1. A company has announced that it wishes to build a large factory near your community. Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of this new influence on your community. Do you support or oppose the factory? Explain your position.

　　New factories often bring many good things to a community, such as jobs and increased prosperity. However, in my opinion, the benefits of having a factory are outweighed by the risks. That is why I oppose the plan to build a factory near my community.

　　I believe that this city would be harmed by a large factory. In particular, a factory would destroy the quality of the air and water in town. Factories bring smog and pollution. In the long run, the environment will be hurt and people’s health will be affected. Having a factory is not worth that rise.

　　Of course, more jobs will be created by the factory. Our population will grow. To accommodate more workers, more homes and stores will be needed. Do we really want this much growth, so fast? If our town is going in growth, I would prefer slow growth with good planning. I don’t want to see rows of cheaply constructed townhouses. Our quality of life must be considered.

　　I believe that this growth will change our city too much. I love my hometown because it is a safe, small town. It is also easy to travel here. If we must expand to hold new citizens, the small-town feel will be gone. I mould miss that greatly.

　　A factory would be helpful in some ways. However, I feel that the dangers are greater than the benefits. I cannot support a plan to build a factory here, and hope that others feel the same way.

　　2. MA If you could change one important thing about your hometown, what would you change? Use reasons and specific examples to support your answer.

　　If I could change one thing about my hometown, I think it would be the fact that there's no sense of community here. People don't feel connected, they don't look out for each other, and they don't get to know their neighbors.

　　People come and go a lot here. They change jobs frequently and move on. This means that they don't put down roots in the community. They don't join community organizations and they're not willing to get involved in trying to improve the quality of life. If someone has a petition to put in a new street light, she has a very hard time getting a lot of people to sign. They don't feel it has anything to do with them. They don't get involved in improving the schools because they don't think the quality of education is important to their lives. They don't see the connection between themselves and the rest of their community.

　　People don't try to support others around them. They don't keep a friendly eyes on their children, or check in on older folks if they don't see them for a few days. They're not aware when people around them may be going through a hard time. For example, they may not know if a neighbor loses a loved one. There's not a lot of community support for individuals.

　　Neighbors don't get to know each other. Again, this is because people come and go within a few years. So when neighbors go on vacation, no one is keeping an eye on their house. No one is making sure nothing suspicious is going on there, like lights in the middle of the night. When neighbors' children are cutting across someone's lawn on their bikes, there's no friendly way of casually mentioning the problem. People immediately act as if it's a major property disagreement.

　　My hometown is a nice place to live in many ways, but it would be much nice if we had that sense of community.

　　Do movies and television affect our behavior? A special concern is whether movies and television make children and society more violent. I believe that movies and television do influence our behavior, both for the better and for the worse.

　　Movies do make people more violent. The more we see violent acts on television, the less sensitive we become to them. Eventually violence doesn’t seem wrong .we may even commit violent acts ourselves. This is especially true because we don’t always realize that violence has consequences. Actors can be killed and come back for another movie. Sometimes we confuse that with reality. We forget that killing someone is permanent.

　　Movies and television also influence our behavior because they make us less active. Looking at films is a passive activity. If we watch too much, we become unhealthy, both mentally and physically. We stop using our own imagination when we see things acted out for us. Mental laziness becomes physical laziness; we’d rather watch sports on to than play sports ourselves. we’d rather visit with the characters on “Seinfeld” or “Friends” than go chat with our own neighbors. Imaginary people have exciting lives. Is it any wonder that some people would rather live a fantasy life than their own?

　　Of course, watching movies and television can also be good for us. It can give us a broader window on the world. For example, seeing movies can expose us to people of different races and cultures. We can then overcome some prejudices more easily. Recently there have been more handicapped people in films, and this also helps reduce prejudice.

　　The best influence on our behavior is that movies and television reduce stress. Watching films, we can escape our own problems for a little while. Also, sometime movies show positive ways to resolve problems we all face. While TV and movies shouldn’t be a way to hide from life, sometimes they can help us cope.

　　It is true that movies and television can influence our behavior negatively. However, I also believe that they influence our behaviors in positive ways. How they affect you depends on how much you watch, what you watch, and how you respond to what you watch.

　　4. Do you agree or disagree with the following statement? Television has destroyed communication among friends and family. Use specific reasons and examples to support your opinion.

　　Some people believe that television has destroyed communication among friends and family. I think this is an exaggeration. In my opinion, whether or not television hurts communication depends on what type of program is being viewed. More importantly, it depends on the type of viewer.

　　There are empty programs and educational programs. Empty programs do not challenge people. They have just enough storyline to keep them from switching channels. There are also passive and active viewers. A passive viewer will just watch television without thinking about what be or she seeing. The combination of an empty program and a passive viewer makes communication unlikely. Passive viewers just continue to watch, actually enjoying the fact that they don’t have to think. They won’t break away to talk about programming with friends and family. Even with better programming, passive viewers still won’t think or communicate much. The probably even prefer the empty program because the better programming is too much work.

　　On the other hand, active viewers watching educational programming always want to share what they see with friends and family. “Educational” doesn’t necessarily mean documentaries on BBS. They could be dramas with realistic relationships or action shows with clever plotlines. When active viewers watch programs, they have ideas and talk about them with others. Good programming inspires them to change their thinking and their lives. Unlike passive viewers, they don’t want to watch more and more without thinking.

　　Television may destroy communication among passive viewers. Those viewers probably don’t want to communicate with friends and family much anyway. For active viewers who already enjoy communicating, television is actually helpful!