Blog 4 (2) Reflections on writing

So what is next? After long time narrating, the passage deserves a conclusion and a repeat of controlling idea? But I even had no intention to write a topic sentence! This bad habit contributed to the fairly low mark of my paragraph. In my view, in some cases it is necessary to make a clear structure of an essay and to show it to the reader, thus readers will get across your ideas. However, sometimes it is not. When write something relates much to one’s emotions, any assertive conclusions or judgments will be superfluous and break all the scenery the writer has made.

What enforces me to write opinions above is an event I shall not forget for a long time. Paragraph 6 was distributed in today’s class, and it was that paragraph that I made my mind to write essays in a well organized way in future. My standpoint was not clear enough, especially the topic sentence, thus making a vital mistake. I got punishment, fairly low marks, for the shaky ground. For the first sentence, actually I considered a long time whether I should write a sentence like this: I will never rely on the Internet to sustain my relationship with a girlfriend, for love does not equal to life on the Internet; but I can’t agree more to make the most of the Internet for romance. 

The main problem is I seemed to have no standpoint. Firstly I issue a denial, and what I mean is that we cannot rely on the Internet too much. Secondly I state my opinion that we should utilize the Internet properly, or moderately. The sentence is written in a Chinglish way because of my lack of knowledge in phrasing. The meaning of “equal to” in this sentence is not clear enough. Another problem is I do not address my idea in a direct way; instead I use the phrase “I can’t agree more”, which is a bit weak in stating an idea.

It reminded me of compositions in senior high school. Translated in English, its name is “An essay that contains five paragraphs: introduction, three main points, and conclusion; each main point is formed by four parts: topic, transition, body and conclusion”. Surprisingly, we have been taught to write formal essays several years ago, and what we are expected to write now is identical to we have been expected before.

Perhaps it makes it easy for teachers to mark the composition, since detailed criteria can be adapted to evaluate students’ work. And it ensures that everyone’s work could be judged in a fair way, thus getting rid of all kinds of conflicts. For students, writing becomes easy as well. Some specific models are provided for them to imitate. With three years’ imitating, anyone can get good marks if he or she spends a little time in reciting models and a few materials.

I am convinced that it is a good way to write academic articles. However, it is not useful enough. One may laugh at this ridiculous statement, for people write essays in this style all the time; it therefore should be the best style with no doubt. But think of the whole life: will people write this kind of essays if they do not have to worry about graduation, money and occupation? When we are free to write anything we like after escaping out of the hell of College Entrance Exam and being admitted in university, seldom do we write anything to reflect our lives.

Of course we should not write academic articles casually. However, masterpiece rarely does in a stodgy way. Not only do we need to write essays to establish a successful career, but we also need to record happenings, express emotions and retrospect ourselves in essays.

Blog 4 (1) Missed the bus

“The weather is fine”. The sun appeared after hiding behind the cloud for the whole day, and it shone upon the ground where everything was full of vim and vigor. The alarm woke me up from a good sleep. Seeing the cloudless blue skies, I felt relaxed and anticipated it would be a fascinating day. However, life is just as it is. It sometimes goes beyond your expectations but sometimes not. Today is the last day but one of February, and this special day turned out to be not a bit awkward and memorable.

After getting up, I just did as usual. Though it was not a proper time for students to get up –7:40, I was still confident enough to catch the school bus because I always managed to get through all the chores and be one of the last persons to get on the bus.

It was eight o’clock, a bit late. But thanks to the poor elevator and time-wasting fingerprint detector in our hostel, I even did not have to worry. Leisurely I put textbooks in my bag and wore socks and shoes, preparing to go downstairs to catch bus. It was when I went out of my dormitory that premonition flew in my mind. The elevator stagnated rather than went up and down. And there happened to be no noise of doors’ shutting in the whole building. Finally I began to feel nervous and uncertain whether I could be punctual for the bus, so I speeded up even to fly. It was too late. When I was in it, the bus often waited others until 8:05 or later. The exception occurred when I was that late person. Two past eight, I trudged through my way to the gate, hardly to catch my breath, only to find another bus that was for SM2 students.

“It doesn’t matter at all!” I said to myself, since so many missing belongings had already molded me having an attitude that worried a little for misfortunes. So I proceeded with my way to NUS and regarded this experience as a great opportunity to observe the views in a normal working day in Singapore.

The speaker in the MRT liked to inform passengers of something interesting. I eventually discerned how important and bustling Jurong East was. “Doors on both sides will open at next station.” The train pulled in Jurong East interchange and opened an extra mouth to swallow busy people. With no more than a minute, the nearly empty train was crowded with people of various colors.

So what is next?  To be continuing...

valentine's day

to be my valentine or not to be ,it is question which needs no answer if you can feel your genuine thoughts and feelings in your own heart.

you even do not need answer my question -- what you have done will tell in fact.your starry eyes have already responded to my passionate love to you,my dear.your eyes are more charming to me when they are gleamed with the enormous joy and excitement.

well,do not mistake my intention-- i am single and i will keep this situation in the near future.however,this does not mean i feel nothing when i watched the movie "you are the apple of my eye" or heard how my friends in china made the plan to spend their valentine's day in a romantic atmosphere with their boyfriends or girlfriends.as a matter of fact,perhaps those who are free from love now like me will have much stronger desire and curiosity  to know how it feels when we are in love.the beauty and mystery of  love virtually lie here.

of all the stages of love,  i like the start most(of course i have not gone through any of these stages, nevertheless, i still have something to say about love because of the popularity of love novels, love movies and love songs, especially in china in my opinion). the blurry but obvious feelings towards our boy/girlfriends at the very beginning of love and  romance will bring us the misery of missing him/her as well as the pleasure of enjoying the existence and growth of love in our heart--the feelings are blurry or fuzzy because we are not sure of the love(this kind of sweetness is not as clear as that after some time) and what is in that boy/girl's heart(in fact, to guess this is such kind of pleasure that all the young people cannot help doing it again and again, haha); the feeling are obvious because none of us is sensitive enough to feel the seed of love in our heart. maybe we will enjoy ourselves more if we are already our sweethearts' boy/girlfriends, but the complicated feelings in the beginning will never fade in our memories even we break with him/her because we can hate him/her but never our own love which is so pure beautiful attractive and seductive.

well,it does not matter if you disagree with my opinion.be someone's valentine,and then we will develop our mindset about love.

hope we all can enjoy the sweetness, purity, elegance, pleasure and romance of love.

Blog 3 Reading Journal

In Theme Six, we learned some reading strategies in order to handle a heavy academic study load. The three tips are, preview, skimming, and cluster. Preview means reading the first two paragraphs, the first sentence in the middle paragraphs and then the entire last two paragraphs. When skimming, we do not have to read the entire sentence but move our eyes quickly across the lines and get the key words. Cluster is a way in which we read a group of words at a time rather than read word by word. Before reading, we had a vocabulary check. Then we applied the methods with three different parts of text respectively. We also recorded time during reading.

In my case, the cluster worked the best for me. I improved my reading rate amazingly. However, as far as I am concerned, the three methods have their own advantages and are suitable for different kinds of reading. By preview, we can get the main idea of the passage and it is useful for us to synthesize materials from a large amount of source. Skimming can help us to orientate the important points, while cluster make it quicker to know the details. I will combine the tips Preview and Cluster when I read materials of the lecture.

Anyway, I should apply them in my daily reading and meanwhile, enlarge my vocabulary for better comprehension.

Wish Everyone Survive in the Sudden Rain( Blog 3)

February 27^th is an impressive day for boys, for we were late for class due to the rain which is extremely heavy. It was not the first time that we saw it raining cats and dog, and the weather in Singapore really shocked me a lot. The weather in Singapore is quite different from it in China, especially in hometown, Harbin. Because Singapore is typical tropical country which is surrounded by sea, the rains though often takes not a long time are extremely heavy. Through my experience, I want to share my opinions about the weather.

First, the thunder during the rain is extremely loud. As far as I am concerned, there are two big things about the rain in Singapore. The first is the big rainfall which is 2345mm in each year on average. The second is the bid volume of thunder that every time I saw lightning in the sky during the rain, I would held my ears until the end of sound which sounded like a big explosion. To make matters worse, the loud thunders do not stop showing up during the rain which drives me mad.

Secondly, the rain often comes quickly and ends quickly. Sometimes the weather seams sunny, but after a while, the clouds gather quickly and the air becomes humid, then it starts to rain heavily. The speed is so fast that you can prepare for it. Take me as an example; one day I planned to go to JP for purchase, as the sun shined strongly, I went out without an umbrella. You can imagine what sad thing happened on the half that I was caught in the suddenly heavy rain. After that time, I always remind myself to bring an umbrella when going out.

Finally, I find the rainwater dries very quickly. After a heavy rain, there was water everywhere, but about one hour later the ground will be almost dried which looks like it doesn’t rain. I also found it today.

OK, that’s my opinions about the rain in Singapore. Wish everyone survive in a sudden rain.       

     

4.the Training for Give Program

My participance in yesterday's training which is aimed at helping us to perform well in Give program really taught me something. That we should listen to other people's opinions is one of my gains in it. During this training, we played some games. In these games we need to cooperate with echo other. So communicating became the most important part of these games. One of these games is that firstly we need to be separated into two groups, one group make a shape by some toys and the second group need to make one whose shape is same to the first one in mirror. Although it is hard for us to express ourselves in English, we try our best to communicate with another group and finally made a great success. Besides, I also learned that we should make a realistic plan instead of a plan which may sounds great but is difficult to achieve. This idea is gained by the following experience. This is a game in which we five people's feet stand on two parallel clubs and try to move together to collect some sticks. First we made a great plan which is starting from the edge of the field and try to move to the middle of the field so we can collect the sticks and meanwhile we also made barrier to other group. For the first time we succeed. But we lost the second round. In second round we made an unrealistic plan. We wanted to collect all the longest sticks and do not pick up the short one. Although in that way we can gain a great scores, it is too hard for us to move so fast to achieve that. During this training we not only learned the knowledge about how to teach but also learned some important skills in cooperation.

Blog 3. OMG OMG

Blogger writing 3

Maybe you are virtually unheard of a Chinese American soldier’s weird death in USA military camp in Afghanistan, but this really drew broad attention on the life of Chinese American soldiers. The man Chan Yujun, less than 20, was born in NY Chinatown who was found dead three months ago in the tower of American military camp in Afghanistan, with a bulletin penetrating his jaw. For a long time, the Pentagon tended to deem it as suicide until an American officer revealed that Mr. Chan had ever been abused by his superiors.  Then under pressure from OCA-NY (a local Chinese oversea association) and media did the military higher-ups start to investigate.

Generally speaking, not until the 2th, 3th generation of immigrants can they get the social status and fuse into the mainstream in America, but many take joining the army as a faster drive.  However, in the US Army, Chinese American account for 3% of all, compared with the Chinese occupation of 5% of American population, which is indeed a deep gap.  In addition, the fact that there are few Chinese higher-ups in the army makes a bitter situation for the soldiers with a Chinese background.  Many of them still face with invisible ceiling, top-down and even peer abuse. 

Anyway, hopefully with more and more attention and supervision casted into the field, they will be embraced with equality, if not, at least firstly without afflictions.