Blog 10: Reflection on Skills.

         1. What do you think you have learned in terms of writing skill?     

          In this class ENG 099 I have learned about all the most important writing skills to write a successful essay, that summarizing have to be in my own word and I should write the author’s mane on it.

        2.What proves that you have learned what you say you have learned?

        All my work in the blogs, I know they are not perfect at all, but I have been doing my best.

        3.What of the material we have covered is still unclear or confuses you?

        I missed the annotating class, so actually I am not very clear on which are the main points or what is really important to annotate.

        4.Would you say that overall you feel more confident about your understanding of basic writing skills, less confident, or about the same as when we started class? What makes you feel this way?
       
        I feel a little more comfortable with my writing, but sometimes I feel totally lost from one class to the other. My brain freezes and it is impossible focus on the lecture. I conscious that I need a lot of practice.                              
        5.Anything else I should know about?
    
        I would like to get more practice on annotating and paragraphing, and the other thing, could you comment on our blog to see what we did good or what we have to improve?

Blog 9: Reflecting on Paragraphing

• What have you learned from the paragraphing class?

        I learned that a paragraph must have a topic sentence, develop the topic and use examples.

• How do you know that you have learned it?

        I do not know, I did my best on blog 8, but I’ll see after Dr. X evaluation.

• Can you describe how you learned it? 

         First at all working with mi group JAC, it is very good help working in group, and also the examples         Dr.X gave us .

• What helped your learning? What made it difficult?

         Work with my group JAC, it is a good idea because we could help each other.

• How do you feel after today's class?  

        Well to be honest I’m more confused after Monday’s class.

Blog 8: Developing Your Summary and Response to "I Know the Truth, so Don't Bother Me with Facts"

     In the article “I know the true, So Don’t Bother Me with Facts” what is being discussed is how humans have become extremely gullible. Despite the facts that have been presented through extensive research it seems that humans are more likely to dismiss new information: instead of embracing it. Although research continues to look into such ignorant behavior and study why it exist no conclusive results have been drawn. The main goal is to some how discover a way in which we can all find a common ground in which all that is spoken is supported with actual facts.
     I agree with Kluger when he states that “Humans have long been dupes, easily deceived by rumors and flat-out lies” because it is easy to manipulate people’s belief with different kind of facts, people’s beliefs are contradicted when subjects are presented with data.
     One case is that people believe on what they want to believe, but most of the time their belief are affected and make them doubt. On what they have believed the reason they are weakened when shown them with facts the beliefs that they had to a certain point of view totally erroneous.
This prove how easy it is to manipulate people’s belief system, but this does not mean that these evidence make people change on what they have believed before.
     Another case that contradicts people’s belief is for example; when we were young one of our common question to our parents is how babies are born? And when they face this situation is a little uncomfortable to explain or perhaps we are too young and won’t be able to understand, they make us believe that a bird called “Stork” is the one in charge to make and bring babies to the world. Even in cartoons you are going to see a stork carrying babies on the sky and leaving them on people’s homes, this make us grow up with this kind of thoughts, until we start school. There they show and teach us how really babies are born, at the beginning will be contradictory to us, but later as we mature, understand things and change the way we think about things that we believed at the beginning.
     In conclusion, we get to know that there are some of the factors that can prove us that we are mistaken to something, but it is up everyone to believe on what we want. The important thing here is on what we believe, make us happy because no body could come and make us change ours opinion.

Blog 4: Revision of "Hype."

Have you ever thing about how polluted our vision is with television commercials and publicity  announcements? . The other day I was reading an article “ Hype”  written by Kalle Lasn where he states that “ Advertisement are the most prevalent and toxic of all the mental pollutants”. Lasn also says that “ every day and estimated twelve billion display advertisements , three million radio commercials are dumped into north American’s collective unconscious”. Now advertisements are placed everywhere we go ; billboards . Buses , stadiums. Even youth children in the classroom watch snickers and Pepsi advertisements , and if you are driving in a country side you can see gigantic billboards all over the place. Lasn ends saying that with all these advertisement “ there is nowhere to run”.

Even if we try to run away from all these advertisements , it would be impossible to achieve, because there is not a place where you cant find them, even people is wearing these kind of publicity  promoting the brand.

I do not agree with Lasn when he says that “ Advertisement are the most prevalent and toxic of mental pollutants” because for me they are very interesting and fun, very relay able  and informative.

Now day  is true that no one escapes these commercials , even if you try you will not make it. In fact you just have to look at the electronic devices  , look at the time in the clock , or at the person that is next to you in the train with sunglasses or in any other place where companies can imagine  that we  might look at, what these companies try to achieve with this is  promote their product and to make people buy their product. I think that they really achieve their goal with their publicity.

On the other side we have the television commercials  and/or radio, billboards all around public transportation. Just like Lasn many people must believe that all these advertisements are absurd and useless, but I believe that many of them have never thought in all the work that is behind each of those advertisements. About how hard these people have to work to create these publicity. I consider myself a consumerist because many times I’ve fallen in these publicity when I see all these stores having all sorts of sales.


In conclusion all these advertisement will be around you forever and you can not avoid them. Make the best of these advertisement and learn or take something positive about them.

Blog 7: Reflecting on Thesis-based Writing.

• What have you learned from the thesis-based writing class? 
  I have learned that a claim it the author's position in any kind of subject and that a thesis statement it is the combination of the claim in one sentences with some reasons.

• How do you know that you have learned it?
  Because i guess that i did a good job in class.

• Can you describe how you learned it?
  I learned with the discussion that we have in class and with that work that we did in groups.
• What helped your learning? What made it difficult?
  what help me was that practices with a group.
• How do you feel after today's class?  
  I am still felling a little confused but i guess that we more practice will be better for a next essay.

Blog 6: Things I do Not Believe in Any More.

i used to believe "el viejo del saco" when i was a child my parents used to tell me that if i do something bad, like do not eat my food,do not do my homework, or fight with my brother. This person "el viejo del saco" will come to caught me in the night.

Blog 5 SUMMARIZING WHAT THE ALLEGORY STANDS FOR

In Plato's "The allegory of the cave" Socrates tells a story to his student Glaucon to explain the human nature. Socrates told his student to imagine some prisoners living in a cave. These prisoners since they were born have been chained and unable to move, so that they can only see before them. Behind them there is a fire that illuminate the cave, and between them there is a road. Where on this road there are men passing by, some of them are talking, others carrying statues and other objects. Between these men and prisoners there is a wall, where at the end only the shadows of the objects and the men are projected. After that, a prisoner is freed and forced  to get up and walk to the light, look at the other side of the cave. There he learn a totally different world to the one he knew. Where was what he was taught was real, was not in this world.

When he gets back to the cave with all the wisdom he experienced outside of the cave, he would have his eyes obfuscated for the darkness, and he would be unable to distinguish the shadows and the others would laugh at him. They would say that going up had damaged his eyes and that his trip had been in vain.

My point of view to this allegory is how the human nature respond to our knowledge, our humanity lives just like these men at the darkness. We just see what we have in front of us, we get into our world and we do not see the rest. We interpret things on our own way of thinking. We live in the ignorance when our preoccupations refer to the world that offered to senses, where only the wisdom let us free and get out of our cave to a world of ideas or to a real world.

Blog 3

• What have you learned from the Summarizing class?

         I have learned that when i have to summarize something i have to do it using my own words and most of the time i have to use the author's name and the tittle of the article.

• How do you know that you have learned it?

       I know because i could write a better summary using what i learnd in class.

• Can you describe how you learned it?

      Reading and re-reading the article, using the ideas and strategies that we used in the last class.

• What helped your learning? What made it difficult?

        What helped me was the lesson that we had in class and those strategies that Dr. X gave us.

• How do you feel after today's class?

       I am still feeling lost and a little frustated, but i think that i did a good job. Overall, I still nedd more practice.

Blog1

Thought time is unbelievable the increase in commercials spots in our world. Everywhere you are going to see a commercial logo in front of your way. In an article "Hype" written by Kalle Lasn talks about how America's view is totally figured out with logos or any product message, where is very difficult find a place without these spot where our eyes could get a rest.

I totally agree in what the writer says in the article, is really difficult to find a place where your eyes could get a little rest of all these commercial spots. It is incredible how our world every day is getting worst, everywhere that you go there are commercial spots that your eyes are going to read . Also, if you are watching TV, all that kind of commercials where most of them do not give people a good advised to take from them.

what I expect from this class

I would like to improve my English, pass the CAT-W and finally get into ENG 101