Assignment 1: Why People Resist New Technology

One of the reasons people resist new technology may be people’s fear of losing their job. With reference to the past, one can see that during the Industrial Revolution, the number of people employed in both primary and secondary industries was greatly reduced when technology was introduced. In that period of time, with the development of technology, many machines were invented. As a result, the jobs of hundreds and thousands of people were replaced by machines. Looking at the sector of agriculture in the primary industry, threshers were invented to replace people in the job of wheat harvesting. As for the secondary industry, in the sector of manufacturing, sewing machines were introduced into the clothing industry and the number of seamstresses required was reduced. All these substitutions of labourers with machines were due to the higher job efficiency and consistency delivered by the machines. This rate of substitution exists even today. In the competitive world that we are living in now, job efficiency is of even higher importance. This causes a higher focus on research and development. Hence, there will be more introductions of new machines, posing an ever growing threat to people’s jobs. For example, in Kodak, a filmmaking company, a machine for mixing of filmmaking ingredients replaced the jobs of 14 workers (Hagenbaugh, 2002, para. 23). In addition, these machines are connected to controls rooms where only a few workers are needed there to watch computer screens (Hagenbaugh, 2002, para. 24). Therefore, one of the potential reasons for people to resist new technology is the fear of being made obsolete.

Reference

Hagenbaugh, B. (2002, December 13). U.S. manufacturing jobs fading away fast. September 12, 2008, from http://www.usatoday.com/money/jobcenter/workplace/2002-12-13-factory-jobs_x.htm

Task 2: One of My Common Grammar Mistakes

One of the common grammar mistakes, which I make on writing, is the missing of articles. I am not sure of when and where to use the article and often make mistake on missing the article out. I had missed out more than five articles in my draft for the first assignment. I think this is actually quite serious. Therefore, in this article, different types of articles will be defined and some tips on article usage will be done.

Basically, there are a total of three articles: “the”, “a” and “an”. They are being classified into two categories being definite article and indefinite articles. “The” is a definite article and “a” and “an” are indefinite articles. A definite article is used when it is referring to a specific object. On the opposite, an indefinite article is used when it is not referring to a specific object. The only difference between “a” and “an”, under the category of indefinite articles is, “an” is normally used if the subject, which one speaks, starts with vowels. In short, a total of three articles are available for usage and they are being classified into definite articles and indefinite articles.

In the following are some tips which I found on internet, on the usage of articles. Firstly, after an indefinite article is used on mentioning something, one can repeat the object with the definite article, “the”. An example is “I live in a house. The house is beautiful”. Next, objects that are referring to water, oceans and seas are to be used with articles. One of the examples is “The Pacific Ocean is large”. As for countries, states, provinces, lakes and mountains, articles will not be used unless the country is a collection of states. For example, Singapore is only a country; hence it will be mentioned without an article but for the United States, which is a collection of states, will be mentioned as “The United States”. Next, articles should not be used when one is talking about things in general and when one is talking about meals, places and transport. One of the examples is “She had lunch at home”. Lastly, articles should not be used with a plural countable noun and with an uncountable noun. For example, when one says “cats are cute” and “this information is useful”, articles will not be used. In summary, the application of an article depends on the form of subject.

In conclusion, there are two types of articles, indefinite and definite articles, and the usage of articles is dependent on the subject.

(Below is the assessment which I did.)

SELF Materials Articles Elementary

Fill in the gaps in this story, using a, an, the, or the zero article (Ø)

Last week I went to ____an____ exhibition of ____zero____ paintings at ____the____ Tate Gallery in London. I’m not really ___a_____ great art lover but I’d read lots of good reviews of ____the____ exhibition and I was keen to see it. When I arrived, there were already some people waiting outside for ____zero (wrong)_the (answer)___ doors to open. I joined ___the_____ queue and in ___the_____ end ___zero (wrong)__the (answer)___ doors opened and we went inside to see ____the____ show.

Now I must be honest and admit that many of ____the____ paintings disappointed me. Although I spent a lot of time looking carefully at ___zero_____ each one, I had difficulty understanding what ____the____ artist was getting at. Finally as I was looking rather stupidly at one of ____the____ paintings and trying to decide if it was ___the_____ right way up or not, ____an____ old gentleman came up behind me and started to explain ____the____ whole thing to me. He kindly answered all of ___zero_____ my questions and we talked for over ____an____ hour. Then he said he had ____an____ appointment and had to go, so we shook hands and said goodbye. I went round the gallery once more and now I found that all ___the_____ paintings seemed really beautiful.

It was only as I was leaving ____the____ gallery that I found out who ___the_____ old man was- his self-portrait was on ____zero (wrong)_the (answer)___ posters advertising ____the____ exhibition!

(Taken from Progress to First Certificate Student’s Book by Leo Jones, CUP 1990)