English coursework portfolio

Source One
Teen vogue article - https://www.teenvogue.com/story/how-take-action-climate-change-at-
school-this-year

Zeena: I encouraged my classmates to practice sustainability in their lives and to take action
against the progression of climate change by being conscious of their carbon footprints and
how they could positively impact the climate movement. I did this through a politically and
socially oriented club that I founded at my high school in my junior year. Through this collective
effort, we successfully swayed our school's administration to make the shift from a nonrecycling
establishment to a recycling establishment.

Rose: In 2017 and 2018, 20 people died in a mudslide and wildfires burned down peoples’
homes in my local community of Santa Barbara. One of my university’s departments put out a
report about the economic benefits of a fossil fuel project in our community — while taking
money from fossil fuel corporations — so we confronted the professor who directs it, at his
office, in May. It was part of our larger campaign of holding our school accountable for not
holding to its values and mission. (UC Santa Barbara did not return Teen Vogue's request for
comment).

Natalie: I have started several climate initiatives at my school, such as the first high school
chapter of Food and Water Watch's Take Back the Tap project, which aims to eliminate plastic
bottled water at schools and universities. I also have written a climate action focused op-ed for
my school newspaper, and urged my school community to participate in the climate strikes.

Sabirah: I have spoken with school administration about the need for more climate-friendly
solutions in our school environment. Instead of giving plastic, heavy packaging with our
breakfast, [I’ve urged them to] invest in more eco-friendly alternatives, such as juice boxes that
don't need plastic straws. I have also [urged] the administration to help our students start
striking and skipping school on global strike dates, such as March 15 and May 3. To prepare
everyone in my school environment for these strikes, I visited many advisories (homerooms) in
the morning and gave mini speeches to the teachers and students about why it's so important
to come out and make sure that you[‘re] presen[t].

Isra: I used to be a part of my school's environmental club where we would organize [about]
how to compost and recycle. Also helped the student walkouts in my school for the strikes by
boosting on social media and passing out flyers.
Source Two
Source Three
Source Four
'This Is All Wrong,' Greta Thunberg Tells World Leaders At U.N. Climate Session

"This is all wrong. I shouldn't be up here. I should be back in school on the other side of the
ocean. Yet you all come to us young people for hope. How dare you!

"You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words. And yet I'm one of the
lucky ones. People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in
the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal
economic growth. How dare you!

"For more than 30 years, the science has been crystal clear. How dare you continue to look away
and come here saying that you're doing enough, when the politics and solutions needed are still
nowhere in sight.

"You say you hear us and that you understand the urgency. But no matter how sad and angry I
am, I do not want to believe that. Because if you really understood the situation and still kept on
failing to act, then you would be evil. And that I refuse to believe.

"The popular idea of cutting our emissions in half in 10 years only gives us a 50% chance of
staying below 1.5 degrees [Celsius], and the risk of setting off irreversible chain reactions
beyond human control.

"Fifty percent may be acceptable to you. But those numbers do not include tipping points, most
feedback loops, additional warming hidden by toxic air pollution or the aspects of equity and
climate justice. They also rely on my generation sucking hundreds of billions of tons of your
CO2 out of the air with technologies that barely exist.

"So a 50% risk is simply not acceptable to us — we who have to live with the consequences.

"To have a 67% chance of staying below a 1.5 degrees global temperature rise – the best odds
given by the [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] – the world had 420 gigatons of CO2
left to emit back on Jan. 1st, 2018. Today that figure is already down to less than 350 gigatons.

"How dare you pretend that this can be solved with just 'business as usual' and some technical
solutions? With today's emissions levels, that remaining CO2 budget will be entirely gone within
less than 8 1/2 years.

"There will not be any solutions or plans presented in line with these figures here today, because
these numbers are too uncomfortable. And you are still not mature enough to tell it like it is.

"You are failing us. But the young people are starting to understand your betrayal. The eyes of
all future generations are upon you. And if you choose to fail us, I say: We will never forgive
you.
"We will not let you get away with this. Right here, right now is where we draw the line. The
world is waking up. And change is coming, whether you like it or not.

"Thank you."

Source Five
Thank you, Mr. Secretary-General, your excellencies, ladies and gentleman, and distinguished
guests. I’m honored to be here today, I stand before you not as an expert but as a concerned
citizen, one of the 400,000 people who marched in the streets of New York on Sunday, and the
billions of others around the world who want to solve our climate crisis.

As an actor I pretend for a living. I play fictitious characters often solving fictitious problems.

I believe mankind has looked at climate change in that same way: as if it were a fiction, as if
pretending that climate change wasn’t real would somehow make it go away.

But I think we know better than that. Every week , we’re seeing new and undeniable climate
events, evidence that accelerated climate change is here right now. Droughts are intensifying,
our oceans are acidifying, with methane plumes rising up from the ocean floor. We are seeing
extreme weather events, and the West Antarctic and Greenland ice-sheets melting at
unprecedented rates, decades ahead of scientific projections.

None of this is rhetoric, and none of it is hysteria. It is fact. The scientific community knows it,
industry knows it, governments know it, even the United States military knows it. The Chief of
the U.S. Navy’s Pacific Command, Admiral Samuel Locklear, recently said that climate change is
our single greatest security threat.

My Friends, this body – perhaps more than any other gathering in human history – now faces
this difficult, but achievable task. You can make history… or be vilified by it.

To be clear, this is not about telling people to change their light bulbs or buy a hybrid car. This
disaster has grown BEYOND the choices that individuals make. This is now about our industries,
and governments around the world taking decisive, large-scale action.

Now must be our moment for action.

We need to put a pricetag on carbon emissions, and eliminate government subsidies for oil,
coal and gas companies. We need to end the free ride that industrial polluters have been given
in the name of a free-market economy, they do not deserve our tax dollars, they deserve our
scrutiny. For the economy itself will die if our eco-systems collapse.

The good news is that renewable energy is not only achievable but good economic policy.
This is not a partisan debate; it is a human one. Clean air and a livable climate are inalienable
human rights. And solving this crisis is not a question of politics, it is a question of our own
survival.

This is the most urgent of times, and the most urgent of messages.

Honored delegates, leaders of the world, I pretend for a living. But you do not.

The people made their voices heard on Sunday around the world and the momentum will not
stop. But now it is YOUR turn, the time to answer humankind’s greatest challenge is now.

We beg of you to face it with courage. And honesty. Thank you.

English reading commentary

Word count: 1666

My devised piece will be a speech about the problems of climate change around the world and how it is
affecting people’s lives. My intended audience for this speech is the WSO school community which
involves students and adults, I choose this because it has a bigger impact on the community and spread
the awareness to more people. I have chosen a speech because it affects the audience more by putting a
solid idea in their head also, I can use more language features like tone of voice and rhetorical questions.
The reason I decided to choose this topic is because it affects all the country’s around the world not just
one pacific country, so It reaches out to a much broader audience. The purpose of my speech to inform
the audience of the importance of climate change around the world and how it is not just affecting them
but the very ground there standing on. I found the research progress interesting and challenging
because I needed to find the right sources to use on my speech and how it can affect our planet in
positive or negative ways. Not all of the information I found was as reliable or useful as I first thought,
but it gave me a new incite on how we can fix the problems/minimize the problems of global warming. I
think my most important source I found was about Leonardo DiCaprio talk to the UN. When he talked to
the UN he said “I stand here today not as an expert but a concerned citizen” this shows the UN the view
and opinions of many citizens around the world. he also explains his point talking about how he played
fictional characters and mankind has the same why, meaning if we want to stop climate change, we
must stop the act we put on. She also has a great way of using language features and this will help me
improve my speech.

To begin the process, I first wanted to find out about how youth are trying to minimise climate change.
After much searching, I found my first source which is a teen vogue article about the climate crisis at
hand and how kids in schools and universities have started to find renewable and more efferent ways to
lessen it. I believe this source is reliable because it comes from a well know news company in America
and it shows the perspective on younger students at school. This article is aimed at the students and
teachers in schools and universities around the world because the only students have been questioned
in the source. Some new information I found out was that students are pushing their schools into a
more eco-friendly type of school I found this particularly interesting because it shows how a small group
of people can put their point of view out there and change the world for the better. This source is going
to directly influence my speech as it will add a connection between the audience and it will expresses
not just a politics point of view but student as well, this helps when I am talking to students of the WSO
community by getting them more engaged in the speech.

After much refining, I chose my second source to be about a poster from Teen Vogue article about a
group of students who are trying to make a change for the better. The picture is showing people in
America marching the streets of their towns protesting about how climate change is a great critical
threat to our planet. This photo is appointed to a younger audience for example students of the WSO
community which could make a bigger impact on climate change by enforcing rules or establishing
awareness around the school. In the picture one of the teenagers are holding up a carboard poster of a
melting world with fires burning up a forest underneath, this poster is telling us about how climate
change has burnt down country’s like Australia and golfed them in flames, houses being burnt down
and forests being obliterated. It' shocking because this is only the start of something bigger if we don’t
change, this makes the viewer of the poster think about the other possibilities that climate change has
installed for us. I think this source is reliable because it voices the opinions of the public not just pieces
of work written down in a book. This source will be useful in my main reading commentary because it
will give me the point of view of how far climate change has gotten to where there are protest around
the globe of people fighting for a better world, so I will enforce a source of empowerment in the youth
of the community influencing them to rise up for a cleaner planet.

Another source I came across was a infographic about how companies are being affect like IKEA and
how they are helping by using renewable recourses. This surprised me because before I started this
research I never thought about how companies are being affected by climate change and how they are
adapting to it. I believe this source is reliable because it comes from a well know website called ‘the
climate group’ which are bring eco-friendly options into the world. This source is aimed towards other
company’s but also adults in the WSO community showing them how they can help stop the climate
crisis by using renewable power sources also it tells other company’s how climate change can affect
you're company, in the infographic it tells me that ‘a hurricane in 2012 made 9 IKEA’s close making them
lose around 9 million dollars. Some new information I found from this source was how not just the
planet and homes are being affected companies are to and how they are trying to stop climate change in
the best way they can; this will influence other companies to follow by IKEA’s example of changing to
renewable energy sources. This infographic has told me about how IKEA has put tones of money into
renewable power for example they put ‘550,000 solar panels installed on IKEA group buildings’ and ‘157
wind turbines across 8 different countries’ this tells me how encouraged companies are to help stop
climate change. This source is going to be one of the most useful sources in my speech because it will
give me the point of view of not just people but companies being affected and how they want to change
their ways of energy production. This is also related to my speech because it gets the adults and older
audience involved in the speech, giving them tips and improvements for their work place or companies.

Recently there has been a worldwide out brake disease affecting everyone even climate change as a
result of this, I have chosen to research about how covid-19 has affected climate change. There are
Satellite images showing dramatic drops in air pollution in coronavirus hotspots around the globe like
china America and more, offering a hope to humans around the world to an otherwise very dark story.
Fossil fuels in 2008 have had a drop because of a fossil fuel combustion reducing it by 1.4% but in 2010 it
has risen up to 4.9%. covid-19 has a great impact on the environment we pollute, but it has a bad impact
on human metal health, physical health and security. This is useful in my speech because it gives the
audience view on the situation at hand right now, creating a more engaging speech and making them
ask questions for them self’s; influencing them to research more. This source was clearly aimed towards
citizens around the globe telling them about how covid-19 has decreased global warming effects on a
wide scale, also motivating people to cut down on your carbon foot print while global warming is a low.
This source is going to directly influence my speech by putting me and the audience on the same page so
that it will make them understand the speech better.

The last source I chose to research was a speech from Leonardo DiCaprio talking to the UN about how
climate change and how it is affecting normal citizens/actors like him. This source is reliable because he
is talking to the UN that means his facts have to be spot on and influential to persuade the people of the
UN. This source is directly aimed at citizens and the UN because how he refers to himself as a concerned
citizen, so he is influencing other citizens to stand up for the cause and express their opinions on climate
change also he forces facts onto the UN telling them how they need to be more aware of what climate
change is doing to our world and if we can’t fix it at least slow it down. New information I have found is
how many people want to change climate change because when he explains ‘one of the 400,000 people
who marched of the streets of new York’ which makes me realise how much people want a change in
their lives for climate change; this will influence the people around them. He also talks about how ‘you
can make history… or be vilified by it’ which emphasizes that if we don’t make a change now we will play
for it in the long run. One language technique is using metaphors when he talks about ‘we need to put a
price tag of carbon emissions’ and economy itself will die if our eco-system collapse’ this was used to
make the reader/listener think about how we can stop carbon emissions and how our eco-system could
collapse. This source will be very useful for my speech because it will show me the point of view of every
day citizens and how the world is being affected also it will give me an insight on how to use formal
language to give my point across to the WSO community.

English Writing commentary

Word count: 802

My purpose of this speech was to create a factual but interesting speech about climate change
so that it will give my WSO community a incite on how to improve. The audience of the speech
was the WSO community which is students from the school WSO and also their parents I did
this to add a wide age range so that adults could influence their kids or even improve their own
workplace. I made it clear who I was talking to by adding “your” which meant I was not trying
make a speech about myself but a speech about how we a collective can improve I used
Possessive langue to do this. My format layout of my speech started with me putting an image
in them of how the world could be if we don’t do anything about climate change making the
audience scared and shocked of the consequences of our actions by using ‘Repetition’. Then I
gradually gave them facts and ways that we could chip in to help the greater good of the world
by using Facts and statistics also reliving them of the picture I put in their heads in the
introduction. This made them think about if they don’t help now the world might not have a
bright future as we have today. I feel like my speech was successful because I could present my
point across to the WSO community of all ages young and old without confusion. I found the
process of using research in my speech Useful by founding out new knowledge that I did not
know before and how much of a crisis where in. also I found this hard searching what sources
would be good for my speech and how it can relate to my audience.

One part of my speech I found particularly successful was how I could relate my sources to the
students and teens of WSO “You don’t have the option to sit around like pigs and do nothing
while you watch other students fly to the streets to prove their point for better of the world”
The techniques I used where similes and metaphors to make the younger audience feel guilty of
them self’s and convey my message to them. I believe this would make my audience feel guilty
and disappointed because of how I present them through my language features I used in my
speech. This part of my speech was significantly influenced by the ‘teen vouge article’ which
gave me a new point of view. The teen vouge article gave me the point of view of the students
in schools and university’s stating how they are trying to change their schools opinion on
climate change, also the ‘teen vogue picture’ demonstrated to me how kids, teens and young
adults can affect climate change so I used it to influence the WSO students.

Another paragraph that I think was very successful was how I told the audience about the
impact of recycling and how your carbon footprint is affecting your world but also how you can
change it. In this speech I like how I used reputation when I said “you can” twice this made
more of an impact on the audience making them remember the phrase “you can” so when I
finish they will remember it. Also in this speech I used small facts to make it easier to remember
for the audience example “You can save 2,400 pounds of carbon dioxide per year” and “you
could save 1,200 pounds of carbon dioxide if you reduce your garbage by 10 percent” I think
this would implement little facts for them to remember after the speech. Also, I focused on the
parents more in the second half of the paragraph talking about “do you know that each child
increases a parent’s carbon footprint by nearly six times? don’t use them as an excuse to wage
war on their environment” this makes the parents more engaged in climate change and how
oblivious they might have been to it. I reinforced my point by giving examples like “I have
children therefore I must buy meat” and “I have children therefore I must drive a car.” This uses
a first-person perspective of the parents and how they act without knowing it using the children
as an excuse.
Overall, I found this speech to be quite successful and educational but also exiting, I got to learn
many new things that I did not know before. I learned many things like how not just people are
being affected by climate change and how not just adults are standing up against climate
change kids are too. I was going to do the project again; I would add more sources about more
meaty products and trash that floats in the sea and poisoning the wildlife.

English speech
Word count: 1103

Imagine your forests being burnt down by wildfires because of thin ozone layers. Just imagine
your homes getting destroyed by floods caused by ice caps melting. imagine your city’s getting
ripped up by enormous typhoon’s. The Earth's climate is changing, but in ways that you can't
easily see. We all know about global warming, but do we really care or try to do at least some
of the things that will help stop it or at least slow it down? Do you like polar bears? Because in a
few years how would you feel if these polar bears no longer existed in a few years? because of
you. Polar bears are running out of ice chucks to sleep on as they are all melting. “Now it is
YOUR turn, the time to answer humankind’s greatest challenge is now” this was a quote used
by Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg, addressing united nations about the
worldwide climate change crisis.

I am here today to talk about how we as a WSO community can work together to make a more
enjoyable and cleaner environment. I have researched different sources and discovered
petrifying and interesting facts on clime change. Some examples of interesting facts I found
where I have found that every time, we damage the ozone layer each year the frailer it gets and
hotter it gets. Global warming has already started to affect the earth in several ways. Arctic
glaciers have begun to melt, threatening indigenous life such as the polar bears; just put
yourself in their shoes, watching ice crack under your feet as it drowns under the water and you
are left with nothing cold Icey water. This problem could become a problem for low land areas
that are below the sea level like the Netherlands. As ocean temperatures have begun to rise
algae start to die which can affect the entire food chain of animal spices as we know it. What if
your children grow up not knowing what a fish taste like? But There are ways we can combat
the effects of global warming; The Clean Air Act of 1990 is a law in the United States that
attempts to protect and improve the earths air. Some of the components of this law include
limiting harmful vehicle emissions and phasing out the use of chemicals that can damage the
ozone layer. we can work together to prevent global warming by planting trees and by car-
pooling. Also not just driving and planting trees on the ground is bad things in the air like planes
for example the contrails left by aeroplanes last only hours. But they are now so widespread
that their warming effect is greater than that of all the carbon dioxide emitted by aeroplanes
that has accumulated in the atmosphere since the first flight of the Wright brothers. this is our
future and we are the only ones that can change it!

WSO how can you make a change? How can you help the world you live in? ask yourself that,
what will happen if we neglected climate change and let the world rot underneath you. There is
no planet B for us to go to, there is no second option so we must save what we hold dearly, not
just leave it in the past, we must bring change to this world, not let it fly past us, we must
create a future for our next generation, not leave the hard labour to them. I know that all of
you are responsible in one way or another, but you can stop this crisis by reducing your carbon
footprint. Us humans have been affected dramatically but more so animals, they have been
hugely affected by our failures to protect them. Recently there has been a wildfire burning
through Australia’s forests, burning through tones of habitats of native Australian mammals
such as the long-footed potoroo, the mountain pygmy possum, the yellow-bellied glider and
the brush-tailed rock wallaby, and bird species such as the critically endangered regent
honeyeater. But also, this fire has burned down 2,000 homes across Australia and killing 34
people just because of the effect of global warming. Students and adults in WSO this is a clear
example of how bad climate change has gotten too, just a little bit of effort a day might even be
able to change the fate of a world disaster.

You don’t have the option to sit around like pigs and do nothing while watch other people fly to
the streets to prove their point for better of the world. students in schools and universities
around the globe are even protesting just so they can give their point across to the world
leaders for example Greta Thunberg. You don’t have to do what they do but a least change your
ways of living for example recycling; You can save 2,400 pounds of carbon dioxide per year by
recycling just half of your household waste. You can Avoid products with lots of packaging
because you could save 1,200 pounds of carbon dioxide if you reduce your garbage by 10
percent. We can make a significant change in this school not just at home, we can fight for the
number of plastic bottles around school; we have already changed our plastic knives, forks and
spoons to wooden ones. We can do this now or we can let our school go on affecting climate
change around the world not just affecting you in the UAE where climate change is not so harsh
on us. Parents of WSO do you know that each child increases a parent’s carbon footprint by
nearly six times? don’t use them as an excuse to wage war on their environment “I have
children therefore I must buy meat,” goes the thinking. “I have children therefore I must drive a
car.” This is like saying, “I have children therefore I must destroy their future.” You can change
the way your children think, you can influence them to stop affecting your life by helping them
with the climate change problem that’s affecting their future.

Global warming continues to become more noticeable by people around the world, but
temperatures continue to rise, the negative effects on our environment will become more and
more of a problem to us and to our future generations. I hope this speech given you an insight
on how you can improve your daily lives or what you can change.

We are in the midst of a climate change emergency and the time to act is now. this is our last
chance, our final opportunity so let’s not waste it!