‘It put an end to my childhood’: the hidden scandal of US child marriage

Child marriage is an issue many young girls are forced to deal with. Many ordinary people learning about such terrifying stories try to react and decide to help innocent girls in any way. Although getting married at an early age is thought to be abnormal, yet no reasonable actions haven’t been taken by the government of the US to prevent it. Surprisingly, there are many views on such a problem, as some people don’t consider it a somewhat bad and concerning issue. Let me examine some points on this topic.

There’s no doubt little girls are not supposed to marry old men as it might lead to crucial consequences. Firstly, in many cases presented in the article girls are to get married against their will, as they got pregnant because of a rape. Therefore, when these marriages are official and legal, all rapes happening afterwards become legal too, and there’s no way out. Secondly, child marriage leaves no childhood to the victims, which mostly lead to many kinds of diseases girls undergo. For instance, cancer, heart attacks, problems with mental health-psychiatric disorders, etc. Moreover, most girls drop out of schools and can’t work afterwards as they’re unable to study and find a good job while undergoing such tough moments of their lives which are really hard to overcome.

Many women having coped with such a problem-or just the ones who want to help-try to do their best to make government notice it and take some actions. However, the outcome is usually worse than it is expected to be. Many males don’t consider it to be a problem as they believe “if a girl gets pregnant, she’s got to get married”, which is quite controversial as it was done against their will. It happens just because representatives of the government are unwilling to change the law and bring out such a topic for a discussion for they think little girls are not old enough to take part in such events by telling their stories and make representatives change their minds, but old enough to get married-which is even more controversial.

All in all, child marriage is something women try to fight against, although it seems rather hard to convince authorities that such an issue needs a discussion and a solution in the end. Little girls are not to blame, as they don’t even decide anything because of their young age; so, people around who are not indifferent try to do the most to help them, although it doesn’t always lead to a great outcome.

Thanks for reading this! Here's the link to the article: child marriage

A Reflection Note

Hello everyone!

Today I’d like to share with you my thoughts on the past semester. We had many interesting activities and some of them I found quite useful.

Firstly, the idea of making a blog and uploading our works to it was astonishing to me as I really like posting my thoughts on the Internet, but I hadn’t known such a platform as ‘Blogger’ before our Academic Writing classes began. It’s indeed very interesting to find out new websites where you can share your tasks and discuss it with your teacher and peers afterward. In addition, reading my peers’ works was useful as it helped me develop my own ones because they gave me some clues.

Secondly, we had many classes related to the topic of social issues. We worked a lot with articles from The Guardian and it helped to not only be aware of current affairs but also helped analyze those articles, give a summary of them, etc.  

Thirdly, I was grateful to find out special links to shorten URL addresses, to check our works for plagiarism and many more. Actually, the topic of plagiarism is an important one, and I’m glad we spent much time discussing how to avoid it and make our works original.

Personally, I’d like to pay more attention to the topic of punctuation in texts. I suppose, it should always be revised, as it’s one of the themes many Russians have problems with for we have different systems and rules (I mean, Russian and English people).

We’ve done a good job, and I hope we’ll continue on doing the same next semester.

A Summary of an Article

Hello everyone!

Today I’d like to give you a summary of the article I’ve read in the Guardian. Here’s the link: https://bit.ly/2PFhSy2

I’ve chosen it because I’m genuinely curious to find out why men often cannot understand women’s problems and act rude regarding them.

The article «Being a father to school-aged daughter ‘makes men less sexist’» written by Nicola Davis is devoted to the problem of men being intolerant and abusive to women because of misunderstanding the problems they actually deal with. First, the author draws our attention to the fact that this often happens if men do not have daughters in their families; therefore, they cannot really face the struggles girls come across. Then she analyses the survey among families with and without daughters asking them questions about traditional attitudes about earning money (men) and looking after home (women). The author emphasizes that men having daughters disagree with traditional views on taking responsibilities in a family. Finally, she concludes by giving a quotation by a woman working in mental health and gender sphere who stated that it’s unclear what exactly makes men change their mind when having a daughter. In addition, although the thoughts expressed there were rather obscure, it is an interesting topic to discuss and further research might give some certain ideas.

The Generation Gap Is One Which Cannot Be Bridged

A problem of misunderstanding between generations has always been important in people’s lives. There are many views on the topic, mostly connected with the fast speed of modern life. However, the problem appeared much earlier, so let me examine some points regarding this issue. 

On one hand, a rapid pace of life suggests that people are supposed to adapt to modern innovations and constantly evolving environment. This is the very point where problems might appear. For example, the elderly are mostly conservative in their mindset: they are accustomed to what they had in the previous century when they were young. Earlier, people didn’t have many options for anything; therefore, it is an odd thing to substitute something they’re used to(like old phones to smartphones, post office to electronic mail, etc.)

Moreover, people of different generations don’t have the same values. Elder people were more appreciative of what they had as opposed to modern generations of consumerism; therefore, when it comes to coping with some difficulties, salvations often differ. Something that youngsters find troublesome and annoying might be an absolutely normal thing for elderly as they are more experienced. 

On the other hand, most modern parents try to keep pace with technological development. They want to be aware of innovations, be closer to their children who are the first to find out about new things. Moreover, there are people who want their children to feel safe and accepted, so they try not to be categorical but tolerant and wise when reacting to their kids’ actions. 

To sum up, I want to say that generation gap is something that cannot disappear completely as opinions of young and old generations based on their experience always differ; nevertheless, people need to work on it to soften degree of perceiving different opinions. 

Quick Memorizing of New Words 

Hello everyone! 

As a linguist I must have good memory to learn  new words; therefore, I should always do something to improve my memorizing skills. 

Today I’d like to give you some tips regarding this issue. Don’t hesitate to try them out!

1. Making paper flash cards 

I consider this way to be the easiest one for me. It takes me very little time. I cut the paper into small pieces, and then, I write the word in English on one side of the card and the translation/definition on the other. It’s useful when I am to write a dictation and I don’t have much time for revising. I can learn at least 30-or even more- words in 5-10 minutes; therefore, I find this way of memorizing vocabulary really efficient. 

Furthermore, if I want to keep some words in my memory, I put the cards with them in the box and revise the words every week/month. 

This way of memorizing is my favourite one as I have a photographic memory; therefore, by writing words down I can easily visualise them afterwards. 

2. Using words as much as possible 

After learning some words, I need to use them not to forget. That’s why the other tip is about writing examples or rather a text using new vocabulary. It really helps me remember the words from the context as I look back on the text or examples which I wrote, and I can quickly come up with the word I learned.

All in all, I don’t use any programs(/apps) for learning new words-it takes too much time and is not efficient for me. It’s enough to flip through the cards or just skim through new vocabulary I wrote in my notebook. My kind of memory allows me just to visualise the image of written stuff and this is it. 

Hope it was somewhat useful!

Leave your comments if there are any questions!