IELTS WRITING TASK 1 - SIMON - Cách khai triển ý

     The graph below shows changes in young adult unemployment rates in England between 1993 and 2012.

     Introduction:

     The line graph compares levels of unemployment among 16 to 24-year-olds with overall unemployment figures over a period of 20 years in England.

     Overview

     It is clear that the proportion of young adults who were unemployed at any time between 1993 and 2012 was significantly higher than the overall proportion of adults without work. Unemployment rates for both groups of adults were consistently higher in London than in the rest of England.

     "Details" paragraphs

In 1993, around 18% of English 16 to 24-year-olds living outside London were unemployed, but the figure for those living in the capital was 5% higher, at 22%. Similarly, the overall adult unemployment rate in London, at 14%, was 4% higher than the rate in the rest of England. While levels of joblessness fell significantly over the following 10 years, the trend for higher levels in London and among young adults continued .

Young adult unemployment in England rose dramatically between 2002 and 2012, from 12% to 21% outside London, and from around 15% to a peak of 25% in the capital. By contrast, the proportions of all adults without work remained below 10%, both in London and in the rest of the country.

KINH NGHIỆM RÚT RA TRONG CÁCH TRIỂN KHAI Ý CỦA SIMON:

 Bài biểu đồ đường chia ra theo vừa vùng vừa độ tuổi (2 yếu tố so sánh)

- Đoạn văn mở đầu: Giới thiệu biểu đồ chỉ phân theo 1 yếu tố duy nhất (VD: Độ tuổi -> Biểu đồ đường so sánh mức độ thất nghiệp ở những người có độ tuổi từ 16 đến 24 tuổi với con số thất nghiệp nói chung suốt thời kỳ 20 năm ở Anh.)

- Đoạn văn tổng quan: So sánh theo 2 yếu tổ so sánh, nêu ra 2 ý chính (VD: 1 câu so sánh theo độ tuổi và 1 câu so sánh theo vùng riêng biệt -> Rất rõ ràng là tỷ lệ thanh thiếu niên những người mà thất nghiệp bất kỳ lúc nào từ năm 1993 đến năm 2012 là cao hơn một cách nổi bật so với tỷ lệ chung những người trưởng thành không có việc làm. Tỷ lệ thất nghiệp cho cả 2 nhóm người trưởng thành ở London là cao hơn hoàn toàn so với phần còn lại của nước Anh)

- 2 đoạn văn chi tiết: Đoạn văn thứ nhất (Chọn mốc thời gian ở năm đầu tiên) thực hiện so sánh chéo (VD: kết hợp vừa theo độ tuổi vừa theo vùng -> Trong năm 1993, khoảng 18% những người Anh trong độ tuổi 16 đến 24 sống ngoài London thất nghiệp, nhưng con số cho những người sống ở thủ đô là cao hơn 5%, ở mức 22%. Tương tự như thế, tỷ lệ người trưởng thành thất nghiệp ở London, ở mức 14%, là cao hơn 4% so với tỷ lệ ở phần còn lại của nước Anh. Trong khi đó tỷ lệ thất nghiệp giảm đột ngột trong suốt 10 năm sau đó, xu hướng về mức độ cao hơn ở London và giữa những người trưởng thành vẫn tiếp diễn)

Đoạn văn thứ hai (Chọn 1 năm nổi bật và năm cuối cùng) vẫn thực hiện so sánh chéo như đoạn 1 (Tỷ lệ thất nghiệp ở thanh thiếu niên ở Anh tăng đột ngột giữa năm 2002 và năm 2012, từ 12% đến 21% những vùng ngoài London, và từ 15% đến đỉnh 25% ở thủ đô. Trái ngược với nó, tỷ lệ tất cả những người trưởng thành tất nghiệp vẫn dưới 10% ở cả London và vùng còn lại của quốc gia này)

HY VỌNG CÁC BẠN SẼ THẤY BÀI ĐĂNG NÀY HỮU ÍCH! CHÚC CÁC BẠN SỚM CHINH PHỤC ĐƯỢC KỲ THI IELTS CỦ CHUỐI! ;)

IELTS Writing - Adverbial Clause

Example: 

- Before reaching the highest point, the price of gold declines dramatically. (Before + Ving, S + V + adv)

- After a quick rise, the amount of meat imported into Vietnam stays unchanged/(remains unchaged). (After + a noun phrase, S + V)

- By dint of rigorous training and sacrifice personal happiness, singers can reach the top career and deserve high salaries. (By dint of + noun phrase, S + can + V + N + and V + N)

- As a result of research for many years and fighting against backwark thinking, promoters/(pioneers) can protect their crazy ideas. 

How to Make Stress Your Friend? - Kelly McGonigal (P3)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcGyVTAoXEU

And this is one of the reasons that ... stress ... . It's not really healthy to be in this state all the time. But in this study, when participants view the stress response as helpful, the blood vessels stay relax like this. Their heart also pouding, but this is the much healthier ... . It actually look a lot like what happens in moment of joys and courages. Over a lifetime of stress for experiences, this one biological change could be the different between a stress-induced heart attack in age fifty and living well into your ninetys. And this is the really what the new science of stress reviews, but how you think about stress matters. So my goal as a health psychology had changed. I no longer want to get rid of you stress. I want to make you better at stress. And we just little intervention. If you raised your hand and said you had a lot stress in the last year. We could save your life, because hopefully the next time your heart is pounding from stress, you are going to remember this talk and you're gonna think to yourself. This is my body is helping me rise to this challenge. And when you view stress in that way your body believes you, and your stress response becomes healthier. Now, I said, I had over a decade of demonizing stress to redeem myself from, so we're gonna do one more intervention. I want to tell you about one of the most under-appreciated aspect of the stress response, and the idea is this: stress makes you social. To understand the side of stress, we need to talk about a hormone, oxytocin, and I know oxytocin had already gotten as much ... as a hormone can get.

Du lịch Hội An

1. Phương tiện di chuyển: Do Hội An không có ga tàu – bến xe nên mọi việc di chuyển bằng tàu hỏa – xe đò đều phải tập trung ở Đà Nẵng. Và chạy thêm khoảng 30km từ Đà Nẵng để đến Hội An. Nếu bạn có ý định đi từ Hà Nội vào Đà Nẵng bằng tàu hỏa có thể tham khảo bảng giá tàu hỏa sau đây: Bảng giá và giờ tàu đi và đến Ga Đà Nẵng

Từ Thành phố Đà Nẵng đi về Hội An có hai hướng. Một là đi theo quốc lộ 1 về phía Nam khoảng 27km đến đường Vĩnh Điện rồi rẽ trái thêm 10km. Vào Hội An theo đường Huỳnh Thúc Kháng có thể ghé thăm Tháp Chàm Bằng Anh ở Vĩnh Điện. Con đường thứ hai gần hơn, vắng hơn, đi từ Trung Tâm Đà Nẵng qua cầu sông Hàn, vào tỉnh lộ Đà Nẵng – Hội An, ghé thăm Ngũ Hành Sơn, đến Hội An khoảng 30km.

Các bạn có thể bắt xe buýt đi từ bến xe Đà Nẵng về Hội An. Cứ 30 phút có 1 chuyến xe buýt, bắt đầu từ 5 hay 6 giờ sáng gì đó đến 5h chiều, xe buýt đi Hội An, đi ngang qua Khu Du Lịch Ngũ Hành Sơn, nên bạn có thể ghé vào chơi ở đây, sau đó quay lại trạm xe buýt tiếp tục đi Hội An, cách nhau khoảng 100m hoặc ít hơn. Chú ý là bạn phải vẫy xe nhé vì điểm nào có khách vẫy thì xe sẽ dừng. Ngoài xe bus bạn có thể thuê xe máy tại Đà Nẵng rồi đi dọc bờ biển đến Hội An (cảnh rất đẹp).

Những ngôi nhà cổ ở đường Bạch Đằng ven sông Hoài

How to make stress your friend? Kelly McGonigal (P2)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcGyVTAoXEU

You can see why this study freaked me out. Here I've been spending so much energy telling people stress is bad for your health. So this study got me wondering: Can changing how you think about stress make you healthier? And here the science says yes. When you change your mind about stress, you can change your body's response to stress. Now to explain how this works. I want you all pretend that you are participants in a study designed to stress you out. It's called the social stress test. You come into the laboratory, and you're told you have to give a five minutes impromptu speech on your personal weaknesses to a panel of expert evaluators sitting right in front of you, and to make sure you feel pressure, they are bright lights and a camera in your face, kind of like this. And the evaluators have been trained to give you discouraging, non-verbal feedback, like this. 

Now that you're sufficiently demoralized, time for part two: a maths test. And unbeknownst to you, the experimenter has been trained to harass you during it. 

Now, we're going to all do this together. It's gonna be fun. For me. Okay. I want you all to count backwards from nine hundred and ninety six in increments of seven. You're going to do this out loud as fast as you can, starting with 996. Go! Go faster! Faster please! You're going too slow. Stop! Stop! Stop! That guy made a mistake. We are going to have to start all over again. You're not very good at this, are you? 

Okay, so you get the idea. Now, if you were actually in this study, you'd probably be a little stressed out. Your heart might be pounding, you might be breathing faster, may be breaking out into a sweat. And normally, we interpret these physical changes as anxiety or signs that we aren't coping very well with the pressure. But what if you viewed them instead as signs that your body was energized, was preparing you to meet this challenge? Now that is exactly what participants were told in a study conducted at Havard University. 

Before they went through the social stress test, they were taught to rethink their stress response as helpful. That pounding heart is preparing you for action. If you're breathing faster, it's no problem. It's getting more oxygen to your brain. And participants who learned to view the stress response as helpful for their performance, they were less stressed out, less anxious, more confident. But the most fascinating finding to me was how their physical stress response changed. Now, in a typical stress response, your heart rate goes up, and your blood vessels constrict like this.       

How to Make Stress Your Friend? - Kelly McGonigal

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcGyVTAoXEU

I have a confession to make. But first, I want you to make a little confession to me. In the past year, I want you to just raise your hand, if you've experienced relatively little stress. Anyone? How about a moderate amount of stress? Who has experienced a lot of stress? Yeah. Me too. But that is not my confession. My confession is this: I am a health psychologist, and my mission is to help people be happier and healthier. But I fear that something I've been teaching for the last 10 years is doing more harm than good, and it has to do with stress. 

For years, I've been telling people, stress makes you sick. It increases the risk of everything from the common cold to cardiovascular disease. Basically, I've turned stress into the enemy. But I have changed my mind about stress, and today, I want to change yours. 

Let me start with the study that made me rethink my whole approach to stress. This study tracked thirty thousand adults in the United States for 8 years, and they started by asking people, "How much stress have you experienced in the last year?". They also asked, "Do you believe that stress is harmful for your health?" And then they used puplic death records to find out who died. Okay. Some bad news first. People who experienced a lot of stress in the previous year had a forty three percent increased risk of dying. But that was only true for the people who also believed that stress is harmful for your health. People who experienced a lot of stress but did not view stress as harmful were no more likely to die. In fact, they had the lowest risk of dying of anyone in the study, including people who had relative little stress. Now the researchers estimated that over the 8 years they were tracking deaths, one hundred and eighty two thousand Americans died prematurely, not from stress, but from the belief that stress is bad for you. That is over twenty thousand deaths a year. Now, if that estimate is correct, that would make believing stress is bad for you the 15th largest cause of death in the United States last year, killing more people than skin cancer, HIV/AISD and homicide.       

- relatively (adv): khá, tương đối
- moderate (adj): vừa phải, phải chăng, có mức độ
- cardiovascular (adj) /ˌkɑːrdioʊˈvæskjələr/: thuộc, liên quan tới tim và các mạch máu
- enemy (n) /ˈenəmi/: kẻ thù, kẻ địch, địch thủ; quân địch, tàu địch
- rethink (v) /ˌriːˈθɪŋk/: nghĩ lại 
- approach (n): cách tiếp cận 

- prematurely (adv) /priːməˈtʃʊrly/: sớm, yếu, non 

- belief (n) /bɪˈliːf/  lòng tin, đức tin; sự tin tưởng

How do nerves work? - Elliot Krane

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uU_4uA6-zcE

How do nerves work? Are nerves simply the wires in the body that conduct electricity, like the wires in the walls of your home or in your computer? This is an analogy often made, but the reality is that nerves have a much more complex job in the body. They are not just the wires but the cells that are the sensors, detectors of the external and internal world, the transducers that convert information to electrical impulses, the wires that transmit these impulses, the transistors that gate the information and turn up or down the volume, and finally, the activators that take that information and cause it to have an effect on other organs. 

Consider this. Your mother gently strokes your forearm and you react with pleasure. Or a spider crawls on your forearm, you startle and slap it off. Or you brush your forearm against a hot rack while removing a cake from the oven, and you immediately recoil. Light touch produced pleasure, fear, or pain. How can one kind of cell have so many functions? Nerves are in fact bundles of cells called neurons and each of these neurons is highly specialized to carry nerve impulses, their form of electricity, in response to only one kind of stimulus, and in only one direction. 

The nerve impulse starts with the a receptor, a specialized part of each nerve, where the electrical impulse begins. One nerve's receptor migh be a thermal receptor, designed only to respond to a rapid increase in temperature.

Another receptor type is attached to the hairs of the forearm, detecting movement of those hairs, such as when a spider crawls on your skin. 

Yet another kind of neuron is Low-Threshold mechanoreceptor, activated by light touch. Each of these neurons then carry their specific information: pain, warning, pleasure. And that information is projected to specific areas of the brain and that is the electrical impulse. 

The inside of a nerve is a fluid that is very rich in the ion potassium. It is 20 times higher than in the fluid outside the nerve while that outside fluid has 10 times more sodium than the inside of a nerve. This imbalance between sodium outside and potassium inside the cell results in the inside of a nerve having a negative electrical charge, relative to the outside of the nerve, about equal to minor 70 or minor 80 miliVolts. This is called the nerve's resting potential. But in response to that stimulus the nerve is designed to detect, pores in the cell wall near the receptor of the cell open. These pores are specialized protein channels that are designed to let sodium rush into the nerve. 

analogy (n): sự tương tự, sự giống nhau

Sex Determination: More complicated than you thought - Aaron Reedy (P2)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMWxuF9YW38

Since our own sex is determined by genes, and we do know of these other animals that have their sex determined by genes. It's easy to assume that for all animals the sex of their baby still must be determined by genetics. 

However, for some animals, the question of whether it will be a boy or a girl has nothing to do with genes at all, and it can depend on something like the weather. These are animals like allligators and most of turtles. 

In these animals, the sex of an embryo in a developing egg is determined by the temperature. In these species, the sex of the baby is not yet determined when the egg is laid, and it remains undetermined until sometimes in the middle of the overall development period, when a critical time is reached. And during this time, the sex is completely determined by temperature in the nest. In pained turtles, for example, warm temperature above the critical temperature will produce females whithin the eggs, and cool temperature will produce a male. I'm not really sure who came up with this mnemonic, but you can remember that when it comes to painted turtles, they are all hot chicks and cool dudes. 

For some tropical fish, the question of will it be a boy or will it be a girl isn't settled until even later in life. You see, clownfish all start out their life as males, however, as they mature, they become female. They also spend their life in a small group with a strict dominance hierachy, where only the most dominant male and female reproduce. And amazingly if the dominant female in the group dies, the largest and most dominant male will then quickly become female and take her place, and all the other males will move up one rank in the hierachy.

In another very different ocean animal, the Green Spoon worm, the sex of the babies is determined by completely different aspect of the environment. For this species, it is simply a matter of where a larval happens to randomly fall on the sea floor. If a larval lands on the open sea floor, then it will become a female. But if it lands on top of a female, then it will becomes a male. So for some species, the question of boy or girl is answered by genetics. For others, it's anwered by the environment. 

And for others still, they don't even bother with the question at all. Take whiptail lizards, for example. For those desert lizards, the answer is easy. It's a girl. It's always a girl. There are a nearly all-female species, and althought they still lay eggs, these eggs hatch out female clones of themselves. So will it be a girl or will it be a boy? Throughout the entire animal kingdom, it does really all depend on the system of sex determination. For human, that system is a genetic XY system. And for me and my wife, we found out, it's gonna be a baby boy.  

embryo (n): phôi, phôi thai

critical (adj): phê bình, phê phán, nguy cấp, nguy kịch 

mnemonic (adj): thuộc về trí nhớ 

tropical (adj): nhiệt đới 

settle (v) bố trí, xếp đặt 

mature (v) trưởng thành 

strict (adj): chính xác, nghiêm ngặt

dominance (n): ưu thế, thế trội hơn, địa vị, địa vị thống trị

hierachy (n): hệ thống phân cấp, cấp bậc

Sex Determination: More complicated than you thought - Aaron Reedy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMWxuF9YW38

My wife is pregnant right now with our first child, and when people see her with her big baby bump, the first question people ask, almost without fail, is, "Is it a boy or is it a girl?" 

Now there are some assumptions behind that question that we take for granted because of our familiarity with our own human biology. For human babies, we take it for granted that there's a 50/50 chance of either answer, boy or girl. But why is it that way? Well, the answer depends on the sex determination system that has evolved for our species. You see, for most mammals, the sex of a baby is determined genetically with the XY chromosome system. Mammals have a pair of sex chromosomes, one passed down from Mom, and one from Dad. A pair of X's gives us a girl, and an X and a Y together gives us a boy. Since females only have X's to pass on in their egg cells, and males can give either an X or a Y in their sperm cells, the sex is determined by the father and the chance of producing a male or a female is 50/50. 

This system has worked well for mammals, but throughout the tree of life, we can see other systems that have worked just as well for other animals. There are other groups of animals that also have genetic sex determination, but their systems can be pretty different from ours. 

Birds and some reptiles have their sex genetically determined but instead of the sex being determined by Dad, their sex is determined by Mom. In those groups, a pair of Z sex chromosomes produces a male, so these males only have Z's to give. However, in these animals, one Z and one W chromosome together, as a pair, produces a female. In this system, the chance of a male or a female is still 50/50, it just depends on whether Mom puts a Z or a W into her egg. 

Certain groups have taken genetic sex determination in completely other directions. Ants, for example, have one of the most interesting systems for determining sex, and because of it, if you are a male ant, you do not have  a father. In an ant colony, there are dramatic divisions of labor. There are soldiers that defend the colony, there are workers that colect food, clean the nest, and care for the young, and there's a queen and a small group of males reproductives. Now, the queen will mate and then store sperm from the males. And this is where the system gets really interesting. If the queen use the stored sperm to fertilize an egg, then that egg will grow up to become female. However, if she lays an egg without fertilizing it, then that egg will still grow up to be an ant, but it will always be a male. So you see, it's impossible for male ants to have fathers. And male ants live their life like this, with only one copy of every gene, much like a walking sex cell. This system is called "haplodiploid" system and we see it not only in ants, but also in other highly social insects like bees and wasps. 

take for granted: nhượng bộ

without fail: chắc chắn, nhất định

a pair of: đôi, cặp 

My little happies

Ở một mình mà bếp núc thế này cũng coi là đầy đủ rồi nhỉ? :)

The power of passion - Richard St. John

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNu6on8dk2o

Bill was such an underachieves, his parents actually sent him to counselling. Yeah, I can just hear the neighbours back then saying, "Jeez, that Gates kid. What a loser. He's never gonna go anywhere". And he didn't, until he discovered his passion for sorfware. 

The big problem is finding your passion. Sure, there's the kid that knows they wanna be an accountant or an architect or an astronauts form the time they were 10. But I found a much bigger group of successful people who, when they were young, and even when they were older, didn't have a clue what their passion was, and it took them a long time to find it, or to fall into it. 

Dawn Lepore, Chief Information Officer at Charles Schwab, said to me, "I fell into what I do, and I didn't know I loved it until I fell into it". And I hear that a lot. 

So, how do people find their passion? Well, they just get out there and try a lot of stuff and explore many paths. Robert Munsch explored many paths. He said to me: "I studied to be a priest and that turned out to be a disaster. I tried working on a farm. They didn't like me. I worked on a boat. It sank. I tried a lot of things that didn't work. But I kept trying, and then I tried something that did work." And I'd say it worked; as a children's author, he's sold over 40 million books. 

Yes, finding a job we love is like finding a person we love. Sometimes we've just got to go on a lot of really bad dates before we find the right one. 

Now, I read a survey 18- to 25 year-olds, and 81% said their fist or second life goal was to get rich. And I thought, boys, they've got it all wrong. Because I've interviewed many millionaires and billionaires, and guess how many of them said their life goal is to get rich? Zero! They didn't do it for money, they did it for love. They went for the zing, not the "ka-ching" "ka-ching". When Bill Gates and Paul Allen  started Microsoft, they didn't do it for money. Bill says, "Paul and I never thought we would make much money. We just loved writing software." And with that attitude, he became the richest man in the world. J. K. Rowling didn't write Harry Potter books for money. She said, "I love writing these books. I just wanted to make enough money to continue to write. And with that attitude, she became a billionaire. 

I became a millionaire by following my heart, not my wallet, and a number of times I walked away from great-paying jobs to do poor-paying jobs I loved better. Once was when I had a great job, travelling the world, making a lot of money, but I wasn't doing the one thing I loved at the time, which was photography. So I said, I think I'll leave and start my own little photo company. 

My heart said, Yeah! Go for it!. My wallet, and all my friends, I might add, said, Are you crazy? You can't walk away from all the money! You'll starve. I didn't listen to them, I walked away, and yeah, at first, there wasn't much money, but it didn't master, because I was having fun doing what I loved. And eventually, the money came, and much more than if I'd stayed in my old job. 

So I learned it's true, what they say: If you do what you love, money comes anyway. So I'd say if you really want to get rich, put money at the bottom of your goals list and passon at the top. And why does it work that way? Because if you love what you do, you automatically do the other 7 things that lead to success and wealth. You'll work hard, you'll push yourself, you'll persist. And what if you're in a job you don't love? Well, just follow your passion on the side. Remember, Albert Einstein was a patent clerk. That was his job, but his passion was physics, and he wrote 4 of his most important papers in spare time as a hobby, and became one of the world's greatest scientists. So it's amazing what you can do if you love what you do. 

Happy Labor Day!

Không được đẹp mắt bằng Lotteria nhưng chất lượng thì tuyệt vời! =)))

Thực đơn: Đậu que xào thịt + thịt rán chấm sốt Mayonnaise. Yummy!!! 

The power of passion - Richard St. John

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNu6on8dk2o

The eight traits successful people have in common. Number one: passion.

Successful people love what they do. When I asked Russell Crowe what led to his Academy Award for Best Actor, he said: "The bottom line is I love the actual job of acting. I have a great passion for it". 

Successful people in all of fields love what they do, whether it's astrophysicist Jaymie Matthew, author J. K. Rowling or athlete Michael Phelps. And not just big names. Margaret MacMillan, a history professor, says: "I've spent my life doing what I love". Carlos, a bus driver, sit with at Starbucks says: "I love what I do. I've only missed 3 days in 4 years". And believe it or not, even successful dentists love what they do. Izzy Novak says: "I love dentistry! I can't imagine being anything else."

But what about business? Many of you are in business, and we tend to think business is more about cold numbers than hot passion, more about logic than love, so what surprised me was how often successful business people actually use the words "passion" and "love" when they talk about their work. When Jack Welch was CEO of General Electric, he was asked if he liked his job, he said: "No, I don't like this job. I love this job". 

We can have passion for a profession. Kathleen Lane, chief strategist at WorkCard, says: "I've found a profession I love". She also says: "Stress isn't working 15 hours at a job you like. Stress is working 15 minutes at a job you dislike." 

We can have a passion for people. Nez Hallett III, CEO of Smart Wireless, says: "I used to be in sales, now I'm a CEO. I just love being around people." 

We can have passion for a product. James Dyson, a vacuum cleaner, says: "I love vacuum cleaners and I will love them until the day I die. Yup, when he dies, they just going to cremate him and suck up those ashes with a Dyson vacuum , and place it on the shelf.

We can have passion for a particular field. Anita Roddick, the great founder of The Body Shop, once said: "I love retailing, I love buying, selling and making connections." She also said: "I don't like systems, finalcial sheets or plans." Yes, no matter how much we love what we do, there's always going to be stuff we don't love. The trick is to make sure the stuff you don't love only takes up 20 percent of your time, and stuff you do love takes up 80. If it's the other way around, we're in the wrong job. 

Passion is sometimes mistaken for ambition. People call Donald Trump are ambitious, but he says: "I'm not ambitious. I just love what I do. And if you love what you do, you do a lot of stuff. And then people say: "Oh. You're ambitious"" 

The cold thing about passion is it turns underachieves into superachieves. I have long list of famous underachieves, like Albert Einstein, who people said would go nowhere when he was young. For instance, who said this, besides me? "I was sitting in my room being a depressed guy, trying to finger out what I was doing with my life". Turns out it was Bill Gates. 

Why it pays to work hard? - Richard St. John (P2)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6FvEwLBgBo

Boy, that was a wake-up call. He says: "I was very disappointed. I started working on my game the day after I was cut." And he soon became the hardest working player in basketball, who made fun of the other players who weren't working hard. And that hard work is what made him the greatest basketball player of all time. So I'd say the real gift isn't talent, it is the ability to work hard. And we tend to underestimate work and overestimate smarts, but in the end work wins over smarts. 

In fact many successful people aren't the smartest. They just work the hardest.  

Francois Parenteau, who Bussiness Week called the top independent analyst on Wall Street, said to me: "I'm certainly not that smart. I can't even remember my own zip code". But he also says: "Work is a bid part of my life. I think about investments pretty much 24 hours a day, seven days a week. 

Nez Hallet III is CEO of Smart Wireless. And I thought, that's ironic because he told me he's not that smart. He says: "I graduated from high school with a C average and college with a C minus average. But now, the smart PhDs are reporting to him. How did he do it? He said: "If you're going to be successful at anything, the key thing is to work hard."

I'm not smart. As proof, here is my actual 12th grade report card. It was the only one my parents ever kept. Don't ask me why they kept it, it's nothing to brag about. As you can see, I was a C student, not an A student. I don't think I'd even make it into the college these days. So how did I achieve some success and wealth? I just worked hard, many 60- to 80 hour weeks. And now, I know I'm not alone.

Thomas J. Stanley studied hundreds of millionares and he discovered most millionares weren't A students, didn't score high on tests and teachers didn't think they'd ever succeed. But they did succeed, because they worked hard. So the good news is if you are not the smartest, if you are a C student, not an A student, the really good news is you can still succeed. Because the word "success" has two C's and no A's. You can still succeed as long as you work hard. And what if you are smart? Well, I'm sorry, there's absolutely no hope for you! Because many smart people don't achieve as much success as they could, unfortunately, because they rest on their smarts and never learn to work hard. 

Jeong Kim president of Lucent Tezchnologies says: "People who are the smartest sometimes don't realize their full potential because things get too easy, so they don't push themselves hard. 

After a talk I gave at one of the world's top-10 bussiness schools, a man came up to me and said: "You know, when I got my MBA here a few years ago, I was one of the smartest people in the class. I thought I had it made. So after I graduated I sat back and I didn't work hard, and I went downhill. And now, at this point in my life, I've gone nowhere. I haven't achieved any success at all". He said: "Thanks for the wake-up call. Now I know what I need to do. I need to work"

So the bottom line is whether you're smart or not, whether you're talented or not, just keep working.  

Formula 10: When was the first/last time you did X?

Speaking part 1: When was the last time you went on holiday?

Answer: 

The last time I went on holiday was about 1 year ago... in April, 2013. My classmates and I went to Nam Dinh for 2 days during the Beach Festival. 

Nam Dinh is an enjoyable place to visit because of the traditional fishing of fishermen in the east of this province.  My classmates and I danced around the fire, ate seefood together and learnt how to scuba dive. I really can't wait to go back there. 

Speaking part 1: When was the last time visitors came to your house?

Answer:

The last time visitors came to my house was just last week. It was my birthday, and my mother secretly arranged for a few close friends to come over for dinner and drinks. Although it was difficult to keep me from finding out. It was quite exciting in a way and certainly a bit of challenge! In the end, everything went to plan and we all had a great time. It was definitely a really enjoyable evening. 

Why it pays to work hard? - Richard St. John

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6FvEwLBgBo

Eight to be great: The eight traits successful people have in common. Number two: work. 

You know, when I was interviewing all these successful people, they kept telling me how hard they worked. And I remember standing there thinking: " Ah jeez, another comment about work? Why do not they tell me the real secret of their success?" Then finally I realized, hard work is a real secret to their success. All successful people work very hard. 

Martha Stewart said to me: "I'm a real hard worker. I work and work and work all the time" 

Media Tycoon Rupert Murdoch said: "It's all hard work. Nothing comes easily. But I have a lot of fun."

Did he say fun? Yes! Successful people have fun working. That's why I say they are not really workaholics, they are workafrolics.  

Jim Pattison, chairman of the Jim Pattison Group, is a workafrolics. He says: "Business is my recreation. I'd rather go to our factories and meet with our people, than go to the beach. I can tell you that."

Dave Lavery, the NASA whiz, who builds those robots for Mars, said to me: "We work our fingers to the bone. But it doesn't seem like work. It's fun. It's what we want to do. We don't want to put things down and go home.

Bill Gates is a workafrolic. Even after he was a multimillionare. He worked most nights until 10 pm and only took two weeks off in 7 years, and he probably spent them on his computer. 

Oprah Winfrey is a workafrolic. She said: "I would never see daylight. I'd come into work at 5.30 in the morning when it was dark and leave at 7 or 8 when it was dark. 

I am a workafrolic, and over the years, I've gone through many days and even weeks without much sleep, just because I was having so much fun. And I gotta admit, at times like that you say to yourself: "Am I the only one working this hard?" Because there's a myth it comes easy to some people. You turn on the TV. Nobody is working that hard. 

A guy like Chris Rock stands up on stage, tells a few jokes. What's hard about that? But even Chris says: "I wasn't the funnest guy growing up, but I was the guy who worked on being funny the hardest"

Trust me! I've interviewed over 500 successful people, not one of them said it came easy, even though they were doing what they loved. 

And we tend to underestimate and overestimate talent. But in the end, work tops talent. 

Arthur Benjamin, America's best math whiz, said to me: "I think numbers and I have always gotten along. But I'm sure my 'talent' it just due to the time and hours and work that I've put into it"

Many talented people don't achive as much success as they could, unfortunately, because they sit back on their talent and never learn to work hard. That's what happened to Michael Jordan when he first started playing basketball. He had the talent, but he wasn't putting in the work, and the coach actually cut him from  the highschool basketball team.