Advantages and Disadvantages of Studying Abroad Students in Today’s world have bunch of opportunities to show their best. They can travel abroad, meet new friends and start a family abroad. What does it bring them? What does it take them? The biggest benefit is that they are able to see totally different cultures and that means change their behavior, opinions and an attitude towards the world. For example, a friend of mine went abroad through the Erasmus Programme. He spend nice time in Amsterdam, had an opportunity to make new friends and worked on a project for an elevator company. He was successful, gained valuable experience and used it as an advantage to work in a prestigious company. There are also a few disadvantages. The sum of money the students receive for a living abroad aren’t sufficient to pay all the expenses. Students usually have to use their savings and the studies in foreign language sometimes aren’t easy. This brings disappointment and sometimes frustration. Another thing is that they are usually alone in a very new environment. Some people aren’t able to adapt as fast as the others, so they aren’t able to look for opportunities or even enjoy the time abroad. I would like to say, that every student is very different and the amount of advantages and disadvantages depends on him or her. In my opinion, the advantages of meeting new people and doing projects abroad are much greater than loosing some money, being disappointed or not being able to study the subjects abroad. It’s totally worth trying! This article is a part of my IELTS preparation. Thanks for correcting it in advance! Pavel

Does Improved Communication and Transportation Help Us? Do you use e-mail, facebook or Skype? I use them all and they help a lot. I can be in a bus and answer my friend, I can be waiting at the airport or just having a video call with my friends at home. It doesn’t matter much where I live or where I spend my time, but I can still be somehow connected. The word “somehow” is very important here. Are you asking why? When I use any kind of chat to answer my friend’s message, then I’m not using full range of communication. I’m not telling him everything. It can cause many misunderstandings and many problems that take long to solve. This is one of the biggest disadvantages I see. I know that when I just text my friends, then it takes much longer than a phone call. Phone call takes much longer than video call. While when I bump into friend on my way home, it takes few seconds to agree on a meeting. Why? Because we have much more communication sources like body language, mimics, voice tone, eye contact, smile... this is all that you cannot receive via phone or just text. The advantage of faster transportation is much easier access to friends, but that causes that people are living more and more alone. That makes them unable to help each other. People have finally much less time than when living together. Fast transportation is good for delivering goods, but not for relationships. Overall, the social disadvantages of improved communication and transportation are much higher than the advantages. The only advantage is that anyone can answer any time, but also loses the privacy and doesn’t receive full range of information resources. That causes many social problems we aren’t aware of. Pavel

Higher Punishments for Better Road Safety? Do you like when you are riding your bike and some “driver” pass you in high speed close to you? Do you like when you cross a road and a driver with mobile in a hand almost hits you? I don’t and I still don’t understand why this still happens. Some drivers like to feel powerful in their cars and that’s why they buy fast cars. Some of them have it as a hobby. Some are just upset and drive very foolishly. I think that the most dangerous drivers are the drivers who are upset and crazy. Do you know what is the problem with these drivers? They don’t even care what is the punishment in form of fee or jail when they drive. They are just not thinking about it while being in “crazy mode”. Higher punishments are useless for these drivers. But for normal drivers, for example here in Czech republic, higher fees can make a huge difference. It is very usual that there are drivers who normally drive 10-20 km/h faster than they are allowed. They are also doing many small offenses while driving. For example crossing the full line, making a U-Turn at crossway and so on. The higher punishments in form of higher fees would surely make a difference. It is proven fact, that money is power and it works both ways. The bottom line is that yes, the punishments should be much higher. Are you asking why? Wouldn’t you think twice when there is a high punishment for your offence? I definitely would. This a part of my training for IELTS exam I'm taking at the end of August. Thanks for correcting the text. :) Here is the task description: To improve road safety there should be more severe punishment for drivers who break the rules. To what extent do you agree or disagree? +think twice before breaking the rules +less dangerous drivers on the roads.

Being Stinged by A Hornet Hurts a Lot! I had a very serious discussion about wasps, hornets, bees and ants in my country with my English teacher. I was surprised that he’s never seen a hornet, has never been stung by any bee, wasp or hornet. It surprised me, because I get stinged every year 2-4 times at least. I live in Czech republic and spend a huge amount of time outside at our garden. I think I have never been stung in a city. Czech Hornet, alias Vespa, which is common kind of hornet living here with us and eating our pears every year. It’s biting a huge hole inside it and eating almost all of it. I don’t know if it’s digesting very fast of it’s just drinking the fructose which is in pears, but it’s working in teams and having no remorse! We have just two pear trees at our garden and I don’t remember me eating a pear. Another thing which is our hornet doing, is stinging us when we are chasing them away from our pears. And trust me, it really hurts! It itches a lot, it becomes reddish fast and we’re cooling and calming the reaction with a the Fenistil gel, or onion. The stinged place stays reddish for a few days sometimes. It isn’t aggressive when you aren’t chasing it away or don’t bump into them. I mean literally bump into them. So be careful when you’re being outside in Europe, especially in the fall. They are there. :) Pavel

Making Things Tougher Than They Really Are What are you doing when is something important in front of you? Are you thinking about it? Are you preparing? Or do you just jump into it and do it? I’m more of a thinker and that’s my curse. I had to perform an one-way job interview. I had prepared, shaved, sat down and connected to the Internet. All the things were wrong, I connecting to the application became impossible and the borrowed iPad was making me mad. I didn’t know that iPad is omitting some important information, but it does. I had to combine PC and iPad (because of the camera) to make it working. I finally did it and all the things were working. But I was stressed out a lot. I wanted things working smooth and they weren’t. I was finally so tired so I just sat down, read the first question: “Why have you chosen this project?How can you contribute to it?” and I started thinking. I was supposed to make 30 seconds video. I had prepared it and started recording. First recording was terrible, second one was my own error by touching a wrong button. The third attempt wasn’t good enough, but it was my last chance so I submitted it. After an hour of doing things like this, I lost all my energy and wanted to get rid of it as soon as possible. The moment when I was exhausted and still recording the videos made me realize that I putting so much effort to it isn’t necessary. Then I relaxed a little, finished it and submitted it. Now I know, that I can be more influential while being relaxed and doing it more casual. Pavel

Usefulness of Double-entry Accounting When someone wants to have an evidence of income and expenses, then they use the Excel. You can see where your money went and where they come from, but you can't see where you spend more or less money by category. Some good applications like Mint can help you to do it better and you will see it by category. You can even see when you have to pay a bill and some programs also do it automatically. This is very useful and it helps a lot! Having an old computer and mobile I can't afford to have these good apps, but I don't want them. I want to have a system of double-entry accounting. What is it? Double-entry accounting is little bit more complicated but logical. When you receive your money from your job, then you have to write them into income (you normally do that with Excel) and then into cash, or bank account in the program. Every transaction has two sides, credit and debit. What is this good for? Lets say that you pay a mortgage and as you know you have to pay it every month. Double-entry accounting says what you have (your home as an Asset) and where you got money to have it (your mortgage). Every month you pay, you see in the program how much you have to pay in total until you mortgage will be repaid. You always have an evidence of what you have and what you have to pay (liabilities), so you know how much you can afford. Another thing which is useful is the evidence of your property which belong to the assets group. You always know what you have, what has depreciating value and what should be replaced. Of course you know it without evidence, but you forgot and sometimes you get surprised by that you have to buy something new. To have the evidence is nice, but you need to know what your expenses are and what more you can spend. This is called Cashflow. It is what remains of your salary after you have paid all your liabilities. This is very useful for planning and increasing your income and expenses. Finally, you can just spend your money every month or you can invest them and gradually increase your Cashflow. It is very nice feeling to see that some money are coming without an effort, isn't it? ;) Pavel

What I do With a Plateau Phase of Language Learning Everyone who studies a foreign language has his own plateau phases and everyone does something different with it. To have a feeling of being stuck on your current English level is good, because you can do something about it. Some people give up the language learning and go to another one and some continue in their plateau phase for a long time. What else can you do with your plateau phase? Plateau phase tells us that we do something over and over again in the same way and we have already exhausted our sources which helped us to improve. What does it mean? It means that you have to change something. It can be only one thing i.e. reading, listening, speaking to friends, speaking to natives or whatever else you do. Here is what I have changed last week and what I will change in this week. I have realized that I have terrible listening skills when I listen to a person on a phone or an audio book. I guess what a person says when I listen to they. The thing which I decided to do is to start listening to audio books when I'm walking my dog. I started to do that on Thursday and I have already heard 165 minutes of audio spoken in old English with formalities like "thy, thou, thee" and another difficult language structures. I've never listened to audio books before so I'm quite surprised what happens. I'm able to understand almost everything almost every day, but some days I'm just tired and not able to understand, but I continue! I also stopped to read books in English because I wanted to do grammar instead, but I realized after a month that I am unable to do English grammar every day and I like to read more than to do grammar. Actually, I need to do both, so I'm going to do one day grammar, two days read and grammar again. This will not be as boring as to do English grammar alone and I'll still have a progress. What are you plans to move ahead from your plateau? ;) Pavel