Make Me Sound Like I Don't Suck

I have never written a description of myself to appeal to other women specifically. However, I guess putting information about yourself on Facebook would count as trying to appeal nicely to everyone.  In the descriptions of myself, I included: my interests, activities, and favorite movies, books, etc. I also have a picture of myself in the display picture. I typically am very honest when writing these details. If I do meet someone by chance, I want them to enjoy the presence of the real me.

Selection, Slanting, and Charged Language

A 10 year old girl, teenage gamer, science professor observing diet coke & Mentos reaction

The 10 year old girl would be super fascinated. She would tell about how the bottle sprayed the pop everywhere and how it looked like a fountain. A teenage gamer might describe the event similar to the girl but then take it further. The mess it makes would be noted and plans for trying that at home and in larger quantities could also be made. Both the girl and the teenager would enjoy the reaction. However, the science professor would have seen a reaction like this before. Instead of describing what was seen, he could be describing the molecular interactions and how the event occurs in more scientific terms. He would also not be as excited as the other two people.

Going to Japan

When two cultures mix, I find that the people of both parties are bit more cautious than usual. Both parties realize that they're different and neither group wants to offend the other. I have this happen to me all the time when I have Caucasian friends over and they interact with my parents. My parents are hesitant to feed my friends certain foods (not dog or anything crazy :P) and my friends are just plan awkward at times. I've learned that when you talk and confront these issues things go a lot more smoothly. When you talk about it, both groups realize that it's pretty silly to be so stressed about cultural insensitivity.

Talking in the New Land

If I had my name changed early on in life, not much would be lost. It took me a while to realize that names even mattered. All through high school, I went by the name "Erick". As college came, I started using my real name: Vu. If I were to only go by Vu now, it would likely lose some fondness of all my high school friends that called me Erick. However, "Vu" has brought me a lot of fun here in college. When I introduce myself to others, they usually ask me to repeat my name. I always say, "Vu, like Deja Vu." Its has a nice ring to it and I like it a lot. I strongly identify myself with my name. I feel like a name is a base for which respect and honor can be built upon. 

Gender Wars in Cyberspace

I communicate through many ways. Besides the typical verbal communication, I like to use a lot of body language. I also text and chat online often. I find myself to be more confrontational. However, it wasn't too long ago that I was conciliatory. I feel that I am in a transition right now since Junior year in high school. My habits of online communications definitely carry over to the real world. I can't help but use abbreviations and acronyms in real life, either to save time or crack jokes. I always talk to my friends from home through this online communication program. It is like a private mini vocal chat room for us and when we meet up to play basketball or hang out in real life, we always use our Internet slang. 

-not sure how to classify things like this.

He and She: What's the Real Difference?

Usually people can tell things about an author beyond his/her writings. Writing styles portray to the personality of the writer. In more scientific writings it could be hard but in other cases you can definitely tell things about the author. Age can be generalized by the vocabulary, grammar/structure can make a person seem more intelligent or old. Sometimes I also believe you can tell if the author is a male or female due to topic, word choice, AND style. There are a lot of subtle things in writings that's kind of hard to explain but definitely hints to what the author is like.

How to give orders like a man!

I recieve orders all the time and each one varies in its dificulty. It is surprising how even the simplest commands can be very challenging. After thinking for some time for a specific event that stands out, I came across one in my dusty mind. The command was given by my mom. It was just "move". One simply word but still I was unable to comply to it.  Senarios can change everything. I remember that day because my parents were fighting and my mom was about to up and leave. My brother and I crowded the door to stop her. With tears in her eyes, it was evident that she was in no condition to drive. There was no way we were going to move. From that event, my family got closer -in my opinion.  In my eyes, in no way does gender affect giving orders. To me, credentials makes me think twice about a command, not the gender. Also the nature of the order matters. Telling me to operate some high tech surgery equipment would not fly well with me. 

Exposing Media Myths

Watching television news is not very important to me. The only time I find myself watching a news program is when someone else is already watching it or I happen to catch glimpse of an interesting head title as I flicker through channels. What I prefer to do is to find interesting articles online; yahoo news or digg is a good source. The length of time an event spends in my memory depends on how outrageous the event is. The things I read usually stay in my mind for a while, just because if I clicked on it, I thought it would be interesting beforehand. Some of my favorite news topics lately have been the monkey tearing a person about and the octo-mom lady. Youtube is also a place of great sorted news. A channel I love to watch is sxephil; he provides a great group of entertaining news feed.

English Belongs To Everybody

I believe we have had this prompt before, towards the beginning of the semester. Depending on the audience, my language is changed. People of authority get more respect and casual friends see a more laid back me. Emotion also plays a role. Before, I did not realize how much this affects it. But the way I talk to my girlfriend is much more "lovey-duby" than when I'm mad. The only time I use profanity is when I'm upset. I feel swearing is usually unnecessary and seems almost fake to me. I don't use them because it's not me, but everyone is entitled to their own opinion.  Academic writing is very refined and different from everyday speech. But not all writing is academic. Journals, emails, or even letters to a love one are much more like spoken English.

The Hard Sell: Advertising in America

Sobe products

Gecko car insurance

Axe & Tag body spray

Hanes underwear

Many different shampoo/hair products

Movie trailers

I occasionally buy Sobe drinks but not any of the other products listed. However, movie trailers get me. If a trailer seems cool to me, I always chat with my friends about them and see if they also want to go see the movie. Advertising in general does not affect my spending habits on myself. I buy what I need to buy and not much else. Products that are intensely advertise tend to be much more pricier and I am cheap. Advertising does get its name into peoples brain. As I walk through supermarkets, I always see products and remember what their ad was. 

From a different prospective, I do however buy gifts for other people taking into account advertisement. Sometimes I buy the masculine bath products for friends and such. 

Text Messaging: Take Note

I am a text messenger and most of my friends are too. I feel that text messages are great. Before my parents adapted the texting plan, I would realize something. There are so many times when you just want to something short and funny to a few friends. Calling them to just say one thing seems too awkward so it falls through. But with text messages, its easy and convenient. There are other times where without texting, it would be just darn impossible to get a message to someone. For example, parties where it is too loud or speeches where silence is required. I think it will slowly change the way we write but only in the slightest. Many times when I am typing a paper, I notice myself typing: lower case i's, urs instead of yours, etc. But we always fix these silly mistakes and academic establishments usually have strict academic expectations for writing. 

When I send my texts, I usually don't go back to edit. E-mail has not changed the way I write much at all, instant messaging has.

Blog

I spend the majority of my time on the computer. I'm always chatting with my friends either on MSN or voice communication chat rooms while I do other things online. I also spend a considerable amount of time playing various online games with my close friends and strangers elsewhere in the world. In doing so, I see tons and TONS of Internet lingo. A lot of things are abbreviated online and I find some of them to be pretty unique. IMO (in my opinion) is one I use around my friends occasionally. TBH (to be honest) is another one. From my experiences playing with people in other countries, AFK (away from keyboard) is a more universal way of saying BRB. I find these acronyms(?) to be very useful as it takes up less typing time and fun to interpret. I think most of these acronyms are already establish and will remain for a very long time.

Virtual Community Real?

List of groups: Water Polo, Swimming, Vietnamese Student Association, Health Science Scholars Program, Clan for online gaming, Orgo 2 study group, many other online groups

All of these groups have helped me build myself as a person. I have many life friends from the sport teams I've participated in. Most of the online groups that I'm enlisted in are with my very good friends from back home and we hang out that way as well. VSA and HSSP are rather new groups to me this year and I foresee them doing the same thing. They will teach me a lot about myself while making great new relationships along the way. The length of the list is decent and it doesn't surprise me much. I feel like I am a joiner as I usually seek groups like those above to make new friends.

The maker's Eye: Revising Your Own Manuscripts

Real early in high school or even middle school, when teachers asked me to revise my writing I thought I only needed to check spelling. But it grew from there. I then learned that grammar was also important to check into. Then came word choice, logic order , and then figuring out if the paper even had a purpose or not. One of the earliest memories I had while revising was just burying my nose in a dictionary because I was one of the worst spellers in class. It never felt good to revise papers. Even now I feel incompetent with the revision paper. I usually am not confident with my own writing so when I am asked to help revise others, I'm at a nervous state of mind. 

Shitty First Drafts

My writing of my first drafts are pretty rough. They usually contain a bunch of mistakes; grammar, run-on's, and confusing are common. The first draft of a paper is always the toughest part in my opinion. When writing my first drafts, I usually just write down whats on my mind and work on it from there. Because it's the toughest part of the paper, I feel really relieved after it's done. It is very unpleasant for me to start papers. The revision process, often lengthy, does not bother me as much as getting the outline for the paper. 

Simplicity

I believe that thinking can be conveyed through writing. When I'm writing, I typically just type what I am thinking on whatever topic is at hand. I also believe that you cannot have one and not the other. It would be impossible to think if there were no words to describe your thoughts. To write things that actually have meaning requires some thought to sentence structure as well as word choice etc. 

I am a person who does like to see ideas on paper. Its good to have a physical copy of something to refer back to instead of recalling a vague memory. I also like to have a brainstorm or outline of what I'm going to write about before diving into a paper. 

How They Chose These Words

The situation that sticks out the most in my mind about this topic is an argument with my parents.  It was about me dating people; my mom would not have it. On the surface, it seemed that they did not approve of my girlfriend. I had many verbal discussion with them to see what the reasons were as well as convey my opinion upon them. I prefer to speak rather than write. I find it difficult to convey the right mood and tone in writing. Sometimes its rather hard to pick out if they are mad or sarcastic. The only time I find myself writing a letter to someone is through email, which is for convenience reasons.

Does a Finger Fing?

Growing up, I would have to rely on students from school to pick up on paterns in English. My family at home spoke Vietnamese. I did eventually learn about the i before e rule but I have never heard that last part as stated in the article; "Or when sounded like ay".  This rule doesn't trigger any memories of other rules for me. I may have never learned them so recalling them its a bit difficult. The only tip I recieved was to "sound things out". These moments in language for me determined the person I am today; a spell check addict. 

Language and Thought

I am a person of very bad memory capacities. To be honest, I personally do not remember anything earlier than age, 5 or 6. However, my family has told me stories of what I use to do. I would associate flashing blue & red lights as police catching a bad guy. A ding-dong sound would mean someone is at the door but do not open it.  A ringing telephone would indicate that I needed to let mom or dad know that someone wanted to talk.

Writing for an Audience

To best friend: 

So this guy in a mustang pulls up to me at the light, and he wants to drag me down 44th. I'm like sure whatever, that street has no cops. I'm winning the entire time,and like a cop pulls up from Quincy and tags me. I just thought to myself, "really...REALLY?" WORST DAY EVER man.

To Parents:

 Mom, Dad, You guys have a good day at work? Really? some customers gave you gifts?! That's amazing! See that reminds me of something kind of bad that happened today. I was rushing to practice and a cop pulled me over. He ended up giving me a speeding ticket. I'm sorry and I'll seriously leave on time from now on.

To Judge:

I am sincerely sorry. I was a late for dance practice and that road is rarely ever populated with cars. From all the years I've lived here, there really isn't much traffic. I see the potential danger though so again, I regret my action and will learn from it.

Each situation has a different audience. Some vocabulary can be used for one group and is considered awkward if used to another group. My story changes from really laid back, common talk to a very formal as the situation changes.

Nine Ideas about Language

The first thing I noticed about this writing was its length. Lauren wasn't kidding about being a long reading.  In the previous semester, I took a linguistics course. It covered the majority of the topics discussed in this reading. It was a refresher about how children learn language naturally and relatively efficiently as well. I also liked how the author brought up the point about the many dialects and how value of a certain language/dialect is completely up to the individuals preference. This is one of the main topics I brought home from the class. No one language/dialect is "correct" so I feel being punished for miss use of language is very stupid.

Regarding how this article plays into my paper, There were parts about how we all switch from formal to informal depending on context of the situation. I expressed that in my paper. I also heard people talking in different jargon and etc while I was in the cafeteria. 

Discovering the Power of Language

My memory is terrible but I believe one day long ago, my mom had lectured me on the importance of vocabulary. She told me that it was important to learn both English and Vietnamese. This is probably slightly different advice than what others would have gotten. People tend to laugh at you and look down upon both you and your family if you cannot speak Vietnamese. It's just a cultural thing over there. To them, kids who grow up and totally forgot their root language is just - I think embarrassing is the word I'm in search of. As for English, the better the vocabulary, the smarter you will sound. 

About the advice my mom gave, I think that it is great. As far as how much I hold true to that advice, that's another matter. I do try to learn new vocabulary often but as I am now, I feel that there is much room for improvement.

Be Specific

I was very relieved today to find a paper slip in my mail box indicating my English book had finally came in. There was a shipping issue but that's besides the point; I am now able to blog about something.

If someone stated "I walked in the woods." I would picture the woody area around my house back home. The trees would be scattered about with many twigs and leaves on the ground. There would be a dirt hill here and there. Tiny shrubs would also accompany the few trees in a refined area. 

"I walked in the Redwood Forest."

Now I see something very different. I'm now in a special park. Humongous dim red trees dominate the land. There are more shrubs, more twigs, more everything! Different shades of twigs help compliment the vast greenery that can be seen everywhere.

Theres a huge difference between my two descriptions; in fact, almost everything differed. I believe the reason for this is the fact that Redwood Forest paints a different portrait than just woods. 

Dutton's "Language Crimes" & "Bad Writing Contest Press Releases"

1/8/09

I had mixed feelings about these two articles. On one hand, I loved it. The point the author is pushing has came across my mind countless times and it feels good to have a highly educated person agree. But in contrast to that happy tone,  the articles also brought me to scratch my noggin and lose interest rapidly. While "Language Crimes" was pretty enjoyable, "Bad Writing.." was very annoying. As a reader, I believe the point was made halfway through the second example of THE WORST SENTENCE EVER. But then I looked to the right and saw the scroll bar indicating I had tons left to read, I let out a sigh. I then just skimed through maybe half of each show off sentence and read the analysis from the author. To be honest, I went to speedy skimming mode for this article. 

Over all, I feel like this is a good way to start off a class. Its very...different. And yes, change is not always bad :)