Band 90-100: THE NEW ERA: TECHNOLOGY AND INTERNET

      Technology and internet have a great importance in our lives because they are a milestone like renaissance, reform, industry revolution. Both of them contribute to our lives with significant improvements. They have developed and continued to developing gradually from past to present. In previous years, whereas technology and internet progressed slower and more ineffective, nowadays they advance more effective and faster. Moreover, fast and impressive progress of technology and internet have impacts on our lives. Internet and technology provide us various services in some areas. Thanks to these services, technology and internet manage to penetrate the world that we live. Technology and internet, which change and improve our lives, offer a range of benefits in some remarkable fields, such as in business life, social life and in the field of education.

       One of the most considerable benefits of technology and internet can be observed in business life. As internet and technology provide facilities in numerous fields, they put forward some facilities in business life. The more new devices and machines, the more level of productivity increases. This makes it easy to reach the product that we want. For instance; when industry revolution occurred, machines were made and production started to get faster. Moreover with improvements of technology and internet, new working fields occur for people such as defence industry, manufacturing industry, information technology. For example; nowadays, the demands for information technology brings new working fields in this area. Thanks to this, firms are established for producing smart phones, smart TV, the latest technological devices. Competition occurs among countries and it supplies more durable and authentic products for customers. Furthermore, thanks to internet, business people connect with their customers directly. Customers can obtain information about products that they will buy. Also, customers can buy their goods on internet or they can sell their goods via internet. Internet and technology offer beneficial services for all people. We can see the advantages of them in business life.

        In the second place, technology and internet have significant impact on social life as they become part of life. Compared to past, people tend to make use of  internet and technology for many purposes. For example; people can contact with their friends, family and relatives, via technological devices and internet supplied. People can communicate by video, telephone, messages etc. and therefore are always in touch with one another owing to technology and internet. Moreover, many people can obtain information about whole world, their countries and their cities. People can be aware of all events by using routinely technology and internet to follow the news, weather forecasts, sport news. Additionally, people use internet and technology to enjoy, by watching videos, various movies, surfing on social networks. For instance; many people frequently share their photos or videos via social networks to keep people following them updated. Many people spend their time thanks to internet and technology. Existence of internet, invention of technological devices, discovery of social nets, affect social life which become comparatively easier and more enjoyable, accordingly in parallel with those improvements.

       Lastly, technology and internet provide highly vital advantages in the field on education. They have undeniable importance for both students and teachers. Technology and internet offer educational opportunities such as online courses, specific webpages, e-mail communication, and tools used in the classroom like smartboards, calculators, laptops, presentation hardware. Online courses have positive effects on students because every age group of people can attend the courses and they can choose any course they want. Furthermore, students can access datum from various sources, webpages, news sources and educational videos. Information is available and updated on websites and online library in any time. This can be illustrated by online library. Instead of going local library, students can access more rapidly to online library and so they can save their time. Likewise, many students can make use of internet and technology to complete homework. Find research or information required for projects. Importantly, student can contact other students and teachers through e-mail and teachers can also contact parents easily. It is important to highlight that teachers can make use of technological devices and internet by using animations, pictures, documentaries and slides. For instance; while they are explaining any subject, they can use actual photographs. Thanks to this, classes are mostly permanent for students. Due to these benefits of technology and internet, education is more influential an organized for teachers and students.

       Overall, technology and internet impress us in various areas; nevertheless, importantly, they penetrate in the fields of business, social life and education. People use internet and technology due to a range of facilities. In business life, internet and technology offer opportunities such as fast production, durable goods, different working areas. In social life, we can see the benefits of technology and net like swift communication, enjoyable times. Also, technology and internet have useful sides namely, online courses and library, the latest technological tools, e-mail communication in the field on education. Technology and internet provide such a comfortable life that this makes them invaluable thus people cannot give up these facilities. Easiness attract people inasmuch as they do not want to experience tough events. When people experience difficulties, they start to look for solutions to sort out them and make them easy. Since internet and technology were revealed, they have offered convenience means and comfort to us. Internet and technology appeared that they become a revelation for people and with time they evolved, this is an enormous evolution. They revolved and become a revolution for all human beings. Revelation of technology and net convert into an evolution, evolution transform into a giant revolution.

by Hatice Demiral 1st year ELT student @ Erciyes University

Band 90-100: BENEFITS OF TECHNOLOGY AND INTERNET

"The number one benefit of information technology and internet (TI) is that it empowers people to do what they want to do. It lets people be creative. It lets people be productive. It lets people learn things they did not think they could learn before, and so in a sense it is all about the potential." said Steve Ballmer. As can be seen, technology is the application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes while internet is the practical part of technology which moves them related. In other words, technology and Internet can be considered as the two sides of the same coin that they cannot be seperated. Both of them have brought  a revolution in the modern World and they have made the World global village. Without the progression of TI, our World would be slow-paced. We can take from many examples in health and health industry, source of faster communication and information.Also taking upon the fruition of encouraging innovation and creativity takes a huge role in our society.

       First of all, technology and Internet have changed health and health industry and play a crucial role in all around the world. TI is also becoming advanced and designed to make our health industry more convenient. For instance, you have better and more accessible treatment, because TI gives opportunities to open up many exploration and research that allows doctors or experts to make healthcare more effectively. Furthermore, the use of TI have made patient care safer with high-technology equipments, so doctors can detect your cure easily. Another thing is that patients can use TI with some mobile applications in the healthcare sector to learn their personal health information. For example, they can control their daily sleep patterns, count calories, research treatment options and even monitor their heart rate. Therefore, thanks to the continuous development of technology and Internet in the health industry, countless lives have been saved and technological innovations in the medical field continue to provide doctors or experts with new ways to improve the quality of their patients'care and improve the global healthcare.

          The second benefit of technology and Internet is the source of faster communication and information. The web is at the heart of many ways in communication and information. It makes things in life faster and more efficient. For instance, you can search everything about what do you want to know, you can find and read many documents, books, news. You can keep in touch with family or do business with colleagues. Moreover, you can hold everything you need to palm of your hand thanks to mobile phones with applications,such as, finding and booking hotel, checking in to your flights, paying the bills, searching for jobs.Another key area is that TI have an enormous effect on social networking. Social networking is all about sharing and it provides you to share your moments with photos, thoughts,videos and more. It gives you many opportunities communicate with people more quickly and more often in various social networking sites,such as, Facebook and Twitter. As can be seen, technology and Internet breakdown barriers of distance and helps to make you more connected in communication and information.

        Last but not least, the third benefit of technology and Internet is encouraging innovation and creativity which help us to build new ways of thinking or doing something. TI allows for the development of online working, so you can do your own business while you stay at home. For instance, you can use various websites to sell products, or you can create new projects and share with other people on the Internet easily. Furthermore, you have the capability to create higher quality ideas in less time thanks to TI, because TI gives opportunities to find many sources for your development such as, online books, training and career courses, documentaries, materials and more. Moreover, effiency and productivity take place in our lives through the use of TI. For example, farmers use TI to produce more food and they also use TI to develop agriculture  and create facilities for animals. There is no doubt that TI helps for the improvement of innovative and creative things and TI moves us, our country and our world forward.

       To put in a nutshell, TI is similar to a spider web which covers every part of our lives. Spider webs have a spectacular view and they have different purposes to attract,capture or store spiders'preys.TI also use the same method to gather and present information to people in great ways.When the webs of TI begin to grow, they affect and surround many sections in the World, like health and health industry, the source of faster communication and information, encouraging innovation and creativity.As far as I'm concerned that health is the golden key of all these locked areas and health industry is on the cutting edge of which is quite improving many sources to make our lives more convenient. TI is required to increase the quality of life and health but do not forget the best ideas always come from healthy minds.

by Hilal Demir 1st year ELT Student @ Erciyes University

Band 90-100: Best Decisions and Best Friends

My grandfather always says ‘the bond of communion is more significant than kindredship’.  Kindredship, blood relationship, is involuntary but friendship is in your hands. Real friends are like your siblings without ties of blood. Sometimes, your friend knows you better and h/she is closer than your relatives or even your family.  Besides, you choose the person to be your friend whom you will build strong and deep bonds. How strong the bond of friendship depends on how you choose your friends. Choosing a friend wisely makes camaraderie last forever, however, choosing him/her carelessly makes it go down in flames.  That is why criteria of choosing friends are immensely crucial. In parallel with this, there are some criteria about what makes a person a good friend. By taking into account his or her characteristics, life style and point of view, you can decide whether a person will be a good friend or not.

First of all, for choosing a superb friend, one of the remarkable and pivotal criteria should be characteristics. The steadier his/her characteristics are, the more durable your friendship would be. S/he should be understanding when you make a mistake or take a decision. A real friend thinks that you have a strong reason for what you did or asks why you did so and tries to understand your situation. Otherwise, h/she can easily cut the painter in every mistake you made. Likewise, a friend should not be revengeful after you do something wrong. Such a negative and hazardous personality can harm both of you. Also, a real friend is not self-seeker as your success should be his/her happiness. If not, friendship does not last for a long time. For instance, I had a friend who blamed me for being overambitious whenever I wanted to get higher marks and I was happy, she would be upset and said I was selfish and did not understand how she felt. In such circumstances, friendship would probably end with an irrelevant pretext. When considering the criteria for choosing a friend, characteristics of your potential friend can play a big part in it.

Secondly, life style is another crucial criterion for choosing a real friend. The proverb ‘if you lie down with dogs, you wake up with fleas’ verifies this criterion. How they live can have an enormous impact on your life, your friendship and your personality. Specifically, a true friend should not have bad habits such as smoking, drinking alcohol. Even if you avoid these habits, after a while, such bad habits would seem good and you would get used to them. Indeed, the significant reason for getting into the habit of smoking and alcohol or drug dependency is mainly related to choosing friends carelessly. Moreover, if you are shy and asocial, it is important to have a friend who always socializes with people and loves outdoors. Such friends could provide you to get rid of your shyness and to learn how to communicate. Importantly, having hobbies that both can enjoy would improve your friendship. Hereby, you can have good time and become real friends in time. Also, h/she knows what can entertain you when you are in a bad mood. By looking at such details, life style can definitely be a decisive criterion to take into consideration while picking a friend.

Lastly, the less effective but consequential criterion for choosing a friend is point of view of your potential friend. Friends may have different enjoyments, and they may (dis)like different things nevertheless they would not be close friends unless they have similar point of view to yours. If a thing is absolutely wrong for one and the thing is certainly wrong for another, one day, they would conflict with each other. In particular, doing something behind someone’s back or lying should be wrong for both of them. Also, your friend’s point of view on life impacts you. It is significant that your friend is whether optimistic or pessimistic. Joel Osteen says ‘’you cannot hang out with negative people and expect to live a positive life.’’ Accordingly, negative people consume your energy of life. Moreover, if a person thinks himself/herself superior, it is difficult to be his/her friend because the person cannot accept that h/she is wrong or you are better at something. Such a friend always underestimates you and causes to lose your self-confidence.  Although people do not exactly pay attention to point of view when they choose a friend, it influences not only friendship but also their life.

In a nutshell, choosing a person whom you can call a real friend can probably be based on his/her characteristics, life style and point of view. Of course, we do not think about the criteria while becoming friends at first. However, these criteria might help you decide how you can select a person whom you will let him/her know all about you and have remarkable effects on your lives. Especially, characteristic has great importance in friendship because it determines their life style and point of view. In addition, characteristics are corner stones of camaraderie and steady characteristics lay the foundations of strong friendship. If you bear this criterion in mind when choosing a friend, your friendship stays strong for years like a well based building. As Rashida Rowe said ‘friends are angels who lift our feet when our own wings have trouble remembering how to fly.’


by Zarife Nur Göveç 1st year ELT student @ Erciyes University

Band 90-100: Elected Features for a Selected Friend

        Considering humans as social beings, there are certain and crucial requirements for them to survive, ranging from fundamental physical necessities to emotional ones. These emotional needs are based on building healthy relations with others as a part of the psychological aspect of human life. As is known, relation is the bonds in family, between spouses, even colleagues and of course between friends. There is no possible way to determine our parents, still we can be quite selective on the matter of accepting someone as a friend. Although, there are several specific features we look for on someone to build up the friendship bonds, the following three would be the basic but common ones for many; personality, point of view and life style. 

        First of all, it is certainly inevitable to observe the personality of someone before setting up a close relationship with him/her. Indeed, there are various attitudes that can be treated as the components of personality such as being supportive, trustworthy, thoughtful, forgiving, genuine and kind. For instance, having supportive and kind manner may be the essential ones for some considering that people need emotional support in most cases and wish to have it in the kindest way possible. In similar to this, being accused of the unintentional mistakes is purely severe; therefore, a person who is forgiving and gracious would be what many people look for. Another point to consider is that, imagine someone who is far away from being judgmental conversely and s/he cares about other`s thoughts by being a good listener, all could determine the significance of personality of a desired friend.

        Secondly, another crucial point to take into consideration while choosing a friend is perception of life. To be clearer, it is the fact that people see and approach the events and others in numerous ways. For instance, people tend to see the glass either half full or half empty. This perspective may determine whether someone seeks the good and illustrates the bright side both in people and in themselves. In relation to this, the attitude of a person towards the life would basically influence the others around. Indeed, “the way the people around us respond to stressful events — whether those people react negatively or positively — may be contagious” *, a new study says. Therefore, to avoid negative thoughts and to embrace a healthy and glamorous mind and life, it is critical to opt someone who is glowing with a sparkling light and inspires around to be the same.

       Thirdly, it is possible to count the life style as a distinctive determiner in point of choosing a friend. Certain habits like eating healthy food, sleeping times, engaging in profitable issues in spare times could be thought as the life style. In particular, the activities or hobbies one perform in his/her spare time are extremely important because people generally spend their free time together by doing the things they enjoy. If two people do not have any kind of pleasure in common, probably, having time together will be suffering for them. Another point to take into account is eating habits. Since there could be wide variety of food choices range from healthy, organic to rubbish, fast-food types, it is essential to select someone who shares the similar eating habits. As it will eventually influence your body and health. Hence, the way we choose to live the life had better be similar to him/her whom we choose as a friend.

        All in all, personality, point of view and life style could be the foremost criteria inquired by the majority before commencing to build up a friendship. Therefore, it is highly important to bear in mind them with respect to one`s priority. As point of view and life style are bound to personality, they could be shaped or built according to personality. Hence, it is highly possible to suggest that personality could be the one which is mostly required to be prioritized. Yet, being over selective could result in solitude, impact of which is negative on people`s daily lives. As Mark Twain stated “Grief can take care of itself, but to get the full value of joy you must have somebody to divide with it” *. The key point is to hold the balance between being fussy or being hasty for the purpose of living and cherishing the life with its entire sense.

  

References

*1: www.livescience.com/28877-negative-thoughts-depression-contagious.html

*2: www.quotationspage.com/quote/31084.html 

by Sema Akbaş 1st year ELT Student @ Erciyes University

Band 90-100

INCREASING VIOLENCE AMONG YOUNGSTERS

     According to The National Youth Violence Prevention Resource Center, nearly 1561 young people, whose ages were under 18, were arrested for assassination in 2000. Throughout the world, 250.000 homicides occur among youngsters who are between10-29 years old each year, which means the %41 of the annual total number of homicides. These statistics demonstrate that the rate of youth violence is quite conspicuous. When a trouble arises, the factors that cause this trouble should be taken into consideration. The research that was done by some experts resulted in the view that there are three major factors of violence in youth. These are family, educational and social factors. Such factors, and more, bring about increasing the rate of violence among young people.

     First of all, family factors can be viewed as the most leading one causing violence among youngsters. A research conducted by Sezer Ayan in 2007 indicates that the teenagers who were exposed to violence while growing up are apt to violence more than the others. Parents had better care about their children so that they can receive sufficient affection which is their imperative requirement all the time. Parents should be aware of how to interact with their children. In order to accomplish this, parents need to be well-educated. Low parental education might lead lack of communication between parents and children. Unfortunately, parents leaving their children in front of TV sets may be observed almost everywhere. They do not even control what their children watch. It is probable that children may watch some movies or cartoons that include violent scenes without parents’ supervision. All these elements may contribute to the idea that it is quite crucial for parents to engage in their children and make them they are of great importance to their parents.

     Second major factor that brings about violence among youngsters can be educational factors. According to CDC’s study, about %2 of homicides occur among school-age children. When children begin to get education at schools, they spend much time with their teachers and other pupils more than their parents. Interaction problems may arise between teachers and students. Unless the teacher tries to put an end to such problems, this situation might become more and more troublesome. For instance, children may be deprived of their willingness to participate lessons. Additionally, they may escape from school, which most probably results in failing. Many of them may be prone towards becoming a part of gangs due to this failure. Since it is very likely for teenagers to be influenced by their peers because of the features of puberty, one student can cause the others to be drawn to gangs without difficulty. As a result of these determinants, they might be involved in violence either with their own decision or with pressure of their friends.

     The third of the most considerable factors of violence among youngsters is social factors. Unemployment can be thought as a major factor of this issue. Particularly in Turkey, the case of unemployed university graduates is an enormous problem. There are approximately 600.000 people suffering from this situation. This tough issue may cause some people to have psychological problems. Furthermore, when the people around the jobless ones begin to neglect them, their problem is likely to become a lot more bothersome. Income inequality in a society might be one of the consequences of unemployment in a country. Such cases may also have an effect on addiction to drugs or alcohol. Due to the fact that their mental health is not fine enough, they may consider that these addictions are appropriate ways to dispose of their troubles. One can be sure that addicted people will not be able to control themselves. They are likely to be brutal against their family members. Each element influences one another and most probably engenders violence.

     To put in a nutshell, the increasing rate of violence among youngsters is a problematic issue all around the world. According to the studies that were conducted previously, family, educational and social factors are the main reasons for this social case. Family is the basis of a society. To head on to such social problems, the first thing to do is establish well-educated families knowing how to raise their children. Insufficient education at schools triggers violence, as well. Social factors, such as unemployment, income inequality, addiction, are said to have a significant effect on rising rate of violence among teenagers. As this is a social issue and family is the essence of a society, every parent is supposed to care about their children and teach them to love the life they live in before the gloves are off.

Author: Fatmagul Ozalp (ELT-2)