2009年10月30日 星期五

Newspaper Article

Students bid for chance at Lunar New Year profit Budding entrepreneurs, many of them in school uniform, went head-to-head to bid for stalls at the 2010 Lunar New Year bazaar in Victoria Park.

//-->BeatriceSiu Friday, October 30, 2009
Budding entrepreneurs, many of them in school uniform, went head-to-head to bid for stalls at the 2010 Lunar New Year bazaar in Victoria Park.
They are hoping to turn a buck from the 2010 fair, amid signs the city is on its way to economic recovery.
New Method College was the highest bidder for a themed dry goods stall at HK$41,000.
A supervisor of extracurricular activities at the school, surnamed Cheng, said the experience will teach students how to do business. "Making a profit is not our aim. What's more important is to teach the students how to run a business and cooperate with their partners."
Student Cheng Wing-hong said profit was not his main motivation.
"I am happy even if I make little money. All I want is to learn from the experience," he said.
Wilson Tam Chin-wai, 23, took eight attempts before he won out with a HK$30,000 bid, eight times more than the opening price.
"As Lunar New Year and Valentine's Day are on the same day, I hope more lovers will buy my products," he said.
Tam is investing HK$300,000 in the stall and hopes to double his money.
The fair opens on February 8 and interest in the auction was likely boosted by auspicious dates. It closely coincides with the first day of the Year of the Tiger - February 14 - which is also Valentine's Day on the Western calendar.
On Wednesday, keen bidding saw the most sought-after fast-food site fetch a 10-year-high price of HK
$490,000 after opening at HK$230,180. A Mr Leung yesterday secured two stalls with bids of HK$60,000 and HK$40,000 respectively, five to seven times more than the opening price.
The Food and Environmental Hygiene Department auctioned eight themed dry goods stalls and 284 dry goods stalls yesterday.
Leung Yui-hung, a chicken biscuit hawker, secured a dry goods stall with HK$60,000, six times higher than the HK$8,740 opening price.

2009年10月16日 星期五

Comprehension Questions

Holistic Learning
Smart people don’t just learn better. They learn differently. While many students get caught up in memorizing facts, intelligent learners know to seek the bigger picture and connect the facts together. This form of learning I call holistic learning.

Holistic learning is basically the opposite of rote memorization. Instead of reciting lists of facts, rules or formulas, you seek to connect ideas together. Instead of having separate boxes in your head for geometry, algebra or ancient India, you deliberately link facts together, so they form a bigger picture.

1. What is holistic learning?
Holistic learning is the kind learning where the learners know how to understand what he learn by using and forming pictures to connect the facts and information together. In other words, holistic learners learn and understand the materials the first time they study.

Excessive studying shows you aren’t learning holistically. It shows that you didn’t learn the material the first time. If you properly link ideas together to see the bigger picture, studying should only be a brief refresher.

How to Boost Your Study Habits

Holistic learning isn’t like a brainstorming technique or mind-mapping. It is fundamentally changing how you look at the process of learning and how you absorb information. As such, there isn’t an easy ten step program to master it.

There are some tools that can help you shift your learning habits so they become more holistic:

Visceralize 感官和動作集中學習- You’ve probably heard of visualizing, right? Visceralizing means taking all of your senses and connecting it to information. Studies have shown that people remember more vividly information that comes to us in an emotionally aroused state. Linking feelings, senses and imagery to bland ideas makes them more real. You probably counted on your fingers when learning numbers, why can’t you do the same when you are learning now?

Metaphor隱喻 - The heart of holistic learning is relating things together. Metaphors are literary devices that link two things that normally don’t go together. Come up with metaphors to describe more complicated ideas in simpler terms.

Ten-Year-Old Rule十歲法則 - Explain ideas to yourself as you would to a ten year old. Sure, this isn’t always possible in your last years of a medical degree or learning how to apply neural networks to computer AI. But the idea is that you should be able to “dumb down” an idea enough so it seems obvious to yourself.

Trace Back 引用 - Put away your books and start with a random fact or concept. Then relate that idea to another concept in your subject. Keep doing this tracing pattern until you’ve linked many ideas together. The Gupta Dynasty reminds you of ancient Greece which reminds you of Socrates, reminding you of Confucius…

Refresher Scan 快速復習 - Scan through information in your text book. Notice whenever you encounter information that you either don’t remember or weren’t 100% sure about. Quickly link that information back to existing ideas through viscerlization and metaphor. If your refresher scan is turning up more than a few points per chapter, you haven’t learned it thoroughly enough.

Compress Information壓縮信息 - Not all information works well for holistic learning. A common point cited to me is learning anatomy for first year medical students. Anatomy involves learning arbitrary Latin names for hundreds of different elements of your body. There often aren’t clear patterns and constructs, just a dry list off acts. When encountering information such as this, your goal should be to compress it. Find ways to group information into smaller chunks of memory through pictures or mnemonics.

Write寫下有關聯想 - Take a piece of paper and write out the connections in the information. Reorganize the information into different patterns. The key here is the writing, not the final product. So don’t waste your time making a pretty picture. Scribble and use abbreviations to link the ideas together.

List two of the learning habits and explain how they help learners to learn better.

One of the learning habit is called virceralisation. Learners can benefit when they use feelings, senses, and imaginary to bland ideas and information when they learn something. This helps them remember better and more vividly because information that comes to them in an emotionally aroused state.

The other habit is called "Metaphor". Learners can benefit when they use metaphor to link two things to describe more complicated ideas in simpler terms.






Scott Young is a blogger on learning, productivity and habits. You can check out his website here. If you want to learn more about Holistic Learning, download his free e-book: Holistic Learning: How to StudyBetter, Learn More and Actually “Get” What You Want to Learn

2009年10月2日 星期五

Letter Writing

Dear John,

Have you watched the TV progromme on the celebration of the 60th Anniversary of China? I think it is a great showcase in terms of China’s military capabilities, the successful rule of communist party, and the social and economic development and progress of China.

As for the aspect of military achievements, I was impressed by the well-performed marching of the troops, they were totally robotic. I like their uniforms and the way they marched. The large number of fighter jets flying over the city is also impressive. The display of the high-tech weaponry, such as ballistic missiles clearly indicates China’s military capability.

As for the successful rule of communist party, president Hu Jintao reported the successful work of the communist party. He made us feel proud of China because of the achievement brought by the reform and opening up policy.

As for the social and economic development and progress of China, the parade showcased some of the social and economic accomplishments China made in the past 60 years through the reform and opening-up policy.

I hope you've seen the programme. If not, you must try to watch it if you can. You will be impressed, too.

With Best Wishes
Alvin