1. Children are the main targets of video games. False.
I don't think teenagers are the main targets, because many adults also play video games, for example my father, he loves to play video games very much, and also, as a form of entertainment, it has no limitation.
2. Violent video games are linked to youth violence and aggression. True.
Even though, people argue that it mostly depends on one's personality that causes violent behavior, nevertheless, children or young teenagers they sometimes still lack of cognition to tell what's right or wrong to behave, so involving with violent video games encourage tendancy of destructive behaviors.
3.Video games are addictive. True
It's true that video games makes people addicted even with the same level of the addiction to drugs or gambling, because the excitment creates dopamine which stimulates the brain to concentrate on playing or doing something. And also, people get addicted and intrigued by the many variety of features in the games which provide a sense of intoxication and satisfaction particularly on visual and audio.
Sunday, August 19, 2007
Saturday, August 18, 2007
About the Presentation
In terms of what I learned from my presentation, I think I learned how to organize ideas and thoughts, especially when speaking, the use of language and expressions are supposed to be in a proper way. Besides, it was my first time ever speaking, I mean presenting in front of others, it was true that I got butterflies in my stomach before and during the presentation, but I learned how to make myself calm and cool later, and got through it. It's something related to psychology anyway. Everyone can actually find his or her own way to solve the problem called "nevous feeling"
Moreover, I feel the result of my presentation can be considered at two different points. To take it as a real fomal academic presentation, I think I did it poorly enough, to say about its contents, and the way I presented, I did something on movies but without using Powerpoint left myself a regret. And according to the feedback I got from several classmates, my little voice is an obvious problem, even though I felt like I was about to shouting. Anyway, personally, I think it is a successful one I did for the first time, for I thought I couldn't do it, but got through it just ok, and I wasn't felt as much nervous or panic as I imagined I would be. It was because I had always been focusing on the black board, and when the teacher called me to turn around facing the audiences I kept focusing on my very big reminding cards that almost big enough to cover my face, though I wasn't always covered my face. Anyway, the whole thing demands furthur improvement and more confidence in the future to get me survive in the many academic presentations. The more you do it the better.
Finally, from listening to the presentations of other classmates, I also learned something. Some of them really did a beautiful presentation with their unique style and ways of speech, even provide humourous atmosphere at times. That allows both the speakers and listeners to feel relax and uplifted in spirit to keep concentrating on his or her presentation. The most important thing I learned is to give others as much as respect just as what you want to get from others as well. You don't feel alright when seeing someone yawning or being absentminded during your speech, so don't do it to others too. To show your interest or at least your attention to what the presenter is talking about through the whole presentation, give comments or feedback also defines yourself as an audience with appreciated quality.
Moreover, I feel the result of my presentation can be considered at two different points. To take it as a real fomal academic presentation, I think I did it poorly enough, to say about its contents, and the way I presented, I did something on movies but without using Powerpoint left myself a regret. And according to the feedback I got from several classmates, my little voice is an obvious problem, even though I felt like I was about to shouting. Anyway, personally, I think it is a successful one I did for the first time, for I thought I couldn't do it, but got through it just ok, and I wasn't felt as much nervous or panic as I imagined I would be. It was because I had always been focusing on the black board, and when the teacher called me to turn around facing the audiences I kept focusing on my very big reminding cards that almost big enough to cover my face, though I wasn't always covered my face. Anyway, the whole thing demands furthur improvement and more confidence in the future to get me survive in the many academic presentations. The more you do it the better.
Finally, from listening to the presentations of other classmates, I also learned something. Some of them really did a beautiful presentation with their unique style and ways of speech, even provide humourous atmosphere at times. That allows both the speakers and listeners to feel relax and uplifted in spirit to keep concentrating on his or her presentation. The most important thing I learned is to give others as much as respect just as what you want to get from others as well. You don't feel alright when seeing someone yawning or being absentminded during your speech, so don't do it to others too. To show your interest or at least your attention to what the presenter is talking about through the whole presentation, give comments or feedback also defines yourself as an audience with appreciated quality.
Saturday, August 11, 2007
My choice of skills to improve academic performance
Personally, I prefer the section of 'Developing Sound Study Habits'. I think the way of organizing time and schedules is an critical element involved in academic study, though, usually neglected by many students.Sometimes, even you spend a lot of time on certain project, it doesn't turn out be a good result, it depends alot on the way you study. It could make you feel more easily going through your academic study, if you try to develope an efficient strategy and well organize your schedule. I think a schedule urges me keep going for my tasks and avoid my putting off something till the last minute. And this is a precondition for me to do the other choices such as concentrating on reading, memorizeing, etc.
Points learned from research writing project
This is my first time writing a research paper. And I understand many important points through this writing project.
- To avoid plagarism, you should always be careful about using sources by paraphrasing them.
- When using the exact text of the author, the quotation marks are necessary. If it's long, indent it as another paragragh with smaller size of typing.
- Some ways to efficiently find approriate sources for topic by using online libraries. And also, Academic sources are the ones that acceptable, the ones find by google are not always acceptable to academic writing.
- And do not forget to note down the information of souces which can be convenient making a references list later.
- Remember to put in Brackets the name of author and date of sources at each end of the paragraph that you paraphrased.
- When making a reference list, the more detailed information is need. In addtion to put the name of the author firstly in an alphabetic order, then follows the information such as the date, year, the name of book or article, the publisher, if the source is from internet, a valid address on the internet should be put there. Also don't forget to put the date you retrieved the information.
There are maybe some other points missing, because you should check out the rules very often to remind you some details when assigned to write a research paper.
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Friday, July 20, 2007
What is happiness?
For me, I think happiness lies in fulfilment of mind, the absence of desire, and a feeling of pleasure not really of sense but of spirit, and surely not of imagination I should clarify. Because human creatures have never-ending desires one after another, never will be satisfied. Even the desire of happiness itself makes you unhappy. The desire of possession can always make you unsatisfied in life. So the definition of happiness and the way of feeling it depend individually on their way of thinking and looking at life. It's difficult and a bit controvertial sometimes for people to get it, because in reality, it's hard for people to stop their desire which is positive for progress, improvement and development, but at the same time exhausts and even stresses people who desire to reach out and realize the goals in their life. Some usually say, your life would stop and become meaningless when you don't have any desire, goals or dreams in your life. But Some would say, happiness belongs to the one who's always satisfied in life.
Indeed, happiness can be arosen in various occasions. For example, you can feel the happiness when surrounded by your family or friends celebreating your birthdays;When you're beloved and giving your love to others; When a new couple get married to each other they feel the happiness too. Sometimes, happiness is just a temporary thing. It would disappear later. In my opinion, the happiness gained on a material basis isn't real happiness, but the one you own in your spirit can be happiness forever.
Indeed, happiness can be arosen in various occasions. For example, you can feel the happiness when surrounded by your family or friends celebreating your birthdays;When you're beloved and giving your love to others; When a new couple get married to each other they feel the happiness too. Sometimes, happiness is just a temporary thing. It would disappear later. In my opinion, the happiness gained on a material basis isn't real happiness, but the one you own in your spirit can be happiness forever.
Population
Q1
Personnally, I feel optimistic about the trend of the declination of fertility rate, not to mention the low fertility rate in some developed countries such as Canada, and the ones already with a stablized population like Australia, Japan and Western Europe, and also the decreasing trend in Russia. The control of population growth in many countries also seems optimistic by cutting fertility rate. In the video showed that many women in Japan choose not to give birth and prefer to be single, despite the fact that it's extremely expensive to raise a family of good qulity and difficult to balance between work and children since women in Japan have to work as well. The population growth though has many negative effects has also its positive side like younger generations make the country looks younger and compell human development.
Q2
The global aging population will be one of the pessimistic result in the future centuries because of fertility rate decreasing trend. It seems a controvertial problem that if the population increase significantly in the next 25years, there would be lack of resources in general, particularly water and petroleum, and also less jobs for too many people.
Q3
What I think should be done in the industrial areas is to stablize population growth as much as possible and to maintain or modify our ecosystem and biodiversity environment. Developed countries should help developing and poor countries for the world development as a whole. And education is important especially in poor undeveloped areas as a way to spread information on health and sexual knowledge to prevent or overcome the problem of Aids in African countries and to cut birth rate. Also, it's a good way to make people to be aware of and use carefully the limited resources on our planet.
Personnally, I feel optimistic about the trend of the declination of fertility rate, not to mention the low fertility rate in some developed countries such as Canada, and the ones already with a stablized population like Australia, Japan and Western Europe, and also the decreasing trend in Russia. The control of population growth in many countries also seems optimistic by cutting fertility rate. In the video showed that many women in Japan choose not to give birth and prefer to be single, despite the fact that it's extremely expensive to raise a family of good qulity and difficult to balance between work and children since women in Japan have to work as well. The population growth though has many negative effects has also its positive side like younger generations make the country looks younger and compell human development.
Q2
The global aging population will be one of the pessimistic result in the future centuries because of fertility rate decreasing trend. It seems a controvertial problem that if the population increase significantly in the next 25years, there would be lack of resources in general, particularly water and petroleum, and also less jobs for too many people.
Q3
What I think should be done in the industrial areas is to stablize population growth as much as possible and to maintain or modify our ecosystem and biodiversity environment. Developed countries should help developing and poor countries for the world development as a whole. And education is important especially in poor undeveloped areas as a way to spread information on health and sexual knowledge to prevent or overcome the problem of Aids in African countries and to cut birth rate. Also, it's a good way to make people to be aware of and use carefully the limited resources on our planet.
Friday, July 6, 2007
Summary of the Lecture
The topics in this lecture is about communication in general. To show the ways people in different genders and age groups communicate. In the first part of communication patterns, it introduced different patterns of communication, word order, grammar, the way we chose words or expressions and why we do chose them. Also, the analysis of natural conversations is to see if they can be presented to general public. Through a cross-cultural study shows the differences between men and women, youngs and olds on communication styles. Through the example of conversations between American and Japanese groups on how they start or end a conversation, how they present ,argue, or fignt, etc. we noticed that American style is quite straightforward often by ladies-first-style whereas Japanese is not in a direct way. They tend to start conversation by sequence of gender and age, and the don't use the same way talking to different kinds of people. For example, the ways of speaking to children and adult or elder people are quite different in their culture. From my point of view, compare with western people who are more direct in way of speaking, Asian people usually choose their words and expression, especially when asking for request or refuse somebody, they express indirectly.
In the part of conversational coherence, focusing on the physical arrangement in conversation of man- to- man and man -to -woman . it happens that men don't face each other when talking, but when a man talk with a woman, they usually look at each other face to face. Girls aged between 7 or 8 are comfortable and open freely to talk a topic, even in a story telling way, but boys aren't comfort under that situation, and they don't talk much in the topic. Boys and girls aged 12 or so are different, boys would have more topics to talk, we say according to research, 55topics within 20 minutes, such as sports,TV shows politics etc. When in trouble talking, boys tend to talk more about their own problems instead of listen to other's problems. But girls of this grade with more coherence, they agree with each other, and usually avoid saying 'I'm better that you' that kinds of thing. but to convey a feeling of 'I'm almost the same as you'.
In the TV debates part, they took 10 people involved in the TV debates for study, during the show, they noticed that people tend to listen to experts more than the one who are not, and they also listen to men more than women even men are not experts. Men present themselves and talking a lot in a lecture way to show themselves as experts.
In my opinion, men are more active in such situations, they tend to dominant the conversation and get control of it.
In the part of conversational coherence, focusing on the physical arrangement in conversation of man- to- man and man -to -woman . it happens that men don't face each other when talking, but when a man talk with a woman, they usually look at each other face to face. Girls aged between 7 or 8 are comfortable and open freely to talk a topic, even in a story telling way, but boys aren't comfort under that situation, and they don't talk much in the topic. Boys and girls aged 12 or so are different, boys would have more topics to talk, we say according to research, 55topics within 20 minutes, such as sports,TV shows politics etc. When in trouble talking, boys tend to talk more about their own problems instead of listen to other's problems. But girls of this grade with more coherence, they agree with each other, and usually avoid saying 'I'm better that you' that kinds of thing. but to convey a feeling of 'I'm almost the same as you'.
In the TV debates part, they took 10 people involved in the TV debates for study, during the show, they noticed that people tend to listen to experts more than the one who are not, and they also listen to men more than women even men are not experts. Men present themselves and talking a lot in a lecture way to show themselves as experts.
In my opinion, men are more active in such situations, they tend to dominant the conversation and get control of it.
Sunday, July 1, 2007
Post-reading discussion
1.
It's hard to say if I am satisfied or not with the ending. The feeling I got with the ending like it's not too much like an ending of a novel in the usual ways. If have to be an answer I should just say it's ok. To be honest, I wasn't sure if it ends until I saw there's no more words in the next page.
And I was wondering if I didn't understand the whole story or there's something wrong with it.
Through all my way reading this novel, I was trying to figure out if there's a clue line up the whole story even if it is composed of seperate stories each chapter. In my opinion, the ending of the story didn't really line up the whole book. They are seperate stories till the last chapter and ,each chapter telling about characters' performance as professional doctor, their treatment and dealing with different kinds of patients, I guess all these seperate stories are maybe in one purpose to support the main idea of the novel.
For myself as a reader, there's still unanswered or puzzled questions to think about. Such as: why Ming, the girl medical student who was acutally deeply in love with Fitz, didn't marry him just because of two points: one should be the disapprovment of her family's traditional notion that her husband should be a chinese guy. Another one should be her commitment and concentration for Med School and her future career as a professional doctor. She finally turned out to be Doctor Chen's wife, (Doctor Chen was also a student in med school once), is this just because Chen is a chinese guy so she married him? Or if she really loves Chen, then what about her deep love before with Fitz? If so, I wonder about her heart and feeling change so easy and fast. Another question puzzled me is why Fitz (one of the medicine school student who later became a doctor) made an HIV injection to the criminal patient brought by police. Was that because the criminal patient hurt him twice (one is cutting on hand because of the patient's struggle to the medicine cure, the other should be the patient's biting on him during his treatment with him)?
2.
1) The major theme from my point of view as well as the other ones in group has identified should be the commitment, endeavour and struggles of getting into Superior Medicine School, to become professional doctors, and being professional doctors. And as professional doctors, there were many things and aspects that are more demanding, tough, obligate and expected envolving into their lives. And the description of certain characters are thought-provoking for life, for love, and for aspects such as humanity, morality and relationships of people, especially the one between doctors and patients, their subtle emotional feelings and the attidude to patients' family memebers. For example, as a professional doctor, they would sometimes tell lies when facing certain bad situation actually resulted from their lacking of responsibility to the patient. Even they got the fear and guilty feeling inside themselves, they hide the truth as a secret.
2)In this book, each chapter dealing with certain character's daily life and work as a doctor that reflects and illustrates the most important part of his or her life - for medicine students, it's important to success in tests to get into higher medicine school and then become a professional doctor in the future of their lives.
3.
The characters in this book is quite clear. Fits, Ming, Chen and Sri are the mainly four characters in this book. I'm able to put each of them in role but I don't feel them as real person even though I consider some of the stories may be true and did happened in real life, but I think the author used these characters just for expressing and making up the stories.
4,
The reason that I kept on reading this novel till the end is because I was always hoping to find a clue and answers to some questions that puzzled me. In my opinion, the plot didn't seem quite clear or get lost too often during the reading, maybe that's what this novel for, to leave the suspend and puzzle to us for thinking and let wandering our imagination.
It's hard to say if I am satisfied or not with the ending. The feeling I got with the ending like it's not too much like an ending of a novel in the usual ways. If have to be an answer I should just say it's ok. To be honest, I wasn't sure if it ends until I saw there's no more words in the next page.
And I was wondering if I didn't understand the whole story or there's something wrong with it.
Through all my way reading this novel, I was trying to figure out if there's a clue line up the whole story even if it is composed of seperate stories each chapter. In my opinion, the ending of the story didn't really line up the whole book. They are seperate stories till the last chapter and ,each chapter telling about characters' performance as professional doctor, their treatment and dealing with different kinds of patients, I guess all these seperate stories are maybe in one purpose to support the main idea of the novel.
For myself as a reader, there's still unanswered or puzzled questions to think about. Such as: why Ming, the girl medical student who was acutally deeply in love with Fitz, didn't marry him just because of two points: one should be the disapprovment of her family's traditional notion that her husband should be a chinese guy. Another one should be her commitment and concentration for Med School and her future career as a professional doctor. She finally turned out to be Doctor Chen's wife, (Doctor Chen was also a student in med school once), is this just because Chen is a chinese guy so she married him? Or if she really loves Chen, then what about her deep love before with Fitz? If so, I wonder about her heart and feeling change so easy and fast. Another question puzzled me is why Fitz (one of the medicine school student who later became a doctor) made an HIV injection to the criminal patient brought by police. Was that because the criminal patient hurt him twice (one is cutting on hand because of the patient's struggle to the medicine cure, the other should be the patient's biting on him during his treatment with him)?
2.
1) The major theme from my point of view as well as the other ones in group has identified should be the commitment, endeavour and struggles of getting into Superior Medicine School, to become professional doctors, and being professional doctors. And as professional doctors, there were many things and aspects that are more demanding, tough, obligate and expected envolving into their lives. And the description of certain characters are thought-provoking for life, for love, and for aspects such as humanity, morality and relationships of people, especially the one between doctors and patients, their subtle emotional feelings and the attidude to patients' family memebers. For example, as a professional doctor, they would sometimes tell lies when facing certain bad situation actually resulted from their lacking of responsibility to the patient. Even they got the fear and guilty feeling inside themselves, they hide the truth as a secret.
2)In this book, each chapter dealing with certain character's daily life and work as a doctor that reflects and illustrates the most important part of his or her life - for medicine students, it's important to success in tests to get into higher medicine school and then become a professional doctor in the future of their lives.
3.
The characters in this book is quite clear. Fits, Ming, Chen and Sri are the mainly four characters in this book. I'm able to put each of them in role but I don't feel them as real person even though I consider some of the stories may be true and did happened in real life, but I think the author used these characters just for expressing and making up the stories.
4,
The reason that I kept on reading this novel till the end is because I was always hoping to find a clue and answers to some questions that puzzled me. In my opinion, the plot didn't seem quite clear or get lost too often during the reading, maybe that's what this novel for, to leave the suspend and puzzle to us for thinking and let wandering our imagination.
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
What struck me the most in this unit of second language learning-The Blogger
Personally, I feel most interested in this blogger thing, though it is no longer something new to me, and to everyone. Blog has actually been popular for quite a long time and even become habit for many people to keep journals, to share their thoughts and daily life with others. And also many things that are enjoyable to share such as photos, videos, music, etc. I've been a blogger for a long time but, mostly I wrote in my native language-Chinese. I think people tend to write their blogs in native language because of their daily living environment. Particularly, when living in their own country, they basically use their own language that understood by their friends and family members.
By this activity I started trying to write everything in english that could be understood by international visiters to my blog. That's fun and challenging. From my point of view, not only does this activity motivate writing and reading, it also a good means for communicating thoughts and cultivate critic thinking when trying to give comments on things that other people write. And also, everyone build blog links of classmates and also the one of our Prof. In spite of its a way of doing homeworks for our study, this also calls for more interaction among classmates and the Prof. It improves the understanding of classmates from different countries;knowing their culture background and share with each other as many interest things as possible. So, I think this blogger activity is really a good idea for our class in this unit of second language learning.
By this activity I started trying to write everything in english that could be understood by international visiters to my blog. That's fun and challenging. From my point of view, not only does this activity motivate writing and reading, it also a good means for communicating thoughts and cultivate critic thinking when trying to give comments on things that other people write. And also, everyone build blog links of classmates and also the one of our Prof. In spite of its a way of doing homeworks for our study, this also calls for more interaction among classmates and the Prof. It improves the understanding of classmates from different countries;knowing their culture background and share with each other as many interest things as possible. So, I think this blogger activity is really a good idea for our class in this unit of second language learning.
Monday, June 25, 2007
The wonderful novel I've ever read is...
I spent first two days of my week-end plunged myself into the novel titled"bloodletting & miraculous cures" that nearly makes my brain bloodletting upon which I got absolutely not a point after my one-breath reading and, got stucked in the page of 165, ended up in an impulsion of eating the book. That's all I got with the novel within firtst two days of my long week-end. Thanks god, for the Monday break! Since I've been forced window-shopping with a friend all day Monday, and stupidly realized that I've almost forgotten what I already read in the day before. So, now I have to stay up late reread it and hopefully to get some point to think about and even to talk about for tommorrow class. Poor me...~
Friday, June 22, 2007
What makes a good language learner?
Learning language can be an great enjoy actually.
It doesn't matter if you have got an aptitude or dower for language. Because to learn a foreign language can never be an easy job. But one thing I should say is that you've got an interest in learning it or you try to be intereted in it if you're not. And also, be curious about things relates to the target language, such as its history and culture. Because the interest and curiosity are the basic motivation for further study of anything.
Be a diligent learner
A learner who is diligent in doing much more reading ,writing on the target language, and working on vocabulary everyday can be proficient master of the language. You should always try to use it whenever there's a chance. Practising your listening by all kinds of audio or vedio materials. Also, dare to open your mouth, to speak as much as you can ,to cummunicate with others and exchange views of learning language can be of great help.
Be an independent & smart learner
The capability of independent learning and thinking in the target language is indispensable for a good language learner. You need to develop appropriate learning skills and strategies that suit yourself. For instance, vocabulary expansion can easily be done by reading alot of books, magazines, newspapers for many people. Well-organized approach can always make a fast and efficient language learner.
It doesn't matter if you have got an aptitude or dower for language. Because to learn a foreign language can never be an easy job. But one thing I should say is that you've got an interest in learning it or you try to be intereted in it if you're not. And also, be curious about things relates to the target language, such as its history and culture. Because the interest and curiosity are the basic motivation for further study of anything.
Be a diligent learner
A learner who is diligent in doing much more reading ,writing on the target language, and working on vocabulary everyday can be proficient master of the language. You should always try to use it whenever there's a chance. Practising your listening by all kinds of audio or vedio materials. Also, dare to open your mouth, to speak as much as you can ,to cummunicate with others and exchange views of learning language can be of great help.
Be an independent & smart learner
The capability of independent learning and thinking in the target language is indispensable for a good language learner. You need to develop appropriate learning skills and strategies that suit yourself. For instance, vocabulary expansion can easily be done by reading alot of books, magazines, newspapers for many people. Well-organized approach can always make a fast and efficient language learner.
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