Unit 4 -1 , Sunghee Park

Intermediate English Writing (1) Monday 7-8

200801224 DIS

Park, Sunghee

 

 

Downloading and Sharing Music off the Internet

 

             It was nine years ago that I bought CD album lastly. It was a Christina Aguilera's second album. I had a CD player and collected albums a lot. Around that time, however, MP3 files started to be popular. Like others did, I began listening to music through MP3 player not through the CD player. MP3 files were usually easy to download for free, so people including me used to download and share off the Internet. Now, I pay a certain amount of money for music files because it has been strict to download and share the files, and free MP3 files usually have low quality. However, I believe it is not optional choice but people should not download and share music off the Internet for three reasons.

             First, to achieve someone's creation for free without permission is an obvious act of stealing. We consider use of someone's property without permission as theft. Though we cannot see or touch music itself, a work is one of the creator's properties. An artist took an effort to make it so we need to acknowledge his/her efforts and ownership. The owners allow people to share music if people pay a certain amount of money. Downloading and sharing music off the Internet, however, can be considered as stealing someone's property and discouraging artists from sales of the music. Therefore, it is morally not right and illegal act.

             Second, downloading and sharing music off the Internet can lower the quality of our culture. In order to develop the culture, we need to encourage people to have more creative activities. If people get enough rewards to their works, they would love to help promoting culture. In the situation where everyone can get music for free on the web, however, all people related to music industry such as singer, composer, and producer are not willing to make better music. After all, it affects the whole culture in a bad way and it might have effect on our country's competitiveness.

             Although some might insist that artists can earn enough money other than from sales of music itself, it is not true. Of course, there are many ways to earn money from music. For example, there are profits from concert, broadcast, and ringtone. It seems there are enough profits. The problem is, however, there are a lot more people who need to get money from the music. In music industry, there are many people related to music such as singers, band, composers, lyric writers, producers, recorders, and record stores. What if they cannot earn money from the main source of profits, sales of music? Downloading and sharing music off the Internet make their living worse.

             In summary, downloading and sharing music off the Internet are illegal, unhealthy to our culture and people's living. You might think it is not a big deal to download a MP3 file but it is a big deal if all people download and share a MP3 file for each. In addition, people do not download only one file. They repeat and repeat because it is beneficial to them. In the short term, it is right. In the long term, however, it cannot be right.

 

Unit 5-1

Intermediate English Writing (1) Monday 7-8

200801224 DIS

Park, Sunghee

 

 

Abilities I Possess for My Potential Career

 

          According to the recent study from Statistics Korea, South Korea's youth unemployment rates registered 9.5% in March. The figure reached almost 10%, and it means that there are over 0.4 million people who do not have a job. In the tragic situation, in order to get a job, we need to possess more unique and better abilities than others. Since I am a senior now, I have a limited time to learn or invest new abilities I do not have. So I tried to analyze by myself what I possess and what can be my advantage. I found three abilities that I can appeal to interviewers: initiative, global mind, and background knowledge.

             First of all, I have initiative and drive to accomplish what I planned to do. For example, when I was a president of student council in Division of International Studies, I planned and carried on many programs. One of the most devoted project was Summer English Camp. My university has volunteer activities for rural communities and students can get credits by doing the activities. Students usually help farm works. Students in my division, however, have complained that they want to help for them in a more productive way. So student council and I projected Summer English Camp, and it was designed to teach English to students in rural communities. To do so, I had contacted Chungcheongbuk-Do education office and school office in my university. After several attempts, I got permission and went to Chungcheongbuk-Do to teach English with credits.

             Second, I am a globalized person. In order to have a global mind, I have learned many languages because I think a language can be a good material to help understanding of the culture. The first motive that I love to learn English was Disney movie. When I was young, the voice and pronunciation of voice actors was really impressive and I wanted to imitate it. That was the start and I have been studying English to meet the world. The second language I have learned is Japanese. Since Japan is a neighbor country and has developed culture, I was eager to learn the language. So I started to study when I was eleven years old and it has been over ten years now. After that, I was curious about Chinese so I entered foreign language high school as a Chinese major. It was really interesting to learn Chinese and rapidly developing Chinese culture. Other than above three languages, I tried to learn many languages and cultures and I will.

Lastly, I am a generalist. Some might say that you are not unique because you do not have special or professional knowledge. However, I can say that I am a generalist and this is much more helpful to understand the problems and society. My major, international studies, provides various general courses such as economics, politics, law, management, and anthropology. By learning this diverse knowledge, I can understand the problems in many different views. I believe it makes me possess high adaptability to any fields. Also, generalists tend to have passion to be specialists so I would study hard and do my best as a member of community.

             In summary, I can get attention from interviewers because of my executive ability, globalized characteristic and diverse background knowledge. Although it would be better if I learn and invest to new abilities, I consider the three abilities as my assets and I'd like to improve it as much as I can. The most important thing that I did not mention is I got a job by appealing the three abilities and it means that I need to improve my abilities for my career not my potential career.

Unit 5-2

Intermediate English Writing (1) Monday 7-8

200801224 DIS

Park, Sunghee

 

 

Types of Friends I have

 

             I am a senior. It seems that I rarely met my friends after I became a senior. I was busy doing my work alone or I spent time with my boyfriend. One day, I realized that I did not contact my friends quite long, and called friends who are on my lists. After the callings were over, I felt that what we mainly talked about was considerably different among friends. I tried to think about what is the difference. Then I found the answer. My friends can be classified according to main interest we discuss.

             First, I have friends who mainly talk about our future. Recently, I meet this type of friends most frequently. When we meet each other, we usually share information about jobs and discuss how to prepare to get a job. I have never thought that I will talk about these boring topics with my friends until senior; however, job and study are the main interest I have these days. After meeting this type of friends, I feel it was a fruitful talk and I try to study hard. So I prefer to meet these helpful friends lately.

             Second, there are friends who really love to do gossip. Most of my university friends are sophomore and junior yet because they had leave of absence in order to do military service or study abroad. Since we have different problems in different situations, we usually talk not about ourselves but about others. They tell me what is going on in our department such as love affairs, conflictions, and troubles. The gossip is interesting and makes us feel closer. When I want to get out of the reality that I face, I meet them and chat all day long in order to relieve stress.

             The last type of friends usually shares the past memories. This type belongs to friends who I met in the past such as in elementary, middle and high school. Since we have no common now, we try to find the topic which can be shared. That is the childhood memories we have. We chat about what we did after skipping class, how sad when I broke up with my ex-boyfriend, and where we usually drop by after school. By having the chance to talk memories, I can look back on the past and it makes me feel refreshed. Even though we do not meet frequently, I try to make time with them at least twice a year.

In summary, I make appointments with my friends depends on what I want to talk about: future, gossip and memories. Though the main interests are various, I can feel relaxed through the meetings. All of them are important and precious friends to me. I hope our friendship last forever and they get satisfied with talks we shared as I got from them.

 

My friends in three groups

200700121 Yoonjin, Ko I can classify my friends roughly into three groups by the topics of small talks. Every single friend of mine is so unique and dramatic like I do, so I couldn't categorize them with their characteristics or types. However, I knew that I chose some certain topics to talk with specific groups of my friends. I'm not telling same stories to same friends or all of my friends. I do have specific topics to talk with specific friends: talks about past, present, and future.              First group is consisted with my four of high school friends. Most of them stayed with me in same dormitory throughout three years of high school, so I spent most of my school life with them. Of course, I had many other friends in high school years, but among them my four roommates were my best friends. Because we stayed every day and nights together during the whole three years in high school, we shared so many precious memories such as our school snack shop was quite far from our classroom, so we had to run to the store in 3 minutes and eat snacks in 4 minutes and come back in 3 minutes or we enjoyed short walk after we ate dinner while eating an ice-creams. Therefore, when I meet with these friends, we talk about mostly our past memories in high school. Those memories are so precious; some of them are actually really funny, young and dramatic as well.              Second group is with my friends in middle school. When I was a middle school student, I liked a boy in our school soccer team. He was really good at soccer, so he was even chosen for the team leader. I really liked him for three years, but all I could do was giving him my notes to help his study. My friends were my best supporters. They texted me when they found him around school like spies. They kept on eye on him instead of me. "He is playing with his teammates at the back of our school!" or "He just arrived at school snack store! Come here! Run!" Since I couldn't tell him that I liked him for more than three years, we are still keeping in touch as friends. My middle school friends were supporting me so eagerly and still do. Whenever I meet them, they gave me a lot of help to understand my boy friend's behavior or when I don't have a boy friend, they are also consulting me a lot. We sometimes talk about our past love stories, but mostly we preferred to talk about ongoing love stories because it is more dramatic.              Last group is my friends who talk about futures with me. I met them in my university and joined a club activity with them as well. Of course, we talk about our memories when we were freshmen and ongoing love stories these days. However, every talk ended up with our future plans, career plans, or dreams. They know me better than me about my strong points and weak points. So they help me write self-introduction papers to apply for jobs. We share our future plans to have more organized one. We are win-win partners to win the future. But sometimes we do fail. When I failed to get an internship, they cheered me up by telling me that it's the company loss.              I think I'm a very happy person with so many friends around me. I can share my past memories, consult my ongoing love stories, and also talk about future plans with my friends. I personally believe that I maintained a successful relationship with my friends and it sustained my life wholeheartedly. It's always good to have friends nearby, so I will continue to build my supportive friendship with them from now on as well.

201003252 Unit 4 Pg.114

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Unit 4 ( Pg. 114)

Reunite with Birth Parents

 

In America, adopted children can find out the identity of their birth parents. In other countries adopted children are not given such information about their parents. Usually the foster family prefers their adopted child to grow up without any enclosure of their birth parents. The foster parents might feel that understanding and knowing who their child's birth parents are might have a negative affect rather than a positive one. When a parent gives up their child for adoption, not all but in some cases leave their child in the care of others due to financial or in some cases addiction of substances. To prevent the child from enduring more pain, the where about of their birth parent s are kept discreet, but I agree with the adoption system in America. Allowing the child to get a chance to get to know who their birth parents are may have positive effects for both the birth parents, and for the adopted child.

                                   Firstly, the birth parents will be able to see how much love and care their child received when growing up. Giving the parents the opportunity to get to know the atmosphere and environment their child grew up in will give the parents the chance to appreciate and thank the foster parents. Also, reuniting with their child will give them an opportunity to tell the child the reasons why he or she was given up for adoption and have the decency to apologize or explain the process taken to put the child up for adoption. Through conversations parents can help their child work out any misunderstanding thus having a great positive effect on the child.

 

                  This leads me to the second reason, the benefits for the child. Most adopted children at some point in their adolescent years undergo an identity phase. This is when a child knows he or she has been adopted, grew up with such love and care from their foster parents, were supported financially, well educated, yet feel a sense of confusion and emptiness because of the uncertainty  their identity and always wonder who they are and where they came from. When the child is able to get the answers to all of their questions, on the long run, the child may find value and contentment in which they are.

                  If the child gets the chance to meet with his or her birth parent, it will be a moment where both the parent and the child can fill in any gaps they might have had over the years. When the child is given answers he or she can find more confidence in him or herself. Rather than having a resentful mind toward his or her parents, the child can go on with his or her life.

                 In conclusion, an adopted child should be given the choice to meet with their birth parents. By reuniting both the child and parent, it will allow the child to figure out his or her identity. The child will no longer have to go through years wondering who and where they came from and can have the choice to let the birth parents to be a part of their lives. Such reunion would be so heart felt and rewarding for both the birth parents and child.

 

201003252 Unit 4 Pg.103

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Unit 4 (Pg. 103)

Think Twice Before Downloading Music

 

Today with easy access to the internet more and more people are downloading music off the internet with free of charge. Internet music downloading seems to be the hot trend, it is simple and easy to do that even young children in elementary school are able to download in a click of a button. Even though downloading music is illegal, people continue to download without hesitation. Some people believe that it is only fair to sample music first before making purchases online. In this case people listen to songs they like and eventually do not make any purchase. Others say that downloading is just as stealing property that no one is given the right to steal from another without paying the price. Even though it may seem logical to listen to music before paying for it, I agree that music download is an act of stealing intellectual property.

 

Firstly, I believe that it is disrespectful to the people that have composed and written the music. Song writers patent their songs with copyright and make a profit through the sales of compact discs. It makes it difficult for them to make a living if people are illegally downloading music off the net. Aside from not being able to make substantial profit, it is downright insulting to have someone steal one's property and have it easily dispersed to others. Song writers and composers dedicate long hours to producing such music. In contrast, it takes less than 30 seconds for people to share the downloaded music with friends and even strangers. While people are at home relentlessly downloading and enjoying the music, the people who have produced the music are continually dedicating their time to put together a song, unfortunately at the time of release there is a feeding frenzy of internet downloader's trying to get first dibs of their finished music.

 

Secondly, it is simply unlawful. Songs are protected by copyright laws. This means that the law protects the work of artists. These laws are set so that the innovative artists will not have to suffer from financial loss. To protect the work of the artists in the United States the Copyright Act was created in 1976. Another is the Universal Copyright Convention. These laws stand so that piracy will go unnoticed. Including making copies of VHS tapes, making DVD's, and getting satellite signals without permission.

 

In conclusion, I do not find the actions of downloading off the internet to be acceptable. It takes much concentration and effort to produce good music, and it is disrespectful to download the property of song writers and composers without their consent. If more and more people start to listen to music through purchases of compact discs, people who produce the music can make a better living, and therefore be encouraged to produce even better music.

Two photographs of Cartier-Bresson