Reading

Are you fond of English?

By: S@m

English is the most widely spoken language in the world. Learning English is not as difficult as you imagine. People hate learning English because they always suppose that English is very difficult to learn. In fact, English is very easy when it is learned seriously and intensively. It will always be hard to learn English if we do not have feeling of love toward English itself. In other word, we hate English, and we don’t have encouragement to learn it. Does anyone know Pare? I am sure that most people know Pare. It is a village famous for Kampung Inggris. It can be said that this place is very appropriate and effective to learn English. It is proven that students who know nothing about English, they become very expert in English after spending some time in Pare to learn English. All is because of their intention and seriousness.  Do you ever hear that in holidays students are in droves going to Pare just to study English? I think you do; Studying English can be anywhere, and it must not be in Pare. The most important thing is our seriousness and how much we love and learn English.

Do you think that English is easier than Arabic? If someone questions me, I will answer “yes”. It is not because I am an English teacher so I answer “yes”. In reality, people who have studied both languages in the same period have the same answer as I do. I have been learning both languages, Arabic and English since I was a student of elementary school. Up to now I still find English easier than Arabic.

Do you want to know my process of learning English? At first, I knew nothing about English, but I love it so much. My heart always said “what a happy if I can speak English well”. Starting from that point, I became highly motivated to learn it. The process was very simple. I just tried to know more the meaning of every single word of English. Every time I found new English word, I was curious to know its meaning. As the time goes by, I have so many English vocabularies. Having enough English vocabulary is the main capital to understand English. Having had vocabularies, I tried to speak English little by little. At that time I felt that my English was good enough. Then I realized that English is far different from Indonesia especially their structure. You know what; My English grammar was very bad. I just used English words with Indonesia structure. At last I tried to learn more about English grammar.

 

SHOULD WE READ MORE?

In the past years the use of the television and the internet has increased; this situation has caused many people to change their likes and the way that they enjoy their free time.  Because of television and the internet, many people spend less time reading, so the purpose for this essay is to present reasons why people should read just for pleasure.  The reasons that I give you are quite simple: to improve your knowledge, to expand your general culture, to have more fun, to make your imagination fly, to find new ways to express your ideas, and finally to expand your vocabulary.

The first reason that I give you to enjoy reading is that when you read, you can expand your knowledge and also your culture. There are a lot of good books in which you can find history, novels, tragedies, comedies and a variety of other themes. You can see that people who read more often frequently have a bigger knowledge of life and also a bigger perspective of their environment.  I think that fact gives them an advantage over all others who do not read frequently.

The second reason to read more often is that through books you can have fun and even travel in your imagination.  Children have not yet lost the ability of getting  into their dreams, and because of this, in their first years the parents read a lot of tales  in which they use their imagination. Adults should try to keep this ability, so we do not forget the importance of the use of the imagination. The imagination also represents a tool that could help you to develop your professional career in a creative way.

Finally, the third and the most important feature that reading offers you is that it does not matter the age that you have, you always could expand your vocabulary and the ways to express your ideas to the others in a simple and correct form. By the time you can improve the kind of books that you read, there are a lot of categories, so you will never stop learning from the pleasure of reading. People who know how to choose a book generally have the capability of choosing a formal book in which they can find formal grammatical structures and obviously a formal vocabulary.  All these things allow them to gain greater fluency in their communication.

In conclusion, I recommend that you enjoy reading more often. There are excellent reasons for doing it; you just have to want to expand your knowledge and your culture, to improve your imagination and also your vocabulary. I know that we should evolve with the technology; that is, it is good to know how to navigate in the internet, but we must also not forget the books. Try to choose good books at the beginning, and then I ensure you that you never will stop reading.

 
HAVE A GOOD LAUGH!

 Experts often refer to exercise, a balanced diet and plenty of rest as the three essential factors for good health in the stressful society in which we live. According to leading doctors, laughter is also extremely important to our general well-being. When we laugh, energy is pumped around the body and it perks up the whole system. Our stress levels are reduced, which means laughter has a calming effect on us.

 More importantly, perhaps, is the fact that laughter releases chemicals into the body. These chemicals are natural pain suppressants and they affect the immune system, helping to speed up healing processes and activating hormones which kill disease cells. In fact, in 1991, the first free Laughter Clinic was set up in Britain so that patients could have fun, which helps them to get better more quickly.

 According to one doctor, laughter is a total body experience in which all the major system of the body, such as muscles, nerves, heart, brain and digestion, participate fully, so laughter is almost equivalent to a form of exercise. However, it is important to bear in mind that we are talking about laughter as opposed to just a smile, in other words, “a belly laugh” says Howard Kent of the Yoga for Health Association.

   So how are we to fill our lives with merriment? Every happy home should have a laughter library of joke books, classic cartoon books, collections of humorous quotations and audio cassettes of our favourite comedians, comedy videos, fun board games, comic plays, novels and amusing biographies.

 

Source: Islcollective

 

WHY COUPLES SHOULD NOT COHABITATE

Nowadays, many couples live together before they marry. The number of unmarried couples living together seems to have increased recently. They might never commit to spending their life with someone without living with him or her first. These couples might think that cohabitation is important to determine if couples are compatible before marriage; however, does this idea really work? Rather than being a time of getting to know one another, cohabitation before marriage is unnecessary, and an unmarried couple ought not to live together because of the higher divorce rate and lower quality of life.

While it is true that cohabitation could be a good start for some couples to increase their love and to experience romance by living together, it can also be argued that the chance of divorce is higher than other married couples. During the first time of deciding to live together, some couples might consider that they could spend times together in such a loving moment. By living in somebody’s company whom they love, they could possibly experience romance in every minute of their everyday life that would lift up their love. Nevertheless, it should be beared in mind that if they live together ahead of marriage and experience an excessive of romance already, as a result, they may feel fed up with their relationship when the marriage materializes. Hence, cohabitants who then marry could have more risk of becoming divorced than those who did not cohabitate before marriage.

Some people believe that living together can enhance the worth of the couple’s relationship. However, it must also be recognized that the quality of life for unmarried couples is far lower than for married couples. There are at least three issues which provide evidence that values of life for unmarried couples are lower than for married couples. Cohabitating couples have a lesser level of responsibility, lower level of sexual relation, and poorer relationships with their parents. Because of no commitment in cohabitation, a cohabitant might not be responsible and lack respect towards his or her partner. This sort of circumstance can hurt both people and drop off the level of responsibility in building a relationship. There is also a strong relation between cohabitation and sexual activity. Cohabitants living together are similar to husband and wife; hence, having sex is part of their natural expectation. However, those who habitually experience active sex before marriage will tend to be less interested in sex with their partner and more likely to cheat on their partners after marriage. Moreover, in the relationship with their parents, cohabitants have a tendency to hide their cohabitant life, particularly on the monetary necessitate. For that reason, they tell lies over and over to cover up the truth, and then create guilt about going against their parent’s suggestions. This kind of manner causes them to be away from their parents.

Although many people claim and several people argue that living together is a good way to find out if couples are compatible before they decide to get married, one can also argue that living together does not necessarily lead to marriage. Living together might be interesting in the beginning, but several years later, cohabitating couples will get stuck in their relationship. Living together before marriage does not always promise marriage. Most of them are still just living together without getting married. They may even break up for several reasons.

In summary, it is clear that those who live together before marriage have less support and benefits. Marriage is far better than cohabitation at connecting people to partners. Therefore, the couples should not attempt to experience it due to the higher divorce rate, lower quality of life, and lack of commitment leading to marriage in cohabitation.

         By: Krisna Ningrum Alberta

WHAT MAKES PEOPLE SUCCESSFUL?

Who do you think is the most successful? Who do you think is the least successful? In order to answer these questions, we first need to define success. Everyone has a different definition. One of businessmen, A. Khoerussalim Ikhs, states that successful persons are those who have a dream, they can make their dream come true, and they can enjoy the result of their dream. Many of us place great value on performance, on achievements, or on reaching various goals. Others associate success with material goods, measuring it by how much one can acquire. Others measure success by how much they can contribute to the well-being of their families, or to the community and society in general.  There are many other definitions, but mostly success is associated with becoming rich, famous, and respected at work. Yet, it doesn’t have to be that way.

Being successful could mean simply being satisfied with oneself and one’s career. For many people, a successful person is someone who feels that his or her work and life in general offer an exceptionally high degree of satisfactions. But how does one get from here to there? How does one reach this feeling of satisfaction with life and career? It seems that successful people consistently do two things:

·         They use their natural abilities in their work.

·         They set career and life goals.

In other words, successful people choose careers where they can use their natural abilities, or do what comes naturally to them. For example, successful teachers are people who instinctively know how to help people learn, and the best doctors are those who know how to listen to people. Successful people know where they are starting from, and what direction they want to give their lives and careers, even if it is something as simple and wonderful as raising a happy family. What are your natural abilities? What are your career and life goals? If you can answer these questions, you are on your way to having a successful career and life. 

Source: islcollective.com