Final blog entry-----Being Bilingual

This semester is nearly end, and my blog may also have a break. Every letter in this blog was typed with my fingers, every story was told from my heart. Everyone, see you next semester!

I have been in America as an international student for two semesters. During this period, my English advanced much and I learnt much about America. Being bilingual gave me much benefits but also some trouble. The best advantage of bilingual is that I can have both American and Chinese friends. In this way, I can receive more information and have various university lives. Another benefit is that I can learn both west and east mode of thinking. Americans and Chinese think in different ways on many questions. But they each have his strong point, and I can have both of their strong points. Another one shocked me is staying in two kinds of culture. There is so much difference between them. Since I am a bilingual student, I can understand both cultures deeper and monolinguals can never do this. For example, I understood the story of “grass-mud-horse” and can tell it in both English and Chinese. But any monolingual person cannot understand the story like me. But there is also some trouble with my second language. Since English is not my mother tongue, I always have words spelling and expressing problems. And I can not speak it fluently as my first language Chinese. Also, I need to learn much more basic knowledge about English language. When I a trying to write something with English, it usually takes a much longer time than in Chinese.
Generally speaking, I am glad that I can speak two languages, it benefits me much. I can study in both language and others cannot do it, I can live in multi-culture society but monolingual cannot, and there are more points bilingual benefits me. In one word, it is a pleasure to handle two languages; it brings me a various life.

Response Apr.14

Elizabeth Hill talks much about the writing literacy like photograph and so on. However, originally, they are all defined as “writing”. In this sense, I would like to talk about writing literacy in my own country----china.
As we know, the Chinese writing system is one of the oldest known written languages. According to some research, some of the earliest examples of ancient Chinese writing date back to 4,000 years ago. China is such a enormous country that it owns many different kinds of language. They are two main languages, which are Mandarin Chinese and Cantonese Chinese together with numerous dialects. Although the spoken languages vary from region to region, all Chinese write the same word. The Chinese writing was the one unifying element that brought all these languages into one standard written language. For instance, while the pronunciation of the word “one” may vary from Mandarin to Cantonese, the written character is the same. Spoken Chinese has changed remarkably over the centuries, while Chinese writing has changed little from the ancient Chinese. There are four distinct periods of Chinese writing---Oracle Bone, Greater Seal, Lesser Seal, Clerkly Script.
Traditionally, the Chinese characters are written in columns. These columns are read from top to bottom and from right to left. Because this writing system uses a single character to represent a word or phrase, there are literally thousands of symbols. This enormous amount of characters accounts, in pat, for the high illiteracy rate in China. In an effort to circumvent this problem, the People’s Republic of China introduced a program to simplify the language into a set of commonly used characters. The current writing system we use today just contains approximately 6,000 of these characters.
Current Chinese writing includes two main methods, one is classical Chinese symbols, which we learn in Chinese class and we are supposed to recite them as well. The other is baihua method which includes vernacular Chinese symbols and is what we use in our daily lives.

Literacy VS Technology

I agree with the opinion which technology is another form of literacy, and they were shaped by each other. At very beginning, literacy is only about wood board and sculpture. As the technology processed, words and papers were developed, so we had better type for literacy. Also, literacy helped technology develop. We record technology with literacy and pass it on. Now, we have advanced technology--- the internet. With internet, every can record their own literacy and upload it, so it can be broadcast to the world. What is more, compared with our ancestor’s literacy with sculpture, ours are much more diversity. For example, we not only have books, pictures and music, but also have something more attractive, such as IM, blog and YouTube. These fantastic literacy forms are all based on technology development. Relatively, technology could not advance so fast without literacy. Each invention is based on human dreaming and designing. As we have desire of a better life, technology processed.
Generally speaking, literacy and technology helped each other advancing in an incredible speed. We will have more diversity literacy and higher technology in the future.

Persuade me, come on!

I think videos can impress people most. Because human always interested in something can move itself with sound, it is like someone is talking to audience. In that way, audience will focus more on speakers’ words, and they can understand the purpose of speakers better. Also, it will be easier to persuade them. As an example, there are two versions for a story, one is novel and the other is movie; if we ask people that which version they prefer, most will chose movie. So, if someone want to persuade me with a media, video presentation is the best choice.

Fifth literacy blog entry

This time I want to talk about dreams. I am sorry to say that I got mono last few days and I had a seriously fever, 104 degrees Fahrenheit. It is really a hard time. I felt so terrible that I even felt death came to me.
While I was sleeping in fever, I dreamed my body was burning on bed, the flame of fire around me as a storm. I was struggling on the verge of death. I tired to jump out of the fire, but it could not make it, I was falling deeper and deeper in the fire. When I nearly lost, a hand showed in front of me, and I did not know whose it is, I just caught it and the one pulled me out. Then I was awaked.
I know it sounds like a paragraph in movies or stories, but it was true and happened on me. I always think about this question these days, if I did not catch the hand in the dream, I might already died in the night.
Dream is unpredictable sometimes. Some dreams look back on history, some predict the future, some mean nothing, and some have delicate relation with truth. It is hard to say what is the relationship between dream and reality, but sometimes dreams have incredible power. Dreams can make people happy or sad; also they can give people hope or frustrate them.
To the other meaning of dream, people own their belief. And their belief made them advanced, also made the world advanced.

Forth literacy blog entry

I think many had heard about that a creature named Grass Mud Horse and its friends was created by Chinese net buddies. China was trying to block something that the officers thought they were not beneficial to internet environment. But something they did not expect was they deleted too much. So that it affected the freedom of speech of Chinese. Then Chinese created some creatures to satirize this event.
These creatures are all named by Chinese dirty words, but they were not exactly dirty words. Chinese used partial tone to name them. For example they used “Grass Mud Horse” instead of “fuck your mother”; they had almost the same pronunciation in Chinese. These creatures were so famous that almost every Chinese known them. Also, some foreign Medias reported them, such as CNN. Additional, one creature named “River crab” occurred. This one had nearly the same pronunciation with the word “harmonization”. It showed Chinese government emphasized the policy of harmonization too much, they controlled too hard on internet, and it had affected normal life of Chinese people. Too much was harmonized. So they made the story of “Grass Mud Horse” fought with the “River crab” to hint they could not stand in such a hard policy. Reporter of CNN said a sentenced that my entire friend thought it was classical “But it involved their mothers.”
This should the diversity of literacy, it can critical much but without any dirty word. But people’s anger was released out. It also should nobody can give too much pressure to the society, or people will fight against it.

Third literacy blog entry

I was told that music can effect human emotion, but I did not notice it was a truth. Today, I found that music really works well on that. I worked at the cafeteria this afternoon. I was so tired because there were extra many came to my station today; also, my station was lack of one member, so my work was extremely busy. I was so exhausted that I told myself many times I should quit. Finally I got a chance to take my break. I sat in the corner, drank a glass of sprite, and tried to quit. Suddenly, a beautiful song came out of speakers, someone told me it called “Love story”. I felt so good with the song, it was like the sun shining around me, all the terrible feeling was left, I was relax because the enjoyable melody. After I back to work again, I tried to sing pleased songs myself, and it works well, I felt much better, even there was still many came.
I think human emotion has much relation with music, musicians write music when they were happy or sorrow, also, when others listen to music, they were effected by music, they feel happy when music were joyful, and lost when music were said. In conclusion, music means much: sometimes, we can listen to music for fun, but more important, music is a kind of psychoactive medicine, helps people to have a better life.