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Summary of critical reading

Sample 1

Stress among students and how to deal with it


Stress is a major issue for students as they cope with a variety of academic, social,
and personalchallenges. Stress is a major issue for students as they cope with a variety of
academic, social, and personal challenges (Lin and Huang, 2013 p.77). According to Byrne
(2005), stress happens as a result of out-balance of life. She divided stress into two parts,
stress that is good for life and the other is vice-versa. However, the discussion on the stress
issues have always been on the bad one that gives bad impact to life. Byrne (2005) discusses
three ways how stress manifests itself in us namely in physical front, mental abilities and
bahavior.
Lin and Huang (2013) have been promoting the relationship between academic
burnout and life stress. They conducted a research regarding factors of stress among students,
which involved students from five universities in Taiwan three public and two private
based on six areas promoted by Lu (2004) which are academic stress, interpersonal stress,
family stress, emotional stress, future development stress and self-identity stress. Their
research reported that the level of student burnout and stress was in general not serious among
the respondents. Nonetheless, findings from the research on factors of stress among students
showed that future-development was frequently chosen as compared to family and emotional
stresses. This indicates that students are worried about their future.
Byrne (2005) asserts that stress could not be eliminated from life, yet one must learn to
cope with stress. She suggests that one should develop a stress-management plan which
would effectively work against stress that one has. She recommends a simple tool that is
called Wheel of Life to work out the imbalances in life by arranging steps to overcome the
imbalances. As for Lin and Huang (2013), they came up with different approaches to solve
stress issue. They suggested role play between student and authoritative figures like teacher
and college administrator. They explained that improved understanding is important so that
students need guides to manage stress.

Sample 2

Gun control could reduce crimes involving guns


The two articles that I read (de Souza et al., 2007 and Chapman et al., 2006) discuss
gun control law in Brazil and Australia respectively. The meaning of gun control law in
Brazil and Australia is slightly different based on these two articles. In Brazil, gun control
law is about controlling the flow of firearms into the country, registering firearm for legalizing
purpose, monitoring the person who could buy guns and imposing penalties in certain cases
(de Souza, 2007). In Australia, the gun control law involves moves to remove semi-automatic
and pump-action guns and rifles from the civilian possession, to ban rapid fire long guns and
to require registration and license of any firearm already in the hand of the civilians
(Chapman et al., 2006). Nonetheless, the ultimate aim of gun control law in both countries is
to reduce the firearm-related deaths and control the availability of firearms in the community.
The two articles also reported about the effects of the gun control law. There is a
decline in mortality that involved firearms after the gun control law is practices in both
countries. Firearm-related death decreased 8 percent and firearm-related hospitalization
declined by 4.6 percent after one year of introducing the gun control law in Brazil (de Souza
et al.,2007). In Australia, after more than ten years since the gun control law was introduced,
an average of 7.4 percent decline per year for firearm suicides and 7.5 percent for firearm
homicides have been recorded (Chapman et al., 2006). It is clear that the introduction of the
gun control law has been effective enough to reduce the number of deaths related to firearms
and made both countries a better place to live with less fear for firearm crimes.
Other than the implementation of the gun control law, both countries have also done
other efforts to reduce the number of firearms in the community. For example, both countries
carried out the voluntary firearm buy-back programme in order to remove as much as possible
the firearms that are owned by the public (de Souza et al., 2007; Chapman et al., 2006). It is
believed that by decreasing the availability of firearms, the mortality rate that is related to
firearms could be reduced. As the then Australian Prime Minister, John Howard, once said,
ours is not a gun culture, ours is a culture of peaceful cooperation (Chapman et al., 2006 p
89).
Sample 3

Many countries have made attempts to bid to host major sporting events such as the
Olympics, the FIFA World Cup and etc. Malaysia has also involved in attempting to bid to
host such events, but the question is, Should Malaysia Host such Sporting Mega Event?. A
sporting mega event could be defined based on two main respects: internal characteristics
such as duration and scale, and external characteristics such as its media coverage and tourism
attractiveness and its impacts on the host country (Malfas et al., 2004). It is undeniable that
these mega events would definitely bring impacts which range from political, social,
economical, physical and cultural and these impacts can be negative as well as positive. The
most common impacts are socio-economic impacts, socio-cultural impacts, physical impacts
and political impacts (Malfas et al., 2004; Barclay, 2009).
In terms of positive impacts, hosting mega sporting events could create more job
opportunities (Malfas et al., 2004; Barclay, 2009), which could decrease the unemployment
rate of a host country. However, Malfas et al. (2004) claim that the jobs are often on part-time
basis and pay very low. In terms of socio-cultural benefits, Malfas et al. (2004) agree that
hosting major sporting events could increase the interest and participation of residents in sport
activities as well as increase the local pride and community spirit. In many cases, hosting a
mega sporting event have also transformed the physical impacts or image of the host cities
(Malfas, et al. (2004). New facilities, new roads and development of public transportation
may improve the physical appearance of host cities (Malfas et al., 2004; Barclay, 2009). Last
but not least, hosting a mega sporting event may improve the practices of public
administrations which could lead to stronger political practices.
Barclay (2007) mentions several negative impacts as a result of hosting a mega
sporting event. First, residents of a host city may change their spending patterns to avoid
inflated prices due to an increased number of visitors. Daily expenditures may also increase
sharply as a result of increase demands from visitors. Local residents also may change their
daily activities due to congestions, resulting from the suddent increase of road users.
In short, both papers have discussed many positive and negative impacts that a
country may experience by hosting mega sporting events. Since the positive impacts seem to
outweigh the negative impacts, perhaps it is wise for Malaysia to bid to host one mega
sporting event.

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