Blog Assignment #7

“Our society thrives upon instant communication, sending millions of text messages and instant messages (IMs) everyday.” As the author, Timothy Barranco would say our society’s form of communication around youths from his essay. “A Way With Words or Away With Words: Effect of Texting and IMing on Language”. The essay does not say any specific claim with reason, but it is mainly stating that; Texting and Instant Messaging should not be a main concern for students’ learning about English and language skills because it does not affect their abilities in English but helps their creativity. The counterarguments that the writer addresses are the people’s fears about the students’ degragation of English and improper use of grammar, punctuation, vocabulary and spelling. The types of evidence to support his claim are the research from different professors from different colleges stating mostly the positive affect on students about texting and a statistic result from a source about the short form of communication being a very small percentage of the data. The explanation of numerous examples to support the claim and studies make the essay persuasive enough for readers with about one or two counterarguments. The counterarguments did not even have any specific evidence pertaining to the negativity of texting to the students. There was not a strong argument within the paper between the negative and positive explanation of the topic, because the positive claiming and examples took over the whole content of the essay.

Blog Assignment #6

In the Arak Anthology page 33, Megan Ramirez wrote the essay, “The Publication of Your Personal Profile”, which is about publishing private information on the Internet through social networking. The author explains about how she would wait until her class will be done for the day and go home to start up socializing through the internet by entering a social networking websites called “Myspace” and “Facebook”. Throughout her essay, the author describes how the users of those two social networks would greatly affect their reputation because of how they would just reveal their private information online. Researchers that were mention on the essay tells how these social networks are not really that secured at all even if users only allow people they assigned to look at their profile. A quote from one source that the author applies: “from a security standpoint”, the author explaining that if people would want to keep their personal lives private, they should not even use these social networking websites at all. The author believes that it would jeopardize a user’s reputation at work, school and social life if it is use inappropriately. The writer chose this material to show her interest to her peers about public cases relating to her topic of choice. The essay shows a full image and information about the writer’s intentions to give her option about the issue. Readers will be most likely be affected from her writing to their online community and internet usage.

Blog Assignment #5

As you know, Christopher Columbus is famously known to have discovered America. English settlement had established in the next century to seek for so called, “The New World”. American natives or Indian Americans were the people who have been living in the new found continent before the Englishmen discovered the land. The clash between the Indians and the Englishmen’s started after the English adapted to the new environment of the continent, especially when the natives helped them adapt through. Since the English have the technological advances on weapons, they barely struggled from the Indians revolt after the English keep taking their lands and properties. Thousands of Indians died from the English’s massacre. The Europeans were basically the winners of the clash and had written the history about the true source of today’s world. Losers on the other hand were the Indians who struggled to keep their population alive from the colonist’s tyranny against them. Killings and slavery where the major causes of their vast population wipe out. It formed the major crime in the world from it. Once again, the winners’ writing history had written the most violent take over and major discovery of all time. In curiosity, if the losers wrote the history, different discoveries would probably take and civilization would form differently. There would be a most noticeable change throughout the world if it would to occur in the past.

Blog Assignment #4

Culture shock seems to be the major challenge for foreign students they go through when studying abroad. From the excerpt, “Two Years in the Melting Pot”, a Chinese journalist, Liu Zonguen is one of the students who face this challenge in which he moved from China to U.S. to learn, speak and write better in English. Under his challenge of cultural shock, he had a hard time being around with his American hosts, the McKnights, and American students. He misses the environment and culture he is use to. He met other Chinese people in which he was more comfortable being with than Americans. This had made him even closer to home, but this contradicts his goal of pursuing his interests for English since he tried to speak only in English while staying in the U.S. As a writer and a Filipino for this excerpt, I had the same experience than Mr. Zonguen, because it makes me go even closer to my homeland being with the same people. For the most part about cultural shock from foreigners, even they are talking to strangers but with the same culture, then would still fell the comfort and confidence of being away from their hometown no matter what. They both benefit from each other and could easily interact with one another.

Blog Assignment #3

As a Filipino, our culture differs in gestures, eye contact and body space from the American culture. Filipino gestures are more of the energetic image type while the American seems not. As for the eye contact, the American culture values eye contact as one of the important material of communication, especially in-person while the Filipino culture does not. Body spaces for Filipinos are not that of a big deal for people’s social life. American’s body space between their people means of something for privacy of one’s personal space. I would think that there is an obvious difference between the Filipino and American culture referring to nonverbal communication. It is because of how they were practiced on communication techniques of early education lives. Thus far, there are some similarities of nonverbal communication between the Filipinos and American culture; the greeting expressions for Filipinos are quite the same set-up to the American expressions. Lastly also, direct contact with each other and how they keep in-touch with one another quite simply. Most of the nonverbal communication styles and approach from different cultures are unique from each another. No matter how vastly the communication is thorough from neither each other nor anything that matters with physical capabilities for communication.

Blog Assignment 2: Option 2

People with different cultures play an important role on how they show their public and private lives. In the Philippine culture of people showing their personal sorrows and joys, they tend to hide their mistakes and sadness to other people. They don’t want to be embarrassed for the most part about themselves. In this case, it is natural for them to show positive expressions and joyfulness to other people when they are around with each other. As of their private lives, they don’t want them to reveal their true selves and how bad they really are. People are different from one another, some people show their emotions quickly and some do not. I noticed most of the people can easily show their emotions, even without them knowing, but mostly they could easily hide their negative emotions so as affections. Talking about affections, in my culture, they could easily hide them in no problem. They don’t want other people or their peers to know that they have a crush nor in-love with someone. Couples though in the other hand do not show affection with one another extremely. Hugging and holding hands in public are common, but kissing is not. You could barely see couples kissing in public. So as for the most part, people act differently with different perspective of their culture. As me, personally, I am a very open-minded person which I share my personal experiences whether it is my accomplishments or mistakes to others. I do not show my emotions quickly nor change it often.

About Me

As a freshman class of 2013 from University of Delaware, My name is Ricky Quilaton Sarmiento. I was born 18th of June 1991 in the country of the Philippines and I am 18 years old. I came here in the United States 2nd of July 2005. John and Jocylin Duffy are my parents. But I was mainly raised by my grandparents, Josue and Rosalia Sarmiento. I current live here in Delaware at the city of New Castle. I graduated at William Penn High School in 2009. And presently, like I said, I attend here at University of Delaware majoring in Chemistry. I love playing lacrosse, basketball and football. I eat out a lot, go out with friends and mainly study and read, especially about general science.

"Mother Tongue" by Amy Tan assignment

Being a person who can speak more than one language and that of my peers brings a different situation of communication between our parents. This is because our parents are the natives of our first language and they can speak it well as almost as perfectly. When I was growing up, my parents talked to me in Tagalog, a Filipino language, instead of English. I started learning the universal language when I was 5 years old. I only developed the English language at school and my peers. Then from there, I could already tell the difference between my abilities to speak it and my parents. My parents speak English in the formal way all the time, but on top of that, they speak it ‘broken’ as of what the author, Amy Tan, is referring to her mother in the book “Mother Tongue”.

Whenever I speak to my peers, I always talk to them in English even though they could speak in a different language the same way I do. The way I speak to them is differ from the way I speak to my parents and elders, because it is considered speaking in less formal situation when you talk to your friends rather than speaking to people older than you. Talking to elders in a formal way is a sign on showing respect, while having a conversation to your peers is rather fun in the kind of way. The language I natively speak has a similar formal and informal approach of voice or tone between the English languages.

Languages for me are the expressions of communication from people who could speak different ones. The way I see languages in different sorts are how they are in different manners when you speak them. For instance, Tagalog language has a different tenor and it simultaneously change of voice compared to the English language.