Written Expressions 3rd Year Classes
Collected by GUELLIL MABROUK (mgbay13.com)
Unit One: Exploring the Past
Topic10:
Write a composition on the scientific achievements of the ancient Indus valley civilization?
Typical Essay:
From the time of the Harappa’s to the time of the Islamic conquests, Indian scientists and mathematicians were leaders in many different fields. They especially stood out in mathematics and engineering.
The Harappa's in 2500 BC had a sewage system at their city of Mohenjo-Daro, and carefully laid out, straight streets. Therefore, even though we cannot read their writing, we know that the Harappa has understood a lot of geometry.
A severe climate change halted development at Harappa around 2000 BC. The Aryan invasion of 1500 BC also seems to have stopped scientific advances for a while, but it did bring military advances to India in the form of horse-drawn war chariots. Around 800 BC, when the Aryans in northern India learned to smelt iron from the Assyrians in West Asia, this gave them another military advantage.
Around 500 BC, thanks to Persian influence, the city of Taxila (in modern Pakistan) became a great sc ientific center. Atria, a great botanist (plant specialist) and doctor, were working at Taxila about this time. Around the 300's BC, Indian farmers seem to have been using water wheels to lift water for irrigation - the earliest water wheels in the world.
By 250 or 200 BC, under Mauryan rule, Indian scientists were the first in the world to be smelting iron with carbon to make steel.
In the 600's AD, Indian mathematicians may have been responsible for inventing the numeral zero, and the decimal (or place) system (or it is possible that they got this idea from Chinese mathematicians). This made it a lot easier to add and multiply than it did had been before. Indian mathematical ideas soon spread to West Asia and from there to Africa and Europe.
Indian advances in iron working led to some new ideas in the 1000's and 1100's AD. First, Indian designs were the first to use iron beams to replace wooden beams for building big temples. Second, Indian blacksmiths discovered a kind of iron that made a very strong and flexible kind of steel, called woods steel.
Topic11:
Write a composition on the scientific achievements of the Roman civilization?
Typical Essay:
Roman scientific achievements are mostly in the areas of medicine and engineering. The Romans invented many new ways to mine for metals like silver and gold and lead. They developed water mills as well for grinding grain. In addition, they were the first people to really use concrete for major building projects. The use of concrete helped them to develop the dome and the barrel vault and the cross vault. They used their vaults to build aqueducts to carry fresh water to towns, and they used their engineering skills to build sewage systems to keep their towns clean and healthy.
Roman subjects in Phoenicia also invented blown glass, and mold-made pottery and oil lamps were also first made in the Roman period.
In medicine, Galen wrote during the Roman Empire, and he was the first to describe many symptoms and treatments. His medical textbook was the standard for over a thousand years. The Romans did not do that much work in mathematics, but they did develop their own way of writing numbers.
Topic12:
Write a composition on the achievements of the Roman civilization in architecture?
Typical Essay:
One of the things the Romans are most famous for is their architecture. The Romans brought many new ideas to architecture, of which the three most important are the arch, the baked brick, and the use of cement and concrete.
Around 700 BC the Etruscans brought West Asian ideas about architecture to Italy, and they taught these ideas to the Romans. We do not have much Etruscan architecture left, but many of their underground tombs do survive, and some traces of their temples.
In the Republican period, the Romans built temples and basilicas, but also they made many improvements to their city: aqueducts, roads, and sewers. The Forum began to take shape. Outside of Rome, people began to build stone amphitheaters for gladiatorial games.
The first Roman emperor, Augustus, made more changes: he built a lot of brick and marble buildings, including a big Altar of Peace and a big tomb for his family, and a big stone theater for plays. Augustus' stepson Tiberius rebui lt the Temple of Castor and Pollex in the Roman forum. Augustus' great-great-grandson Nero also did a lot of building in Rome, including his Golden House.
Then in 69 AD, Vespasian tore down some of the Golden House to build the Coliseum. Vespasian's son Titus built a great triumphal arch, and his other son Domitian built a great palace for himself on the Palatine hill.
Even though Domitian was assassinated in 96 AD, later architects continued to use the techniques that had been developed for his palace, just as later emperors continued to live in Domitian’s palace. Trajan’s architect used brick and concrete arches to build a new forum with a big column in it and an elaborate market building that is the source of modern shopping malls. Trajan also built the first major public bath building in Rome. It may have been the same architect who later designed Hadrian’s Pantheon, a temple to all the gods, which used brick and concrete to build a huge dome. Nobody would build a bigger dome for more than a thousand years.
Topic13:
Write a composition on the ancient Roman system of government.
Typical Essay:
From 500 BC to nearly 1500 AD, for two thousand years, Roman government had more or less the same system. Of course, there were some changes over that time too.
When the Roman Republic was first set up, in 500 BC, the people in charge were two men called consuls. The consuls controlled the army, and they decided whether to start a war and how much tax to collect and what the laws were. There were also prefects in Rome, whose job was to run the city - some heard court cases, some ran the vegetable markets or the meat markets or the po rt. Finally, there was also an Assembly of all the men (not women) who were grownup, free, and had Roman citizenship.
Once the Romans began conquering other places, far away from the city of Rome, they also had a system of provincial governors - men who took charge of a province of the Empire, and who heard court cases there. They were also in charge of the army while it was conquering places.
By about 50 BC, the time of Julius Caesar, these generals had begun to take over the government and not pay any attention to the consuls or the Senate anymore, and just do as they pleased. They could do that, because they had the army with them.
Augustus, in 31 BC, was one of these generals. But he realized that people did not like this pushing people around, and so he set up a different system keeping the Senate and the consuls This system kept on going for the next 1500 years, more or less.
Topic14:
Write a composition on the scientific achievements of the ancient Chinese civilization.
Typical Essay:
In early and medieval China, as in the Roman Empire, science seems to have been oriented mainly towards engineering and practical inventions, and not so much towards theoretical ideas about how the natural world worked. It was in Han Dynasty China that paper was first invented, and about the same time, that the magnetic compass, for telling north from south, was also invented there. Scientists in China also invented gunpowder.
Chinese scholars also conducted scientific observations of plants and animals, and also of astronomy (the stars and planets). The many detailed and careful drawings of flowe rs and other plants, and star charts, from China show this interest.
The influence of Confucius made China a place where logical thought was also highly valued. Mathematics was taught in the schools, through the use of a math textbook called the Nine Chapters, which may have been written as early as the Han Dynasty in the 200's AD (but nobody knows for sure).
By around 850 AD, under the Tang Dynasty, Chinese printers were experimenting with block printing, and around the year 1000, they invented moveable type.
Topic15:
Write a composition on the ancient Islamic civilization.
Typical Essay:
People first came to the Arabian Peninsula probably about 150,000 BC, in the Old Stone Age. They were hunters and gatherers. By 2000 BC (or possibly earlier) Semitic-speaking people had moved into the Arabian Peninsula, also coming from the north. They were nomads when they arrived, who travelled around with their sheep and goats pasturing them in different pastures at different times of year. And they stayed nomads: many of them are nomads today.
In the southern part of the peninsula, on the other hand, the people were farmers. Nobody is sure where they came from, but the Queen of Sheba mentioned in the Bible may be one of these people.
By the time of Alexander the Great, we start to know a little more about the Arabs, because the Greeks were trading with them. The Romans also traded with the Arabs, who got spices and other things from India and sold them to the Romans for gold.
In the long war between the Sassanids and the Romans, different tribes of Arabs fought on each side. In this Late An tique period, the kingdom of Saba (Sheba) fell apart.
The Prophet Mohammed was born in the northern Arabian trading city of Mecca between 570 and 580 AD. When he was forty years old, he heard the angel Gabriel speaking to him and telling Mohammed that he was a prophet in the line of Abraham, Moses, and Jesus, who would continue the faith those prophets, had started. Mohammed's faith was called Islam (iz-LAMM). After a slow start, Mohammed made many converts to his religion, and after he won some military battles, most of the other Arabic tribes also converted to Islam. After they had done that, Mohammed's successors attacked first the Romans and then the Sassanids to convert them. By 640 (after the death of Mohammed) the Arabs controlled most of West Asia, and soon after that, under the rule of the Umayyad caliphs, they conquered Egypt. By 711, the Umayyad has controlled all of Western Asia except Turkey (which was still part of the Roman Empire), and all of the southern Mediterranean: Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, and most of Spain.
Collected by GUELLIL MABROUK (mgbay13.com)
Unit One: Exploring the Past
Topic10:
Write a composition on the scientific achievements of the ancient Indus valley civilization?
Typical Essay:
From the time of the Harappa’s to the time of the Islamic conquests, Indian scientists and mathematicians were leaders in many different fields. They especially stood out in mathematics and engineering.
The Harappa's in 2500 BC had a sewage system at their city of Mohenjo-Daro, and carefully laid out, straight streets. Therefore, even though we cannot read their writing, we know that the Harappa has understood a lot of geometry.
A severe climate change halted development at Harappa around 2000 BC. The Aryan invasion of 1500 BC also seems to have stopped scientific advances for a while, but it did bring military advances to India in the form of horse-drawn war chariots. Around 800 BC, when the Aryans in northern India learned to smelt iron from the Assyrians in West Asia, this gave them another military advantage.
Around 500 BC, thanks to Persian influence, the city of Taxila (in modern Pakistan) became a great sc ientific center. Atria, a great botanist (plant specialist) and doctor, were working at Taxila about this time. Around the 300's BC, Indian farmers seem to have been using water wheels to lift water for irrigation - the earliest water wheels in the world.
By 250 or 200 BC, under Mauryan rule, Indian scientists were the first in the world to be smelting iron with carbon to make steel.
In the 600's AD, Indian mathematicians may have been responsible for inventing the numeral zero, and the decimal (or place) system (or it is possible that they got this idea from Chinese mathematicians). This made it a lot easier to add and multiply than it did had been before. Indian mathematical ideas soon spread to West Asia and from there to Africa and Europe.
Indian advances in iron working led to some new ideas in the 1000's and 1100's AD. First, Indian designs were the first to use iron beams to replace wooden beams for building big temples. Second, Indian blacksmiths discovered a kind of iron that made a very strong and flexible kind of steel, called woods steel.
Topic11:
Write a composition on the scientific achievements of the Roman civilization?
Typical Essay:
Roman scientific achievements are mostly in the areas of medicine and engineering. The Romans invented many new ways to mine for metals like silver and gold and lead. They developed water mills as well for grinding grain. In addition, they were the first people to really use concrete for major building projects. The use of concrete helped them to develop the dome and the barrel vault and the cross vault. They used their vaults to build aqueducts to carry fresh water to towns, and they used their engineering skills to build sewage systems to keep their towns clean and healthy.
Roman subjects in Phoenicia also invented blown glass, and mold-made pottery and oil lamps were also first made in the Roman period.
In medicine, Galen wrote during the Roman Empire, and he was the first to describe many symptoms and treatments. His medical textbook was the standard for over a thousand years. The Romans did not do that much work in mathematics, but they did develop their own way of writing numbers.
Topic12:
Write a composition on the achievements of the Roman civilization in architecture?
Typical Essay:
One of the things the Romans are most famous for is their architecture. The Romans brought many new ideas to architecture, of which the three most important are the arch, the baked brick, and the use of cement and concrete.
Around 700 BC the Etruscans brought West Asian ideas about architecture to Italy, and they taught these ideas to the Romans. We do not have much Etruscan architecture left, but many of their underground tombs do survive, and some traces of their temples.
In the Republican period, the Romans built temples and basilicas, but also they made many improvements to their city: aqueducts, roads, and sewers. The Forum began to take shape. Outside of Rome, people began to build stone amphitheaters for gladiatorial games.
The first Roman emperor, Augustus, made more changes: he built a lot of brick and marble buildings, including a big Altar of Peace and a big tomb for his family, and a big stone theater for plays. Augustus' stepson Tiberius rebui lt the Temple of Castor and Pollex in the Roman forum. Augustus' great-great-grandson Nero also did a lot of building in Rome, including his Golden House.
Then in 69 AD, Vespasian tore down some of the Golden House to build the Coliseum. Vespasian's son Titus built a great triumphal arch, and his other son Domitian built a great palace for himself on the Palatine hill.
Even though Domitian was assassinated in 96 AD, later architects continued to use the techniques that had been developed for his palace, just as later emperors continued to live in Domitian’s palace. Trajan’s architect used brick and concrete arches to build a new forum with a big column in it and an elaborate market building that is the source of modern shopping malls. Trajan also built the first major public bath building in Rome. It may have been the same architect who later designed Hadrian’s Pantheon, a temple to all the gods, which used brick and concrete to build a huge dome. Nobody would build a bigger dome for more than a thousand years.
Topic13:
Write a composition on the ancient Roman system of government.
Typical Essay:
From 500 BC to nearly 1500 AD, for two thousand years, Roman government had more or less the same system. Of course, there were some changes over that time too.
When the Roman Republic was first set up, in 500 BC, the people in charge were two men called consuls. The consuls controlled the army, and they decided whether to start a war and how much tax to collect and what the laws were. There were also prefects in Rome, whose job was to run the city - some heard court cases, some ran the vegetable markets or the meat markets or the po rt. Finally, there was also an Assembly of all the men (not women) who were grownup, free, and had Roman citizenship.
Once the Romans began conquering other places, far away from the city of Rome, they also had a system of provincial governors - men who took charge of a province of the Empire, and who heard court cases there. They were also in charge of the army while it was conquering places.
By about 50 BC, the time of Julius Caesar, these generals had begun to take over the government and not pay any attention to the consuls or the Senate anymore, and just do as they pleased. They could do that, because they had the army with them.
Augustus, in 31 BC, was one of these generals. But he realized that people did not like this pushing people around, and so he set up a different system keeping the Senate and the consuls This system kept on going for the next 1500 years, more or less.
Topic14:
Write a composition on the scientific achievements of the ancient Chinese civilization.
Typical Essay:
In early and medieval China, as in the Roman Empire, science seems to have been oriented mainly towards engineering and practical inventions, and not so much towards theoretical ideas about how the natural world worked. It was in Han Dynasty China that paper was first invented, and about the same time, that the magnetic compass, for telling north from south, was also invented there. Scientists in China also invented gunpowder.
Chinese scholars also conducted scientific observations of plants and animals, and also of astronomy (the stars and planets). The many detailed and careful drawings of flowe rs and other plants, and star charts, from China show this interest.
The influence of Confucius made China a place where logical thought was also highly valued. Mathematics was taught in the schools, through the use of a math textbook called the Nine Chapters, which may have been written as early as the Han Dynasty in the 200's AD (but nobody knows for sure).
By around 850 AD, under the Tang Dynasty, Chinese printers were experimenting with block printing, and around the year 1000, they invented moveable type.
Topic15:
Write a composition on the ancient Islamic civilization.
Typical Essay:
People first came to the Arabian Peninsula probably about 150,000 BC, in the Old Stone Age. They were hunters and gatherers. By 2000 BC (or possibly earlier) Semitic-speaking people had moved into the Arabian Peninsula, also coming from the north. They were nomads when they arrived, who travelled around with their sheep and goats pasturing them in different pastures at different times of year. And they stayed nomads: many of them are nomads today.
In the southern part of the peninsula, on the other hand, the people were farmers. Nobody is sure where they came from, but the Queen of Sheba mentioned in the Bible may be one of these people.
By the time of Alexander the Great, we start to know a little more about the Arabs, because the Greeks were trading with them. The Romans also traded with the Arabs, who got spices and other things from India and sold them to the Romans for gold.
In the long war between the Sassanids and the Romans, different tribes of Arabs fought on each side. In this Late An tique period, the kingdom of Saba (Sheba) fell apart.
The Prophet Mohammed was born in the northern Arabian trading city of Mecca between 570 and 580 AD. When he was forty years old, he heard the angel Gabriel speaking to him and telling Mohammed that he was a prophet in the line of Abraham, Moses, and Jesus, who would continue the faith those prophets, had started. Mohammed's faith was called Islam (iz-LAMM). After a slow start, Mohammed made many converts to his religion, and after he won some military battles, most of the other Arabic tribes also converted to Islam. After they had done that, Mohammed's successors attacked first the Romans and then the Sassanids to convert them. By 640 (after the death of Mohammed) the Arabs controlled most of West Asia, and soon after that, under the rule of the Umayyad caliphs, they conquered Egypt. By 711, the Umayyad has controlled all of Western Asia except Turkey (which was still part of the Roman Empire), and all of the southern Mediterranean: Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, and most of Spain.
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