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.

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.

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.