Responding to the News: weekly blog schedule

As we have noted, every chapter in Quest includes a response writing activity, such as exercise J. on page 30 (Hartmann & Blass, 2007). These response writing exercises are there because Hartmann and Blass think that they are important for practising fluency in a less strictly academic form of writing. In response writing activities, we are still writing full English sentences, and we do want some organization, but they are responses, not carefully research and planned pieces of writing. Since much academic writing involves citing and responding to the work of others, combining this writing activity with regular reading outside of our class reading also gives practice in reading.

This is our weekly blog schedule.

	Bloggers
Monday	A	Nid	Yuko	Pu	Apple
Tuesday	Akira	Pat	Bright	Taey	Book
Wednesday	Apple	Petch	Joe	Tarn
Thursday	Book	Pu	Natt	Tum	A
Friday	Bright	Taey	Nid	Yuko	Akira
Saturday	Joe	Tarn	Pat
Sunday	Natt	Tum	Petch

When it's your day to blog on something in the news, please

• choose an article from one of the publications on my "Looking for Something to Read?" list on our class blog.  You may blog on an article from elsewhere, but it must be from a publication at a similar standard, which rules out The Nation and The Bangkok Post, although you are very welcome to respond to something in those papers as an extra post if you like.
  All of the publications on my list have articles on a wide variety of topics, so you should have no trouble finding some that interest you, whether because you agree, disagree, think it funny, or interesting for any other reason. 
• follow the suggested organization, but don't worry too much about it. That is, begin with a very short introductory paragraph that at least introduces your source, and perhaps explains why it caught your interest as something to respond to; follow with a short summary paragraph that tells us the main points that you want to respond to; and then move on to your response to the ideas in the article, which should be more than half of your total post and one or two paragraph, although you can write more if you like. 
• it is a good idea to make the title of your source in the introductory paragraph a link
• you are citing a source, so you must write a reference list entry. These are important academic writing skills that we want to practice in these response writings, even though the writing itself is not as rigorous as academic writing. Again, in your reference list entries, make the URL a link. 

Something I find useful is to email myself a link to articles that interest me but which I don't have time to read and think about immediately - I then have a reminder in my Inbox to go back and read them later. Most online publications now include the option of emailing a link to an article.

Note added July 1:
I usually create my reference list entries in Notepad, and then paste that text into the references section. If you copy and paste from sources, the formatting can be weird. Doing it in Notepad removes all the formatting, leaving only the text, which will then be fine when pasted into your blog post. But don't forget to add italics where needed and to make the URL an active link. 

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References

Hartmann, P. & Blass, L. (2007). Quest 3 Reading and Writing, (2nd. ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.

Supreme Wisdom or Super Silly?

The US Supreme Court's decision handed down on Monday against US state and local government laws that ban gun ownership made the headlines in all of the news publications that I regularly read. They varied from straight reporting (Liptak, 2010; US Supreme Court, 2010), to opinion pieces which disagree with the ruling (C.L., 2010, The Court, 2010), and I'm sure that this week's Economist will have a full report on it. As a long time observer and fan of the US Supreme Court, I take note of most of their rulings, which are always fascinating reading even where I strongly disagree with their decision.

As the reports in all three publications note, Monday's ruling extents a previous Supreme Court ruling on gun ownership laws from federal jurisdiction, such as Washington D.C., to state and local levels of US government, whose laws banning gun ownership have now been ruled unconstitutional and must therefore be changed. The specific case that the judges ruled on was that of Chicago, where the city government had tried to ban people from owning guns to control that city's high firearm murder rate. Four Chicago residents who wanted to own guns and keep them in their homes for protection took the case through the US court system, eventually ending up in the Supreme Court, where five of the nine judges have now ruled in their favour to allow them to own guns.

Although it's clear that many disagree with this decision, such as The New York Times (The Court, 2010) and C.L, writing in The Economist (2010), it's one with which I agree. The controversy, which has been of long standing in the US, is mainly over the meaning of the second amendment to the US Constitution, part of the Bill of Rights; it's very short and reads: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed". The court had already decided, in 2008, that this meant that ordinary Americans had a legal constitutional right to own guns. The new decision has explicitly extended the earlier decision from federal law to all American law, which must now allow US citizens to own guns.

The first thing I thought worth a note is that this reminds us how important words are. This is often the case with Supreme Court decisions, which are largely interpreting the meaning of the excellent US Constitution, which has served Americans extremely well for more than 200 years without a single army coup treating it as toilet paper. As this court decision shows, words and their meanings have a very real impact on the world and  our lives.

Following the above point, I was again impressed with the excellence of the US Constitution: it's very short, but managed to get things pretty much right to set the foundation for an extremely stable, successful and peaceful nation. My own country's constitution is good, but I think the US's is even better. It's short, but covers all the most important elements necessary for a healthy democracy without getting bogged down in details that governments should be free to decide and change, such as who provides education and so on.

And that brings me to the last point I wanted to make, why I think that those who oppose this decision are wrong, not just on legal grounds, but also morally. It is true that the murder rate in Chicago is high, and that it would be good to reduce that, but it does not follow that anything that reduces that murder rate is acceptable or right, just as not everything that reduced heart disease would be acceptable - should fatty pork be made illegal because it's unhealthy? Should citizens be legally forced to exercise every day? Such things would almost certainly reduce death rates and lead to a healthier, more productive society, so is that a good enough reason for a government to make them law? I think not, nor is the need to reduce murder rates a good enough reason to ban gun ownership. In fact, the United States is much less violent than many other countries, even it's murder rate is only half as high as Thailand's. I think that the Supreme Court has made another right decision, in line both with the excellent American Constitution and with justice.

__________

References

C.L. (2010, June 28) Guns n' Robes. The Economist. Retrieved June 30, 2010 from http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2010/06/gun_control_and_supreme_court

The Court: Ignoring the Reality of Guns. (2010, June 28). The New York Times. Retrieved June 30, 2010 from http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/29/opinion/29tue1.html?emc=eta1

Liptak, A. (2010, June 28). Justices Extend Firearm Rights in 5-to-4 Ruling. The New York Times. Retrieved June 30, 2010 from http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/29/us/29scotus.html?emc=eta1

US Supreme Court extends gun rights. (2010, June 28). BBC News. Retrieved June 30, 2010 from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/us_and_canada/10438332.stm

Akira on Load of the Flies

This book is quite hard to read for me. There are so many words that I don't know, so it takes a lot

of time to read, but i believe that this kind of practice is good for me.

My english skill can improve.

Oh, reading 24 pages in a day was too hard for me.

Anyway, I like this kind of story.

Tarn on Load of the Files

After reading the chapter 1 of Load of the Files, I feel exhausted and bored. Maybe because I didn't understand the story and I didn't use my imagination much when I read it. And I think the story is not as excited and adventurous as I expected. Also, nothing is mysterious as well.

Novel

This novel about the relationship of children's society because there are no adult characters in this book. I guess anyone in this novel would meke some happening and tried to make a good society. But I think each character is so strong that they can't manage by theirselves. This is novel that we will enjyoy process of this association.

Tum on Lord of the flies

I've just finished chapter one this morning, and it leaved me a lot of vocabularies I don't know. This novel is a difficult one for me to read a understand everything the author wrote; however, he did a good job in his fiction. In my opinion, every characters has a unique behavior, and they act as a symbols of today's politic. For example, Jack is represented to be a person who want to be the leader and crave for power because he always order to another child. That's why I believe that this ficton is not just a funny story to read and laugh, but you have to think while you read. Reading this book is not just improving my reading skill only, but it also force me to try interpreting the real propose of the writer, and I think this is very important skill for academic learning in my future.

Nid on Lord of the flies

After reading the first chapter, there are many words that I don't know, however I feell a bit enjoy it. It seem like I want to know what exactly happened to the boys. And it's remind me some reality show on the cable TV that the children were left on the island and looked them how they command themself. So It would be great to finish it. One more thing that I don't understand or very unclear is about the scene when the author describe.

Natt on Lord of the Flies

I quite struggled to read it. There are a lot of words that I don't know and the style of writing that I don't familiar with. Maybe because I hardly read novel in English.

However, the story is very interesting and attractive for me to keep reading it.

Bright on Lord of the Files

Last night, I had read the first chapter of Lord of the Files. Although I didn't know the meanings of every single word, but I can understand how this story's going on because when I read it, I try to imagine about the place, the picture, or the character in this novel, and I think this is very helpful for me to understand the story. Actually, I'm not usually read the novel in English, so I found that it's difficult to me in the first time to understand it.

Petch on Lord of the Flies

After perusing the first chapter of a book called Lord of the Flies, I can see that the author try to remind us of our human's instinct. I also believe that this story is underlined with the author's psychological, philosophical and symbolic interests, all of which are implicitly pointed out through out the whole chapter, which presumably he relate it to our society. Furthermore, due to his degree from English literature, the chapter has been well written and chosen the scattered ideas by his story-telling skill.

__________

References

xxxxx add the reference citations for your sources here (in alphabetical order, as usual). If you did not cite any source, delete this entire References section.

Pu on Lord of the flies

I just finished the first chapter of " The lord of the files" last night and felt like the first chapter is decribe in detail too much about the island. I almost felt asleep too many times. I heard that this book is very good, so I believe that the next chapter will be better than the last one. After all I curious that what is the meaning of Lord of files and who is the lord of files. I think that he or she might be an important chracter in this book, but I could haven't find any connection between this name and a story in the book.

Book on Lord of the Flies

To be honest, I'm not familiar with literal novel which is difficult to me for reading. There are many words that I do not know. However, I think chapter one is an introduction which are telling how the story begins and Of course, it is a little bit boring because it is too much detail about place. And I also doubt why only kids survives.

__________

Pat: Lord of the Files

After I read Lord of the Files's first chapter, I found that the book's plot is really interesting. While I was reading it, I feel like I was watching the famous TV program "Survival". Even if the English

Taey on Load of the Files

At first, when I saw the cover of the book I think it should be the life of man who lives in the jungle. After reading the first chapter, it takes me more than two hours to read whereas the first chapter is contained with only about 25 pages and very hard vocabularies making me realizes that if I used the dictionary to look at all words, time spending would be more three times than I only guess the word and try to illustrate the whole story to be a movie. However, it is very easy to translate it to be a picture and make me interested to continue read.Before continuing read chapter two, I still waiting for extreme creatures or supernatural items.

Apple on Lord of the Flies

Reading Lord of the Flies,totally, lead me into the world of children. It reminds me some ideas that I always dreamt about in my childhood which was being grownups. At that time, I thought being an adult is a symbol of freedom and expressing full of identity. No one can limit or restrict your desire. You are the boss of your life.

Peter on Lord of the Flies, and Wikipedia

Since I've asked you to read it, it seems fair that I should also briefly introduce Lord of the Flies. Being one of the most read classics of modern English literature since it was published in 1954, there are a lot of websites with information on this novel. I thought that some of you might have had a look at the Wikipedia entry on William Golding's famous novel, so I also checked it out a few minutes ago. It isn't very good, being badly written and not very insightful; at least there is a warning at the top of that Wikipedia entry (2010).
However, one interesting piece of information in the Wikipedia entry is that the novel is not only a classic, but has been, like many other classics, very controversial ever since it was published. I'm not sure if it's been banned in as many schools and libraries as Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men, but it has certainly upset a lot of people over the past 50 plus years. As we read it over the next 12 days, you might like to think about whether there should be any restrictions on the novel.

More relevant to us is the sentence: "The title of the book, in turn, has itself become a metaphor for a power struggle in a chaotic situation" (¶ 3), which I think it wrong. Even if it's right, the Wikipedia author has given zero support or explanation of that claim. This caught my eye because it is about symbols, which is our current topic in Quest, and also because it states the same sort of idea about the use of symbols in various elements of society that we have been considering in "Symbolic Systems and Meanings" (Hartmann & Blass, 2007, p.12 - 16). Although she probably has a good idea, I think that the Wikipedia author is wrong.

Although certainly not completely useless, this particular Wikipedia entry is a good example of the dangers of getting someone else's idea or opinion and accepting it for no good reason: it does not make you look either intelligent or sensible. And that reminds me of Tum's source, to which I referred in my response to his summary paragraph (Peter, 2010).

When I started writing, the title was simply "Peter on Lord of the Flies", but when I saw what I ended up with, I decided to add and Wikipedia.

Although there were a few other comments, generally a bit more on topic, I'll leave them for now so that you have a chance to share your responses first without any interference from my ideas. I suspect I will have more to say on the novel later, and I'm sure you will have something to say about it here - possibly a great many very different ideas on the topic.

__________

References

Hartmann, P. & Blass, L. (2007). Quest 3 Reading and Writing, (2nd. ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.

Lord of the Flies. (2010, June 28). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 10:04, June 29, 2010, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Lord_of_the_Flies&oldid=370677858
Note: if you do want to use an article from Wikipedia, always use the "cite this page" tool to automatically create the correct APA style reference list entry. 

Peter. (2010, June 26). Opposing Stephen Law: final comments. Class Blog - AEP at AUA. Retrieved June 29, 2010 from http://peteraep.blogspot.com/2010/06/opposing-stephen-law-final-comments.html

Blogging Our Class

As Apple's thoughtful and instructive questions below show, it is normal that students in a reading and writing class at our level should have such questions (2010). I would expect that you will have questions about things we cover in class, in our reading, or elsewhere, that you would like to discuss more, and blogs are well suited to that sort of discussion, nor need you restrict blogs on our class to questions: if something interests you, feel welcome to share your response to it. 

__________

References

Apple. (2010, June 27). ???. Class Blog - AEP at AUA. Retrieved June 29, 2010 from http://peteraep.blogspot.com/2010/06/blog-post.html

???

My friends, sorry for maybe wasting your time
After reading Peter's comment of my work and Peter's original work, I've wondered something about summary paragraph. I emailed Peter to ask for answers of the questions. Unexpectedly, Peter suggests (indirectly forces 555) me to post the questions in order to share ideas with all of you. Hope you don't blame me to use our class blog's space. The questions are :

1. I'm not sure that the serious mistake of my whole paragraph is not clearly stated the main idea in the topic sentence, which is eating meat is morally wrong. If so,according to my paragraph, is it possible to only add some letters in my first line like this?

In Carving the Roast Beast, Stephen Law sets up a strong argument about the immorality of eating meat.

I always bear in mind about the word "about" you taught me that it is too general to be in a topic sentence because it only states a topic but not a main idea. But in my case, the line I am presenting above contains both topic and main idea, inspite of having the word "about".
So, could it be a clear topic sentence or no matter what topic sentence must be pointed out with a clause.

2. Before anything else, I love your summary. it is an effective model for teaching students how to develop and conceptualize a summary paragraph.Still, I have one question. Why you use the words "some human beings"? Is it possible to use a more specific word "impaired human"?

P.S. ten times thank for your attention and please help me out of my stupidity.

Opposing Stephen Law: final comments

As well as discussing his use of sources, another question worth some final comments is whether we agree with Stephen Law's main idea that meat eating is immoral, that we should not be eating steak, foie gras, tasty pork leg and the like (2003). In his paragraph on Wednesday, Tum suggested one opposing argument, citing a source for it, that Law does not consider (Wongkitikumjone & Filicietti, 2010). In that paragraph Tum also cites evidence for the controversial nature of the question, with approximately 67% against the opinion supported by Stephen Law.
I like Tum's idea, which is exactly what academic writing is about: presenting, opposing and supporting ideas with reasons and evidence. If we are to continuing eating meat and thinking of ourselves as behaving morally, it is necessary to answer Law's well argued opinion by showing that he is wrong. There are a number of ways this could be done, with Tum's paragraph providing examples of couple of those approaches.

• If you continue to disagree with Stephen Law, what is your reason? Why do you think that he is wrong? 
• If you agree with Law, you might like to respond to those who still think that eating meat is morally OK. 

__________

References

Law, S. (2003). Carving the roast beast. In The Xmas Files (p.124 – 140). London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
.
Wongkitikumjone, S. & Filicietti, P. (2010, June 25). Tum's paragraph on Stephen Law's "Carving the Roast Beast". Retrieved June 26, 2010 from http://docs.google.com/View?id=dm6nf6d_17dt8rtjxc

Law, S. (2003). Carving the roast beast. In The Xmas Files (p.124 – 140). London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. Oops. I just noticed that this reference list entry was not in its correct alphabetical position; L definitely comes before W in the alphabet. (Corrected June 27, 6:27 PM).

Supporting Stephen Law: Using Sources

In "Carving the Roast Beast", Stephen Law cites a number of sources (2003). As you are reading your classmates' summary paragraphs, which I have emailed to you, you will notice that several people commented on those sources. There are a couple of questions on Law's use of sources that are worth discussing since they are good examples of how sources are regularly used in academic writing. 

• How many sources does Law cite in his essay? What are they? 
• Why does he cite them? How does he use each source? (From your summary paragraphs, I thought that there might be some disagreement here. There is certainly something worth discussing.)

Feel welcome to share your ideas on these or related questions arising from Law's essay. You can make one longer comment, or a few short ones. And you can always come back to comment on other comments. (I suggest you turn on "Subscribe by email" when you make your first comment.)

__________

References

Law, S. (2003). Carving the roast beast. In The Xmas Files (p.124 – 140). London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.

Remembering Ourselves

A couple of months ago, when we were discussing the Thai army's malfeasance and lying about the GT200 fraud, I upset a friend by doubting his grandmother's report of an event from many years ago. I remembered this argument yesterday when I read the report "Flashbulb Memories" in eSkeptic.

In the article, Daniel Greenberg presents a variety of compelling evidence from a variety of psychological studies over more than 100 years and well known examples of President Bush's dubious mental efforts after 9/11, when terrorists flew planes into New York's World Trade centre in 2001, to show how very unreliable, and how subject to change, are our memories of what we see, hear, feel, and so on. I guess we all, naturally, think that if it's our own clear and strong memory of an event, that it must be correct, that it must accurately record what we were doing, seeing, hearing and feeling at the time, but the evidence suggests that we should not have such confidence in our memories.

As Greenberg himself notes, the false memory phenomenon "proves particularly vexing to police officers and lawyers," (2010, "The False Memory Phenomenon", ¶ 3) casting especial doubt on the veracity of eye-witness accounts of crimes. It is worrying that eye-witnesses are often wrong, and yet trusted so much in courts. I think it is a very good thing that psychology is now providing solid reasons to tell us when we should doubt the truth of what eye witnesses honestly report; sincerity and honesty do not make things true. Getting back to the GT200 scandal and the argument with my friend, he believes in dowsing, that something like the GT200 can be used to detect things underground, specifically, that someone walking around with a stick of wood held out in front of them could find underground water. I don't believe this. As evidence, he offered his grandmother's memory of someone who came to her home and very accurately traced out the underground water pipes via dowsing. The story he told was certainly very compelling, and well designed to answer any objections I might make that it was not really good evidence at all. And that was the problem: it was so good a story that I'm sure it was not true. This suggestion upset my friend, who thought I was accusing his grandmother of lying. Even when I had explained that I was sure she was not lying, he wasn't very happy; I am sure that her memories and honestly told reports of them were not what really happened on the occasion. The story was so amazing that I could only believe it with some more solid, objective and reliable evidence. The far more likely explanation is that something different to her memories is what actually happened. (We are still friends, and my friend has conceded that although accounts such as his grandmother's are interesting and worth considering, they are not good enough evidence to prove that dowsing can really work as claimed by many.)

My own interest, from a philosophical point of view, were the implications that Greenberg's ideas have for our own identity as persons, since, much of our concept of ourselves as a person is based on our memories. If those memories are so unreliable and subject to change, what does this mean for the idea that we are one person from birth through death? And that reminds me of movies like Total Recall and The Bourne Identity, where someone has their memory completely erased, and a new one created or a mind left blank. Is the body and brain with the new set of memories still the same person? How stable and enduring do our own memories have to be for us to be able to say that we are the same person we were ten years ago? Are we the same person?

__________

References

Greenburg, D. (2010, June 16). Flashbulb memories. eSkeptic. Retrieved June 23, 2010 from http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/10-06-16/

To eat or not to eat the beasts?

We've just started reading Stephen Law's dialogue "Carving the Roast Beast", in which his clearly stated main idea about the topic of eating meat is that it is morally wrong.
What do you think about this?

• Is it morally acceptable to eat meat? 
• When might it be acceptable? Why? What makes it morally OK to eat cows, cats or cockles? 
• When is it wrong? Is it ever wrong? Why do you think that? 

This is a response writing to share our ideas on the topic of the morality of eating meat. It is not necessary to discuss Law's ideas, most of which we have not yet read. As I was writing this, it occurred to me that one response would be to relate it to chapter 4 of Quest, "Cultural Anthropology", which we have also started on today (except that we didn't quite get there. I'm confident we will tomorrow.) It's a response writing exercise, so feel free to respond with whatever ideas you like on the topic, or even a bit off the topic. The questions I wrote above were just some prompts to hopefully get you thinking.

__________

References

Law, S. (2003). Carving the roast beast. In The Xmas Files (p.124 – 140). London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.

Introducing Peter

Although my first areas of academic interest were biology, dating from when I was about 12 years old, that gradually changed as I went through high school. In fact, from age 12, mathematics was always something I loved, but initially I just liked it because it was easy for me and I did well in the classes. My first interest was biology. I used to grow trees, read about gardens, flowers, and so on. Now that I think about it, I was more into botany than zoology. Mycology was also another area of interest. I used to read our family encyclopaedia for articles about fungi and mushrooms. I don't why they fascinated me, but they did. Growing up on a farm provided lots of opportunity for indulging these interests, and my parents had lots of books in the house.

I always think of my academic interests as being science based, but that's not exactly right. As I was writing the above, I remembered that when browsing the encyclopaedias at home, I was also interested in the art and history sections, especially the arts and history of classical Greek and other ancient  civilisations, so perhaps there was always at least some interest in the humanities as well as teh sciences. The great thing about the sciences was that as well as being fascinating, they were something that I excelled in at school.

In highschool, my main interests moved from biology, to chemistry, to physics and mathematics. But I also started reading philosophy in high school. Although it wasn't, and still isn't, a subject in Australian schools, philosophy really caught my interest. I began university in the science faculty, majoring in physics and maths, but changed to Arts, with majors in philosophy, mathematics and a couple of dead languages. This was not an obviously strong career move, but I was doing what I loved, and I don't regret the choices I made then.

Today, I am still interested in all of those academic areas, and read in them regularly.

Introducing Natt

My name is Nattapong. My first academic interest is landscape architecture. Subsequently, It has been extended to something which is in bigger scale like urban planning and design. I think both of the areas will support to each other. Understanding something in overall will help us to understand the system and relation of each small unit. Similarly, when we understand the big picture, that will help us to design each small units better.

Introducing YUKO

My name is YUKO. I'm from Japan because of my husband's transfer. I have lived in Bangkok 3 years and 7 months. When I was university student, I studied business administration due to my father's job. But I didn't continue to study so I haven"t gotten master degree yet. It's shame for me. In the future, my husband will have to transfer another country. Now, we don't know which country we will live next to Thailand, depend on hedoffice in Japan. But My husband's boss recommend to him to work in Europian country(UK,Germany,France) or India. If I have a chance, I would like to study MBK this opportunity. That is convenience for me to be housewife and student!

Introducing myself....Tum

My name is Sutee Wongkitikumjone, many called me Tum. I graduated from accounting department of Kasetsart University. Many people always think that people who graduated from such department must be an accountant which is one of the most boring career, and I agreed with that idea. However, I worked as an auditor after I graduated. What's an auditor? What do they do? A lot of people often ask me such questions. Auditor is like an investigator of the business, especially for large business such as Axon corp., CP corp., or even very large bank like Deutsche Bank have to has auditor to work for. We, auditors, investigate to find frauds in such firms, especially the frauds from the management departments such as making their profit higher, overstate about their amount of goods or selling for the propose that investors will interested in their firms and willing to spend their money in those businesses.

I had worked at Ernst&Young corp. about 1 year before I resigned. Being an auditor is extremely try because of overloading work.

Introducing Nid

In the last four years I have been looking for further study abroad. And a few year ago I tried to submit my portfolio to the university in Sweden and Finland. There are many people ask me why I chose the countries that is very far from my home town and known as the coldest place to live. I don't know the exactly reasons why but when I was a university student, I read and looked a lot of books about scandinavian design. And I love it very much especially the textile design which I really interested in. So after I searched many information for a few year I decided to apply the university in Stockholm. Unfortunately the result was the university gave me a waiting list!! I still had a little hope to study there, didn't I? No I didn't and now I forget about it. Due to, when I looked back I realize that I didn't fit with the course.

Introducing myself -- Taey

My name is Tridti Patarakiatsan. You can call me Taey. I am interested in every kind of designs especially for architecture which is my bachelor degree. Design is all around us and we cannot live without design. It makes things cooler, more valuable and so on. In terms of architecture,I would like to be an architect when I was in the grade 12 so, I choose my major in architecture and will study for the master degree, Urban design, in The Netherlands in August. Urban design is a field that are slightly different form architectural term because it is larger and more comprehensive than architectural design. Besides, after deeply studying in this field that makes me realized that architects are the field related to others like landscape, interior architecture, urban designer ever other field like politics, economics. One architect can create buildings but towns which is more complicated than small ones. I will tell you later for additional information.

Introducing myself(Pat)

My name is Sorapat Tulyathan. Last year, I graduated from Assumption University, which I studied Finance and Banking as major. Moreover, I also studied Marketing as my minor. Therefore, I believe that I do not want to study Marketing anymore. However, since my career goal is to become financal analyisal, I am going to continue my study at University of Texas at Dallas for MS. Finance. I hope that I will improve my understanding of finance. In addition, studying at University of Texas at Dallas will also help me to learn many new point of views from other people from different cultures and counties.

Introducing Pu

I'm interest in art and design. So when I was in university, my favorite subject was History of Arts. I wanted to be an archeology when I was kid. I love history and would like to know more and more about how human culture developed. I also interested in design and painting. I think Design is base on human culture and society. In third year of my university. I was interested in Photography.

Introducing "Mr.A"

Greeting peer reader. My name is Siridet Muenchana, but Please comfortably call me "A" for short. I was graduated bachelor degree from Kasetsart university in Industrial Engineering major. There are many things related to my field of study, which I interested in the most. Let me show you some thing that I'm up to. Now I'm Interesting in Recycle business the most, because we are facing the waste problem as you all know, not only in urban area, but also in the suburb, and remote area. I think opening a recycle business is one way to help the country to ease this brutal problem. In addition to recycle business, it going to makes a good profit, because from my experience the raw materials are free or almost free in some cases.

Introducing Book

Once a upon a time, when I was young around ten years old or less, I was invited from my friend at primary school to his house and that was a first time I met the computer. The monitor of computer was mono chrome screen which has only green and black, but for me, it was not that. I mean it was really amazing. My friend shown me the computer game and tough me how to play it. This was a beginning of my academic interested and became my professional later on.

At that time, I was not interested in computer yet. A few years later, my friends at high school asked me to meet him at computer training school while he was studying in computer application call "Lotus Note". After he finished, he tough me about how to use computer. Of course, he tough how to play game as well. I was enjoy playing game with him.

Introducing Apple

My academic interest is totally about the science of psychology. The field explains a lot of human's condition which always happen in daily life. Everyone is unique and different more or less depended on their background. There are also many varieties of factors influencing the forming of mind, for example perceptions, experiences and upbringing. Moreover, not only psychology affects existence of personal level, it also demonstrate important events and phenomenon in the world. If people can thoroughly understand their the need and work mechanism of their own mentality, it will become a powerful source that make them overcome their fear or negative feelings and encourage them to the state of efficient plus creation. Because psychology has precious advantages I stated above, I really love to study and access its massive greatness.

Introducing Bright

My background education was about computer science and mathematics. In other words, when I was studying in the university I have to read journal about computer science and programming language which are related to the mathematics, however, these are not my academic interest. In fact, I have decided to study abroad in master degree in the field of business which is very different from my bachelor degree, so, my academic interest is about business analysis. The reason that I am interested in business analysis, even it is not my first interest, is that I need to prepare myself to study in master degree.

nittlebitofsomething

No, the title isn't a mistake. I just checked to see who might have already joined our blog, and Nid's very distinctive user name caught my eye. I'm pleased to see a few others have also accepted their invitations to join; it was easy to see who they were, but I had to think for a minute to work out who "nittlebitofsomething" was. And when I clicked to see the profile, I also realised that Nid has been using blogger since 2007, so if you have any problems or questions, she might be someone to ask for help.

It's a great user name, Nid. ( I know I suggested using your nickname so it's clear who you are here, but I still like the display name that Nid chose a few years ago.)

Welcome to AEP Reading and Writing 5

Welcome to term 4 of 2010, and to the level 5 AEP Reading and Writing class.

If you have already had a look through Quest 3 reading and Writing [Quest], you will have noticed that every chapter includes two types of writing exercise: a response writing activity and an academic writing assignment. For example, in chapter 5, "Physical Anthropology", the response writing is exercise G. on page 72, and the academic writing is Part 5, which consists of pages 77 to 81 (Hartmann & Blass, 2007). Hartmann and Blass think that both sorts of writing are important; since I agree with them, we will be doing both on a regular basis. In fact, we will aim to do both a little more often than the parsimonious one of each per chapter that Quest asks for.

The academic writing exercises are fairly straight forward, and we will do the preparation necessary for those as we come to them. This blog is where we will do the less formal response writings. In case you are new to blogging, don't worry. Once you've joined our class blog and written your first post, it will be easy. The instructions that Hartmann and Blass provide in exercise G. on page 72 give a fairly clear idea of what response writing is all about, as well as how to do it, including how not to do it, although we might change that a little for some of our response writings.

Just as we will be writing more than is included in the chapters of Quest, so too will we be reading outside of Quest. And having read something, we want to share our ideas about it, so that will also be a source of topics to write about, both here and in academic writing assignments.

__________

References

Hartmann, P. & Blass, L. (2007). Quest 3 Reading and Writing (2nd. ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.

We're Back, with some changes

The annual Songkran break went on a bit longer than usual this year, and much as I enjoyed the first week visiting my family in Australia, a two month vacation was  bit longer than I might have chosen for myself. In fact, I would have opted for something a bit less, perhaps a month, but definitely not two. But the immediate disruptions are now over, we can get back into AUA at Rajadamri, students have signed up, and I'm busily planning for my classes that start tomorrow, which I'm looking forward to.

The change, of course, is the much later start. I like the idea of getting up two hours later, although I suspect I will miss the early morning walk into AUA: it won't be so cool two hours later, dawn won't be breaking, and the traffic will be worse. I'll have to see how it goes. And then there is the business of being at AUA after midday - something I've never done before. The real question, I guess, is whether to eat at AUA; this may require some planning.