What would you like to discuss?

I've just posted about something that came out of this morning's class. If there is something we cover in cover in class, in our reading, or in our writing that you would like to ask about, discuss more or get others' ideas on, please feel welcome to post on it here.
We're all checking our class Blog everyday, or at least a few times a week, and will be happy to share our ideas in a quick response.

J's question in class

When she was explaining why a writer might want to say "In my opinion" this morning, J made another point that I think is worth reflecting on and responding to. Her point was that if someone reads your paragraph or essay, they have to rely on and accept the supporting points you give. The well chosen example that J used was that a reader might not have a copy of Quest in front of her, so she has to accept the supporting details about the painting that J gave in her paragraph.

What do you think about this?

What makes it "correct English"?

In his book, The Language Instinct: How the mind creates language, the Harvard cognitive scientist, linguist and psychologist Steven Pinker writes:

So there is no contradiction in saying that every normal person can speak grammatically (in the sense of systematically) and ungrammatically (in the sense of nonprescriptively), just as there is no contradiction in saying that a taxi obeys the laws of physics but breaks the laws of Massachusetts. But this raises a question. Someone, somewhere, must be making decisions about "correct English" for the rest of us. Who? There is no English Language Academy, and this is just as well; the purpose of the Académie Française is to amuse journalists from other countries with bitterly argued decisions that the French gaily ignore. Nor were there any Founding Fathers at some English Language Constitutional Conference at the beginning of time. (p. 372)

Does your culture have anything similar to the Académie Française? What does Pinker think about it? Do you agree with him?

How would you answer Pinker's question about "correct English"? What about correct Thai? Korean?

Please share your ideas on these questions or anything else that Pinker's ideas made you think of.
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References
Pinker, S. 1994. The Language Instinct: How the mind creates language. New York NY: Morrow

Why write academic English?

We're all studying academic English, and we're all in a reading and writing class, so it perhaps makes sense to spend a few minutes thinking about the question: Why do people write academic English? In particular, why do people write paragraphs, essays, research papers, theses, and the like? And I don't mean just the members of our class, but also academics, journalists, philosophers, economists, news paper readers, lawyers and others, even students. Why do all of these people, along with us, want to write academic English?

What are your ideas? Why do people go to the trouble of writing paragraphs and essays and so on?

This is Peter

Hi, and welcome to Reading and Writing Level 4 in the Academic English Program here at AUA.
As you already know, my name is Peter. I'm from Australia, but have been living here in Thailand for the past twenty years almost, and I've been teaching at AUA for about fifteen years.
My academic background is a bit varied. I began a science degree, with a major in pure mathematics, but then I switched to arts. My major became philosophy, with second majors in mathematics and languages. My main areas of interest in philosophy are logic and ethics, but I continue to read in most areas, and I also read a couple of science magazines regularly. You will probably find out what I read because I often post here about articles that I've read in one of the magazines.

J

Hi.
My name is "J"
I'm a housewife with two kids. I've been in Thailand for 4years.
While my children are in school, I want to spend time more effectively, so I'm here in aua.
I don't have exact plan yet for furture. I'm studying english right now because I just want to prepare my furture. Nobody sure their furture.
Sometime in the future, I don't want to miss my chance-better job or studying more.

Gus

My name is Jiratchaya Phontar. I graduated from Mahidol University in the Department of Chemical Engineering, faculty of Engineering. I got the scholarship of Energy Ministry to go to abroad in order to study in Master Degree in the field of Petroleum Engineering. I plan to study in the United State next year. I set the target at Texas, University of Texas at Austin because Texas Austin is the top of Petroleum Engineering University. When I graduate, I will comeback to Thailand and work in Ennergy Ministry in order to manage the resource and the country to the deverloping.

Pat

My name is Apichaya Lilavanichakul, Pat. I graduated with Bachelor of Science in field of Food Technology from Chulalongkorn University and Bachelor of Business Administration from Ramheumhang University. After I graduate, I am an research assistant at Department of Food Technology. My plan is study abroad in Canada in Master of Food Agricultural and resource economics. Because it is famous university in this field and has a lot of effective teachers and interesting research that I can read. I believe that Guelph can provide me opportunity, experience, knowledge and a better understanding about supply chain management. After I complete the program, I will be as a leaturer at University.

Noom.AEP4

My name is Chanus Sumanangkul and my nickname is Noom which mean soft in english. I'm graduated from Ramkhamhaeng University; faculty Law. After graduated, I worked at Deloitte which is an international audit firm. I worked as Legal advisor for 1 year then I changed my career fields to Business Development (Marketing) with some IT company for only 6 months and I realize that Legal Advisor is appropriate to me more than Marketing so I decided to go back to work as Legal advisor again. However, In year 2009, I plan to go to study for Master degree in abroad to gain more knowledge about international law or business law. furthermore, I really love to travel especially in south of Thailand, there have many beautiful beach and many island. if anyone want to go to any province in south of Thailand, you may run to me for some information. for an example, tourist attraction, Hotel or resort.

Michelle

My name is Michelle from Korea. I have been in Thailand more than one year. I study English here. I studied Business at university in Korea and worked in Hyundai Group as a secretary of Honorary chairman but at that time my Enlgish was very poor that's why I resigned and start to study English even though it's not only reason to resign work. I hope to get a good job after study English more and live other countries.

paully.aep4

My name is Paully. I graduated bachelor degree of Pharmaceutical Sciences from Chulalongkorn University and master degree of Business Administration from Thammasat University. My future plan is working at international company in marketing field.

mick

My name is Mick. I am try to use the blogger as the first time. From now on, I would like to inform you a little history of my file. I used to be work as engineer for a Japanese company for to 2.5 year. I got the much experience from the company, but I have a plan to study in the master degree in Germany around the Aug2009. Therefore, I had to resign the job for study English at AUA.

Maimai

My name's Kawjaraung from Myanmar. I'm learning english at AUA, AEp program. I'm just finished high school. Next year, I'll go to university. So, i'm learning english here.

Abortion: A good solution to social problems?

In his essay, "Where Have All the Criminals Gone?" (Levitt & Dubner, 2006), that we are reading this week, Stephen Levitt presents strong evidence that abortion is a major factor contributing to lower crime rates. This finding, that abortion is good for society, has upset many people. Should Thailand legalise abortion?
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References

Levitt, S.D., & Dubner, S.J. (2006). Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything. St. Ives Plc: Penguin Books.

What is a person?

In his essay proposing a solution to a problem related to drug use, an important point in Pong's essay is that a foetus is a person and therefore has the same rights as any other human being. Do you agree? What is a person, and at what point does a human foetus or child become a person? Do only human beings have rights? Can there be non-human persons? Would they have rights?

A Most Controversial Novel

Although the Wikipedia entry on Of Mice and Men may mislead readers, it is certainly correct to note that the novel has been controversial ever since it was published (2008). One idea in the novel that upsets many people is Steinbeck's very sympathetic treatment of mercy killing.
More recently, especially since Diane Pretty lost her court bid to have her husband help kill her in 2002 (Diane Pretty dies, 2002), there have been increasing numbers of people insisting that they have a right to die and that doctors or other people should be free to help them die. What do you think? Do current laws deprive people of basic human rights as Ms Petty argued? Should Thailand legalise euthanasia?
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References

Diane Pretty dies (2002, May 12). BBC News. retrieved on July 14, 2008 from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/1983457.stm

Of Mice and Men. (2008, July 7). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 22:05, July 11, 2008, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Of_Mice_and_Men&oldid=224111516

The Morality of Eating Meat: Must we stop it?

As we found in our discussion yesterday, Stephen Law presents strong arguments that eating meat is immoral (2003). This seems to leave us only a few options: we can stop eating meat, which most seem unwilling to do; we can continue eating meat knowing that we are acting immorally; or perhaps there is another option.
What do you think?

• Is it really immoral to eat meat? Why not?
• How would you feel about continuing to do something you now knew was immoral?
• What other options do we have if we want to continue gobbling up animals for our pleasure?
• What do we really need here?
• Do you have any other thoughts about Law's dialogue?

_____________

References

Law, S. (2003). Carving the roast beast, in The Xmas Files: The philosophy of Christmas. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson

Do we all have multiple persons in our heads?

In the reading "Culture and Mental Illness", one of the disorders that Hartmann discusses is multiple-personality disorder (2007). But might we all suffer from this mental disorder? Philosophers since Hume (1711 - 1776) have theorised that the mind may not be the single entity that it seems to be, and recent research from psychology has tended to support this view: it appears we all have multiple persons inside our heads.

One recent piece of research that has been seen as giving further support to the multiple-persons theory of the human mind concerns an unexpected finding about the accuracy of guesses we make. The main ideas are outlined in "The Crowd Within" (2008), and the short report of the original research by Edward Vul and Harold Pashler (2008) is also worth a look at. It is difficult, but very interesting and I don't think too difficult. It is also fairly short, being just eight pages. The journal Psychological Science also hosts a Blog discussion on this topic (Herbert, 2008), which you might like to have a look at, both for Herbert's post and the following discussion.

Did these results surprise you?
Do they support the idea that persons are really collections of persons, that we are all multiple personalities inside our brains?
How do you feel about that idea?
Most of us think of ourselves as being a single person. Could we really all be wrong? If enough research proved otherwise, would you accept that your mind was really a whole collection of minds? (Or something like that)
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References

The crowd within. (2008, June 26). [Electronic version]. The Economist. Retrieved July 6, 2008 from https://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11614183

Hartmann, P. (2007). Quest 2 Reading and Writing (2nd ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill ESL/ELT.

Herbert, W. (2008, June 10). Polling the crowd within. We're Only Human. Retrieved July 6, 2008 from http://www.psychologicalscience.org/onlyhuman/2008/06/polling-crowd-within.cfm

Vuh, E. & Pashler, H. (2008, in press). Measuring the Crowd Within: Probabilistic Representations Within Individuals [Short report]. Psychological Science. Retrieved July 6, 2008 from http://www.psychologicalscience.org/journals/ps/19_7_inpress/vul.pdf

Of Mice and Men - the title

The full text of the 1785 poem by Robert Burns, from which Steinbeck took the name of his novel, is available at http://www.bartleby.com/106/144.html , where the words "o' mice an' men" occur in line 39 in the seventh verse.
The language is old, not standard English, and is very difficult for native speakers, which is why some words and phrases are glossed to help us.

There is also an audio file of the poem being recited that you can download from http://www.electricscotland.com/burns/ToAMouse.rm
_____________

References

Burns, R. (1785). To a Mouse, On turning her up in her nest with the plough. In Palgrave, F. T. (ed.). (1875). The Golden Treasury. London: Macmillan [Electronic version]. On Bartleby.com Retrieved July 6, 2008 from http://www.bartleby.com/106/144.html