Week 16 and the future

During this semester I learned to work and know different types of people, this will help me not only in other classes and more importantly in my future work.

My part of the finale project is done, but I still need to supervise the work of the others and upload it to the blog, I hope everyone is making their best effort in their works. Thelma and me are going to present it tomorrow and I am so nervous, I hope everything turns out to be fine.

Tomorrow starts the last official week of the semester, but it's not over.

Week 15 summary

This week can be divided into two parts, the final project and american stories.

I worked very hard to finish my part of the work, which are 1000 words describing the future of the English in the world, I asked the teacher if he could check it out and give me some input, I was happy that to know the grammatical errors I make so I could correct them with time.

For the task of the american stories, like I mentioned in the presentation we made, I'm very stressed because I have more final projects to make and the time is running out. I find time to enjoy two of the three stories, I specially enjoyed the third one because l identified with the main character, he is full of frustration (like a student during finals).

In the end he cared for the others, it's important to note that this is how life is, we can't ignore the problems of the others and if we can't help them it's our duty to do so, even if it's a small effort.

Week 14 summary

This week was solely dedicated to the movie "The power of one". I consider it had a good plot, but it is not the kind of movie I would go to a cinema and pay to watch it.
It's a movie that make us realize about the racist past South Africa was going through, it's good to know that the country has changed and is working to grow.

For Thursday's class we worked on a paper about the movie including examples of it, I talked about the unity of a country, the aspirations of the principal character.

Week 13 summary

This week was very short to me:
The quiz was very tricky, but I think I'm gonna get a got grade because I studied a lot for it. On Wednesday we need to make a post on the forum with the subject of plagiarism, it makes sense doing this because it's something we have to avoid for the final project.

The next class we answered questions of the short stories we had to read for the class. (Unto dust, Love love love alone and The Silence). I worked again with Tiffah, we did a good work although it was incredibly difficult for me to write the number of words we needed to put in each answer, didn't feel like myself that day. I also managed to know the sarcastic side of Tiffah,  she was stressed because of other classes so that's understandable.

We were both making funny comments about the stories we read, I think this was the best class of the semester.

Week 12 summary

This week was completely dedicated to the country presentations, I think my team did a very good job. Trinidad and Tobago as I said in my previous post is a country full of beaches, cultural festivals languages and of course their take on English language.

I also need to put attention to other team presentations because we are going to have a quiz about these presentations.

Week 11 summary

John Donne and his painting:
For this class I worked with Tiffah Arcadia, this was the first time I actually talked to her in the semester; I'm a pretty quite person, so that's the reason why. We really make a good team, she really was really helpful, giving me many ideas that I could work with. Also we had to work in other place because my computer has been broke since week 9 and she didn't her Mac's charger.

On Wednesday, we started working in our presentation of Trinidad and Tobago, I'm mostly focusing in how they English is very different when compared with other countries.

Our proposal for the final project is very simple, we are going to talk about the beginnings of English and it's expansion through time, its usage in popular culture and the future of the language. We still need to go deep in every point of the research.

Week 10 summary

We didn't have class, I used that time to go to the gym; nowadays it seems impossible for me to go more than one hour a week, still it's considered healthy to go that amount of time.

On Wednesday we finally present the Mega quiz of the book, it wasn't as difficult as I was imagining, but there were also a couple of tricky questions I think I'm going to get wrong.

For the next class we had to read a short story of Nadime Gordimer called Homage, I like that story. Because it makes us look deep inside the mind of a person that is desperate to survive in a world that doesn't cares about him.

Week 9 summary

This week we learned about the Battle of Hastings, I should say first that it was very difficult to understand all the history behind it, I'm not very adept of watching documentaries of this type of themes. 

It makes sense that the Norman invasion brought new words to the English language, for example when the Spanish conquered the Mexica Empire words originally used in nahuatl language are now been used in Mexico's Spanish.

English as a Global Language:

In other news, we have to read the book of English as a Global Language; no wonder this book is been quoted in articles about global languages, it has a lot of information about the history of the language. I hope I can get a good grade.

Week 8 summary

Translation activity

During this task we both realized that there are a lot of differences between Spanish and English (besides the obvious), we couldn’t translate everything straight to the English language without making it sound a bit computerized or dumb. 

We had a harder time trying to set order to our sentences than when we translated the actual words, also we discovered that not every word in the Spanish language needs to be translated, and we actually were able to skip a few words because some of them didn’t mean anything in the context of the English version of the text. Learning English clearly isn’t a tool for translations but a tool to get to know a different culture with different characteristics.

Week 7 Summary: Various activities

Creative contest writing

In the first session we worked on creating a story with a select group of themes. My story was about a girl being lecture by her dad in a park in the future, in a underwater city to be more exactly. The girl is very young having an altercation with another child because of a broken toy. Her father told her that her actions always have consequences and you have to be at the same time responsible of your actions, making references on ho humanity is now living underwater due to pollution on Earth.

I was inspired mostly of sci-fi movies, videogames and books I have read, also I wanted to included a development of artificial intelligence in the form of the serv-bots but the extension of the story didn't gave me the opportunity. 

Punctuation exercise

In session two, we worked in pairs (in my case I worked with Julio) using the magazines we brought in order to write them again without any punctuation and capital letters. This task was very difficult because I confused a lot of points with commas.

Shakespeare search

I worked alone for this activity in CETEC, because my computer is not working properly these days, the activity really made me think if the writer really did all of his plays, because of the lack of information and that there is no original manuscripts written by him. 

Week 6 summary: Poem presentation

My poem presentation experience

In the first session, my team and I worked on how we were going to present the poem to the group and we decided reading it first and then explaining the meaning behind it.

This will be a very short entry in my blog so I will better start explaining that again I survived making a presentation. If I recall correctly we were the second team in presenting their work, we read the poem (which you can find in the week 5 summary post) and explained it to the class, it turned out to be a very good presentation.

As a final comment, I enjoyed reading the story and playing the activities the other teams made, like playing jeopardy, and also I enjoyed it more because my team won.

Week 5 summary

Wall street activity

The first part of the activity consisted in watching a part of the movie "Wall street", in my opinion it is a very clever movie that show us the corruption and tactics employed in Wall street in order to obtain more money. I heard of the movie in the past but didn't see it, it was interesting seeing Charlie Sheen in a serious role and not being a plain character like in the series of Two and a Half Men.

For the second part we read the articles "Why be Honest if Honesty Doesn't Pay" and "Keeping Your Colleagues Honest". 

We have to link the main ideas in the articles with the plot of the movie, at first I knew what ideas I would talk about in my paper but I find it very difficult to explain my ideas.

For session three we made an investigation in teams about a country and their different ways of talking English. In our team we talked about Australia, South Africa and India. In my case, I center my search with South Africa and realized that their English is heavily influenced by European and African accents, and also that they also have their own terms. The most curious one was bathing suit instead swimming costume, because when they refer to costume it refers to halloween costumes.

Week 4 summary: Charles Dickens' proposal

Charles Dickens' proposal

At first I thought that I was going to work alone in my proposal, fortunately I formed a team with Thelma and Jorge. We agree in making a poem based in the story "The old curiosity shop" of Charles Dickens. The poem's name is "Wealth and death", we came up with it because the recurring aspirations of many of the characters in the story is obtaining money.

Wealth and death

Dickens usually talked about debt

He used literature to reflect his life

It must have being harsh I bet

His beginnings were not rife

The Old Curiosity Shop was inspired

by a personal tragedy in Dickens’ life

Nell is based on the seventeen year old sister-in-law

of Dickens who lived with him and whom he was fond of.

Money made Nell’s future to be a gamble

More than his grandfather’s struggle for health

Their destiny was completely a scramble

With the main objective of gaining wealth

Frederick, Dick and Quilp acted with ambition

To obtain what they thought deserved

Forgetting to accomplish their mission

Ultimately enjoying what they earned

All human’s fate includes death’s kiss

Our constant struggle to embrace

To earth trying always to escape

Death, prevents us to have bliss

To reach a goal we need more than a plan

That’s what Nell’s grandparent did

He thought his actions were the best bid

That was the problem with being a player man.

Even though currency is not total happiness

It is the tool to reach our goal’s fulfilling

But forgetting your ideals end with emptiness

Or could it be that I am just chilling?

As time passes by and their health decline

with a calming aura she will appear

and don’t be scared, everything will be fine

as they will be by the river together with no fear.

By:Thelma Cárdenas, Jorge Vela, and Victor Ordoñez

Week 3 summary:Job Interview video and Charles Dickens questions.

 

Job interview

 

For this week we worked in teams (in my case Thelma and Jose) our idea was of a man with an automotive engineering major, searching for a job in a marketing company. Out teacher gave us a lot of ideas for the background for our principal character.

 

I was very stressed in filming the video because I think that it will took us at least one hour to make it, but to my surprise we made in 30 minutes with only two takes. My role in the video, as you can see on the link below, is of the former engineer.

 

Here is a link to see the video on YouTube.

 



Charles Dickens

 

We were instructed in answering 15 questions of Dickens, mostly about his life and the inspiration for his books. The activity was made in teams of two so I paired up with Jimena, we divided the questions so we could finish it faster.

 

I find it interesting the way Charles Dickens experiences affected his way of writing the "quarrel with America" is an example of this. He didn't liked hipocresy, corrupted governments and child labor was an aspect of his country. It is sad that things are still like that today.

Summary: Week 1 and 2

Week 1:
In the first week, we saw the contents of the course and worked creating an essay of two hundred words about a topic of our election ita finished with a homework of reading the two introductions of one of the books of the course and making an essay of a list of topics and a presentation of it for week 2.

Week 2:
We had a quiz of the introductions of the book, on the second sesión we had to deliver the essay and make the presentation of the topic. I was very nervous at first because in my other classes my presentations are in my spanish so it was very difficult to perform it. When I finished my presentation I realized that it is the same as making a presentation in spanish but I need to practice more my choice of words.

- Overall it was a very balanced weekend.

Monday: February 26, 2015

Reflections of the class:

Yesterday we worked in pair to créate 15 thesis statements of different themes. What I learned is that statement thesis must be strong and go to the point, stablishing the subthemes that will be talked through out the essay. The following are the 15 statements me and Jimena worked in class.

1.      School Uniforms

When you think about school, the first thought that comes to your mind is wearing a uniform. Wearing it comes with positive things not only for the institution which gives an identity, but it also reduces the laundry work at home.

 

2.      Your parents and trust

Trust can be considered a state of mind, where two or more people can help each other out. Earning your parents trust is a very difficult task, but if you follow their rules, and treat them with respect should become easier.

 

3.      Drinking and driving

Driving requires total concentration of the driver with the environment, but if someone drinks and drives at the same time it will reduce this concentration and cause accidents.

 

4.      Legalization of marihuana

Most countries in the world agree that marihuana is an illegal drug because of the effects it causes to the mind when it’s consumed. Even though some people disagree with the legalization of marihuana, it will reduce the power of drug trafficking organizations, which is a huge problem in many countries; it may also be used as a medical treatment.

 

5.      Animal testing

Before releasing a product, companies need to test it first to assure if it is safe for the general public or not. In most of these tests, scientists use animals. Groups of people; like PETA, have argued that it is not an unethical action, because animals suffer throughout these tests, and like humans they also haverights.

 

6.      Changing Universities

Choosing where to study your major is a very important and difficult decision because it includes your future. However going from one to another depends mostly on the student’s major, because there are universities specialized in certain subjects like arts or engineering.

 

7.      Endangered species protection

As time passes by, species have become extinct because of human interactions with their environment. The balance of the environment is disturbed when humans start building cities, hunting species as a sport and polluting natural habitats.

In order to preserve the majority of animal species, humans need to establish an agreement that protects species and their environments.

 

8.      Life on other planets

The universe is a mystery that has intrigued humans since the beginning of history, and living on other planets is an example of this. The lack of space and resources on Earth are the reason why searching for another planet to establish a colony is an important issue for the future.

9. Art museums

Art pieces represent a part of history we must not forget and art museums exist so we can appreciate them in one place. As time passes by, different types of specialized museums have been created. For example, there are classical art museums, modern art museums and abstract museums.

 

10. Nutritious food

Nutrition is an aspect sometimes people ignore when it comes the time of eating. It is proven that diabetes and a variety of heart diseases came mostly from bad eating habits. A good and balanced alimentation can help to reduce the levels of cholesterol and fat.

 

11. Living on campus

As the number of foreign students increases, living near the campus can be a good experience to grow as independent people. As responsibility increases, the students need to make decisions like the money they will be spending in food, friends and school material.

 

        12. Gambling

Gambling is the wagering of money or something of material valueon an event with an uncertain outcome with the primary intent of winning additional money. Even though gambling is a very popular hobby around people, there are certain negative things like, becoming addicted to this game and loosing everything owned because of it.

 

         13. The use of technology in Language education

Technology has a lot of positive uses; it has helped humanity in many aspects of their daily life. Education, specifically, language education has been benefitted a lot because students are able to look for language’s history, and may know the number of languages spoken in the world.

 

          14. Cosmetic Surgery

A lot of people know what does a cosmetic surgery envolves, but not everyone is aware of the consequences of a bad surgery. If the process is not taken with a lot of care the patient could be in risk and may not like the outcome.

 

          15.  The English Language

The English language is one of the most important things to know in the world; not a lot of people around the world know the language, but it has a lot of benefits. Knowing English could help communicate around the world because it is the universal language.