Mid-Semester Progress Report

My inquiry project is going actually really well, in the beginning i was overwhelmed by the whole project. As we started really getting into it it was not as stressful and more interesting. Learning more and more about my topic which is something i have always been interested in, it made me kind of excited to do more research on it and get all of the real facts and opinions from people i do not personally know. The project itself like the work has not been as hard to me as past projects because we get designated class time to work on it and it makes and procrastinate less and actually get things done before the due date! Also working on it in class is very helpful because if i do not understand something or just want someone to look over my work so far i have my teacher and classmates to ask. This has actually been one project I have not been stressed about so I think thats progress.

For college in general my first semester can pretty much be summed up in one word, stressful. I have so much more homework than I ever did in high school and i actually have to pay attention during lectures which is pretty hard especially at 9am when you just want to be in bed. My first midterms were kind of a wake up call that i need to study and pay attention more, i do not even want to think about my classes next semester. College is definitely something new but once i get the hang of it HOPEFULLY it will become less stressful.

Blog Post #3

Over the course of this week we analyzed multiple sources talking about the different styles of text. I got a pretty good idea of the basic purpose and understanding of language in a different sense.  We then were assigned multiple articles to choose from a read, as i read those i seemed to pay more attention to the language and style of writing much more than i ever had before. I think that this is an important skill to have, being able to understand the readings better and maybe get why the author is writing like that, it will help you overall comprehend it. I have a better sense of where on the writing spectrum i like the most and will continue to write in it. Overall learning about the different ways people speak and write English have been beneficial to me in my writing as well and my understanding.

Research Blog

http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2017/09/08/548648307/houston-students-are-heading-back-what-they-find-could-change-schools-nationwide

I read “Houston Students Are Heading Back-What They Find Could Change Schools Nationwide” by Anya Kamenetz. Overall this article made me more aware of all the great efforts Texas is doing along the lines of public schooling and they made it clear how they are mainly are mainly trying to help the students deal with trauma and recover without punishing them for lacking on school work. They are providing three free meals a day to all of the students and also free uniforms in effort to trying to help them and their families out after the storm. I think after a disaster like this the main priority would not be school but it seems more welcoming when they are doing all of these thing to try and make the students feel safe, recover from this and provide them with supplies their families might not be able to give them at this time.

In the article it states that “In its scope, Hurricane Harvey is being compared to Hurricane Katrina which struck New Orleans in 2005. But when it comes to education, the two cities are following very different paths post-storm”. I want to know how so?

After Hurricane Katrina mostly all the schools shut down and the community was focused on rebuilding their lives and didn’t think twice about school. When it came to Hurricane Harvey they took a very different approach and started schools back up 2 weeks after the disaster and wanted to help kids and their families come together as one and have a sort of “safe space”. The schools are trying to focus their teaching on helping the students recover and learn to cope with this sort of trauma. In the end i feel as if it will be very beneficial to everyone in the end and it was a much better way to handle the school system after the storm than Katrina.

The different responses to hurricane Katrina and Harvey.

Blog Post #2

The article “Mother Tongue” really stood out to me out of the other sources we analyzed. It made me see things from a different perspective, like how her mother speaks English but just in a different way. It does not  mean she speaks broken English it is just the way she interprets it.  Her mother is very smart but people treat her different then others like for example when she went to the doctors and they wouldn’t give her any real answers until her daughter called and then they gave all the information needed. Its as if they just blew her off thinking it did not even matter cause she did not speak perfect English.  Amy Tan then explained to us that she always has to tell people she speaks broken English when in her eyes its just her mothers tongue and i think that it is ridiculous that people think its acceptable to treat other who do not speak perfect English different then others, it does not make them less important or less of an equal human being.

Blog Post #1

Unlike most videos assigned to watch by a teacher, John McWorther’s “Txtng is killing language.  JK” was definitely an eye opener. With most school related videos i am fighting to keep my eyes open and pay at least somewhat of attention so i can pass the class but this Ted Talk was much different.

This was finally a video made by someone over the age of 20 actually supporting us and informing the world about how texting is in fact NOT killing language and never has. People have been looking at it all wrong, texts are not supposed to be written as formally as anything you write. Texting is simply speaking  to another person just not face to face, it has the same type of casualty in the tone of everything. Nobody is going to record someones conversation with someone and critique them on the terms or slang they used so why should they in texting?

This video was intriguing with the fact that John McWhorter showed us intercepts from past documentation from centuries ago and all of them pointed out the bad spelling and grammatical incorrectness. I appreciate the fact that this video is the start of bringing to light how just because our youth is evolving and changing with the new found technology given to them it does not necessarily mean we are killing language.