English Academic
UNIVERSITI TUNKU ABDUL RAHMAN ACADEMIC YEAR 2013 / 2014 FHEL 1012 English for Academic Study
_____________________________________________________________________________________ WORKSHEET LECTURE 4 Task 1: Read and identify the common theme shared by the articles below. Then, list the possible focus of writing using these articles. Article 1 In the summer of 2012, Steve Fan suspended his graduate studies at Stanford University and headed back to China, which he had left four years earlier. The motivation of this computer science major -- to launch a start-up and cash in on an idea he spotted in the world's largest Internet market -- was not uncommon. Less expected were the extra costs he incurred for doing business in China. These had nothing to do with common costs like equipment, rent, or hiring workers. Rather, daily life involved finding workarounds past China's immense national Internet censorship apparatus, widely known as the Great Firewall. "Google is often blocked for obscure reasons," said Fan, 25, now a software engineer at the Shanghai-based Morpheus Lab. "For example, if a word in my query is sensitive, like 'river,' and if I attempt to search the same term several times, the entire IP address will be blacked out for a minute and a half." "River" in Chinese is pronounced the same as the last name of China's former president, Jiang Zemin, and therefore is censored.
It is hard to estimate how many entrepreneurs in China, like Fan, need to access information and websites blocked by the Great Firewall. According to Chuangtouquan, a social network that connects Chinese entrepreneurs to venture capitalists, China has about 10,000 start-ups today, covering all kinds of industries from mobile Internet to flower delivery to video games. And even if only a small portion of companies suffer from censorship-related inefficiency, over the years the overall effect would add up. In the eyes of Michael Li, founder and CEO of Chuangtouquan, this inefficiency costs
_____________________________________________________________________________________ WORKSHEET LECTURE 4 Task 1: Read and identify the common theme shared by the articles below. Then, list the possible focus of writing using these articles. Article 1 In the summer of 2012, Steve Fan suspended his graduate studies at Stanford University and headed back to China, which he had left four years earlier. The motivation of this computer science major -- to launch a start-up and cash in on an idea he spotted in the world's largest Internet market -- was not uncommon. Less expected were the extra costs he incurred for doing business in China. These had nothing to do with common costs like equipment, rent, or hiring workers. Rather, daily life involved finding workarounds past China's immense national Internet censorship apparatus, widely known as the Great Firewall. "Google is often blocked for obscure reasons," said Fan, 25, now a software engineer at the Shanghai-based Morpheus Lab. "For example, if a word in my query is sensitive, like 'river,' and if I attempt to search the same term several times, the entire IP address will be blacked out for a minute and a half." "River" in Chinese is pronounced the same as the last name of China's former president, Jiang Zemin, and therefore is censored.
It is hard to estimate how many entrepreneurs in China, like Fan, need to access information and websites blocked by the Great Firewall. According to Chuangtouquan, a social network that connects Chinese entrepreneurs to venture capitalists, China has about 10,000 start-ups today, covering all kinds of industries from mobile Internet to flower delivery to video games. And even if only a small portion of companies suffer from censorship-related inefficiency, over the years the overall effect would add up. In the eyes of Michael Li, founder and CEO of Chuangtouquan, this inefficiency costs