K S LO ENGLISH

During the COVID-19 outbreak, everyone plays a variety of roles in different communities, and a person may carry several identities which undergo tremendous changes. I am no exception.

As a high school student, the Education Bureau suspended classes when COVID-19 swept over Hong Kong. My learning model changed, and I experienced the physical classroom on a small computer screen for the first time. With face to face teaching and learning, teachers can observe and supervise students’ learning progress and situations. Compared with offline classes, online classes have higher requirements for students’ self-control. Facing all kinds of distractions and temptations from the outside world, it is difficult to concentrate in class. The teacher’s mouth on the screen opened and closed, as if they were performing hypnosis. The phone next to me seemed to be glowing, constantly attracting my attention. On top of that, I had to get used to brand new software for attending classes and submitting assignments. I needed to learn how to switch on the camera and microphone, how to take notes on the computer screen and so on. These let me experience E-learning. My younger brother and I took classes at the same time, so we could not avoid influencing each other. My left ear was listening to the policies of the dynasties in Chinese History of Form 5, while my right ear was listening to Mathematics theories in the fifth grade of primary school.

As a consumer, I felt the benefits of a comparatively complete consumer system during this global epidemic. Electronic payments and online consumer applications can reduce contact between buyers and sellers. My mother could buy fresh vegetables and fruit without going out of the house, and she did not need to go to the market every day. Sometimes I would order take-out at home and avoid eating outside. The epidemic was getting worse in Hong Kong as the Chinese New Year kicked off in 2020. However, most of the factory workers were on holiday. Masks were like the latest products from a luxury brand, and were sold out at many pharmacies. Thanks to globalization, I could buy masks and protective gear from other countries online.

As a family member, during the pandemic, my family and I became closer. My friends and I had to stop going out and family trips were cancelled when the government issued a social gathering ban. A large number of employees have been put on unpaid leave because of the outbreak. My dad was one of them. Because of work, I usually only see my father once a week. But this time it was rare to get along with my father for a long time. We talked a lot and tried cooking and baking together to make up for the past regrets. My younger brother and I had half a school day. In the afternoon, four of us played chess, watched movies and shared our experiences with each other. My parents were more aware of our anxiety and stress as school children, and we were more understanding of their burdens as parents.

As a citizen, I was touched and worried. The news reported the daily lives of the workers on the front lines. Healthcare workers fought coronavirus, scientists worked to develop a vaccine, police officers and community workers served the people. Because of their dedication, I was able to live a safe life during this special period. On the other hand, the environmental damage from this infection was incalculable. Uncountable disposable protective equipment was discarded, which may accelerate the saturation of landfills. Incineration of such waste produces harmful substances that are also irreparable to air pollution. There is no doubt that COVID-19 has led to hundreds of millions of diagnoses and even deaths worldwide. But it made me appreciate the convenience that technology can bring.

In 2003, the technology was not mature enough to develop online class software. Therefore, students could not study at home during the SARS period. Citizens needed to venture out to shop. The government had been unable to put in public health codes and other measures to keep track of the movements of people and control the development of the epidemic. This public health emergency of international concern also taught me that a crisis is also a business opportunity. While all industries were in deficit and negative growth, masks and protective equipment were making a fortune. Our family also got to know each other better because of the accident. Besides, humans were vulnerable and strong in the face of a virus we had never seen before. There were so many patients fighting for survival, do I have the right to give up my life easily? In addition, the victims of this pandemic are not only human beings but also nature. In the future, we should pay more attention to environmental conservation and try to remedy our friend. To look at the same thing with different roles and angles, the results will be different.

The global epidemic, COVID-19, poses a major threat to the world in 2020. From the initial state of unsure about the severity of the virus to getting used to wearing masks now, this epidemic brings countless effects on you and me for the whole year. We seem to be experiencing a catastrophe. The epidemic affects my daily life and I will outline what I have learned so far.

With regard to learning, the mode has changed completely. At the outbreak of the virus, I believe most Hong Kong students and teachers did not think that the Internet would dominate our learning and teaching ways. As the pandemic spread, we soon realized the days of e-learning were beginning. Although I can’t go to school, I didn’t expect to have lessons through my electronic devices in the long term. Everything was online. Undoubtedly, it took a while to get used to it. For example, I got the study materials from teachers via online platforms like Google Drive, having lessons and tests on Zoom, and handing in my homework by taking photos and uploading them online. This practice differs from what we usually do when we were going to school. Therefore, I was worried if I could concentrate on my studies at home and how my academic performance would be negatively affected. I am not confident that my learning efficiency would be the same as in the past. 

Socially, I lost many opportunities to communicate with my classmates and friends. I cherish the days in high school life as these should be the most precious time of my young age. Our classmates and I are supposed to make as many memories as we can in form 5. Yet, reality is always cruel. We are not only unable to join any activity together, such as school picnic, sports day, but also can’t meet each other at school. Compared with last year, I spend less time getting along with my peers. As for hanging out with them, the social gathering ban becomes one of the obstacles to develop my social circle. Even though I can still go out with a friend, I am afraid that it is a risk and maybe infected if we take the crowded public transport and dine out without masks. Considering the potential dangers of going out, we rarely gather together. In other words, I lack chances to have face to face connection with others because of the epidemic. 

As for entertainment, I have fewer choices to kill time. In the past, I could choose to go shopping, watch movies, do karaoke on weekends. To avoid large gatherings of people, the government closed the cinemas, gym rooms, party rooms, karaoke rooms, and sports grounds at the same time. I can only stay at home or go to the countryside to have a picnic and go climbing. My rights to have leisure activities have been restricted. I was actually planning to go traveling during the New Year holidays this year. You must know what happened next, right? That’s the time when there were more and more infections in different countries. Eventually, we chose to cancel the trip. Until now, I haven’t left Hong Kong for just a while. I know the travel lovers, like me, wish to get on the planes again.

I have just written about the impact of this pandemic on me. In the following, I would like to explain what I have learned. 

My most profound reflection is that e-learning can be the trend in education. I had the idea that studying can only take place at school. I thought the traditional learning method, which a teacher would stand in front of me and write the key points on the blackboard, was the only way to acquire knowledge. After having online lessons for the whole year, I discovered that e-learning could be more effective than traditional schooling. For students, we can save time on transportation. Instead, we can have lessons right away by just turning on our devices. E-learning is flexible for us to adjust our learning process with teachers. If we can’t catch up with the learning schedule, we can take the makeup lessons as we have classes at home, so there are fewer teaching and learning limitations.

Moreover, I understand that maintaining relationships is not an easy task. Not meeting my friends at school every day, we can only contact each other through social media. That’s why it is much harder to maintain our friendship without schooling. This situation may also happen after graduation. If one side doesn’t place great emphasis on the company, no matter how much effort the other side has made, keeping in touch seems impossible. Therefore, I learned that I shouldn’t take anyone’s friendship for granted. Only those who take the relationship seriously will try their best to keep friends, especially during this challenging time. 

Finally, on public health, I learned that everyone should take responsibility for decreasing the possibility of virus transmission to heart. From my point of view, selfish behavior is unacceptable. For instance, people who ignore the social gathering ban but keep going out in a large group. There are always some people walking on the streets who don’t wear masks. Having the goal of fighting the coronavirus, we should do our duty and cooperate with government policies. 

All in all, COVID-19 affects us all. I have learnt valuable lessons.

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected my life since 2020. COVID-19 is a monster which we are all afraid of. Due to the pandemic, I have been confined in my home like a bird in a cage unable to fly. To be honest, global pandemic has brought me both good and bad results. Bad, the motivation to do anything has been lost drastically. Also, I am a bit depressed. On the other hand, I have started to concentrate on my physical and mental health. What’s more, I have learnt that there is always hope even if we are desperate.

To start with, I am not as efficient as before. Because of the situation of the global pandemic, I am restricted from going to school. I can only attend online lessons. I do not have the motivation to concentrate on the lessons because there are numerous distractions on my desk. Honestly, I do not have the feeling that I am having my lessons online because I am wearing my pajamas. Even if I am doing my homework, I always procrastinate everything because I do not have to hand in homework tomorrow morning. Instead, I just have to submit my homework before 23:59 tomorrow. That means I can deal with it later at night. My procrastination has become more severe since the outbreak of COVID-19. In my heart, there is always a devil who tries to convince me to stop doing anything just playing. Eventually, I do not have the motivation to deal with my study.

Additionally, I am depressed due to the pandemic. I am told that it is risky to go outside because there is always a chance to get COVID-19. After all, COVID-19 is a contagious disease. If I join some social gatherings, I will be one of the close contacts if someone in the gathering has been infected with COVID-19. I end up realizing what a caged bird’s life is like. I understand why the bird always wants freedom. Although it is materially wealthy in the cage, it is not satisfied mentally because it cannot socialize with peers. It cannot explore the world in its spare time. Likewise, I cannot meet my friends and classmates regularly. I cannot communicate with them and see those familiar faces every day. In another word, I cannot reduce stress by talking to them directly.

After talking about the negative impacts of the pandemic to me, I will point out the positive impacts brought by a pandemic.

First and foremost, the pandemic makes me concentrate on my health. When I realised that the COVID-19 situation was getting serious, I started to concern myself. I always notice whether my body is functioning well since I am afraid of suffering from COVID-19. I started to exercise more to improve my health. In addition to exercise, I changed my eating habit. Previously, I loved eating junk food as well as snacks which were unhealthy. Amid the pandemic, I did not want to become ill. Otherwise, I may have a risk of suffering COVID-19 because my body is less resistant due to illnesses. Eating healthily can make sure that I can have a healthy lifestyle which can reduce the risk of being sick.

Moreover, I care more about the things around me. I stay at my home all the time to minimize the risk of getting COVID-19 disease. When I am bored, I cannot go out and play with my friends. Alternatively, I listen to a news podcast every day. I have realized that I am more fortunate than others. I can talk to my friends via social media. When they are sick, I will phone them and ask them about their health conditions. Friends motivate me to be optimistic about the situation. They are like candle lights in the dark.

The pandemic has taught me that we cannot be hopeless. Initially, when the government noticed the outbreak of the pandemic, it had no idea what to do. Most countries chose to have lockdown. In countries around the world, a majority of citizens felt hopeless. Different scientists and pharmacologists invented vaccines to combat the disease. Recently, there have been vaccines developed by different countries. Normality will return soon. With COVID-19, it seems like we are confined in a very dark cave. Even if we are in the dark cave, we should be optimistic. There is always a glimmer of hope and light somewhere if we can attempt to find out instead of focusing on the darkness.

In conclusion, I become less effective and more depressed in the pandemic. However, I have more focused on my health and surroundings. Besides, I have learnt that we cannot be hopeless. In the foreseeable future, I hope everything will return to normal.

Online learning is an education environment or courses conducted on the Internet. But have you been wondering if online classes are really that beneficial or useful? And can it replace the traditional education environment, face-to-face learning?

First up, what are the advantages of online education? Online education provides a comfortable, convenient and effective environment for both students and teachers to teach and learn. You do not need any transportation to go to school anymore. You only need a computer at home, or even a smartphone will do all the work for you. As long as you have a stable internet provider, the simplest online education environment is set up! You can go teach and learn via the Internet now! Also, students learning via the Internet do not need to worry about overweight school bags. According to Asterclinic’s blog, overweight school bags can cause multiple drawbacks on students’ growth, such as long-term back problems, spine deformity, and other health problems. Learning on the Internet, you do not need to take your school bag from place to place, instead, just put it beside your desk, and whenever the teacher tells you to take out one of the books, just reach for the book! Easy, isn’t it?

Although there are a ton of benefits of online education, there are still a lot of drawbacks as well. First of all, students may not be totally focused. Since students attend the classes at home, there are a lot of things that can distract the students, for example, games, toys, books, etc. This situation won’t be happening in face-to-face learning, because students are in a place with people that will supervise them. During online lessons, teachers can’t check unless students turn on and face their cameras. Also, it would be more difficult for teachers to distribute worksheets and information, since teachers cannot interact with students in person, they can’t distribute the worksheets or test paper directly, and students will have to print the worksheets out or look at them via electronic devices. The former requires students to have a printer at home or print them out in a store that has a printing service. Also, constantly looking at the screen might harm students’ eyes or neck. Another drawback is that exams and tests cannot be fairly done via online classes, since students are doing the exam without supervision. There is a high possibility that the student will cheat, or even ask other students for the answer, which makes the test or exam unfair for other students.

Online education and face-to-face learning both have advantages and disadvantages with both offering some opportunities for learning and teaching. But for me, I prefer face-to-face learning. Not only because of the listed advantages, and because of the feeling of actually learning something, try and imagine, which environment feels more like a student’s life? Face-to-face! Which learning environment do you prefer? And why? Be sure to think of this question more often!

As technology evolves, many speculate that online education will eventually replace classroom life as it has many advantages over classroom life. Nevertheless, despite all the new technology and features, I still prefer classroom life since I believe it has many upsides that technology does not.

Firstly, the better feeling of learning in a classroom. The feeling of a book cannot be replaced by gadgets, for example, the smoothness of paper and the flipping of pages because online learning uses in electronic devices which are static and cannot be felt, they are screens that display messages, words, and photos. In my opinion, the presence of a book will help one focus better and enjoy. If you hold up a book, it has weight, and you can feel it. On the other hand, if you hold up your smartphone, you cannot feel the content because it is virtual, you can neither feel it nor touch it. Imagine holding your phone and read, you may just go to another page to play or chat with others, you can lose focus on electronic devices but not on books, they have only one function, to be read. Moreover, the feeling in the classroom cannot be replaced as well. A classroom is a place to learn, it is made for learning, no disturbance will occur, and provides the best environment for learning. On the contrary, although online learning can occur anywhere, it lacks the atmosphere of learning. During the pandemic, I have been experiencing learning online entirely at home. The disturbance is unbearable, for instance, drilling of walls, noises from construction sites, and even the chatting of people around me. Moreover, I seldom speak to my classmates when studying online, which means I miss classroom life a lot. Usually, we play and chat together in recess and afterschool, but now I sit in front of the camera all the time and keep silent.

Secondly, the rich facilities of classroom life. A school provides a lot of facilities for students which online learning does not. Every school has a library, a canteen, an art room, etc. A library provides a quiet environment for reading. A canteen provides a lively environment for social gathering. These facilities allow more face-to-face interactions and specific places for students to learn, relax and play. Online learning lacks these facilities which makes the lessons tiring and tedious since one can only stay in a room with electronic devices. I miss all these facilities at school. While I can only sit and look at the screen at home now, I can chat and walk freely on campus when studying at school. Furthermore, these facilities provide tools for learning, such as books, paint, and white boards. They are essential for learning because they help students understand easier. When studying at home, there will be no tools and experiments carried out by yourself, it is harder to understand.

To conclude, I prefer classroom life more than online learning because classroom life provides a better environment for learning. I believe as technology evolves, online learning will catch up classroom life and makes our lives easier. Nevertheless, learning will always be essential to our lives and it will remain as it is.

Back in this time last year, while everybody else and I were undergoing the endless stress brought by repetitive daily life, an enormous tragedy was approaching silently. It was the coronavirus disease of 2019, which no one had any ideas about how serious it would turn out…

Okay. I know the pandemic isn’t something that dramatic. It’s just that this is kind of an unusual incident which brings a huge loss in population to society and somehow spreads too much anxiety. For me, this is the first time I witness how the world functions under an international public health emergency besides reading about the pandemics in history, so there are more or less some brand new impressions I have towards this kind of disasters. And because of inclining technology development nowadays, I have also found a couple of new, intriguing issues that I couldn’t even notice under normal situations. Allow me to share a few of them with you now.

As a student, the sudden change in ways of conducting lessons is obviously one of the largest variations I face during the spread of the virus. ‘Listening’ to lessons online appeared fair to me at first since I thought the effectiveness of gaining knowledge would just be the same Yet soon, something went totally wrong. An exam was around the corner, and I felt like stuff I hardly understood was gradually getting more, especially during online lessons when the teachers were explaining. I tried to search on browsers for more information and train myself with loads of exercises after lessons like other students would but they are of no use. Unfortunately and not surprisingly, my results for that exam turned out to be a massive mess.

Since then, I began to think deeply about what caused the decline in my overall performance. Months later, I concluded something I didn’t expect at all from all that pondering——the passivity in my learning process was the answer. Unbelievable, right? It may seem like learning itself is an active process. Homework, researches, quizzes…we could finish them as we take action. Then are we eager to finish them in the first place? This pandemic told me it was not true. In fact, I was only following the lead of the courses. Because of the rapid spread of viruses, almost everything is conducted online, which represents a total loss of physical contact with acquaintances in reality. Without the pressure brought by teachers, I discovered that I don’t actually know the ways to bring up the motivation to understand things by myself. The education system is still pushing students, and students are still bearing pressure passively without knowing how to learn and why they should learn. Instead of just waiting to be spoon-fed, I realised I should take the initiative to know more about the world. What a horrifying fact for me to know, yet alarming enough.

Another trouble, the psychological downfall, was more of an annoying side-effect of this pandemic. I had absolutely no idea how a lifeless tiny virus would destroy human beings before the pandemic went ashore on the land of Hong Kong. Nevertheless, as the numbers of diagnosed cases and deaths soared, everyone and I around started to worry about it. Whenever I have to go anywhere else, I must wear a mask and bring a bottle of ethanol like I had mysophobia. I bet the scariest being in the serious times were crowds indoor. Living in a busy city like here, formation of crowds is inevitable, and this is why I chose to stay at home. Fears did not disappear even when I was in my room, however. I was still afraid the viruses could spread through ventilation, pipes or even the air. Coincidentally, restless feelings brought by decline in academic performances came into play by then. The situation was way too sticky that my mind was filled with anxiety. Everything appears to be uncertain all of a sudden. As life goes on, media have become a source of my negative emotions that I felt disgusted to hear anything from them. To be honest, this negativity could be resolved if I had figured out rationally and calmly the reason I was overthinking but I just couldn’t find the way thinking out of this darkness.

Now, you might be wondering why I’m able to write this without sounding like a maniac. Well, this world is not just about tragedies, there’re gorgeous parts of it as well. Especially when the viruses has taken effect all over the globe, some of the parts revealed their extraordinary beauty. I would occasionally be distracted by them in the hard times. One of the parts I enjoy is the change in surrounding temperature. When society first noticed some eruptions occurring in certain regions, governments started to announce restrictions for citizens. These restrictions led to a large decrease in economic activities and lowered the production of greenhouse gases and wastes. Though the economy was suffering, the environment had its burden of carrying hazardous substances reduced. After days of abnormally warm weather, I finally felt the seasons becoming more distinguishable by temperature for it’s not extreme anymore compared relatively to last year. It’s too bad though, that this phenomena would only be available during the pandemic. No one knows whether it will be kept when the time’s over.

Very disorganized so far, isn’t it? There’re problems and different changes that come to me, making it more complicated. I felt like I was in a different space-time during the pandemic, for I was seeing what I don’t normally see and pondering about things I never expect I would. Everything was too unrealistic that I lost control of my mind. And yet, this is reality: it may seem worse but somehow better. No matter how disorganized or even chaotic it will be, it’s always an irreplaceable section of my memories.