Fictions

I'm so sorry to write the blog at this time (Oh, I wrote same sentence in the last time!).

In the last class, we learned about 3Bs in fiction. What's that? 3Bs are Background, Biography, and Bias. These points are important things to know when we read fictions. By doing so, we can deepen our understanding of the story and it will easy to make interpretations.

Other things we learned were "compassion and love" in a novel, "The Old Man and the Sea." We recognized compassion between the old man and the boy many times in the book. They have a strong and nice relationship through whole story, and at the end of it, I felt something warm in my heart, how he needed the boy, and how the boy loved and respected him.

This time I read so fast to catch up with the class, but I want to read it again more thoroughly if I have time to do it.

The Old Man and the Sea

First, I'm sorry for writing this article at this time. I couldn't finish this yesterday.

Anyway, in ARW class, we are now working on reading a famous novel, "The Old Man and the Sea."  According to this article, I learned the writer of this novel, Earnest Hemingway was a difficult person unlike Santiago, who is a main character of this novel. However, there are also similarities between them. Both of Hemingway and Santiago are physically strong men and like fishing. The article has a picture of Hemingway, and I thought my image of Santiago was the person who was in the picture. Hemingway's eyes are little scary, but except this, he was Santiago.

Also, I read a material about stoicism in this novel. In this book, Santiago wasn't able to catch fish for 84 days, but he never give up until he caught a fish. Even when he was in a bad situation, he took it positively. This is important and necessary things to live through tough situation. As for me, I tend to take things negatively, so I admire his mental strength. I think I must follow his attitude and never lose my hope. Because my name is "hope."

A Heavy Day...

The last weed has ended, and a new week starts. Although I had a few big events in the week, I felt so busy and tired. Why? Perhaps, I had two exams on the last Friday.

One was a mid-term exam of Principles of Language Learning and Teaching class. The content of this exam was based on a textbook that was not used in our classes. So I had to read and understand the book all by myself. At the beginning of April, I made a reading plan. However, since I had had a lot of homework and because of my poor time management ability, I couldn't read it little by little. As a result, by the last Monday, I could finish only five of 200 pages! That was the most terrible thing since I entered this university. Therefore, I worked hard on reading from Monday to the exam day, and I finished reading 150 pages, in other words, I couldn't finish. I don't wanna do the same things again!!! I hope I'll be a good planner and performer.

Since this blog is ARW class's journal, I'll write about the other test I had today (Sorry for a long introduction...). That was ARW's CWT about fallacies and argumentation. We learned about total to 13 fallacies through classes and homework. Some of them were easy to understand, but others were difficult to distinguish their meanings from each other. I took the test with my uncertain understanding, so my exam result was not quite good. I should examine them once again and use the knowledge when I write my essay!  

Nishin...

It's Wednesday today. This week, I have a lot things to read, write, listen, and remember. I am exhausted now, but I'll give much effort to write this blog.

In today's ARW class, firstly, we continued to learn about fallacies. I found that there are many kinds of fallacies, and each has own unique name. One of the names I found interesting was "Red Herring". When I read this at first, I realized there was a small picture of fish. And I wondered why this picture was put here. Since I didn't know the meaning of a word "herring", I looked it up in my dictionary. Then I understood the reason. "Herring" is a name of a fish, in Japanese, "Nishin". I was a litter surprised at this because I ate Nishin yesterday! So, I could remember at least this one. However,  I have to remember all of the other fallacies. I' ll do the best!!

Fallacy, What Is It?

In the Monday's ARW class, we continued to learn about argumentation. And in that class, we focused on fallacies. Do you know what fallacy mean? Fallacy is a mistake when people make an argument. I didn't know that mistakes in an argument are named special names, so at first, I didn't understand what thing I was going to learn. Moreover, I was very sleepy during the class, so I still don't know much about it (Sorry Dan......). So, I have to recheck the material and know what it is.

Key Is Evidence

Today's topic is "argument" in academic writing. Since we entered the university, we have learned how to write or read an academic paper in ELA classes. Argumentation is one of the things we have learned for this two months. But, I didn't understand well about it, for example, what "assumption" exactly is, or how to strengthen my claims more efficiently. These days, I'm working on a 5 paragraph essay and often struggle with argumentation. So, when the teacher gave us some materials about argumentation, I watched and read them very carefully. And they could solve my questions.

Here are some things I learned.

1. Evidence should be different, for example, facts, examples, expert opinions, and statistics.
2. Evidence should be accurate, relevant to topic, representative, which means true to the context, and adequate.

Note: These are from "The Little, Brown, Compact Handbook."

I know evidence plays a paramount role in argumentation, so to use appropriate evidence is necessary for a good writing. However, searching that kind of evidence is a hard work, and it sometimes takes a long time (and this leads to the lack of sleep!!!). I think it is crucial to acquire searching skill as well as knowing about argumentation.

Anyway, I'll "do", not "try" my best to write my essay!
   

I'm Not a Machine...

Today's topic is drafting and peer reviewing. My teacher providing videos about it, and I thought they were interesting and much useful in my writing and peer reviewing. While I was watching the videos, I realized many things that I should do, but I will tell you only one of them.

 I found that when I peer-review other person's work, I tend to comment on grammar mistakes a lot, and not on concepts because I didn't know well how to check concepts. According to the video, the first thing that peer reviewers should do is to understand massages of writing, and checking grammar is the last thing to do. I recognized that if a writer uses a grammar check tool, he/she doesn't need a kind of peer reviewer who only check grammar, such as I. From now on,  I should concentrate more on understanding massages of a writer and give comments on them. Because I'm not a machine...