Blog Assignment 7

I've read the article named "A Way With Words, or Away With Words: Effect of Texting and IMing on Language", and the writer of this article is Timothy Barranco.

Counterargument: Rapidly texting makes student use abbreviations and improper English instead of Standard English which will degrade the English language and also will lower the ability of students' language skills.

Reasons: 1. Those students who are always texting will use these improper English in their writing and cannot differentiate the proper and improper English which leads to using English inappropriate.

2. The bad habits developed through frequent use of txt are typically short-lived.

Claim: Txt is sometimes beneficial and is a accessory to Standard English and has no threat to English language as a whole.

Reason: 1. Phenomena like txt has occurred before.

2. Popularity of txt can recall poetic examples of non-standard spelling according to some scholars.

3. Since internet invented, sharing of opinions, ideas, philosophies and so on has been much easier, just a click.

The writer uses lots of researches from books and database which make the paper much more believable and dependable. And he also uses lots of examples from his life which also makes the paper real. The paper is really persuasive due to the researches he did and the examples he raised.

Blog assignment #6

One example of paraphrase: The largest social networking website, MySpace, has approximately 320,000 new users join every day. (Clemmitt)
One example of a quotation: According to Chris Hansen, author of To Catch a Predator, “An appealing picture, a friendly query, a similarity of interests, or someone just seems ‘cool’ is often more than enough for kids to make exceptions and let someone into their site that they don’t, in fact, know” (Hansen 135).

Why did the writer choose to present their research material in this way?

Because the paraphrase of some statistics can make the essay much realer and the quotations in the essay all fit well in the paragraphs, meantime, these make the essay seem to be much more believable.

How does the research contribute to the overall meaning of the essay?

The research can make this essay more believable. Since this is an essay about the publication of personal profile on social networking website, the statistics the author listed make the essay very serious and accurate and the sentences cited from some other works make the essay realer and persuasive and powerful.

Blog assignment #5

Winners of the war are also the winners of the history. However, things are not always what the winners think it look like. Even though losers are beaten in the war, they have their reasons. For example, in the First Opium War, China was beaten by Great Britain, and had to sign the aggressive treaty, that is, Treaty of Nanjing. China, as a loser, really had her own reasons for this failure. In the end of Qing Dynasty, the government of the nation was very weak and corrupt. Lots of officials were addicted to the opium imported from Europe. Some lower class officials would bribe the upper class officials to make them say something to the Emperor. The Emperor then was puzzled by the flattery and was not clear about the truth. In the meantime, the English merchants took advantage of the weaknesses of the officials’ addiction to the opium, and forced the officials to flatter the upper class officials or even the Emperor by using the opium as a temptation.

Although the losers are not willing to be beaten, they have rights and the reasons to explain their failure. The history from the losers’ angle may not be that much beautiful, however, it may be encouraging.

Blog assignment #4

I’ve been through the same struggle as Liu that whether to be with my Chinese friends or with Americans. Several days ago one of my roommates consulted with me whether I wanted to de-triple. Then I felt a little disappointed for I thought what she meant was to let me move out. But I comforted myself that I could live with my Chinese friend (she lives in a double room, but only herself there) in this case. Actually I was extremely sad and angry about why they treated me like this. After moving, my old roommates were still saying hi to me always and talking with me, which made me feel much more comfortable and not that much sadder.

This experience makes me learn much about the culture shock. So I think to be with other people from your own country, even if they are strangers, is quiet a way for people to comfort their emotion. They can avoid the culture shock and tension temporarily by talking with people from the same country, for they share the same beliefs and values and even tastes to some food. Even if they come from different parts of their country, they all have the sense of belonging when they meet each other. Although they may lose a great chance to talk with native speakers, they make their minds comfortable and relieved.

Now I’m living with my Chinese friend. I feel happy every day instead of tensional and upset. I know what I lose but I also know what I get.

Blog Assignment 3

When I just came to America, there was a phenomenon which made me confused. That is, every time when strangers meet, they would say “hi” to each other. The first time an American said “hi” to me, I shocked and replied nothing. I just wondered why they were so friendly that they could greet a stranger at that time. After reading this article, I learned that that was just a simple way of acknowledging another person’s presence. But I think this is a good way to show friendliness. However, in China, my hometown, such greeting to a stranger will be regarded as weirdness and abnormality. Usually Chinese won’t greet any person they don’t know.

Another phenomenon I feel different is the eye contact when talk with other people. In America, people talk to each other with a lot eye contact, which makes me feel uncomfortable. But if I want to show confidence and attention to the person I’m talking with, I have to stare at their eyes. It seems to be opposite in China. We only stare at other people’s eyes when we are angry or we are peers. However, when we talked to parents or grandparents, whoever is senior to us, we cannot stare at their eyes, which can show our politeness.

These are the two differences I’ve found between my hometown and America. Then I’m going to talk about the similarities of these two countries. People in both countries like to smile at each other to show friendliness, raise eyebrows to express shock and surprise, grimace to convey pain, disgust disapproval, and they have almost the same personal space to talk with each other. These similarities make me feel at home.

Above all, although there are so many differences among countries and cultures, there are still similar things which make people feel that the whole world is just a global village.

Option 1

This article is about why some people can become friends and how to make friends. According to Dr. Zunin, the first four minutes are completely important, for we can judge if we want to make friends with others by these four minutes and the impression left by others.

When I meet someone, I’d like to portray a polite and elegant image. But sometimes I may fail to behave in such a graceful way, and I hate such kind of feeling. Once I met a Chinese from my FYE class, I just wanted to be active and excited. However, things went the opposite way. I made myself overconfident, and I had no idea why I was like this. After that, I felt so disgusting of myself and so depressed.

I like to be myself when I meet someone. Actually, I’ve never met someone first time and shown him/her the real personality of me. Every time I met a person, things do not turn as I wish always, either too shy or too confident. I cannot handle it in a balanced way. I really wish I could meet a person whom I could show the real me!

However, after I read this article, I feel that I could find a good way to handle the first impression I leave on others.

Response to Mother Tongue

After I read this article, I found this is about the way we speak. There’s something in this article which is as same as my life. Actually, my mother’s Chinese Mandarin is not as good as mine. She has heavy accent. So sometimes I have to help her fix it in the right way. But sometimes I am just like her, saying something not right, and this may makes others confused with what I’m talking about. From this article, I learned that this is the way my mother usually speaks and it deeply influences me, which makes me speak like her, act like her. So this is Mother Tongue.

As to the difference between different generations, I think it must be the different things they went through, the different societies they lived in and the different values they had.

The biggest difference between formal and informal languages would be the different situations they are in, like spoken language and written language. Spoken language is a informal format while written language is formal.

In my life, I’ve encountered in so many kind of languages. One of them would be the body language. This kind of language is the strongest one I’ve ever seen before, for if one cannot speak the language in another country, this language is extremely useful. I’ll take my parents as an example. My parents have been in America these days. They cannot speak English, only some words but not any sentence. However, they just used the body language and some words, then they traveled around almost the whole Delaware State. I have to say that body language is really a useful language.

This is my response to this article.

Aloha~

Hi, everyone! My name is Yeqing Liu, you can call me Rita. I'm from China. My eighteenth birthday is coming. It's just in this month seventeenth. I'll be so glad if you help celebrate it.I'm the only child in my family due to the One Child Policy in China. In this case, I own all the love from my parents and I love my parents. I'm majored in Finance, and I want to be a businesswoman just like my excellent father in the future and help him make his company a better one. I have lots of hobbies, like singing, cooking, fashion design. I'm an easygoing person, and I'm happy to be your friend!