Part Ⅵ Writing (45 min)
Nowadays, there are multiple activities for students to attend todevelop their mental agility and rhetorical skills, such as debatecontests, speech contests and the like. In view of this situation,some people claim that students should be encouraged torealize that mental agility and rhetorical skill must beaccompanied by sincerity and the true conviction of their own beliefs. What do you think of thisstatement? Write an essay of about 400 words.
In the first part of your essay you should state clearly your main argument, and in the second partyou should support your argument with appropriate details. In the last part you should bring whatyou have written to a natural conclusion or make a summary.
You should supply an appropriate title for your essay.
Marks will be awarded for content, organization, grammar and appropriateness. Failure to follow theabove instructions may result in a loss of marks.
Achieving a Balance between Mental Development and Molding of Personality
There is an academic tendency today to overemphasize mental agility and rhetorical skills, whilegiving little attention to students’ sincerity and the true conviction of their own beliefs. As we cansee, there are multiple activities for students to attend on campus to develop their intellect andrhetorical skills, such as debates, speech contests and the like. Intellectual “wins” in these mentaland rhetorical games become more important to some people than true beliefs and convictions;displays of intellectual brilliance are more important to them than representing what is true. In viewof this situation, some people expressed their worries. I believe these worries are justifiable.
Of course, these skills have their place and it is essential that they should be developed. Mentalagility’s value lies in helping us reason more effectively and thoroughly and discriminate betweenright and wrong. This is its rightful purpose, but it should not be used as a tool to belittle ouropponents by concealing faults or weakness in our reasoning, or by setting fallacious intellectualtraps for our rivals. Similarly, the true value of rhetorical skills doesn’t lie in making a falsehood seembeautiful and logical. Only the pursuits of truth and right are essential for the career of scholars andother educated people.
One can easily observe the dangers of such imbalance: without the accompanying of sincerity andtrue conviction of one’s beliefs, students might easily abuse their mental agility and rhetoricaltechniques. Only concerning with the technique itself, a student might not hesitate to saysomething in which they don’t believe, or make a statement about which they haven’t even givenmuch thought. Ensuing discussion and exchange of ideas will be of no value except as a meregame for displaying one’s intellectual brilliance. More dangerously, such a tendency to use theseintellectual techniques as a goal rather than a tool, would be likely to eventually weaken one’s abilityto distinguish between right and wrong. Such a result ignores our academic goals.
The last argument opposing to one-sided development of intellectual skills is the difficulty todevelop really cogent and strong point of views if mental and rhetorical skills are not accompaniedby the sincerity and true conviction of one’s beliefs. Such sincerity and conviction are essentialelements of a wholesome and learned mind. Without such sense of responsibility, students wouldtend to develop a sophistic but superficial way of thinking and talking, which might influence theirwhole life. Without question, this once again violates our academic goals.
In conclusion, it is high time to lay equal emphasis on students’ mental development and moldingof personality. Only by achieving a balance between the two can students develop in a healthyway.