Has technological progress bring negative effects upon society in the last 100 years? Some people, including famous critics, believe that advanced technologies have brought detrimental impacts on the entire world in the past century. While the perspective they hold is valid, I personally disagree this perception and contend, with threefold sources, the overall effect of technological progress is positive, despite the negative aspects certainly exist. First of all, it is an indisputable fact that people’s lives have revolutionized by new technologies which are widely applied in many domains as to transport, trade and communication. Because of the innovations in techniques, we can connect with friends immediately by telephone or on the Internet and fly through the Pacific for some hours by airplane, which hardly can be imaged by the people who lived in hundreds years ago. Secondly and more importantly, though, technical promotions advantage to enrich the material needs and make hunger history around the world. With the development of techniques in agriculture as well as transport, the outputs of foodstuffs are increasing and these foodstuffs can be deliver to those areas where are suffering from floods or droughts. Last but not least, improving technologies not only benefit the materials but also profit the mental. For instance, the past 20 years have seen considerable changes in people’s spiritual lives due to the dramatic improvement of the Internet technologies. Nonetheless, we cannot ignore the harmful influences caused by technical progress, such as making people more lazy and losing the traditional techniques and skills. By way of conclusion, I restate my position that the merits brought by new technologies far outweigh the drawbacks. However, reducing the negative consequences to the limit is a more reasonable developing mould of technologies. (2nd September, 2011)

The ordinary people can get no advantage with the development of air travel. Do you agree? The past 10 years have seen a widespread phenomenon that airplane has become one of the chief travelling methods in most parts of the world already. Yet, there remains some perception as to air travel is a poverty discrimination because it can barely benefit the wealthy people. In this essay, I aim to contend travel by air can advantage all people with my threefold reasons. First of all, it is an indisputable fact that the costly expenditure of air travel is the main obstacle to fly for ordinary people. While with the dramatic development of technologies in air travel domain, like the increasing number of planes along with the passenger load of each plane, the air fares are in decline. For this reason, the quantity of passengers who can afford the cost of air travel will ascend rapidly in the near future, as the consequence which has happened to motor vehicles. Equally importantly, though, air travel is the most effective and quick transport measure. Admittedly, the most significant vantage of travel by railway or highway is its relative low fare; however, flying can shorten the travel time considerably. Therefore, even considering the expenditure, common people who have to arrive certain places immediately can also get profits from the convenience of air travel. The last contributing factor supporting my perspective is that airplane is the only means of travel in some special areas, for example, central Asia where the populated cities isolated by deserts as well as a series of islands in Pacific Ocean. It fairly benefits the rich people and the ordinary under these conditions. By way of conclusion, I reaffirm my position that air travel is not only created for the rich but also invented for the relative low income people because of its convenience and the plunging admittance. (29th August, 2011)

Why children spend more time on watching TV ? How to solve the problem? Research reveals that televisions have brought significant impacts on children in recent years. Since children spend more time on great deal of TV programmes, they are lacking of outdoor activities or creations. In this essay, I aim to identify the probable sources of this problem as well as some viable solutions to it. From my perspective, one of the main reasons of the mentioned phenomenon is the increasing numbers and marvelous contents of TV programmes, which are both caused by the advanced TV technologies. According to this, kids are easily attracted by all kinds of programmes as to cartoons, soap operas, even advertisements. Equally importantly, though, watching TV is considered as an effective method to prevent children who were born in two-income families—parents both have jobs and cannot spend much time on taking care of their kids—from doing dangerous and hazardous behaviors. The third contributing factor of kidnapping boys and girls on the front of TV sets is lack of activities which are interesting and suit for children today. Therefore, watching situation comedies, like the Simpsons, is the last pastime for children at leisure. In order to address this problem, I personally believe that, first of all, parents should spare time to enter more outdoor activities with their kids who should be dragged out of TV programmes. Furthermore, active courses should be included in compulsory, for example, physical education and fine art. Last but not least, while there remains some disagreements on the contrary, I still contend parents have to control the span that their kids facing televisions and it must be the most useful and helpful solution. In reality, my suggestions on this widely existed problem are oversimplified. However, if parents associated with school teachers realize these possibilities, children will have more opportunities to be released from the negative influences of the modern invention named TV.