Mar. 2010.
Catholic Culture News. “Irish Church can no longer operate public school system,
archbishop
says”. Catholic Culture. 17 June 2009. Web. 11 Mar. 2010.
Ivereigh, Austen. “The Irish church's legacy of abuse”. The Guardian. The Guardian, 28
Nov. 2009. Web. 16 Mar. 2010.
James, Steve. “Irish Child Abuse: The Ryan Report Cover-up”. World Socialist Web Site. 26
May 2009. Web. 14 Mar. 2010.
88
Student 5.3
The Guardian vs. The Times
Two of Britain's most famous quality newspapers are without a doubt the Guardian and The
Times. The Times is an old newspaper that has been published in the United Kingdom since
1785. The Guardian is slightly younger than that. Both have always been known for their indepth, informative and high quality articles about a large variety of subjects. However, when
reading both these newspapers, it may become apparent that this description of the two is not
as accurate as is usually believed. Whilst both newspapers write on the same subjects, the
Guardian appears to be more biased in its opinions than The Times, which generally offers
solid news without much political influence. In addition, the Guardian seems to mention
numbers and percentages frequently to make its articles sound more sensational and
shocking, in contrast with The Times. Lastly, The Times still has the middle and upper
classes as its target audience, in contrast to the Guardian, which focuses more on
international readers of any class. It can be concluded that although The Times still appears
to be a true quality newspaper, the Guardian sometimes seems to slip into semi-tabloid style.
The Guardian's strong opinions on certain matters influence its reliability; whilst The Times
prefers not to pick sides, placing more importance on actual facts in its reports. The
accusations against the Guardian for political bias in the matter of the war between Israel and
Palestine are a vivid example of this issue. Many feel that the newspaper only gives the
Palestinian version of events, whilst many details stated are not verified. An article in the
Guardian from 13 August states that: "The Israeli military said that in some cases Hamas
militants had used civilians with white flags for cover. It said yesterday the reports were based
on unreliable witnesses' whose testimony was unproven.' Human Rights Watch said it could
find no evidence of misuse of white flags or the use of civilians as human shields in the cases
detailed" (Beaumont). The Guardian here claims that the Israeli soldiers' testimony is
unreliable, despite them having witnesses as well as video evidence that support their claims
(Israel Defensive Forces). The Guardian, on the other hand, gives no real proof to support its
own standing. This subtle change of facts by using only select sources in favour of the
Palestinians happens structurally in the Guardian's reports, as researched in the article
"Guardian Hypocrisy." The Times, on the other hand, tries to avoid taking sides. To take a
similar example from this newspaper: in November 2006, Hamas was accused of hiding
militants in a crowd of innocent citizens: "Israel insists that it hit eight gunmen hiding in the
crowd and criticised the militants for using the women as cover to fire on them. But many
accused Israeli tanks and snipers of shooting into unarmed crowds of women, several of
whom were wounded before they got anywhere near Beit Hanoun's Nasr Mosque" (Farrell).
The Times approaches the situation from both sides, and then states in the next paragraph:
"Whatever the truth of conflicting reports," refusing to pick one side, but rather approaching
the situation from both sides, leaving it to the reader to decide who is right. This is far more
fitting of a quality newspaper than the Guardian's approach.
Something else that is quite typical for tabloids is using numbers and percentages to make
articles appear more shocking, which the Guardian is also sometimes guilty of, especially in
contrast to The Times. In an article in the Guardian about the earthquake in Haiti from 13
January, this becomes especially clear. The title says: "Earthquake Death Toll Rising after
Haiti's Day of Devastation." However, the article presents no actual facts, only guesses and
estimates, as the following quotations show: " as fears grew that the death toll could rise
above 100,000," "The country's Prime Minister, Jean-Max Bellerive, told CNN that the death
toll could well be over 100,000" and "Haitian senator Youri Latortue told Associated Press
that 500,000 might be dead. Both men admitted that they had no way of knowing" (Addley
and Carroll). The numbers are not proved as facts, and as such they should not be mentioned
89
in an article about a rising death toll. The Times, on the other hand, uses official numbers
released by the Haitian government rather than guesses, as can be seen in "Haiti Earthquake
Worst Disaster in Modern History'": "Using the official Haitian government death toll of
230,000 dead, ... ." Another article, published on 15 January, reports: "The 7.0 magnitude
quake brought phone lines and masts down, cutting communications and making it hard to
form an accurate estimate of the death toll, but disaster experts say it is likely to be heavy,
probably running into the thousands" (Hines). At that time the death toll was not yet known
and The Times makes sure to state this clearly, instead of guessing at possible numbers. By
staying to the facts, The Times proves itself a reliable source for factual information, in
contrast to the Guardian. The Guardian's tendency to use numbers and percentages to make
its articles come across as more interesting and sensational seems more fitting of a tabloid
than a quality newspaper.
Another issue that should be taken into account is the target audience of both newspapers.
The Guardian typically focuses heavily on its online website. Almost all articles are not only
published in the newspaper itself, but also uploaded online. The editor stated that, after the
New York Times, the Guardian has the largest online readership of all English-language
newspapers. The website receives around thirty-seven million views every month (Reid and
Teixeira). This means that the target audience is not middle to upper class British people any
more, but instead any English-language speaker who wants reliable information about British
and also international matters. In this way it is almost regarded as a newspaper version of the
BBC (Reid and Teixeira). The Times, on the other hand, places much less focus on its
website and only publishes a small part of its articles online. Its focus is still mainly on
academic people and the upper classes in Britain. As such, its use of language and phrasing
of sentences is still more formal than that of the Guardian. This contrast becomes especially
clear when there is a choice between an originally Anglo-Saxon or Scandinavian word or an
originally Latin or French word. The latter are generally perceived to be more formal (Castro
4). To name an example: where The Times prefers the usage of "abduction," the Guardian
favours "kidnapping."
In conclusion, the Guardian and The Times are both known for being high quality
newspapers. They are said to use reliable sources and contain mostly factual news. This is
considered common knowledge, but whether it is truthful is debatable. Whilst The Times is
impartial in its articles, the Guardian is in several occasions known to be biased. In addition,
it uses large numbers and percentages to make its articles more dramatic, in contrast to The
Times, which focuses on being factual. Lastly, readers of The Times are still mainly
academic people, whilst the Guardian focuses on a much wider audience from different
social classes. Overall, The Times is definitely the quality paper it is said to be, but the
Guardian, in contrast, sometimes slips into semi-tabloid style.
1. academic
2. accurate
3. apparent
4. approach
5. approaching
6. bias
7. biased
8. communications
9. concluded
10. conclusion
11. conflicting
12. contrast
90
13. debatable
14. definitely
15. despite
16. dramatic
17. editor
18. estimate
19. estimates
20. evidence
21. experts
22. focus
23. focuses
24. issue
25. military
26. Overall
27. paragraph
28. perceived
29. percentages
30. Prime
31. published
32. quotations
33. released
34. reliability
35. reliable
36. researched
37. select
38. similar
39. source
40. structurally
41. style
42. target
43. unreliable
44. version
Unique: 466 Total: 1225
Works Cited
Addley, Esther en Rory Carroll. “Earthquake Death Toll Rising after Haiti’s Day of
Devastation.” The Guardian. The Guardian, 13 Jan. 2010. Web. 12 Mar. 2010.
Beaumont, Peter. “Israeli Soldiers Killed Unarmed Civilians Carrying White Flags in Gaza,
Says Report.” The Guardian. The Guardian, 13 Aug. 2009. Web. 12 Mar. 2010.
Castro, Miguel Ángel Benítez. “Broadsheets Vs. Tabloids: Neutrality Vs. Sensationalism.” 21
Aug. 2008. Web. 21 Mar. 2010.
Farrell, Stephen. “Female Human Shield Killed in Gaza Siege.” The Times Online. The
Times, 3 Nov. 2006. Web. 12 Mar. 2010.
“Guardian Hypocrisy.” Blogspot. Proud Zionist. 14 Aug. 2009. Web. 12 Mar. 2010.
“Haiti Earthquake ‘Worst Disaster in Modern History’.” The Times Online. The Times, 17
91
Feb. 2010. Web. 15 Mar. 2010.
Hines, Nico. “Live: Haiti Earthquake – Latest Updates.” The Times Online. The Times, 15
Jan. 2010. Web. 15 Mar. 2010.
Israel Defensive Forces, prod. “Hamas Terrorist behind White Flag Gaza, 8 January 2009.”
YouTube. YouTube, 13 Aug. 2009. Web. 12 Mar. 2010.
Reid, David and Tania Teixeira. “Are People Ready to Pay for Online News?” BBC News.
BBC, 26 Feb. 2010. Web. 20 Mar. 2010.
92
Student 6.3
Two Different Perspectives on Spelling Mistakes Gordon Brown
In November Prime Minister Gordon Brown made a mistake which was thoroughly discussed
in the media. He had written a note of condolence to Jacqui Janes, a mother of a fallen
soldier, which contained several spelling mistakes. Jacqui felt offended and sent the note, and
a telephone conversation in which Gordon Brown said he was sorry for his mistakes, to The
Sun. The media picked up the story at that point and each of them narrated it in their own
way. The Sun and The Times in particular reported it differently. The Sun approaches the
spelling mistakes of Gordon Brown with more bias than The Times. First of all, The Sun
influences the reader by only covering one side of the story, while The Times reports both
sides. Second of all, the writing styles of both newspapers are remarkably different. Lastly,
the lay-out of The Sun portrays a different perspective than The Times.
The differences between the newspapers can be seen in the angle they use to describe the
incident; The Sun is only covering one side of the story which influences the readers,
whereas The Times covers both sides. In The Sun's article "Mr Brown, listen to me... I know
every injury that my son sustained. My son could have survived but he bled to death'" the
story is told from Jacqui's point of view. The Sun gives Jacqui enough opportunity to explain
her opinions and experiences in the article, while Gordon Brown only gets two chances in the
article to defend himself, consequently making it a one-sided story and turning the article
into a biased piece which influences the readers. Objectivity can be reached by giving all the
involved parties a chance to explain their views or as the University of Michigan states on its
site about news bias: "All those who are stakeholders in the story should be given a
reasonable opportunity to state their case". The Times, on the contrary, does cover both sides
of the story. The article "Gordon Brown mortified' over misspelt letter of condolence" by The
Times starts off by letting Jacqui explain why she is offended and then switches to Brown's
point of view to let him explain his actions. It is noteworthy that more space is given to
Brown's point of view in compared to The Sun's article. The Times reports both sides of the
story, The Sun however falls short on that point and therefore approaches the subject with
more bias.
The writing styles of both newspapers also show a difference, especially in the use of biased
language opposed to neutral language. The use of a certain kind of register for an article
shapes its purpose. FAIR, a group advocating for Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting', says
about this subject: "When media adopt loaded terminology, they help shape public opinion."
In The Sun's article a few loaded words have been slipped into the story which are not
noticeable at first sight but become upon closer inspection. The suggestiveness of the article
manifests itself in the adjectives used to describe Jacqui Janes. She is described as "grieving",
"shocked", "outraged", "heartbroken" and "mum of six", all of these words address the
readers' hearts because the words show the powerlessness of a mother who has lost her son.
Such words create an influencing undertone, particularly in comparison with the negative
words that surround the actions of Brown. Words such as "blunder", "slapdash", "slip" and
"squirming" are used to describe Brown's mistakes, while more neutral synonyms, such as
mistake and messy, could convey the message neutrally. The article in The Times however
does not misuse bias words. It links no suggestive adjectives to either Jacqui or Brown and
only uses formal, short sentences which convey the facts without an influencing undertone.
The words used, or not used, show the different level of bias that each article communicates,
with The Sun communicating with more bias than The Times.
The last aspect in which the level of biasness can be found is in the different perspective of
the lay-out of the articles. One thing in the lay-out of an article always stands out from the rest
and that is the headline. The headline, whether it conveys the main message of the article
93
perfectly or fails to do so, influences the reader from the start. There is a big difference
between the two headlines of the described articles. The Sun's headline is a quote from Jacqui
with great emotion behind it. It appeals to the readers' curiosity, because it is a cry to Brown
about a son who died, people would want to know the story behind it. The headline however
does not entirely convey what the story is about and therefore misleads the readers. The
Times uses a neutral headline that does convey everything their article is about. Another
difference in lay-out which suggests a greater bias from The Sun's part is the font that is used
for the article. The Times uses a plain, commonly used font which appears calm and formal,
while The Sun uses a rather big showy font. The flashiness of the font increases even more
with the occasional bold words in capitals, emphasising the important words of the article.
Taking these points into account, the lay-out of The Sun conveys more bias than The Times.
In conclusion, The Sun only covers one side of the story about the spelling mistakes of
Brown in comparison with the coverage of both sides of the story by The Times.
Furthermore, the writing styles of both newspapers differ remarkably. Lastly, the lay-outs of
both articles show a different perspective on the story. Therefore, The Sun approaches the
spelling mistakes of Gordon Brown with more bias than The Times.
1. Accuracy
2. advocating
3. approaches
4. aspect
5. bias
6. biased
7. communicating
8. conclusion
9. consequently
10. contrary
11. create
12. emphasising
13. found
14. Furthermore
15. incident
16. injury
17. inspection
18. involved
19. links
20. media
21. negative
22. neutral
23. Objectivity
24. perspective
25. Prime
26. quote
27. register
28. site
29. styles
30. survived
94
31. sustained
32. whereas
Unique: 347 Total: 974
Works Cited
“Are Journalists Really Objective?” News Bias Explored. Web. 22 Mar. 2010
< http://www.umich.edu/~newsbias/objectivity.html>.
Booth, Jenny. “Gordon Brown ‘Mortified’ over Misspelt Letter of Condolence.” Times Online
9 Nov. 2009. Web. 22 Mar. 2010
<http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/afghanistan/article6909326.ece>.
Dunn, Tom Newton and Smith, Justine. “‘Mr Brown, Listen to Me… I Know Every Injury
that My Child Sustained. My Son Could Have Survived but He Bled to Death.’” The Sun 10
Nov. 2009. Web. 22 Mar. 2010
< http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/campaigns/our_boys/2722174/Mum-JacquiJanes-at-war-PM-is-humbled.html>.
“How to Detect Bias in News Media.” Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR). Web. 22
Mar. 2010 < http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=121>.
95
Student 7.3
Idealist Versus Realist: Opposing Views on War
War shapes the human world. It breaks down borders and creates new ones, and it alters the
way people see their world: for example, many inexperienced, idealistic soldiers who are
willing to die for their country, often lose their sense of patriotism once they experience the
horrors of war. A comparison between two war poems, "The Soldier" by Rupert Brooke and
"Aristocrats" by Keith Douglas, reveals the differences between an inexperienced and an
experienced soldier. Firstly, the poets do not share the same view on the importance of
chivalric behaviour. Also, the poems reveal a different view on the usefulness of individual
bodies. Furthermore, the soldiers have different objects of which they believe deserves their
love and respect during wartime. These contradicting views from both poets reveal a
different view regarding moral reasons to engage in warfare.
The poems have a different view on chivalry. Brooke uses chivalric expressions to enlighten
his sense of patriotism, whereas Douglas reveals the folly of chivalry and he uses his poem
to mock chivalric war poems. The soldier in Brooke's poem expresses his love for England as
if it were his lover (Brooke, lines 5-6), which connotes that the knight shows his courtly love
for England. Consequently, he would sacrifice his life in honour of his beloved England, and
he would be honoured for this act and rewarded with peace at heart and a place under an
English heaven (Brooke, line 14). Douglas however, uses the combination of chivalric
expressions and references to games to indicate that chivalry can no longer be taken seriously
in war. Winn explains this combination:
Fighting on horseback was the original marker of knightly nobility, so Douglas, with comic
affection, turns his comrade into a noble centaur%97part horse, part man%97who absurdly
displays his courage by smoking his pipe as shells fall nearby. When one of them strikes him,
the dying man describes his mortal wound as "most unfair," echoing the cherished notion that
noblemen fight by fixed and generous rules, playing the game as if it were cricket or polo.
(Winn, 124)
The opposing outlooks can be explained by the difference in experience between the two
poets. When Brooke wrote his poem, he had never been engaged in warfare: he died of bloodpoisoning, on board of a troopship (Ramazani and Stallworthy, 1955). His lack of experience
provided him with a romanticised view on battle. For example, Brooke's soldier does not
mention actual death. He says he is willing to die, yet he fails to realise what he might endure
during a battle: he could suffer a horrible death. There were more poets who wrote romantic,
patriotic poems about war, yet the experience of actual warfare altered their perspective.
Douglas actually had experienced war; he survived the desert campaign in Tunisia (Ramazani
and Stallworthy, 2456). This enabled him, like many other soldiers, to see the stupidity of
chivalric war poems such as "The Soldier".
The poems express a difference in the way the bodies of individual soldiers are regarded by
the poem's speaker. The voice in "The Soldier" says that his dead body is useful; whereas the
comparison to tradable horses made in "Aristocrats" shows that a soldier's body is considered
insignificant by the English government. In the first stanza of Brooke's poem the soldier
expresses his awareness that he might die, yet he believes that his death will be for a good
cause since his dead body's dust will fertilise the foreign soil on which the battle will take
place with Englishness' ( Brooke, lines 1-4). Douglas however, uses horses as a metaphor to
express a soldier's obsolescence. The soldiers in "Aristocrats" are compared to horses several
times (Douglas, lines 1-4, 9-10, 15-17), and Douglas makes it clear that they are tradable:
"How can I live among these obsolescent breed of heroes and not weep?" (Douglas, lines 910). Douglas's decision to use horses might have to do with an event which occurred while
96
he was in the army: the cavalry regiment in which he was enlisted in 1940 in Tunisia, was
obliged to exchange its horses for tanks (Ramazani and Stallworthy, pg 2456).
The poets' have different objects to which they feel affectionate towards. The soldier from
"The Soldier" expresses his love for England, whereas the one from "Aristocrats" expresses
his love and respect for his fellow comrades. "The Soldier" mentions England as the one thing
he will fight for. In addition, the final stanza reveals that the soldier might wish for death: If
he is to die, he will remember the beauty of England forever (Brooke, lines 11-14). This
possible death wish is strengthened by the notion that his personal life is insignificant: He
should only be remembered as English ( Brooke, line 1). In "Aristocrats" however, England is
never mentioned. Douglas instead praises only his comrades. Despite criticising chivalric
behaviour from soldiers, he also praises their courage and unconcern by referring to them as
heroes (Douglas, line 10, 14, 19). Douglas shows his respect for the individual soldier,
especially since he mentions his comrade's name. This contradicts the idea that soldiers are
obsolescent. In turn, this means that Douglas expresses criticism towards the English
government, which does believe that individual soldiers are insignificant and tradable. While
Brooke only praises England, Douglas merely criticises it.
To conclude, the poets' different experiences caused them to have a different view on war.
Brooke believed that his duty to fight was for a good cause, namely in honour of England. His
death will have purpose: a foreign land will be more English, and he will be in an English
heaven as a reward. Douglas, who experienced war, has a different perspective on the
purpose of a soldier's death: He saw soldiers die because their government had ordered them
to fight, often encouraged by a folly sense of chivalry, of which patriotic poems such as "The
Soldier" often contributed. Their bodies will be replaced by new ones. The soldiers who
engage in war with a sense of patriotism and chivalry similar to that of Brooke's soldier, in
reality suffer a horrible death. The poems have a different object of their affection and respect.
"The Soldier" expresses only his love and respect for England, whereas "Aristocrats" shows
only his respect to the soldiers who died for the English government. These differences reveal
the poems' contradicting views on moral reasons to engage in warfare.
1. alters
2. awareness
3. conclude
4. Consequently
5. contradicting
6. contributed
7. creates
8. Despite
9. displays
10. enabled
11. final
12. Furthermore
13. indicate
14. individual
15. insignificant
16. notion
17. occurred
18. perspective
19. reveal
20. similar
97
21. survived
22. whereas
Unique: 363 Total: 1062
Works cited
Brooke, Rupert. The Soldier. 1915. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Greenblatt,
Stephen. Pages 1955, 1956. 7th Edition. Volume 2. New York/London. W.W. Norton
& Company, Inc.
Douglas, Keith. Aristocrats. 1946. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Greenblatt,
Stephen. Page 2458. 8th Edition. Volume 2. New York/London. W.W. Norton &
Company, Inc.
Ramazani, Jahan. Stallworthy, Jon. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Greenblatt,
Stephen. 8th Edition. Volume 2. New York/London. W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.
Winn, James. The Poetry of War. 1st edition. The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press. 2008
98
Student 8.3
Promotion and Protestation in War Poetry: Representations of War in "The Soldier" and
"Aristocrats"
In times of war, poetry has been used as a device for promotion as well as protestation. At
the beginning of the First World War, for instance, before the realities of modern warfare
were fully understood, British poetry was rife with nationalism and heroism to glorify war.
Rupert Brooke, a poet as well as a soldier in the Great War, was one of the poets who
established this tradition. By the time the Second World War broke out, however, war
poetry had changed significantly. The type of patriotic poem written during the Great War
became an "anachronism": it did not fit in the new image of war (Greenblat et all 1955).
Keith Douglas, also a poet and a soldier, was among the new generation of war poets who
wanted to depict war more realistically. "The Soldier," an acclaimed World War I poem by
Rupert Brooke, and "Aristocrats," written by Keith Douglas in World War II, show many
differences. Firstly, whereas death is merely an unlikely possibility in "The Soldier," it is
regarded as a daily reality in "Aristocrats." Furthermore, "The Soldier" seeks to justify war
by appealing to a sense of nationalism, whereas "Aristocrats" does not provide a reason for
war, but instead, compares war to sports. In addition, "The Soldier" addresses the pursuit of
heroic ideals, but in "Aristocrats," those ideals are questioned. Lastly, "The Soldier" avoids
addressing the actual war, while "Aristocrats" depicts the realities of warfare in considerable
detail. These differences indicate that "The Soldier" promotes war, whereas "Aristocrats"
protests against war.
Death is not regarded a serious threat in "The Soldier," while "Aristocrats" highlights
death as a reality in times of war. The former poem starts by stating, "If I should die" (line 1).
In this phrase, the speaker acknowledges the possibility of dying, but by using a conditional
clause as well as the subjunctive form "should," the speaker makes death seem implausible
(Kendall 1). Tim Kendall points out that by this formulation, the phrase carries the same
meaning as "If it so happen that I die" (1). "Aristocrats," by contrast, describes the death of a
soldier in considerable detail: "Peter was unfortunately killed by an 88: /It took his leg away,
he died in the ambulance" (5-6). By describing the death of a fellow soldier, and even
mentioning this person by name, the speaker not only acknowledges the possibility of dying
but also portrays death as a normality: a logical consequence of warfare.
The speaker in "The Soldier" appeals to the reader's patriotism as he seeks to provide a
justification for war, whereas the speaker in "Aristocrats" does not try to do so but instead
compares warfare with sports. The former poem highlights the nation's cause by repetition of
"England" and "English". The poem idealises England: "her sights and sounds; dreams happy
as her day" (12). The line "in hearts at peace, under an English heaven" further authenticates
this notion (14). The English people are also idealised; the speaker states that the body of the
dead English soldier, "A body of England's, breathing English air" (7) is "blest by the suns of
home" (8). Margot Norris also mentions patriotism in "The Soldier" when she argues that in
his poem, Brooke paints a "romantic and patriotic image of the soldier's grave" (8). By
idealising England as well as the English people, the speaker provides a reason for war and
for the possible death of soldiers, which is a better position of power for England. The poem
"Aristocrats" does not provide such a justification for the Second World War, however.
Instead, the speaker compares warfare with sports: "The plains were their cricket pitch /and in
the mountains the tremendous drop fences /brought down some of the runners" (15-17). In
addition, another version of this poem carries the title "Sportsmen." By comparing war with
sports, the speaker in "Aristocrats" makes war seem just a game, and not a satisfactory reason
for the loss of lives.
99
The speaker in "The Soldier" is a heroic warrior; the speaker in "Aristocrats," on the
other hand, challenges the heroic ideal. The former speaker shows no fear of dying, and he is
willing to risk his live for the nation's cause. He argues that if he dies, the reader should think
only about the country for which he fought: "Think only this of me: /That there's some corner
of a foreign field /That is forever England" (1-3). Moreover, the speaker is a very pious man.
This is evident from his certitude that when he dies he will become a "pulse in the Eternal
mind, no less" (10). By making the speaker of the poem a hero, the poem encourages the
pursuit of heroic ideals. In contrast, the speaker in "Aristocrats" regards the heroic soldier as
becoming obsolete: "obsolescent breed of heroes" (10). Furthermore, he regards them as
foolish: "Their stupidity and chivalry /are celebrated." (11-12).
"The Soldier" does not describe the actual war, but "Aristocrats" does. The latter poem
mentions the death of the soldier "Peter" (5). In addition, the poem addresses the "shellburst"
(2): the infamous experience of being under constant bombing. Furthermore, he mentions
the type of weapon used by the enemy: "killed by an 88" (5). In this line, the speaker refers to
the German 88 millimetre gun. The speaker describes these details about combat, but he never
panders to his emotions. Vincent Sherry also acknowledges this when he argues that "in those
warscapes where the frenzy is statuesque, where the tone is accordingly composed, Douglas
affirms his control in the face of violence emotional as well as physical violence" (7). The
speaker depicts war ironically, by stating these details about war so unemotionally, and by
using understatements such as "unfortunately" in "unfortunately killed by an 88" (5). In
contrast, "The Soldier" focuses on promoting patriotism and heroism, and does not mention
any details about warfare.
In conclusion, differences in Keith Douglas's "Aristocrats" and Rupert Brooke's "The
Soldier" can be found in the threat of dying, the reason given for warfare, the stand on
heroism, and the depiction of war. Firstly, compared to the "The Soldier" dying is more
anticipated in "Aristocrats." In the former poem, death is made to look improbable.
Secondly, in "The Soldier," nationalism is put forward as the ground for war, whereas in
"Aristocrats" no satisfactory justification for war is given. In this poem, war is instead
highlighted as a mere sports game. Thirdly, in "The Soldier" the pursuit of heroic ideals is
advocated, whereas the speaker in "Aristocrats" impugns these same ideals. Lastly, whereas
"The Soldier" does not describe warfare, "Aristocrats" describes combat in considerable
detail. Taken together, these differences suggest that "Aristocrats" seeks to protests against
war, whereas "The Soldier" seeks to promote war.
1. acknowledges
2. advocated
3. anticipated
4. challenges
5. clause
6. conclusion
7. consequence
8. considerable
9. constant
10. contrast
11. device
12. established
13. evident
14. focuses
15. formulation
100
16. found
17. Furthermore
18. generation
19. highlights
20. image
21. indicate
22. instance
23. justification
24. justify
25. logical
26. normality
27. notion
28. physical
29. promote
30. Promotion
31. pursuit
32. seeks
33. significantly
34. tradition
35. version
36. whereas
Unique: 381 Total: 1118
Works Cited
Brooke, Rupert “The Soldier.” Norton Anthology: English Literature. Ed. Greenblat et all. 8th
ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. 1955-56. Print.
Douglas, Keith “Aristocrats.” Norton Anthology: English Literature. Ed. Greenblat et all. 8th
ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. 2458. Print.
Greenblat et all, eds. “Voices from World War I.” The Norton Anthology: English Literature.
8th ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. 1954-55. Print.
Kendall, Tim. “Keith Douglas and Self-Elegy.” Essays in Criticism 53,4 (2003): 366-84.
Web, 17 Mar. 2010.
Norris, Margot. “Teaching World War I Poetry – Comparatively.” College Literature 32,3
(2005): 136-54. Web, 17 Mar. 2010.
Sherry, Vincent. “Hectic Statis: The War Poetry of Keith Douglas.” University of Toronto
Quarterly 48,2 (1988): 295-305. Web, 17 Mar. 2010.
101
Student 9.3
Merciless Computers.
Computers once started out as enormous boxes, but these days the computer has become
smaller and humankind's best friend. The Internet has gradually become accessible to most
people and computer games are a common part of the life of teenagers and adults.
Computers have become a standard addition to households and are used worldwide. There
are even people who have become addicted to computer games, chat sites or dating sites and
clinics exist to help these addicts get rid of their addiction. Currently, people have become so
used to computers that it has become an everyday occurrence to sit behind it, be it playing a
game, conversing with friends through the web or writing a speech. The question is, however,
whether the computer should be regarded as a positive aspect of technology. Because,
firstly, computers cause less social interaction in real life. Furthermore, computers invade
people's privacy. Additionally, computers have a negative influence on health. These three
reasons lead to the conclusion that computers have a negative influence on society.
Firstly, computers are the source of less social contact in real life. Due to a
fascination with computer games or sites, people tend to stay inside to play these games as
long as they can. Subsequently, they have less interaction with their environment. That this
causes less social interchange has been shown by research by Ricardo Duque and Marcus
Ynalvez. In the research, they state that using a computer results in fewer social activities
outside the house. This is due to the fact that the people Duque and Ynalvez questioned
during the research remarked that they had noticed a decline in social contact ever since they
had started utilizing the computer or accessing the Internet (502). That is, these people
stayed inside more. However, staying inside is no problem, because nobody has a problem
with this nor has the right to prohibit it, but less social contact is. Less interaction can
influence society negatively, for declining social interchange can make people estranged
from the world they live in. However, people in a country need to be connected to be able to
establish the views other people have, especially if the country is a democratic country. If a
country is democratic, the government needs to know what the inhabitants of the country
want and need to function so they can adjust their plans or the plans of the separate parties.
However, being interested in what happens on the computer can cause civilians to become
disinterested in their surroundings. Subsequently, there is no connection with these people
and they cannot give their opinion on certain matters, whereas the country needs everybody
to express his or her opinion. Ergo, computers affect society and countries in a negative
way.
Additionally, computers violate people's right to privacy. Much of the information we
give to companies is saved on computers in programs, but programs are not totally secure.
As long as there are programmers who try to make secure programs, there will probably be
computer specialists, or hackers, who will try to get into these programs and use the
classified information. Actually, according to Adam Cohen, many operating systems by
Microsoft have already been hacked and the information that was saved on computers in
confidence, is easily accessible to hackers. Cohen states that spyware on a person's own
computer has become increasingly popular and that, these days, a family member could
easily be spying on what the other does on the computer. He also states that hackers or data
brokers find out most data through records, for example Social Security numbers, creditcard
numbers and where a person works, allowing them to steal identities or find victims. In
another article, "Data, Data Everywhere," it becomes clear that everything can be found on
the Internet:
Sometimes those data reveal more than was intended. For example, the city of
Oakland, California, releases information on where and when arrests were made, which is put
102
out on a private website, Oakland Crimespotting. At one point a few clicks revealed that
police swept the whole of a busy street for prostitution every evening except on Wednesdays,
a tactic they probably meant to keep to themselves.
This shows that even classified information is not safe on the Internet and if this is the
case, the question was raised whether there is actual privacy for civilians. The world has
evolved from a place where a bank employee knew only the face of an individual, to a place
where an employee can find out how many times a client broke their leg and what their Social
Security number is. That is, if they know where to search. Consequently, computers can be
a threat to the right of privacy, even though most people agree that privacy is a right
everybody should respect.
Lastly, computers have a negative influence on health. Some children or adults do
not cease playing computer games like World of Warcraft, while others go online and join a
chat community. Either way, people become obsessed with computers quickly. However,
next to obsession, computers can have a negative influence on the health of children as well.
Research by Markus Dworak et al. on the effect of computers on children, has shown that
computers, especially computer games, cause concentration problems, mental issues,
lower grades in school and problems with sleeping (984). If children have bad results in
school, though, due to computers, this means they will have less of a chance on the job
market. Children are not the only people being affected though, for about 2 million adults in
the United States of America alone suffer from chronical injuries due to computers they
have to use for their work, according to Reid Goldsborough (par.1). Due to some of these
disorders, people are not able to work and have to end their carreers. Therefore, indirectly,
computers lessen the chance of a successfull carreer later in life, and this is harmful for
society.
To conclude, computers have an unfavorable influence on people, but an even more
unfavorable influence on society. Three reasons lead to this conclusion. Firstly, the use of
computers on a daily basis results in people with a less gregarious personality or generally
less contact with their surroundings. Subsequently, the computer, or, rather, the storing of
data on computers or the Internet, contravenes with people's right to privacy. Lastly, the use
of computers can have negative effects on society for it can cause health problems. All in all,
computers may not be as big as they used to be anymore, but they still cause big problems.
1. accessible
2. accessing
3. adjust
4. adults
5. affect
6. aspect
7. cease
8. community
9. computer
10. concentration
11. conclude
12. conclusion
13. Consequently
14. contact
15. data
16. decline
17. declining
103
18. enormous
19. environment
20. establish
21. evolved
22. found
23. function
24. Furthermore
25. grades
26. identities
27. individual
28. injuries
29. interaction
30. issues
31. job
32. mental
33. negative
34. occurrence
35. positive
36. prohibit
37. releases
38. research
39. reveal
40. secure
41. Security
42. sites
43. source
44. Subsequently
45. technology
46. utilizing
47. violate
48. whereas
Unique: 414 Total: 1096
Works Cited
Cohen, Adam et al. “Internet Insecurity.” Time 7/2/2001, 157; 26. Web. 2 Mar. 2010.
<http://web.ebscohost.com.proxy.library.uu.nl/ehost/detail?vid=2&hid=13&sid=4f5a2
dd8-f166-448e-88c489092e34a3f2%40sessionmgr12&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%
3d#db=afh&AN=4690862>
“Data, data everywhere.” Economist 2/27/2010, Vol. 394
Issue 8671. Web. 15 Mar. 2010.
<http://web.ebscohost.com.proxy.library.uu.nl/ehost/detail?vid=2&hid=14&si
d=d6f17939-6af7-4c23-a59b27e729e60982%40sessionmgr10&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d
104
%3d#db=afh&AN=5940278>
Duque, Ricardo, and Ynalvez, Marcus. “Internet practice and sociability
in South Louisiana.” New Media Society 2009; 11; 487. Web. 10 Mar. 2010.
< http://nms.sagepub.com.proxy.library.uu.nl/cgi/reprint/11/4/487 >
Dworak, Markus et al. “Impact of Singular Excessive Computer Game and Television
Exposure on SleepPatterns and Memory Performance of School-aged
Children.” Pediatrics 2007;120. Web. 10 Mar. 2010.
<http://web.ebscohost.com.proxy.library.uu.nl/ehost/detail?vid=2&hid=14&sid=0512
1c6f-30df-4a75-b5a9494bd6bb81db%40sessionmgr4&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=
afh&AN=27578947 >
Goldsborough, Reid. “WARNING: PCs Can Be Hazardous to Your Health.” Black
Issues in Higher Education; 04/27/2000, 17:5. Web. 8 Mar. 2010.
<http://web.ebscohost.com.proxy.library.uu.nl/ehost/detail?vid=2&hid=14&si
d=38a12437-5e35-44c7-b3f40452c1d37f77%40sessionmgr13&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d
%3d#db=afh&AN=3075832 >
105
Student 10.3
Online Communication: A Tool for People’s Social Lives
Recently, an article from the Telegraph concerning an interview with the Archbishop of
Westminster Vincent Nichols about the effects of online communication on people’s social
lives has caused uproar in Britain. In this article, Archbishop Nichols argues that “internet and
mobile phones [are] ‘dehumanising’ community life” (Wynne-Jones par. 1), referring to the
case of a secondary school pupil who committed suicide after being bullied online (WynneJones par. 2). Ever since this article was featured, discussion has sparked once again on the
advantages and disadvantages of online communication with the advantages being in favour.
Firstly, the use of online communication increases the communication between people, as
they have more than the usual ways of contacting each other. In addition, those people who
suffer from limitations that keep them from contacting others benefit from online
communication. Moreover, the social lives of adolescents, the largest group of users,
improve through online communication. Even though Archbishop Nichols argues that online
media are detrimental to community life, online communication is beneficial for people’s
social lives.
First of all, online communication strengthens the communication between people.
Prior to the Internet era, people had to rely on letters and telephones to maintain contact
with family and friends. Even today, letters take some time to arrive at its destination, and
they can relatively easily get lost. Contact by telephone, even though it was quite fast, was
dependant on people having access to their landline telephones. In addition, telephone calls
with relatives or acquaintances living abroad were quite expensive. The accessibility has
improved because of the rise of cell phones, but the expenses and time differences are still
present. Nowadays, by ways of Hyves, Facebook or E-mail, family members and friends from
all over the world can reach each other in a matter of seconds at any given time and with
almost no costs involved. As a result, family ties are firmer and friendships can be
maintained more easily, which is very productive for a good social live. Pew Internet and
American Life Project, a Washington based research centre, has conducted research which
indicates that people who use the Internet find it a favourable medium for upholding their
social contacts (Fairly Raney par. 2). People who are easily homesick also benefit from
online communication. For them, the benefit works two ways. Not only can they keep in
touch with others from the shelter of their own homes, but also, when visiting other people,
they can easily communicate with home. Another advantage of online communication is the
possibility of finding old acquaintances via websites such as Facebook and Schoolbank. A
quick search on Google learns that various websites offer the possibility of finding
acquaintances from years ago. Renewing contact with, for example, old schoolmates
enhances people’s social network.
Moreover, people who encounter difficulties when contacting others in person can be
helped through online communication. A group to consider are those people who suffer from
a physical disability. Many people suffer from a disease which limits them in their activities,
such as MS and Parkinson. These conditions can make it harder for them to maintain a social
life. Not only are they often homebound, but also, non-disabled people often have difficulty
encountering people with a disability. With the help of online communication, disabled
people have a way of establishing themselves as individuals who are esteemed for their
qualities, rather than judged by their limitations. Work can be done via home sourcing;
people can be met through social networking sites and there are hundreds of dating websites
established especially for those people with a disability, for instance Dating4disabled.com
(Dating). As well as people with a physical disability, there are people who suffer from a
psychological limitation, ranging from shyness to a mental disorder. These people have their
106
own reasons for not being able to connect with others. Online communication helps them to
meet others in a way that is comfortable to them. It keeps them from being homebound and
deprived of contact with others. A last group to mention are people who have suffered the
loss of a child, partner or family member, or people who were involved in, for example, an
accident. Many of them have difficulties reconnecting with the world because they feel that
others do not really understand their feelings. Forums and websites that are concerned with
these feelings bring together people who have undergone the same kind of tragedy. Here,
people can overcome their grief and start rebuilding their lives, including their social
networks.
Lastly, online communication positively influences adolescents’ social lives. Of all
online communication users, they spend the most time online. Research reveals that online
communication enhances their existing friendships (Valkenburg and Peter par. 6). At the
same time, it is not a substitute for offline contacts. A study conducted by Patti M.
Valkenburg and Jochen Peter, researchers from the University of Amsterdam, focuses on the
effects of Instant Messaging (IM) on the quality of adolescents’ relationships. The results
indicate that online communication “stimulates online self-disclosure” (par. 7), meaning that
adolescents, without the experience of social restraints, are more uninhibited to unveil
intimate information to others (par. 8). This display of information takes place with the help
of IM and is aimed at existing friends (par. 11). Valkenburg and Peter point out that online
self-disclosure has positive effects on existing friendships because a control group showed
that “within 1 year, adolescents' online self-disclosure resulted in higher-quality friendships”
(par. 11). Research conducted by Kaveri Subrahmanyam and Patricia Greenfield supports
this view. Subrahmanyam and Greenfield argue that online communication is “primarily
[used] to reinforce existing relationships, both with friends and romantic partners” (par. 2),
and thus demonstrates to be beneficial for adolescents’ social lives.
In conclusion, online communication is a substantial component of the amplification
of communication between people, which leads to stronger family bonds and friendships. In
addition, online communication simplifies the process of contacting others for disabled
people. Furthermore, it fulfils a role in the enhancement of existing friendships in
adolescents’ social lives. While Archbishop Nichols has his concerns about the effects on
community life, online communication proves to be a valuable instrument for people’s
social lives.
1. access
2. accessibility
3. beneficial
4. benefit
5. bonds
6. committed
7. communication
8. community
9. component
10. conclusion
11. conducted
12. contact
13. contacting
14. demonstrates
15. display
16. encounter
107
17. enhancement
18. enhances
19. establishing
20. featured
21. focuses
22. Furthermore
23. indicate
24. individuals
25. instance
26. involved
27. maintain
28. media
29. medium
30. mental
31. network
32. networking
33. partner
34. physical
35. positive
36. positively
37. primarily
38. Prior
39. process
40. Project
41. psychological
42. ranging
43. reinforce
44. rely
45. research
46. restraints
47. reveals
48. role
49. sites
50. substitute
51. undergone
52. via
Works Cited
Dating4disabled.com. Dating4diabled.com, n.d. Web. 21 Feb. 2010.
<http://www.dating4disabled.com/>.
Fairly Raney, Rebecca. “Study Finds Internet of Social Benefit to Users.” New York Times.
New York Times, 11 May 2000. Web. 24 Mar. 2010.
<http://www.nytimes.com/2000/05/11/technology/study-finds-internet-of-socialbenefit-to-users.html?pagewanted=2>.
Subrahmanyam, Kaveri, and Patricia Greenfield. “Online Communication and Adolescent
108
Relationships.” Future of Children 18.1 (2008): n. pag. Web. 18 Mar. 2010.
<http://www.futureofchildren.org/futureofchildren/publications/docs/18_01_06.pdf
>.
Valkenburg, Patti M., and Jochen Peter. “Social Consequences of the Internet for
Adolescents: A Decade of Research.” Psychological Science 18.1 (2009): 1-5. Wiley
InterScience. Web. 15 Feb. 2010. <http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgibin/fulltext/122212739/PDFSTART>.
Wynne-Jones, Jonathan. “Facebook and MySpace Can Lead Children to Commit Suicide,
Warns Archbishop Nichols.” Telegraph. Telegraph, 1 Aug. 2009. Web. 9 Feb. 2010.
<http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/religion/5956719/Facebook-andMySpace-can-lead-children-to-commit-suicide-warns-Archbishop-Nichols.html>.
109
Appendix B
In order to rule out any large differences in the group, an analysis was made into the average
and the median of the group per course for both lexical and grammatical complexity results.
There were, however, no discrepancies worth mentioning.
Table 4: Academic Wordlist Highlighter Results
Course
TV1
TV2
TV3
Average
20,2
22,4
36,4
Median
19
21
35,5
Table 5.1: Type Token Ratio Results TV1
Words
Unique Total
%
Average
240,8
598,8
40,2
Median
235,5
598
40,3
Table 5.2: Type Token Ratio Results TV2
Words
Unique Total
%
Average
272,9
678,7
40,2
Median
266,5
667
40,2
Table 5.3: Type Token Ratio Results TV3
Words
Unique Total
%
Average
378,5
1083,5
34,9
Median
372
1072
34,9
Table 6.1: Average vs. Median TV1
Measure
MLT
MLC
C/T
CP/T
Average
19,50
11,62
1,67
0,43
Median
18,45
11,04
1,66
0,45
Table 6.2: Average vs. Median TV2
Measure
MLT
MLC
C/T
CP/T
110
Average
19,93
10,44
1,92
0,38
Median
20,03
10,09
1,95
0,38
Table 6.3: Average vs. Median TV3
Measure
MLT
MLC
C/T
CP/T
Average
19,51
10,80
1,82
0,42
Median
19,26
10,93
1,80
0,39
AWL
Paired Samples Statistics
Pair 1
Pair 2
Mean
N
Std. Deviation
Std. Error Mean
AWL_TV1
20.20000
10
4.917090
1.554921
AWL_TV2
22.40000
10
8.382521
2.650786
AWL_TV2
22.40000
10
8.382521
2.650786
AWL_TV3
36.40000
10
11.500725
3.636848
Paired Samples Correlations
N
Correlation
Sig.
Pair 1
AWL_TV1 & AWL_TV2
10
-.078
.831
Pair 2
AWL_TV2 & AWL_TV3
10
-.690
.027
TV1 to TV2 t(9) = -.693, p = .506
TV2 to TV3 t(9) = -2.417, p < .05
TTR
Paired Samples Statistics
Mean
N
Std. Deviation
Std. Error Mean
TTR_TV1
,4020
10
,01814
,00573
TTR_TV2
,4030
10
,02869
,00907
TTR_TV2
,4030
10
,02869
,00907
TTR_TV3
,3500
10
,03197
,01011
Pair 1
Pair 2
111
Paired Samples Correlations
N
Correlation
Sig.
Pair 1
TTR_TV1 & TTR_TV2
10
,564
,090
Pair 2
TTR_TV2 & TTR_TV3
10
,400
,252
TV1 to TV2 t(9) = -0.133 p = 0.897
TV2 to TV3 t(9) = 5.026 p < 0.001
MLT
Paired Samples Statistics
Mean
N
Std. Deviation
Std. Error Mean
MLT_TV1
19,49800
10
3,607516
1,140797
MLT_TV2
19,93000
10
2,629267
,831447
MLT_TV2
19,93000
10
2,629267
,831447
MLT_TV3
19,50800
10
2,384025
,753895
Pair 1
Pair 2
Paired Samples Correlations
N
Correlation
Sig.
Pair 1
MLT_TV1 & MLT_TV2
10
,258
,471
Pair 2
MLT_TV2 & MLT_TV3
10
,324
,361
Pair 1: t(9) = -0.352, p = .733
Pair 2: t(9) = 0.457, p = .659
MLC
Paired Samples Statistics
Mean
N
Std. Deviation
Std. Error Mean
MLC_TV1
11,62200
10
1,409529
,445732
MLC_TV2
10,43900
10
1,297660
,410356
MLC_TV2
10,43900
10
1,297660
,410356
MLC_TV3
10,79900
10
1,378473
,435911
Pair 1
Pair 2
112
Paired Samples Correlations
N
Correlation
Sig.
Pair 1
MLC_TV1 & MLC_TV2
10
,374
,287
Pair 2
MLC_TV2 & MLC_TV3
10
-,208
,564
TV1 to TV2 t(9) = 2.465 p < 0.05
TV2 to TV3 t(9) = -0.547 p = 0.598
C/T
Paired Samples Statistics
Mean
N
Std. Deviation
Std. Error Mean
C_T_TV1
1,67400
10
,190625
,060281
C_T_TV2
1,92300
10
,266710
,084341
C_T_TV2
1,92300
10
,266710
,084341
C_T_TV3
1,81700
10
,195451
,061807
N
Correlation
Sig.
Pair 1
Pair 2
Paired Samples Correlations
Pair 1
C_T_TV1 & C_T_TV2
10
,159
,660
Pair 2
C_T_TV2 & C_T_TV3
10
-,360
,307
There was a significant increase in scores from TV1 to TV2: t(9) = -2.606, p < .05
However, there was no significance difference between the scores of TV2 and TV3: t(9) =
.875, p = .405.
CP/T
Paired Samples Statistics
Mean
N
Std. Deviation
Std. Error Mean
CP_T_TV1
,43170
10
,184143
,058231
CP_T_TV2
,38290
10
,148803
,047056
CP_T_TV2
,38290
10
,148803
,047056
CP_T_TV3
,42020
10
,159155
,050329
Pair 1
Pair 2
113
Paired Samples Correlations
N
Correlation
Sig.
Pair 1
CP_T_TV1 & CP_T_TV2
10
-,207
,566
Pair 2
CP_T_TV2 & CP_T_TV3
10
,227
,529
None of these results were significant: there were no significant differences in students’
scores from TV1 to TV2 or from TV2 to TV3:
Pair 1: t(9) = .594, p = .567
Pair 2: t(9) = -.615, p = .554