Yesterday I
met Maria in the lounge of the CIES building to catch up a little. She brought
her tablet and brought up many pictures of her hometown and their traditional
dances and clothing style. We talked about the approaching finals week and she
explained to me that she is pretty worried about all of her upcoming exams. In
addition to the exams she has to take here at FSU with CIES she will also have
a set of exams to study for as soon as she returns home.
She also
told me quite a bit about a presentation she had coming up. I’m pretty sure
that it is in a speaking class and is a debate done in groups. Her group has
three people and they have three main points to argue. Maria told me that
although she believes smoking should be banned everywhere, she has to argue the
exact opposite. I explained to her that as far as debating goes, I thought that
she had the easier position to argue. Her points were pretty interesting. Her
first point was that public places should be public. Her second point explained
that there is not, in fact, that much research done about second hand smoke
inhaled from public places (most research is only done on people who live with
smokers and are around it every day). Maria’s last point explained that there
are other things that can be harmful to one’s health and we do not do anything
to fight this (for example, the chemicals and smoke released from cars).
I was really
impressed with her group’s arguments. I thought that the arguments were really
well supported and even seemed like something a native speaker would come up
with. Also, even though didn’t agree with the point she had to argue, she
seemed very impressed to do so. Because of the fact that we had not been able
to get together that much because of conflicting schedules, I persuaded her to
meet me again that afternoon for dinner.
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