OUMH2103 1

ENGLISH FOR SCIENCE AND TECHNICAL PURPOSE

FAKULTI PENDIDIKAN DAN BAHASA

OUMH2103
ENGLISH FOR SCIENCE AND TECHNICAL PURPOSE

NAMA

LENDY @ JESSICA CHRISTOPHER

NOMBOR MATRIK

751209125558001

NO KAD PENGENALAN

751209-12-5558

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019-8087731

E-MAIL

lendy75@hotmail.com

PUSAT PEMBELAJARAN

: OUM CAWANGAN TAWAU

SEPTEMBER 2015

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ENGLISH FOR SCIENCE AND TECHNICAL PURPOSE

TABLE OF CONTENTS

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1.0

INTRODUCTION

Television is one of the greatest achievements of the twentieth century. Families were glued
to the screen watching interesting shows, films, sports events and other programs. Viewers
could witness milestone events in the history of humanity, for example the Apollo 11 landing
on the moon. The television informed and united people. It became part of the family.
Moreover, people at work also talked about their favorite soap opera or the football game the
night before. However, that was only the beginnings. Later, the role of TV changed a lot and
has been changing ever since. Television offers such a wide range of channels and programs
that people cannot handle the abundance of shows coming from the box. Think of series and
reality shows that have made people spend most of their free time in front of the television
instead of spending quality time with their loved ones.
In August 1999, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) issued guidelines recommending
that children under the age of two watch no television or any screen entertainment at all
because television can negatively affect early brain development and that children of all
ages should not have a television in their bedroom. This announcement has more recently
been followed by a study of 2,500 children (Christakis et al, 2004) published in their journal,
Pediatrics, looking at whether early exposure to television during critical periods of synaptic
development would be associated with subsequent attentional problems. About 5% of
children now exhibit attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and its incidence
appears to be increasing. Although genetic inheritance accounts for some of the prevalence of
ADHD, and despite decades of research, little thought has gone in to the potentially crucial
role that early childhood experiences may have on the development of attentional problems.
Christakis and his colleagues wondered if there was an omnipresent environmental agent that
is putting some children at risk of developing ADHD.
They found that early television exposure was associated with attentional problems at age
seven which was consistent with a diagnosis of ADHD. Children who watched television at
ages one and three had a significantly increased risk of developing such attentional problems
by the time they were seven. For every hour of television a child watched per day, there was a
9% increase in attentional problems. The authors suggest that their findings may actually be
an understatement of the effects on children.

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It has become a conventional wisdom that television in general, and higher exposure to
television, in particular, has an adverse effect on children. Television has been blamed for
childhood obesity, lower cognitive achievement and deteriorating school performance,
violence and aggressive behavior, and for glorifying (and thereby encouraging) smoking,
drinking and teenage sex.2 In this paper, we ask whether it is television viewing per se that
negatively affects the childs development or are there intervening factors such as family
income, parental education, family structure, and unobserved child or family characteristics
that explain the observed negative relationship.
Television can be friends in our life. However, it can became foe when we start to addicted
to it. Thus, watching too much television can effect an individual in terms of physiological,
psychological and sociological.
2.0

PHYSIOLOGICAL EFFECTS

According to Wikipedia, physiology defined as "nature and origin and the scientific study of
the normal function in living systems. A sub-discipline of biology, its focus is in how
organisms, organ systems, organs, cells, and bio-molecules carry out the chemical or physical
functions that exist in a living system. Given the size of the field it is divided into, among
others, animal physiology (including that of humans), plant physiology, cellular physiology,
microbial physiology (see microbial metabolism), bacterial physiology, and viral physiology.
Television still takes an important place among the amenities of our modern life. Being born
as a scientific discovery of photoconductivity and image scanning in the end of the XIX
century, it turned into a huge monster, which captured minds and souls of billions of people
around the earth. Modern television plays significant role in implementing various social,
cultural, propagandist and even military objectives.
For many people television is still the primary source for receiving all the information, which
can satisfy their needs as social individuals. In addition, television provides us with perfect
entertainment for any taste, starting with cartoons and ending with action movies. All these
positive factors advantage constant increase of TV viewership and encourage people to spend
more time in front of the TV sets. Often this results in television abuse and addiction, which
usually cause numerous harmful consequences and can seriously damage peoples health and
life style.

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The first and the most dangerous physiological effect of watching too much of television is
mass physical degradation in our society. People, who spend hours and hours in front of the
TV sets, are under very high risk of becoming overweight and obese. At that, television
works for putting on weight from two different directions: it considerably reduces physical
activity of obsessive TV viewers, and, at the same time, promotes unhealthy eating choices,
like the foodstuffs with high content of sugar and fat, etc. Also, it is very common to snack
excessively or to drink a lot of beer when watching some exciting programs, like sports,
different competitions or thrillers. Therefore, supported with the models of extreme alcohol
consumption in different TV shows and movies, television encourages drinking, especially
among the teenagers and adolescents. That is why obsession with watching TV can cause
some dangerous addictions.
Other than that, which can be caused by watching too much of television, is connected with
possible mental disorders or disturbances. The most spread of those are attention deficit
disorder and other problems with emotional health. In addition, obsessive TV watchers
frequently feel so called exhaustion of the orientation response, which results in constant
feeling of tiresome and weariness. Bringing the effects of relaxation into our minds,
television actually disturbs human brain and makes it tired even within the first minutes of
TV watching session. Recent researches discovered that television slows down our thinking.
Also, image and color flickering affects human vision and, especially, functioning of heart,
because the frequencies of such flickering can correspond to the frequencies of the heartbeat
or to some electrical frequencies, which support functioning of human heart and brain.
Resonance of such frequencies is especially dangerous for a human organism.
Other very common problems of those people, who watch too much of television, is lack of
concentration, insomnia, restlessness and depressive thoughts. Obsessive watching TV steals
the time to be spent for many other important activities, like reading, cleaning the house,
traveling, going to cinemas or theaters, and so on. Children are especially affected by the
negative sides of watching television (like seeing violence or sexual abuse) because of their
unformed psychology and organism, in general. Modern television ruthlessly damages the
development of aesthetic sensibility of a child and his imagination about the beauty. This can
result in wrong perception of the life and its realities. The most common reactions of children
on TV dependence are imitation of caddish or aggressive behaviors from TV, failures in

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schools and low grades, slow-down in intellectual development, lack of social skills, and
others.
3.0

PSYCHOLOGICAL EFFECT

Nowadays, there are so many television programs showing movie and film not only from
Malaysia, but also from outside. Some of the movie and film show violence, gangsterism, and
many inappropriate content. It cant be denied that all this movies and films influence the
viewer behavior especially the young children.
Thus, one of the most worrying behaviors that parents faced with their young children today
is the tendency to perform any motion of aggression. Many television shows today tend to
insert aggression behavior in most of the scenes, which is not just the actions of kicking or
hitting, but to the extent of raping and killing. In 1990, the National Association for the
Education of Young Children has raised their concern in the NAEYC position statement
where they stated that there has been an increase in the number of reported violent acts
directed at children and severity of violent acts observed by children through the media,
including television (p.18) (Ni Chang, 2000).
In relation to that according to the American Psychological Association Task Force on
Television and American Society, by their graduation from elementary schools, children will
have seen 8,000 killings and more than 10,000 other acts of violence (Carter, 1995; Ni
Chang, 2000). Many believed that there is a correlation between an excessive viewing of
violence on television and childrens exhibited aggressive behaviors (Hapkiewiez, 1979; Ni
Chang, 2000; Rothenberg, 1985). In an experiment on aggressive behavior among preschool
children, the results show that children who viewed aggressive programs showed
significantly greater increases in aggressive behavior than those who watched non aggressive
programs. Analyzing the above scenario, it reflects Bandura social learning theory, where
most human behavior is learned observationally through modeling, which involve observing
others forms an idea of how new behaviors are performed, and on later occasions it will
serves as a guide for action (Berks, 1994).
Hence when young children continuously watch aggressive actions from the television, there
will always be a tendency for them imitate the actions, thinking such actions as part of their
play, which could lead to actual aggressive behavior. This is because repetition of violence in
the mass media could results in a decreased emotional sensitivity to media violence and

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increased probability for decreased emotional sensitivity to actual aggressive behavior in real
life situations (Rothenberg, 1985).
Other than that, watching too much television also will influence the teenagers. Love story,
romance, sex-oriented contents and many more will lead the teenagers to do the same.
Recently, there are a lot of cases baby abandoned by the mother, baby killed, baby chopped
and many cases related to unwanted baby. This situation is very worrying as humanity value
are getting lost every single day.
The average American teenager watches three hours of television a day. Typical teen fare
contains heavy doses of sexual content, ranging from touching, kissing, jokes, and innuendo
to conversations about sexual activity and portrayals of intercourse. Sex is often presented as
a casual activity without risk or consequences. Conventional wisdom holds that the messages
young viewers absorb from television promote sexual activity in this group.
Nowadays, teenagers in Malaysia also exposed to this kind of movie and films. We can see in
social media, teenagers are more daring and posting inappropriate picture. Recently, there is a
case where male student proposed his so called girlfriend in front of the school. Not only that,
the female student was very unthoughtful to kiss the male student in front of their friends.
This is not our culture and it is from western culture.
All this psychological effects should be undertaken seriously by all parties including parents,
teachers, the ministry of education and also society. We cannot simply closed our eyes and let
this problem getting bigger and serious day by day.
4.0

SOCIOLOGICAL EFFECTS