Persuasive Writing

Welcome to my speech ladies and gentlemen! Today I am giving a speech on 孏he school should install language pack on the computer programme�. Language pack is a programme that allows foreign language speakers such as Chinese, Korean or Japanese etc. to view our language on the computer. It is a very concerning issue at the moment for us.

The school is not deciding to install any language pack whatsoever for the sake of us Asians. We live at this school from Sunday until Saturday, for at least three months at a time. Language pack is necessary for us, for the Asians, for the people who are no where near their home. They say the reason for not installing the language pack is for the benefits of ours. They say we are here to learn English. Does learning English mean that we have to give up our first language? This is completely injustice, inconsiderable, inappropriate reason. We all came here. We come from the other side of the world. We miss home. We miss our friends. We miss our country. The least the school could do for us is to give us the most basic facility so that we could keep in touch with our friends, family and country. Allow us to read the news and know what is going on in our country. Let us know how our friends are getting on. Is this considered as against the rule of learning English? This is just cruelty. I cannot understand the reason of stopping us from communicating from our country by reading our own language. Would this help our English? It would not. It is not going to. It is going to make us feel more home sick. We feel as if we are completely isolated from our friends and family because we are learning English here. What if one of us wants to enter into one of the universities in Hong Kong and yet she cannot view Chinese in order to get the best information given on the website? This is unfair. What if one of us wants to take part in the public exams of Chinese? We would need to read more, contact with it more. At the same time, we could still learn English. It is all about practising. I believe that they understand learning a language is all about practising, then why stop us from practising our own language?

Imagine when you receive an e-mail from home or friends that is written in your language and yet you cannot view it. All you are able to see is square after square. Does anyone even understand how awful we all feel?

Yet they installed the language pack for European foreign languages, French, German and Spanish are all installed. There are a few French, German and Spanish girls that would come to learn English at our school. They get to access websites that are viewable in their own language, and yet they are only here for at the most one month to learn as much English as possible. We are here for years, morning until night, Sunday until Saturday, beginning of term until end of term. We still do not get the chance to contact with our friends and family!

They would probably say 㛝ou could use the phone; we are not stopping you from doing that!� I believe that they have not included the time difference in their consideration of allowance. There is seven hours of time difference between the United Kingdom and Hong Kong. I am sure there are other big time differences between here and Korean, Japan too. It is just ridiculous how much we get to contact with our friends.

They have also stopped us from accessing to our blogs (diary online). I do not see there is anything wrong in typing our diaries on the website so that our friends can see how each other are getting on at different part of the world. We could not talk to them instantly all the time, so we decided to read their daily routines and things that had happened to them the very day. The school decided that this was dangerous for us girls because we would be meeting random people form the internet and get ourselves killed! Therefore they decided to stop us from letting our friends know how we are getting on and letting us know how our friends are getting on. This is very fair indeed!

I also strongly disagree with the way they treated the e-mail accounts. They have denied our access to hotmail and yahoo accounts. Then they say, the school would provide you e-mail accounts. Soon, there is a massive notice up on a notice board telling us that all e-mails would be monitored. How are we, as students, supposed to feel about this? Is there much privacy (if any) involved? Is the school bringing in too much rules on the computer? Should us, the Asians, the foreigners get more facility and be able to contact with our friends and family more than just square after square?

Thank you for listening to my presentation.