Category Archives: Writing

31 Mar

Report – by Ivan Beljic

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Photo by Melinda Kolk

To the School Administrator,

Introduction

This report outlines the recently noticed security issues and the possible solutions for the future.

The general situation

In recent days, there have been reports of intruders on the premises. I conducted a survey based on a questionnaire of our students and it showed devastating results for our security system. As I am the Student Representative I was asked to write a report for the college authorities in order to solve this problem.

Security problems

According to some students, the feeling of safety in the hall of residence is much worse than it was before the unpleasant events. Some of the problems are:
* unlocked front door during the night
* possibility than anyone can come inside the hall, because there is no ID needed
* many thefts in the last two weeks/ – such as some cases of missing clothes or PC technology

Recommendations

In the light of the above, we believe the following will make improvements:
* providing an ID card for every student and a machine which would read that card at the front door
* having the doors automatically locked at midnight exactly – we believe it is better to have this type of closing the doors than a human, because human can always make a mistake, let someone in or forget to look the doors
* install security cameras in halls

19 Mar

LINGVA GAZETTE Assignment

schoolmarkica

Today we are going to start working on our newspaper project, Lingva Gazette, at this site: www.smore.com

It will have the following main sections:

Lingva News
Valjevo/Mionica Community
Serbia
International
 
The Lingva News section will include an article about the English course you are attending and the members of your group. It should also include what you especially like to do in this course and what your expectations are for the future. Another contribution for this section will be an interview with one of your  coursemates.
 
In searching for and gathering information for other section of our newspaper, you may find the following sites useful:
http://www.ugradu.info/index.php/valjevo-vesti
http://www.vesti-online.com/tag/35485/Mionica
http://www.naslovi.net/
http://uk.reuters.com/news/world
Free-to-use photos can be found at:
http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=&l=comm&ct=0&mt=all&adv=1
http://eduscapes.com/tap/topic98.htm
 
In the second stage of our project we will present the content of our newspapers and decide which events or situations you think you will remember and why.
15 Feb

A Letter of Complaint by K. Savic

Dear  Sir or Madam,

I am writing to express my opinion on the ban on smoking you have recently introduced. As you have stated in your Information leaflet, smoking will be banned in all public places including any outdoor facility in which there is seating. I would like to inform you that neither I nor the majority of the citizens I have talked with about this issue are feeling supportive towards this certain ban and in the next paragraph I will try to explain why this ban is inadequate and list a few alternatives.

First of all, I would like to note that the ban was introduced on really short notice and that there was no public discussion. If there had been any, I have no doubt that there would be much more compromise suggestions. Introducing this kind of a ban in that way will not bring any good to the City Council. I can give you an example of a similar case in Poland – the government banned smoking, but not many cafes respected this, and those which did – they lost many of their customers. A case like this   makes us realise that the introduction of this ban will result in a loss of not only tourists but also jobs and that the city economy will suffer from it.

In order to resolve this issue, I can suggest a few alternatives. Firstly, you should organise a public discussion. If that is not possible, you can always chose a simple solution – introduce obligatory non-smoking areas in every facility. In my opinion this is an adequate solution because it  will bring benefit to both sides in this issue.

Finally, I would like to mention that I do respect the City Council’s worries for the health of its citizens, but in the future you should make your decisions more carefully. I hope you will take my suggestions in further consideration.

 

Yours faithfully,
Katarina Savic

15 Nov

Slow and Fast City Life in Valjevo by Jovan Milovanovic

To be honest, up until recently I have never really liked living in Valjevo. I have always compared  it to bigger cities such as Belgrade and Novi Sad and how they have better standard of living and more things to do.

However, as the time passed and I got older and “wiser”, I realized that I am pretty lucky to live here. I was so focused on bad things we have to cope with that I completely forgot the good things, which, by the way, there is plenty of. The city isn’t overcrowded and you don’t have to put up with too much noise. There are a lot of parks where you can relax and do whatever you please. Also, there are tennis courts and a swimming center called “Petnica”. We have one of the least polluted rivers in the whole Serbia, the river Gradac, which is one the most favourite places among younger population to spend time during hot summer days. Lately, a lot of main streets in Valjevo have been renewed so the center of the city looks really nice now.

All in all, I think I am pretty lucky to live in a town like this and I should enjoy every moment I spend here because soon, when I another city for university studies, I won’t be visiting Valjevo that often.