Why do people attend college?

People attend college or university for many different reasons (for example, new experiences, career preparation, increased knowledge). Why do you think people attend college or university? Use specific reasons and example to support your answer.

College, or university is an institution which offers us an opportunity to prepare for our future. The term ‘future’ here relates a lot with our career of life. In addition, we can meet and interact with many different people and community in college, too. I believe that the primary reason why people attend college or university is to prepare for their career as well as to associate with the others.

Let us begin by talking about career. I am going to choose one career as an example : doctor. In the past, there were some people which began their career in medical area without attending some medical schools before. They learnt about how to heal sick people from their experience; They even made some herbal medicines. This is really a big difference with the condition now. It was possible in the past because the people have not had much knowledge compared to the people now. Now, if you want to heal sick people, you cannot do it as you wish. You have to gain a belief from the society by becoming a doctor. How could you be one? Of course, you have to graduate from university. In other words, if you want to be a doctor, you have to attend some medical schools. If you want to start your career as an engineer, you have to get your engineer degree first by attending some colleges or universities. That is why, career preparation is one of the main reasons why people pursue their degree in the college or university.

To associate with others or to build good networking is the second-main reason why people attend college or university. In the university, you can find people with different character and habit, different culture, or different in the way they think. As you talk or interact with them, you can learn much about many things. This is important to us because we can learn how to deal with people with these many differences. And this is also one thing that can support our career in the future.

College offers many things that we cannot get in the other places. Two of these things are excellent career which we prepare in the college, and good networking with many different people. I think all of these are the reasons why people attend college or university.

Filed under: essay, career, essay, iBT, university

Grading System

In some classes, course grades are based solely on exams, while in other classes, grades are based more on class participation than on exams. Which type of grading do you prefer? Use specific reasons to support your response.

Grading system is one of the important thing in educational system. Usually, such educator as a teacher and lecturer determine their students’s grade based only on their point in exams. I believe that grade which based on class participation is better than that on exams. The main reason is that we cannot measure our students’s ability just because of their exams’s grade. In addition, class participation is important to evaluate the students’s mastery regarding some class materials.

To begin with, students’s ability cannot be fully determined just by their point in exams. There is one problem we have to face when we want to evaluate our students’s ability by an exam : Cheating. Cheating is one problem we have not solved yet. For example, when we give them an exam, we cannot be sure whether our students did the exam by themselves or not. Our students might cheat in the exam when we did not pay attention to them. That is why, in my opinion exam’s grade cannot be fully used to evaluate students’s ability about the course.

What is more, class participation requires the students to elaborate their ideas as fast and much as possible about the topic presented. Beside that, they have to build their critical thinking concerning the topic when they have to participate in the class discussion. They have to “understand” the topic rather than merely memorized the topic. For example, some students with the high point in the exam may not be able to explain more about the topic since when they studied, they just “memorized” the textbook and did not try to “understand” the topic. Therefore, we can evaluate their ability better by seeing their participation and ideas in the class discussion or presentation than by giving them an exam.

In conclusion, I think that course grades based on class participation is better than that based on exams. Grades are not only about their point, but also their ability to explore their idea by participating in class discussions or presentations.

– longman iBT preparation writing independent task. I am in the middle of iBT preparation

Filed under: essay, class participation, exams, grading system