Topic 71 a high-paying job vs. Quality spare time

Between a high-paying job with long hours and a lower-paying job with shorter hours, I will definitely choose a high-paying job with long hours, although I might have little time to spend with my family and friends.

Firstly, money can help my dreams come true. I need a lot of money to do many things. I want to buy a huge house with a garden and a swimming pool. I also want to have an expensive car. Maybe my relatives need my financial assistance. Especially, I hope my family can have a kind of comfortable life. My children can go to a famous private university to get excellent education. If I have no money, all of my dreams cannot come true.

In addition, to me, making a lot of money is a sign of success. I think that no one respects a poor man in today's society. From newspaper to television, almost all media focus on wealthy people instead of the poor. I cannot let the others consider me an incompetent man.

Of course, making this choice means that I have to pay a price. Perhaps, I cannot spend too much time with my family and friends. But I never regret my decision because I believe that both my family and my friends can understand me. For my family, I think they should know whom I do this for. For my friends, they will think how success I am and they will proud of me.

In conclusion, money is so important to me that I must choose a high-paying job regardless of the consequences it will cause.

Topic 72 Does grades encourage students to learn?

When it comes to the issue that whether grades are the purpose of student's education, different people have different ideas. As far as I am concerned, the grade can promote student's attitudes toward learning.

I take this view on account of the following reasons. First of all, grades are the objects that demonstrate students' abilities in specified fields that they learned. Since there are lots of drawbacks (недостатков) of other evaluation methods, examinations or grades are the most efficient and fairest way to describe a student's capabilities (возможности). For example, a student who achieves the best grades in all subjects is undoubtedly the best student in his class.

Second to take into account is that grades are possibly the definitive factor whether one student can obtain a decent and well-paid job. Having not many working experiences, students can only prove the proof of their abilities by showing exam records to their employers. Last but not least, contrasting to the better grades the his classmates make, a confident and self disciplined student will continue making effort on his study. Such kind of a grading system certainly encourages students to learn.

However, just as the English proverb goes, "a coin has two sides." Those who maintain the opposite view are partly reasonable that grades could not demonstrate all the abilities that a student has, such as communication skills and survival skills.

Despite the factor I outlined, we can easily conclude that, generally speaking, grades are very important for student's study, and they surely (конечно) encourage (способствуют) students to learn.