English question on history for IELTS & TOEFL students to practice conversation and writing and receive feedback in an interactive way
How might the world be different if you could actually change some historical event?
How sure are you that the long-term consequences would be positive?
Do you believe that “history repeats itself”?
Reading practice
History (from Greek meaning “inquiry; knowledge acquired by investigation”) is the study of the past. Events occurring before the invention of writing systems are considered prehistory. “History” is an umbrella term that relates to past events as well as the memory, discovery, collection, organization, presentation, and interpretation of information about these events. Historians place the past in context using historical sources such as written documents, oral accounts, ecological markers, and material objects including art and artifacts.
History also includes the academic discipline which uses narrative to describe, examine, question, and analyze a sequence of past events, and investigate the patterns of cause and effect that are related to them. Historians seek to understand and represent the past through narratives. They often debate which narrative best explains an event, as well as the significance of different causes and effects. Historians also debate the nature of history and its usefulness by discussing the study of the discipline as an end in itself and as a way of providing “perspective” on the problems of the present.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/
1. I think that the major historical events most of the time are not in the hands of one person but they are the results of decisions or acts of a society or nations. So if a nation reaches to certain point to make a decision – bad or good – I think it is better to let them alone to do that. Sometimes in future they understand that they made a good choice or not.
2. I am not sure that the long term consequences will be positive. The societies must become mature in the course of time and events. Sometimes without experiencing a disaster they can not grow and florish.
3- sure , it does repeat itself.
I believe sometimes one small event in history could yield big unexpected results. This is based on the domino effect or butterfly effect because, according to these theories, everything is related to each other.
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Feedback:
* flourish
1_ it well be so different ,I’m sure. but it would be hard.
2_ I think yes.
3_ no.
I’m so glad I had the chance to listen to you in our online class because you did not support your points with any reason.
1. I’m not sure. Maybe it would be really different and better or maybe it would be worse. Or maybe preventing an event in the past would just postpone it.
2. In fact I’m not sure. But I’ve seen in many movies and read in books that the history is unchangeable. I think the reason of that could be that people learn from particular events and circumstances. We can not skip from those certain levels.
3. Yes, I do believe in this. I guess it’s the same in our personal lives too. As long as we don’t get a lesson or point, it’s gonna happen again and again like a loop, till the time we learn.
Thank you for your comment. We will surely discuss your raised points in the class.
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Feedback
* skip from sth = skip sth
* The last word, learn, is transitive, so you need to use an object.
How might the world be different if you could actually change some historical event?
If I was able to change some historical events, It would not have changed any thing, because I believe that historical events do not change the general position of word. If the inventor of an innovative inventions did not provide its invention at all, it would have been done finally after one or two years delay by another scientific.
“History repeat itself” it means that all af us are a mean to change our place of life to better place, if we do not change it in appropriate type some others would change it.
How sure are you that the long-term consequences would be positive?
As an answer of this question I want to point a quotation wich says finally the right is victorious.
It means that finally in long-term consequences would be positive and we are just tools.
Do you believe that “history repeats itself”?
I believe this sentence extremely. It is not so difficult to understand the meaning of this sentence. It is only needed to study our ancestors lives and historical events. If we review this events we can vividly understand that all historical events repeats itself and each event is only a life lesson.
* change anything
* the general position of the world ??
* two-year delay – “two-year” is an adjective for “delay”, therefore, it should be singular
* another scientist
* mean –> means (tool)
* an answer to this question
* which says
* ancestors’ lives
* review these events