Shattered Glass

Speaking of the writing/research practice involved in this movie, I found a number of similarities between what the writers did in the movie and we have been doing for our social research project, those include note-taking, interviewing, recording, searching on the internet, and so on.

As far as the ethical problem is concerned, it is clearly none other than plagiarism, a very severe ethical crime for a writer to commit as doing it is exactly the same cheating the public reader, not to mention making things up from nothing at all.

Extra Credit Events

1. I went to listen to the speech entitled: "Wrong Place, Wrong time" which talked about how young Black American often find themselves in potentially dangerous situations and end up in injuries or even deaths. Besides, the speech is also about how after-care and counseling can help prevent the victims from returning to the same type of situation or committing the crime themselves out of vengeance.
2. I attended the panel speech on how the current criminal justice system is broken which results in many innocent people being convicted and sent to jails. The speech introduced an organization working to rescue innocent inmates using DNA testing.
3. I attended the conference "Symposium on Gender and Sexuality. Panel 2 explained the causes and effects of sexual harassment and revealed the severity of the issue by showing the statistic of people experiencing sexual harassment.

Shitty First Draft

According to the article, a shitty first draft is a rough draft that we all do just by writing down everything that comes into our mind about one topic without thinking about relevance, structures, vocabularies, as well as grammatical errors. This is one of the best ways, I believe, to start putting your pen down on to your paper. However, after that shitty first draft, it's time we did revision and edition. What I would do personally is look at the comments from whoever reads it, and try to improve the piece or sometimes shorten it achieve more conciseness.

Covering

Every single one of us needs to cover some part of our identity or personality in some way or the other in our daily life. Actually, we all have that unexpressed side, either the feminine or the masculine side, the side which we only let out when we are around people on whom we trust. Therefore, in our everyday encounter with people in the process of our socialization, we don't get to run into all the people that we trust, that's why we always feel the urge to hide the part of our characteristics which we don't want to be seen or judged by the others.

This is why we all wear a mask out!

Activity 33

Although I am a Cambodian, the first language I learned was Mandarin. Back to the year when I was seven, my parents sent me to a private Mandarin school simply because I had been nagging to ride the school bus. So off I started my Mandarin school, my very first school. Fortunately (this is what I feel right now), the school incorporated a Khmer language class giving me the chance to learn the Cambodian language at the same time. However, it didn't go well at first, I sucked at the language to say the least. I remembered pretending to read by moving my lips up and down so that the teacher would assume that I was reading only my voice wasn't audible. I ended up getting my ass spanked in front of the class and I was made standing in front of the class for the entire session too.

I-SEARCH

The first thing that came to my mind at the very begining of this research project was multicultural communication; however, as I began to look for sources related to this topic, my attention turned to stereotypes, a pervasive social misinterpretation. I then decided to do a research paper on the dangers of stereotypes considering the potentially adverse effects that they could do on those upon whom the stereotypes are applied. I also learned more about the negative effects of stereotypes such as mental and psychological impacts, and so on. For this research, I am going to interview a small group of college students of foreign origins on their peronsal encounters with negative stereotypes. The biggest challenge for me so far is the literature review, there are so many different sources available. I have to be selective and synthesize them in a way that it can give credibility to my paper, and in the mean time, to also include my own voice, which is a significant part of this project.

In-class blogging

Lester argues in his Writing Research Papers (1976) that students frequently excessively employ direct quotations when they are doing note-taking which leads to abundant presence of quotations in their completed research. Approximately about 10% of the final version should be of direct quotations. You should therefore try your best to control the number of direct quotations in your note-taking process.

In-class Blogging

The type of social change I hope to bring about is a better multicutural communication within a society. I am not yet certain how I am going to start such a social epidemics; hopefully, the research paper I am currently working on will reach the right people: connectors, mavens and salesmen, in the right place and the right time, that is to say, the right context.

I find the last chapter most influential and interesting because it addresses two of the biggest problems we are all facing today: isolation and immunity. Especially the latter for if we want to succeed in the business realm, we have got to pay attention to the immunity and deal with it.

The one important idea I have gained from reading this book, I believe, is the Law of the Few, because to advocate and to promote your idea in an academic career, you need these people to help you tip the your epidemics; likewise, for a product to be successful, again you need them to do the exact same thing for your business or whatever you trying to sell.

The Stickiness Factor: Discussion Questions

1. Bernie Goetz got into a New York subway and was threatened for money by a group of gangs, an event which turn this man into a first-time criminal, leading him to pulling out his gun and shooting the group. I personally do not think that Bernie Goetz is either a cold-blooded murderer or a heroic vigilante; to me, he is just an oroinary man affected by the environment or the power of context at the time; what he did was to defend himself and it is true that he had long detested that type of subway gangs. All in all, the power of context coupled with the hatred he held should be held responsible for the shooting.

6. Well I believe that the reason that made Gandhi and Mandela able to immerged seemingly uncorrupted after being subject to the most brutal and atrocious conditions is self-control. They were both committed to what they believed in and were so highly self-disciplined that they were able to prevent the surrounding from contaminating their mind.

English Undergraduate Conference

Panel 11………………………………………………..Leonard 214
Moderator: Judy Bertonazzi
“Raising Awareness About Our Roles in Diversity: Implications for Becoming Agents of Change.”
Haley McComb, Heather Black

The presentation introduces the problem of racial discrimination and prejudice as well as negative stereotypes existing in all societies today as a result of the globalization. Because of our skin color, because of our disability or other negative features that we possess, we are assumed inferior by other people around us, even ourself, we tend to have some kind of a negative impression of those who we consider to be inferior before we even get to know the real truth.

What I learn from this presentation is the way to make a change, that is to be the change yourself. At the end, four key elements to success in rasiing awareness about our roles in diversity are introduced, and they are: awareness, analysis, action and accountablity.

Panel 15……………………………………………….Leonard 210
Moderator: Tracy Lassiter
“Transcendental Meditation and the Internet: Two Approaches to Omniscience, Their Expression In, and Effect On Literature”
Damon M. Boykiw

Somehow I found this presentation extremely abstract, and the speaker appearted to be lazy-looking and speaking in a drowsy fasion, and he hardly made any eye contact with the audience. To make the matter worse, he came unprepared, no hand out, no slide show, but a piece a written draft. I believe the presentation is about meditation adn the internet in today's world, it's about using how internet can be found anywhere around the world right now, meaning that everyboy is connected to one another, and therefore making it difficult for people to have some real peace and quiet. This leads to mediatation, I learnt that mediatation can be praticed in many different forms besides sitting quietly and closing your eyes. Actually, when we focus our attention on doing something such playing a videogame or watching a soccer match, that is also a kind of mediatation since it relieves us from those stresss and allows us to forget life problems for the time being.

Group-blogging-Stickiness Factor (Narong&Katlyn)

We do think that children's television shows like Sesame Street and Blues Clues are more educational and stickier than books simply because there is interaction between the children watching and the shows, e.g. there's a host in Blues Clues asking questions now and then to attract attention and interest to keep the kids watching and trying to work out the answers and anticipating what is going to happen next; children learn better this way with entertainment and interaction while gaining knowledge at the same time.

Chapter 2: Reflective Writing

The author talks about three important elements constituing the the law of the few: connector, maven and salesmen. The most interesting argument in this chapter to me is that nonverbal expression can have the same impacts as the verbal counterpart. The type of data that the author collected is from a few studies and researches conducted by people other than himself, and also from his personal conversation with some certain individuals.

Comparing

The genre that I am used to reading is narrative. The major contrast between my favorite genre and that of the Gladwell's book is the source of information presented. Gladwell refers to a great many sources of information to support his own arguments and at the same time tells stories of his own experience and interaction with various individuals, whereas in a narrative, the author would normally just describe an event or tell a story out of his own account.

Summary of Introduction and Chapter 1 (Tipping Point)

Macolm Gladwell raises the phenomenon of Tipping point with the purpose of anayling and find out the factors behind the outbreak of this social change which he refers to as social epidemic. He argues that a social epidemic is actually caused by a small group of people begining with tiny changes in their behaviors or trends by introducing two remarkable Tipping points which took place in the United States of America, namely, the return of Hush Puppies and the dramatic decrease in crime rate in New York. Finally he concludes that the law of few, the stickiness factor and the power of context are the three rules of Tipping point.

In-class blogging

I want to do a research on intercultural communication (I know that it is a broad topic and I am in the process of narrowing it down to a specific yet interesting question). How people of different culture communicate is what motivates me to think about this topic because I have often found it hard to fit into a new group of people, and I believe that there are many other individuals who face the same problem, so I am always curious about the secret behind that and the factors that can make it work better. As far as my academic major (TESL) is concerned, understanding students of diverse background is a crucial part of my future job; besides, I am also interested in the field of translation, which is again something to do with different languages of different cultures.

Hopefully, this research will benefit teachers and people working in multicultural societies by allowing them to socialize better and live together in a more harmonious fashion.

Speaking of the methods for conducting this research, although it is undecided, I will employ any tool or mean accessible and necessary.

Diversity

Diversity to me is a co-existence of a variety of elements in the society including culture, background, occupation, race, gender, and the list can go on and on. I believe social changes have helped the world to become a more diverse planet through multicultural education which gives people the opportunity to explore and understand different cultures as opposed to ethnocentrism, and through advancement in technology which has made travel so much easier and communication so much more accessible; these have all contributed to a more diverse world in which we live today. In the mean time, despite the fact that I am an English major, I have always been fascinated by the issue of how people of different culture can co-exist and how they can understand one another better in a way that will make them more tolerant, because I myself has often found it rather difficult to start a conversation with someone from a different background, let alone finding a topic.

Family in Cambodia

Brainstorming:

- Traditional
- Family size: mostly nuclear family, it was once extended family
- Occupation: mostly business
- A lot of respects for the elders
- Housework for female members (although this trend has grually been changing)
- Men used to be the only breadwinners, now that more and more working parents can be seen
- Parents' intervention in children's study, e.g. deciding what major their children should do in college
- Children are expected to do well in school, at home and the community
- Huge gap between ideal culture and real culture
- A younger sister cannot get married until her older sister does
- Domestic violence is prevalent

Activity One

I believe I did my first writing in primary school when I was taught how to write simple sentences then paragraphs and then compositions and finally essays when I was in high school. We were usually given some new words that we learned during the lesson of the day to construct some simple sentences as homework. I can say that most of the writing I did in my primary and high school careers were done for academic purposes rather than personal communication or any other purposes except for when I was doing my final year in high school, I was inspired to write a number of essays and send them to be published on newspaper, of course not all of them were selected. In general I do not find writing easy and a pleasant task to do because I have always found it difficult to start putting my pen down to paper and convert my ideas into appealing words. Sure enough, there are times that I find writing enjoyable, and that is when I write e-mails or letters to my friends and family, mainly because of the fact that I never have to worry about mistakes or organizations whatsoever, so it is like free writing.

Speaking of reading, I have always enjoyed reading news articles and novels and books on self-improvement. I used to keep a diary, and I managed to do that for more than a year; I have to say that it is fun to write diary every single night before you go to bed, it is a very good summary of your day, the good things and bad deeds that took place, it is always so much fun reading those I wrote down that year now. Although I do not write any more diary these days, I write e-mails and text my friends on a daily basis; these two mediums have become two essential parts of my daily communications. When it comes to formal writing, quite frankly I do not have much chance to write formally but I used to write a daily report and minutes of the daily meeting to my supervisor when I was working at a local cable TV company in Cambodia, ocassionly, I was asked to reply clients' inquiries too.

I was lucky to have had the chance to grow up in three different language environment when I was a child. I went to three different schools, namely, Khmer school (Cambodian language), English school and last but not least, Chinese Mandarin. As a result, I now speak three languages; however, what you find easy in one language might not be as easy to express in another language, this is what I learned.

To me, the biggest difference between an essay and an assignment is that the former has a wider range of audience whereas the latter is usually confined to certain instructors and peers. The biggest similarity would be that we use both types of writing to express our ideas.

Self Introduction

My name is Narong Loa, I am an exchange student majoring in teaching English as a second language from Cambodia, a small country rich in culture and natural resources located in Southeast Asia, we are especially proud of our magnificent Angkor Wat temple-one of the seven wonders of the world. Anyway, I will be here for one semester only, so I hope I can get to know all of you and together we can have a very productive semester.