How to Tame a Wild Tongue

In How to Tame a Wild Tongue, the author’s main idea is to teach us that be who we are. At first, the author was ashamed that she did not speak good American because of her Spanish accent. However later she just let go of her shame because she was able to understand it was more important to be who you are. She even used new invented dialects. These languages were neither proper Spanish nor standard English. There are mixed with English and Spanish. Using this new language, the author embraced her culture. To the author, being Mexican is a frame of mind; it is culture which is in your soul, not the birth place or nationality.
This essay gives me a great lesson. Now though I live in America, eat American food and speak English, I should not forget my culture but more I should take pride of it. It is our culture shapes who we are.

Oracle Bone Script

According to legend, Chinese characters were invented by Cang Jie. Chinese scholars have devoted themselves to discovering the origin of the Chinese characters since several thousand years ago. But modern scholars Chinese character system cannot be created by only one person completely, after all it is a legend.
Until recent 100 year, the oldest Chinese characters were found in Henan Province written on oracle bones so this kind of writing is called Oracle bone script. Comparing it with the Mixtec and Aztec script, I think Oracle bone script had developed for a period to the appearance now we see. In another word, the characters on the oracle bones discovered are not what they originally were and they had changed. I think Oracle bone script might be like the Mixtec and Aztec script that contained a high proportion of visual description. However this is only my own opinion which has no scientific foundation.
Unlike the Mixtec and Aztec recordkeeping systems which are highly pictorial. Oracle bone script is a combination of logograms representing whole words, phonetic signs and semantic qualifiers. Oracle bone script is hieroglyphic like Maya script. For example “明”, the left part of it “日” means the sun; the right part of it “月” means the moon; the whole means bright. Many Chinese characters consist of affixes. Some of those affixes indicate the pronunciations of the specific character, and some indicate the meanings of them, which act as carriers of phonetic information.
In the Pictograms of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, Oracle bone script was used to representing 35 events.

Myself As A Audience

Among all the media types, only TV can be continuous and paged, visual and aural, interactive and static. Otherwise media like the media of aural can only be continuous and static. For me the media of TV impresses me most.

In media of TV, there are some methods people usually use to report news, stories and so on. For example, people would not only tell the audience a piece of news as aural does. TV will play what the cameraman took at the scene, which is a method I find persuasive. When reporting a crime case, TV station prefers to display a video of the crime scene to persuade the audience in which there is blood of victims or a mass of people crowded in the street.

Another media type impresses me is print. Especially when I was a kid, I felt everything written in books was right. Why I thought so? I think it is because the audience like children is always given something true to read such as comic of scientists’ autobiography and inventions they made. Also children like to read fairy tales which always have good ends. Both kinds of print works are persuasive to them because the materials are positive and interesting. And young audience believes that those positive and interesting things are right and negative and boring things are wrong which cannot persuade them. As a result, at most time children prefer to read the two kind of print works.

Slangs and Idioms

Ability to speak is recognized as a most fundamental element of literacy by the public. You may even not be able to read or write in the language. In the area whose literacy rate is low people can speak at least.
Knowing large numbers of slangs and idiom could definitely be considered as an asset of literacy. Slangs and idioms make spoken language vivid, fluent and exaggerated. When people speak in an informal occasion they prefer to use slangs. In daily life, I often use slangs and idioms when talking with my friends and families in Chinese and I manage to use quite a lot. There are some examples.
1. People mountain people sea (a large crowd of people) When it is Thanksgiving, I always describe the malls as people mountain people sea.
2. You ask me, I ask who? (How should I know?) Any when others ask a question know do not know you could say the expression.
3. Good good study, day day up! (Work hard, and someday it will pay back.) This expression is used to encourage students to study hard.
After all Chinese are my mother tongue, so I am at home in Chinese. There is still pretty much to improve in oral English. And later I will work on rich slangs and idioms in English.

A Blooming Tree

In my Chinese class in high school, my teacher said, “poetry is the most ancient form and most essential constituent of literature and poetry is full of emotion. If you are capable of judging poetry and interpret poetry, then you do get the essence of literature and have high literacy skills.” From then on, I have done a lot work to practice. Among all the poems I read, following is my favorite one and my interpretation:
A Blooming Tree (translated edition)
How to let you meet me
At my most beautiful moment
For this I prayed Buddha for 500 hundred years
To be bestowed a relationship with you on this earth .
So Buddha makes me a tree
Growing by the road you bound to take
Blossoming cautiously and flourishing under sun lignt.
Each blossom an expectation of my previous life
When you approach
Please listen
The trembling leaves are the passion of my waiting.
But when at last you walk past unseeing
What scattered on the ground behind you
Oh, my friend
It is not petals But my withered heart
This poem is about a young lady who falls in love with a man. Just at the very beginning the young lady expresses her emotion and feeling. Love is a kind of feeling which you cannot force to have or cast away. To love or not to love is not a choice. It is a spark in an instant which you cannot choose to see it or not. Eventually, the man evidently says no to the girl. Those petals scattered on the ground are like the girl’s heart. Although he heart is hurt, the love is rather pure, vivid and eternal.

This Saturday, instead of doing sports outside or watching TV at dorm I became a Chinese teacher once.
In the community where my aunt and uncle live, there are a few Chinese American kids who were born in America. Although their parents are Chinese for what reason they ought to speak Chinese quite well, the result is actually disappointing. Those children feel weird to speak a different language when they contact residents in the community. They do not know how useful a second language can be and refuse to use it. As a result, their Chinese are poor. To make a change, a Chinese class is set up.
On Saturday, my aunt who is the teacher of the class took me to join into the class and teach them how to pronounce correctly and speak fast. The day before Saturday I chose to teach them a tongue twister. Because in tongue twister many words sounds alike and saying tongue twister can practice the clearance and speed of people. In the class I wrote down the tongue twister and added phonetic symbols on the blackboard and taught them to pronounce words one by one. With practice time after time, eventually most of the students can say this tongue twister clearly and fast.
I never thought about teaching somebody a language. It is interesting but also challenging. It is pretty much like a test to test my own literacy in this language.

My Math Literacy

When I was in China, I did not find my literacy in computing is so outstanding. Before coming here, I was impressed the first time when I took Math Placement Exam of MSU. At first I imagined that this exam was so important for placement so it must be rather difficult. I even spent two days to prepare for it. Finally the exam turned out to be quite easy that most materials it covered were learned before 7th grade and it only took me 15 minutes to finish it.
Just a few days before class began, I left home for the school. After check in, I went to different stores to buy things for daily use and books for the classes. I remembered that all the purchases cost $29.41 in total. I handed the cashier 30 dollars. When I was looking for one penny, the cashier already typed 30 in the computer, and it computed then showed 59 cents back. At the same time I found one penny and gave to him, he took it and looked at the computer screen thinking for quite a few second. I realized that he was doing calculation. It was so easy to find how many cents he should give me back—I gave him one more penny and he should give one more cent and that is 60 cents. Eventually he got the answer and gave me change. I was impressed the second time.
The third time occurred in MTH132 class. When the teacher congratulate me on high scores in the first exam, students seated around me felt it unbelievable and all looked at me and it was uncomfortable.
No matter when and where, math literacy is such an important ability and I am proud I have it.

Literacy--Net words

From quite a few years ago, the Internet has become one of the most important means to obtain information and news. Also it has become the most common way to communicate with others which take the first place of phone calls and letters. In just a short time of period, a great lot of software and programs were made and developed. For conveniences and concision, net friends create a large number of new nouns to define specific things and adjectives to describe things. Besides, shortened words are also made. As a result, I must create and develop my literacy of net words. The process of learning net words is interesting. Everyday when I surf the Internet I will pay attention to those new words that I never met before and search for their meanings. Gradually I understood quite many net words and also used them frequently. Following are tow of the words that I newly learned and use from then: 1. 山寨(copycatting) This Chinese term literally refers to the mountain strongholds of bandits. First borrowed to describe rip-off products, it has evolved to refer also to homemade products, such as video parodies of movies. 2. 囧(be sunk/sunken) This is an ancient Chinese character, pronounced jiong. It means “light shining through a window”. Young Chinese use it to express embarrassment, or a bad mood. Look at the character. Doesn’t it look like a disappointed face?
Actually I am thinking about making my own new net words someday. Till then my literacy of net words could be said to be at high rate.

Literacy

When I first heard this word, I thought it must be a very professional term. Finally, I realize it is so common that what we everyday do is a certain kind of literacy. The definition of literacy is the ability to identify, understand interpret and so on. To me, I think literacy is not just simply and I feel literacy is arts of identfing, understanding and interpreting. In another word, it is not enough to for example interpret, more it should be to interpret something profoundly, originally and roundly. In my opinion, literacy is a standard levels to judge what the degree of the ability is.

Big Eyes

Under the disheveled hair, there is a pair of bright and big eyes which is full of eagerness for chances to study. You may be not familiar this picture, but almost every Chinese know this girl who is holding a pencil. This picture is the public poster of the Hope Project, through which people seek resources from every aspect to help the children who are born in the countryside and lack opportunity to study.This picture was taken in May, 1991 by a journalist of China Youth Daily. He chose the right face of the girl, and took a close-up of her. This angle of view let people read the expression of this face clearly and let people feel being in front of her, which made them think I was having so strong and tight relationship with this poor girl and I would like to help her. At the moment she just noticed the camera lens. It was the truest moment. Those big eyes were communicating eagerness for books, classrooms and teachers, and the eyes showed the belief that knowledge would totally change their destiny and we would never life in such a poor, backward area and we got to change it. Further more, the photographer chose to develop this picture in black and write. To my way of thinking his purpose for this method is to create a faint atmosphere and set a sorrowful, sympathetic tone. Using this method in the picture reflects how poor she was and how urgently she needed help more profoundly. In the picture, there are two objects bearing a special meaning: the pencil acts as symbol of knowledge and the pair of big eyes represent need and eager. Rugged conditions of study and life the picture shows move a large number of people.This picture reveals am important and urgent social problem the Chinese people are facing---lack of educational resources. In Chinese culture, education for children is the absolutely most important issue in every family. For children, Chinese parents will sell houses, cars and companies to offer a favorable condition for study. This is quite different from the situation of America. I heard that many American parents do not offer money to their children especially for college study. The eventual goal of the Hope Project is to help the children in families which even do not have houses, cars and companies go to school. This picture is the first and most influential poster, like many other public posters, this poster reveals a social problem and the image realistically records what is happening.

Cinderella

link:http://www.allthingsfrugal.com/cind.htm
For a long time, by reading Grimm’s Fairy Tale and Andersen’s Fairy Tales, young children establish their first impression of the world at the very beginning of life. Cinderella, one of the most famous fairy tales around the world is known by almost every kid; and they are dreaming of being such a lucky lady.
A significant characteristic of Cinderella is that the pretty girl will be cared and loved. At the first sight, the prince falls in love with her, even though he absolutely dose not know her personality. Young children may not feel anything wrong with it, but it makes me feel the man is quite superficial and his love is cheap as well. A professor of Purdue University has conducted a research about the 168 fairy tales of Grimm brothers. She discovered that 94% of them mentioned looks, 13.6 times per piece, especially in one piece the author described beauty 114 times. In 17% of those fairy tales ugly were linked up with evil, and in most stories ugly ladies came to a sticky end. As a result, young girls may believe beauty success just because they have pretty face, and then they may ignore education and become eager in make-ups and clothes rather than careers. Maybe in future fairy tales, authors are supposed to start a story like “One upon a time, a common-looking princess lived in a castle……” rather than always start with “One upon a time, a beautiful princess……”
Is there anything unreasonable in Cinderella? At 12 midnight, everything becomes to what they are originally, except the crystal shoes. However, without the crystal shoes the prince will never find Cinderella; what we want is just the “Happy Ever After” mode ending. If this is allowed, how about the bad treatment Cinderella suffers from. After all, audiences of fairy tales are most children. It is easy to mislead them that stepmothers are pitiless and cruel—stepmothers are fixed to negative images.
Now that the topic is about fairy tales, we can not ignore the genre of Cinderella—genre of fairy tales. “Once upon a time…and they lived happily ever after” is special beginning and ending words. Good characters, evil characters, royalty, castle and magic are all elements present in most of these stories. And every coin has two sides. After all, beautiful princess including Cinderella are kind-hearted, have amiable disposition and suffer from unfortunate experiment at beginning that incite pity. Through fairy tales, children start to understand the world; their minds are full with niceness thanks to those beautiful things; they believe that evil will finally come to a sticky end because of fixed mode; children begin to learn words used to tell the stories. And the most important, fairy tales quicken imagination of children and encourage children emulate kindness of those princesses.
In conclusion, the proper way of dealing with Cinderella for parents is to discuss the plot and the characters with children and figure out what children are encouraged to do nor not.

This video is an advertisement of 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. Overall it leaves the audience a friendly, natural and touching impression. “One world, one dream” is the slogan for China’s 2008 Olympics. This video is made to introduce this slogan to the public.
The video contains an object of emotion—a baby. This video narrates a baby’s dream to become an athlete. This dream is not only to become an athlete but also to achieve success as the Olympic’ motto says “itius, altius, fortius” which means faster, higher, stronger. And this is what we people all over the world are always pursuing. A baby is so new that he has opportunities to learn, to create and to develop; he will make much progress as well. He is the hope and the future of human. The ad maker uses this symbol to represent all human beings and teach and persuade people the essence and the values of the Olympic spirit—Unity, Friendship, Progress, Harmony, Participation and Dream—this slogan reflects; he also expresses his belief that what we dream is what we will get. By the way, people believe that babies have all the pure moral merit. So choosing a baby as the object to reflect indirectly that the Olympics is fair and no such immoral indeed like taking drugs is allowed in the games. That immoral indeed is just like killing new-bored babies which is so evil.
Such a lovely baby and a nice dream imply that the tone of the video is hopeful, optimistic and lighthearted for the purpose that to illuminate the theme and the meaning of “One World, One Dream”. Only this kind of tone is accordant with the Olympic Games. Mentioning the genre of the video, it could be identified as a charity or commonweal advertisement in advertisement genre produced in narrative format. This format tends to be pointed to a specific main idea. Although it is not long enough for us to know whether the baby achieves and this is not quite important to what we are concerned, this format makes the whole story compact and the ad genre is thought-provoking.
Since the Olympic is rather a universal topic, there is no specific audience for this video. Every nation or area could take part in the Games; every person no matter a man or a woman has right to participant in the Games; what is more, everyone could turn on the TV set to watch it. At the end of the video, those lovely babies of different countries, different colors and different nations reveal the idea of the composer that the world is a family and we are members. Even aliens could be the audience, and then the video became a text to introduce the earth.
At last, the most successful and attractive part of the video is the way the composer uses to narrative the dream of the baby. It is so original to compare the movement of the baby to the sports the athletes are doing. Without one word or any other extra interpretation the video is still clear enough to express the theme.

Under the disheveled hair, there is a pair of bright and big eyes which is full of eagerness for chances to study. You may be not familar this picture, but almost every Chinese know this girl who is holding a pencil. This picture is the advertising map of the Hope Project, through which people seek resources from every aspect to help the children who are born in the countryside and lack opportunity to study.

This picture was taken in May, 1991. A journalist of China Youth Daily. He chose the right face of the girl, and took a close-up of the her. This let people read the expression of this face clearly and let people feel being in front of her, which made people think I was having so much relationship with this poor girl and I would help her. At the moment she just noticed the camera lens. It was the most ture moment. Those big eyes were communicating eagerness for books, classrooms and teachers, and the eyes showed the belief that knowledge would totally change their destiny and we would never life in such a poor, backward area and we got to change it. Further more, the photographer chose to developed this picture in black and write. I feel he used this method in the picture to reflect how poor she was and how urgently she needed help more profoundly. And that pencil was the signifier of knowledge and bright eyes were signifer of hope.

This picture moves many people. Now donating to the Hope Project is so common, and there are fewer and fewer children who cannot go to school.

25 things writing assignment

1. I hate cheese; its taste makes me feel sick, even its smell is disgusting.
2. I must have a more than 10-hour sleep every day to avoid feeling sleepy in the next day classes.
3. I grew 1cm taller in the last semester after I came to USA; it makes me so happy because I stopped growing taller since 2005.
4. My favorite juice is apple juice, and there are no carbonated drinks in my life anymore.
5. This spring summer I plan to do some shopping in Chicago.
6. ISS really brings me a hard time; I am not good at working at social and economic issues.
7. My cell phone is served by T-mobile, but I find the signal is not quite good.
8. I want to find an English name which sounds like my Chinese name.
9. I love dogs, but mum said it is not the time to have a dog, for she and dad are so busy to take care of him.
10. Though the food in the cafeteria is not as bad as I expect, I can cook better food than that in the cafeteria.
11. I seldom play on-line game, some of them are difficult and some of them are boring.
12. I want to learn how to dance, I have never been to a ball.
13. I have trouble understanding Americans' texts, there are too many words in shortened form.
14. I care my GPA so much, but at most time I don't want let others know.
    
15. One of my dream is to live in a Chinese traditional house looking like the house in the Forbidden City.
16. I don't know how to ride bike, in my city Chongqing people rarely ride a bike.
17. I can play the piano, though I haven't practiced for a long time. And I can play zithers(kucheng), it's a Chinese traditional instrument.
18. I want to marry a man like my dad, who is good at cooking, repairing, and most of all who is responsible gentleman.
19. My eyebrow is the most beautiful part on my face I think.
20. I want to learn to a language that doesn't consist of letters(a,b,c.....).
21. I want a SSN for driving license, but I don't want to work to get one.
22. Brad Pitt is a cool guy, but his wife is not as beautiful as people say, she looks fierce.
23. I am so lucky that I often guess the answer correctly in exams.
24. I like flowers, but until now I haven't received a rose in the Valentine's Day.
25. My lucky number is 6!!!
    

The commercial described a guy who was just out of luck, who first had his TV set dropped frow the wall then crashed, which let him not able to watch movies or news. After a while, his computer got totally broken which he was so disappointed and mad. What is worse, his girlfriend was so angry with him that he was listening to music all the time and threw the CDs out of the window. ....... Now you can imagining how frustrated the guy was. No movie, no internet, no computer games, even no music, all of these got togother made him feel it was like no meaning of life there. Designer of the advertisement is just so shrewd to grasp the points in everyday life in deep American culture, that is he/she knows how importance it is to enjor different kind of entertainment I mentioned before. Finally, that guy found Nokia N96, which had every function those broken machines had. This is the main idea clearly. The narrative before was just for introducing this versatile cellphone. Both the terribly bad luck and the wonderful cellphone narratived in the story can strongly capture the audience. So this is a successful advertisement.

My favorite sticker

"I'm feeling lucky."

In reality, not quite a lot of people think they are lucky. They always feel they haven't earned enough money; they sometimes complain the food is not as they expect; they always think others' are better than mine no matter in water aspect. Instead, they like to say "I'm feeling you're so lucky."

I love this sticker; I feel positive atitude to life and everything. People who like to say "I'm feeling lucky" must be kind, positive and happy. Actually not every thing in life is so satisfying. God is fair, we all have strongpoint and weakpoint. The more I say this sentence I believe the luckier I will really become. So, let's yell it out!

The Analects

The Analects were written from the Spring and Autumn Period to the Warring States Period more than 2400 years ago. The disciples of Confucius collected words and acts of him, as well as the discussions they had then wrote the Analects.
During the Spring and Autumn Period, wars between different countries were so frequently that the people suffered from poverty, injury, cold weather and homelessness. Confucius was so concerned himself with those people and as a teacher he would teach students, then those words and acts came into being.
The Analects has heavily influenced the philosophy and moral values of students at that time and later Chinese to contemporary society. Chinese regard the Analects as standard of conduct, and it is widely used to teach the young generation. The Analects addresses conflicts between the monarchy and common people. Confucius advocated benevolence in The Analects; in the addition, benevolence is the central thought of Confucianism.Since the Analects is the standard of conduct, both our ancestors and people nowadays are stick to it. Confucianism is the key connecting ancestors with us. Now the Analects become the basic documents to study Confucius and Chinese culture.
The link:http://afpc.asso.fr/wengu/wg/wengu.php?l=Lunyu&no=1

Mother Tongue

I feel now I was Amy Tan's mother, facing the embarrassment using "broken" English. In the influence of my mother tongue, it is difficult to show my sence of humor in another language. And my mother tongue creats border to the ability of comprehending and using specific words.
To some extent, I am ashamed of this limit.
Nevertheless, we do carry a hidden treasure that may make no sence to others deep the roots. My mother tongue provides the most precious treasure of the culture, the language, the characters and the ways of thinking. It is just because I am not familiar enough with the language I am using right now.
In this way, the girls who are fat are no longer ashamed of their shapes but to appreciate their lovely-looking bodies.

Capacity Inventory

Reading
Reading novel_____
Reading magazine_____
Reading news paper_____
Reading textbook_____
Reading play_____
Reading poetry_____
Reading prose_____
Reading biograph_____
Reading essay_____
Reading report_____

Writting
Having wide vocabulary_____
Memorizing new_____
Spelling correctly_____
Using grammar correctly_____
Using simile_____
Clear topic_____
Good hand writting_____
Fast writting_____
Correct format_____
Citing_____

Computer
Typing_____
Using powerpoint_____
Using excel_____
Using photoshop_____
Using MSN_____
Sending email_____
Blogging_____
Using frontpage_____
Making flash_____
Using word_____

Communication
Greeting_____
Self introducting_____
Texting_____
Making phone calls_____
Listening_____
Facial expressing_____
Using body language______
Translating_____
Using idiom_____
Instant massaging_____

Entertainment
Singing_____
Dancing_____
Drawing_____
Watching movie_____
Shopping_____
Watching drama_____
Reading comic book_____
Listening to music_____
Barbecueing_____
Joking_____

Sports
Playing Table tennis_____
Playing tennis_____
Playing badminton_____
Playing football_____
Playing basketball_____
Skating_____
Skiing_____
Playing soccer_____
Playing baseball_____
Swimming_____

Living ability
Cooking_____
Laungry_____
Doing grocery_____
Sewing_____
Washing dishes_____
Making bed_____
Replacing lightbulb_____
Vaccuming_____
Repairing toilet_____
Cleaning the room_____

Association participation
Programming_____
Marketing_____
Fund raising_____
Advertsing_____
Voluntaring_____
Hosting_____
Leadership_____
Enrolling members_____
Running for positions_____
Showing talent_____

Acadamic life
Critical thinking_____
Calcutating_____
Writting paper_____
Doing homework_____
Attending class_____
Setting goal_____
Career planing_____
Previewing_____
Reviewing_____
Taking notes_____

Other
Making up_____
Selling textbook_____
Managing retationship_____
Getting along with roommate_____
Organizing party_____
Driving car_____
Hair cutting_____
Traveling_____
Taking pictures_____
Taking medicine_____

Homework 1

For a long time, the public consider language is a tool that we use to perceive the world. That is, people get to know the world before language forms to express what we know. Language is looked upon as a truck; and knowledge of the world is like goods in storage -- can be loaded on anything besides a truck.
Nevertheless, different culture is a reflection of different language which explains that language impacts how we perceive the world. Language is a kind of creativity. The accuracy and widespread use push us and accelerate the rate of human understanding the world. So we can see how ridiculous it is to look at language as an inflexible tool.
To me, there really exist many examples, I will pick one to talk about here. To learn English well, I read a lot and memorize idioms and slangs. During those process, I found Amricans like to use blonde as a symbol of fool. This makes me learn more about the culture of the country and turns to be new knowledge to me. In this case, language shapes the another meaning of blonde, also shapes the way we think of it.
To sum up, language shapes the way we perceive the world, and what we get to know about the world helf shape language.