Topic 66 Are classmates a more important influence to a child?

Children's success at school depends on a lot of factors, excellent classmates, qualified teachers, good parenting and so on. Among all the factors, classmates play an important role in determining children's success.

Did the boys pal up with any other campers? — Мальчики подружились с кем-нибудь ещё из лагеря?

First, classmates are a great help in the academic studies of our children. Children spend most of their time at school with their classmates, sharing learning experiences among each other. No only are they competitors, but also they are learning pals (друзья, приятели) as well. When someone face difficulties in the learning process, he can seek immediate help from his classmates especially when teachers are not available at that moment. In some cases when courses relating to language teaching demand that students practice speaking in groups, cooperative classmates will be a great assistance to achieving the goal of effective learning.

Second, children acquire (приобретают) communication skills during their encounter with their classmates. Children who are able to establish good relationships with their classmates are more likely to achieve in their future career. Since a classroom consists of a group of people including teachers and students, they are just like a small society. If children can deal with everything appropriately (надлежащий) with their schoolmates at school, they are more likely to keep good terms with their colleagues in the future workplace. A Good relation with others is part of their success.

Finally, children have also obtained a great deal of life experience from their classmates. Being of the same age, children are easier to communicate with their generation than with their parents. As a result, they learn more from their counterparts (коллеги) than from their parents.

From those reasons, we can safely conclude that classmates are too important a factor to ignore and they are a more important influence than parents on children' success at school.

Topic 67 Inexperienced, cheap workers or experienced workers?

When it comes to whether an employer should hire (Когда дело доходит до того) workers with less experiences and lower pay, or to hire experienced workers with a higher salary, since there are always advantages and disadvantages of the two, and there are always different situations, my personal option is that different strategy should be applied for different situations.

For situations where basic and simple jobs which requires less training, and cutting down (сокращение затрат) cost is vital for the survival of the business, I would prefer to hire someone who has less experience and willing to work under a lower pay. For example, a factory should hire more inexperienced laborers to work on the part of the plant where less skill but more physical strength is needed; and a restaurant owner should hire a cheaper kitchen hand rather than more chefs to cut down the cost of operation.

On the other hand, for situations when more knowledge and skills is crucial for a job (имеет решающее значение для), I would tend to (как правило) hire someone who is more experienced and would rather pay more salary. Training an inexperienced person for an advanced position can cost a great deal of money (много денег), and a mistake an inexperienced makes sometimes can bring disaster to a company. Therefore an experienced personnel is a valuable asset (ценный актив) for a business. Sometimes the value cannot be measured by money. A company may lost millions of dollars of revenue when some important positions are vacant and it has to look for someone who is qualified or take a lot of time to train a new person.

In conclusion, when we decide whether to hire a inexperienced, cheaper worker or an experienced, but more expensive worker, it is always depend on the nature of the business and the position, the amount of training required, and of course, the employers' personal preferences (личных предпочтений).