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英创教育「早鸟早读」计划第【3101】天明早8:30不见不散！??

Topic 3: A Person Who Makes Things by HandQuestion: Describe a person who likes to make things by hand.Answer: So the person that I know who likes to make things by hand is my friend Michael. So Michael is someone that I went to school with, primary school and secondary school, actually. And he is also a doctor. He"s a GP in the British NHS, the National Health Service. So he"s a pretty successful person. He"s a smart person.And he was good at science and maths and also technology when we were in school. And those were my terrible subjects in school. So I always admired how he was very good at those. Anyway, recently he has gotten into woodwork, so he"s made for himself tables, chairs. He has also made a full shed, a garden shed to keep all of his tools. So he"s becoming actually quite good at making things.And I think he enjoys it because he has a lot of stress from his job, his day job of being a doctor. And it"s a nice way for him to relax and do something that he has to concentrate on. So it"s not an easy thing to do, but it takes his mind off of his work. And it also has the feeling of something that you can complete, so you know when the table is finished because you can look at it and you can see it"s finished. And that feeling of completing something, I think, is quite satisfying for him. And in terms of how I feel about him, I think he"s, you know, it"s very cool. It"s a really cool and useful hobby to have. And I"m also a little bit jealous, to be honest, because I"m really bad at DIY and I would love to be able to do the things that he seems to be able to do very easily. So I"m a little bit jealous, but also I admire what he can do.Question: What are the benefits for students to learn to make things by hand?Answer: Well, I think there"s two main benefits, really. First of all, it"s good for younger children for their fine motor skills, so learning the different movements that they have to make to be able to create something. And then I think for older students, it"s good to be reminded of those more traditional activities so that they don"t become, you know, let"s say if they"re studying coding, they don"t become entirely focused on the digital world. They retain some connection to a more traditional physical world and the kind of activities that people would do in the past. So I think that"s pretty important.Question: Is it reasonable to charge a high price for handmade things?Answer: I think as long as the things are of high quality, then it is. Because, of course, something just being handmade doesn"t necessarily mean that it"s going to be good quality. For example, if I make you a table, we"re pretty sure it"s not going to be high quality.But if it"s someone who"s an artisan, they"re an expert, they know what they"re doing, and they"re producing things of high quality by hand, I think it is reasonable to pay a higher price for that because we"re paying for their time, we"re paying for their materials, for their experience. And it"s also something that is unique. It has a uniqueness that something made in a factory doesn"t have because the thing made in a factory, there are 20,000 just the same. But the thing made by hand could very well be the only one of that thing in the whole world. So, yes, I think generally it"s reasonable to charge a higher price.Question: How has modern technology changed the handicraft industry?Answer: Well, I think modern technology has kind of made a big divide, a very clear line between things that are factory produced and things that are made by hand. And so we generally now think of things that are mass-produced, factory produced, as slightly lower quality, and then things that are made by hand, we put more of an importance on them. And then, as we discussed, you might pay a little bit more for that kind of handmade item.And I think the handmade items, we feel like they have more soul, if maybe a physical product can"t have soul, but certainly that"s how we feel. It"s got the loving attention of someone who"s taken their time to make it, whereas modern technology has made a lot of the normal things that we buy kind of soulless because they"re produced en masse in a factory and so they don"t have anything special about them. So I think that"s how modern technology has changed things.编辑：Moon▼IDE英创教育