Welcome to the 2013 WINTER WRITERS!

We are international students from the University of Denver who are here to learn English and communicate with the world. We have three main features to share with you.

First, our most important feature this quarter was focused on argument writing. Through writing, reading and speaking we explore how to make the world a better place. Throughout this feature, you will see our essays, some research and a video designed to display our language skills and present our ideas.

Second, we read full English novels and wrote reviews.

And finally, we also briefly talked about important issues in environmental sustainability and offer important connections we've made to the ideas we have read.

We welcome your readership and ideas, so please leave comments!

How can we make the world a better place?

This quarter we studied topics that ranged from unemployment to globalization to the one-child policy in China. Each project represents an in-depth investigation into a topic that allows us to add our voice to the discussion while improving our English language skills. Our overall theme was thinking about ways to make our world better, and we believe that joining a dialogue if the first step.

We invite you to explore our work below, and we welcome any of your views. Below the jump are more links to more features.

Thank you for taking time to read our work!

Winter Field Trip

This quarter we went go-kart racing. We had a good time and even learned some new vocabulary, like how to use the adjective EXTREME to describe everything and make us feel cooler. Below is a video and here are some pictures.

Book Reviews

For our bookclubs, we read Hunger Games, Persepolis, The Alchemist, Stormbreaker and Tipping Point.

We meet every Friday for six weeks, discussing themes and details, and learning new vocabulary and ideas. Below are our reactions to some of those major ideas. Enjoy!

Are we doing enough to sustain our environment?

Environmental sustainability is an important topic worldwide, and a topic that inspires a lot of passion, debate and discussion.

image from http://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/en/environment

So as part of our studies, we engaged this question. Below are some of our opinions.

Esar Li and Mohammed Alhajri notice that there is much more we can do with renewable resources. Jeff Zhang discusses the effects pollution has on rivers. Beining Wang and Vince Luo are is concerned about air pollution in China, while Bader Albannaq discusses the same issue but for his homeland of Kuwait. Stephanie Niu wonders what a world without plastic bags could be like, and Abdullah Boodai also talks about waste.

So please check out our opinions and feel free to add your ideas to the discussion.