Final Reflection

This semester, I took the ENG109, the college composition for second-Language writers. It is an English course and primary focus on English academic writing. I totally completed four major writing work in the semester, weekly blogs, Rhetorical Analysis essay, argumentative essay and remediation with comment. From all my assignment, I learned a lot and realize it is helpful to me about my future work in college and careers.

Firstly, the weekly blogs let me practice writing every week. Instructor was not required us writing a long essay every week, but rather, I was require to keep writing (usually to do the reflection of the whole week) every week. In my opinion, the blogs let me familiar with the normal writing and give me the confident when writing the English, essays, e-mails, blogs and so on. In the meantime, writing blogs also let me familiar with the coursework. For example, the most common topic we need to write for the blogs is the planning of coursework in that week. While I thinking and writing the plan, I have the more clear recognition of the coursework.

Secondly, the two major essay writing program let me know the skills about rhetorical analysis and argumentation. In the rhetorical analysis essay, I chose the WCS (Wildlife Conservation Society) webpage as my analytic target. Through carefully watch the whole website, I understand why the website can appeal people, because they used some rhetorical skill including ethos, logos and pathos. So what I actually learned from this essay is to know how to use rhetorical skills to appeal people in my future writing. Otherwise, another important writing I did is the argumentative essay. Although I even wrote the argumentative essay in pervious semester, I still learned a lot from this essay, especially in researching and avoiding academic plagiarism. In order to writing this argumentative essay, I took a long time to stay in the library to searching the supporting evidence of my writing. I remembered that I also talk to the librarian for help in the beginning. At that time, I did not know how to use suitable keywords to do the search. I talked to a librarian and she was very professional to show me how to choose the keywords and search in the database. It is very necessary to me to know how to search sufficiently, because I have to often do the search in my future studying. As I studying computer science which is a subject developed at top speed, the fastest way to obtain knowledge in this subject is doing the search and convert others’ knowledge to my knowledge.

Finally, the last thing I did in the course this semester is to remediate my argumentative essay to a video. Remediation is a significant skills to show people our opinion, but it is very easy to me because I often make PPT or videos in high school.

In conclusion, the knowledge I gained from this course is important for my future studying, especially in paper writing. I will no longer to be fear of writing anymore because of this course.

The Role of Computer Technology In Education

Last week, in ENG109 class, instructor introduced to us a useful online training website called Atomic Learning Tutorials. As a computer science major student, I have realized that the role of computer technology in education has been given a lot of importance in recent years. In my opinion, multimedia and internet have several positive effect in education.

Firstly, I mentioned that the multimedia can help teachers teach students. It can make teaching more sufficient and make class more interesting. For example, projector can transfer the picture from teacher’s screen to a larger public screen. It can let students watch the screen clearly because the characters on the public screen are as large as students can see. At that way, teachers do not need to write anything on the blackboard, therefore, they can save time in class and have chance to teach student more knowledge. Moreover, in recent years, teachers began to use PowerPoint in class. I think it is an effective way in teaching. Teachers maybe put some picture in the PowerPoint which related to courses, therefore, student will find this class is more interesting and have promotion to learn the knowledge.

Secondly, internet technology is also an effective tool in education. Such as the E-Learning website (Atomic Learning tutorials) I mentioned before, it offers a lot of high quality tutorial videos including many areas(subjects) online. As a student, we will no longer need to waste time to google search the tutorial when we need, but rather, we can unlimited to access the tutorial at home anytime. It is convenient and efficient.

All in all, the role of computer technology in education is significant nowadays.

Planing of Inquiry 4

Last week, I finished to write the argumentative essay about whether global climate change is man-made or not. According to instructors’s requirement under resource tab in Niihka, I will plan to re-mediate my argumentative essay. Firstly, I want to use PowerPoint slide as tool to show my work. Because I am familiar with using PPT. Unlike a small video, PPT is easy to edit that allow me to put pictures and some text on it, although, it is not convenient to put some audio in the PPT. In the body part slide, I will clearly put evident with pictures to show to audience why I believe global climate change is man-made. For choosing audience, I think that anybody who want to know or interest in, but confuse about the reason of climate change is my audience. What I do is just a description of my research which may credential, otherwise may not because i am not a scientist. So i think my Inquiry 4 is just to give general people a introduction of my collection.

Reflection of a TED Talk — Fighting Viruses, Defending the Net

This weekend, I found a very amazing TED talk when I did some research for my major course. It is a talk about defending computer virus by a computer security expert called Mikko Hypponen. He said computer virus now become a kind of tool for crime and spy rather than the troublesome object in the past. In this talk, he illustrated how the late-model computer virus work and how to defend them. He said virus are no longer being written by hobbyists and teenagers in modern society. Today, computer virus crime have become a global problem. Some criminal gang wrote virus to obtain other’s computer browser history lists, so far as to steal their visa card number and password. He suggest to promote defending virus globally which is more important than developing new anti-virus or firewalls. It is a terrible fact that computer viruses are ubiquity in the network and have harmed us. Perhaps while we open a picture which downloaded from internet, viruses entered to our computer and took over the administrator authority.

Work Cite:

Fighting Viruses, Defending the Net, Novenber 4, 2014,                         <http://www.ted.com/talks/mikko_hypponen_fighting_viruses_defending_the_net&gt;

Revision Plan of My Argumentative Essay

Last week, I finished an argumentative essay which talk about whether global climate change is man-made or not. I use two paragraph to prove that global climate is man-made and use one paragraph to mention the counter argument that natural factors also affect the climate in some degree. In my planing of revision, I will not change the main thesis and structure of the essay. I will pay most of my attention to the structure of the logical level in every argument. I realize that all my statement in discussing have no layering. I always wrote down anything I suddenly thought without strong relation between two sentences. So, I have started to modify my essay, but i still want the feedback from my ‘review partner’ to help me improve the essay. Otherwise, I will plan to make appointment with HOWE writing center to talk about my essay and get professional suggestion.

Midterm Revies

Half a semester has passed. I learn a lot from all courses I took. In ENG109 class, I have learn how to write rhetorical analysis paper. In that paper, I introduce the WCS’s website and analysis how it appeal audience. What I learned is use of methods including logos, ethos and pathos. From the instructor’s rubric of my rhetorical analysis paper, I still ignored some of the problem. For example, I illustrate much more contents on the webpage rather than explaining how it appeals people. Another question is about the authorship. Instructor said that I have something wrong about citation. However, I double check the turn it in system and still not find the problem. Second thing I learn from the course is about writing the blogs. I write a blog about what I learn and watch once a week. My classmate and I can see our blogs each other. I think it is a good way to improve our English writing skills, because we practice a little in a time and we can gain a lot in long time.

A Nice Movie — Girl With a Pearl Earring

In this long weekend,  I found a very nice movie called ‘Girl with a Pearl Earring’. I want recommend it to all of the audience of my blog. The story took place in the 17^th century in the Dutch town of Delft. A girl who is only 16 years old is a devout protestant. Her name is Griet. Because of life distress, she had to come to the painter Vermeer’s house as a maid which need to care for Vermeer’s children. She also had to deal with Vermeer’s wife because she is very jealous. Over time, Griet was fascinated by Vermeer’s work and Vermeer also found that Griet has the talent of the arts. Unlike his wife who know nothing about arts, Griet could understand his paintings. Griet began to assist the Vermeer’s painting. She gave him a lot of suggestion and inspiration of creation. Griet influenced the inspiration of Vermeer deeply, and even became model in his painting. Griet ware the precious pearl earrings which borrowed from Vermeer’s wife as Vermeer painted his masterpiece called ‘Girl with a Pearl Earring’. Slowly, these two people, Griet and Vermeer, fell in love. Unfortunately, Vermeer’s wife noticed the abnormal emotion between Griet and Vermeer. She broke the relationship between two people over and over. Finally, Griet was evicted by Vermeer’s wife. In many romantic films, the ending are almost perfect. But in this film, the leading actor obey the moral and dogma. That is why this film achieved great success. The hazy beauty and love are the watching focus in this film. Funny!

Global Climate Changing: Natural or Man-made?

Global climate problem is always a hot and disputable issue in the whole world. Most people believe the main reason of global warming is human activities, because human activities have made huge of greenhouse gas. That is probably true as greenhouse can cause the global warming. However, according to my research, I realized that global climate changing is mainly caused by natural factors rather than human activity. In my argumentative essay, I will show to the audience three main statement with evidence to illustrate my perception including solar activity, volcanic action and forest-fire. Otherwise, about the counter-argument, I will mention the effect of global climate changing by human activities(because it also a usual and reasonable point). Some research in the last decade show the human activities effect the global climate, but they may ignore the effect by the nature, more or less. The conclusion is, both natural factors and human activities effect the global climate. Thus, mention to the argument in which effect global climate even more, It still does not exist the conclusion exactly.

Taking a Gap Year Between K-12 and College?

Nowadays, students only have maybe two months (summer vacation) to rest between high school and college. I read a news yesterday which recommend high school graduate taking a gap year before entering college.In my opinion, it maybe have some positive effect for students because of the huge gap of knowledge between learning in high school and in college.

A lot of students have no way to learn very well in their freshman year and sophomore year because of this huge gap. So they need some time to prepare the undergraduate-level lessons. For example, American students in high school just only need to learn the background mathematics and some easy linear algebra unless taking AP courses, but they have to learn advanced mathematics such as calculus and discrete mathematics in their freshman year in college. It is a big challenge for them to adopt the difficult knowledge which they have to learn.

Otherwise, the possible negative effective of taking a gap year also cannot be ignored. Some students with poor self-control do not use time sufficiently in their gap year. Thus, it hard to say whether taking a gap year good for students, or not.

Two Significant Difference between Chinese universities and American universities

There are many differences between Chinese universities and American universities, especially in the following: admission mode and content of courses.

In China, people have been attaching great importance to examination since ancient time. The colleges entrance examination (Gao Kao) which is almost the most significant examination to determine students’ life is the product under examination-oriented education system. Under this circumstance, almost all schools ignore to cultivate student some social abilities. However, in United States, students in senior high school have up to 24 chance to take SAT. They can select their highest scores to apply colleges or universities, and scores only account for a small percentage in role of admission. Their extracurricular activities and teacher’s recommendation are more important.

Mention to the content of course in Chinese college, as a result of China’s national conditions, universities graduates face heavy pressure of employment. Meantime, the education and training in colleges do not match the demand of employment market. The teaching process also do not match the employment guidance. Conversely, American colleges strengthen the innovation of personal training and strengthen interdisciplinary connection. They focus on cultivating students the abilities of enterprising spirit.