Final Reflection

1. Do you feel like your writing has improved this semester? Why or why not? In what ways has it improved? In what ways do you want to continue improving your writing?

Yes,for sure. The course provided efficient ways to organize the paragraph and present my thoughts more clearly. Even after the course, I am further thinking of  improving my writing through attending advanced english reading and writing.

2. Do you feel like your reading comprehension skills have improved this semester? Why or why not? In what ways have they improved? In what ways do you want to continue improving your reading skills?

It would have been better to focus more on the reading comprehension skills. However, I liked our course book, which contained various social, political issues. I also liked discussing my views with classmates related to the reading passage.

3. In what other areas do you think you have improved during the semester (grammar, speaking, vocabulary, confidence, etc.)? In what areas do you still need to continue improving? What will you do in order to improve in those areas?

While studying the book, I felt the need to study grammar in order to improve my writing accuracy. I am planning on studying it during the winter vacation, and attend a course related to that field.

4. Was this the first time you kept a blog? Did you enjoy blogging? Was blogging a helpful way to practice writing? Did you enjoy reading your classmates' blogs? Do you think you will continue blogging in the future?

This was my first time to write a blog. To be honest, I felt the keeping a blog could be bothering. However, I felt proud of myself viewing the improvements in writing. I also liked reading the blogs of classmates, which helped us to communicate in ways outside the course. I am eager to make a blog on my own in the future and I strongly recommend others to blogging.

5. Please share any other thoughts about the semester.
I really enjoyed the course this semester. I hope to further improve  my writing and reading.

Formal Essay 2 Rewriting

Please click the following link for my Essay Rewriting

Hyongwon Jeon

Prof. Kyle Brebner

IERW(04)

20. November 2015

Degree behind a Monitor

Nowadays, more universities are adopting online courses for student convenience. There are universities which offer a full degree solely from online classes and more cyber universities are newly established every year. Although the courses can be effectively used in a short period of time, colleges should not make the choice of using them in the long run. To explain, online courses have negative effects for both the student and the professor: being unable to learn the value of school life, being lazy about studying, and providing difficulty for evaluation for professors.

To start with, online courses deprive students of the opportunity to learn the value of school life. After three years of harsh high school, university is a place where students can build up life experiences other than only studying. Since online courses offer ubiquitous environment for studying, many students who study online choose to both study, and work in a society. Compared to schools which provide students with various ways to develop themselves by extracurricular activities such as volunteering and clubs, relatively limited chances are given for students who take online courses. Unlike universities, a society is known as a competitive battlefield. In companies, workers compete for promotion and are sometimes forced to make harsh choices for their career. To add, society regards school life as a major factor to decide whether to employ a worker or not. While most students are focused on studying exams during high school years, university can be a place to learn social skills, such as cooperation from team work. Also, students are able to learn how to behave with responsibility through making a choice on their own without the help of others.

Another reason for online courses being negative is that these can have a danger of weakening the pupil’s will to learn. We should remember that laziness is a result of freedom. In other words, when students are given a specific amount of time to take the class without checking each student’s attendance, they tend to delay the learning until right before the due date. The learning is no longer a priority to the students on Mondays. Students live happily during the six days and get busy on Sunday night, which disturbs them to think deep and study in a relaxed environment. On top of that, it is much easier for students to lose concentration during class hours online. Students mainly use computers or smartphones for cyber lectures, which disturb students to mainly focus on the lectures. While studying online can be intervened by various situations as students can choose to learn on their own, common university courses enable students to actively concentrate, and participate during class since a professor has the control for the class.

Professors may also struggle while evaluating students when students are allowed to take all their classes online. In normal classes, the professor can easily communicate with a pupil in real time, and set the level of difficulty for the lecture. Additionally, learners are exposed to a lot of irritating factors from people around, their learning tool, or even themselves: the inability to control their laziness. Professors cannot know whether the learner really heard the lecture or watched a movie while chatting with his or her friends. Thus, the efficiency of class can be critically lowered. The fact that students cannot do face-to-face communication with the professors further causes a major problem of online classes: the test unable to be a fair evaluation tool. Even though alternative assessments could be possible, Korean universities still rely deeply on the tests to see whether students understood the lectures content. Provided that students substitute school from online courses, the test simply becomes an open-book test. There is a risk of pupils using materials from the book, media or even friends.

 To conclude, although online courses are preferred by many people for their comfort, students should not be able to take all their classes online. Rather, schools should provide various activities other than studying and support their learning with strict control in classrooms. With outline courses, professors are also able settle their evaluation systems while communicating with students in class. Before simply adapting all online courses, we should ask the following question. Does school only exist for studying? Can Internet control learners?  

   

Persuasive Essay: Stop Trying to be Multi

              Currently, the global world is strongly influenced by multilingualism. Employees are not able to survive in their companies with only one language. Following this trend, there are countries who consider having two official languages. Even though Korea's decision on the two languages may benefit the nation by diversity of languages, it will certainly cause serious problems on communication and finance.

 

             Two official languages can first cause difficulty in communicating among people. A language has its own form and develops variously region by region. The most important value a language has is the delivery of the meaning. People should be able to convey their purpose through languages. If Korea had two languages, there would be thousand forms of dialects that blcoks proper communication. We can clearly see how different languages put distance between citizens by North Korea, as an example. While North and South Korea both use Korean as an official language, the use or the way it sounds differ significantly. South Koreans cannot speak North Korean fluently.

 

               Second, financial problems can also occur from using two official languages. As the choice is made by the government, it should provide effecrive language programs to suit the majority of citizens. To learn a new language takes consdierable time and effort. Schools, companies, public institutions should be able to adopt learning programs, educational materials widely. In other words, the cost for the second official language is expected to raise financial debt for the government to support citizens for something new.

 

               Besides the negative effects mentioned considering this decision, the choice still may floruish the nation through language diversity. Different languages have their own ways of interpreting the world. By using two languages, ctizens would be able to expand the eye for diverse cultural experiences in this global world. Moreover, a language is used to express the nation's history, value, or culture. Considering the triaits of languages, it is important to view two official language policy as a way to help citizens express cultures in two distinct, unique ways.

 

                Even though more and more countries are trying to make citizens a multi player, we should stop trying to be multi at least in languages. The language diversity should not tease the government concealing the serious results such as difficultes in communication between people, and finance. Korea should have one official language, Korean, which still provides citizens with great pride and comfort by its own.

Formal Essay 1 Rewriting

Please click the following link for my Essay Rewriting

Research based essay: Cyberlegs

       Cyberlegs is a joint project by a number of European institutions including the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia, and Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna di Pisa. Researchers from these schools have been working on the project since 2012. The project has a goal of developing an artificial cognitive system for assisting amputees in daily activities. It can be meaningful to understand the way it works, and the significance in the field of biomedical engineering.

 

              Cyberlegs enable amputees to walk, climb stairs, move with a minimum cognitive, energetic effort. The basic principle of cyberlegs lies in copying the amputee’s habitual leg movement with a motor. The leg includes a sensor, which reads the angle of one’s ankle, or the strength applied to the legs while walking. And the motor artificially makes a movement such as kicking the ground or spinning the ankle. This differs greatly from original prosthetic limbs. The original limbs do not involve ankle movements, which results in lack of stability. However, with the help of cyberlegs, the amputee can walk, climb the stairs, or move with a minimum cognitive and energetic effort much more naturally. 

 

               Last year, Juliano Pinto, who is paralyzed from the waist down, kicked the World cup football using an exoskeleton connected to the neurons in his brain. Pinto simply had to think  about how to kick the ball and the science helped the physical movement. Likwise, the Cyberlegs project took a step forward in terms of biomedical engineering. Biomedical engineering (BME) applies engineering principles and design concepts to medicine and biology for healthcare purposes. Unlike other science projects, cyberlegs solely focus on the movement of a human being combining engineering to human life. As the interaction force between cyberlegs and the amputee is the moving power of them, the project effectively shows how engineering can effectively help daily human life.

                To conclude, the project Cyberlegs made an effective tool for amputees using a motor which copies the leg movement of the user. It is important as a way of combining science into real human life. Although the project still needs further financial, medical improvements, Cyberlegs has made a new major contribution in biomedical engineering.

Persuasive Essay: Ensuring a sustainable future

          There can be tons of ways recommended for a sustainable future, but most of them are limited for large companies and government. However, for a more probable and fast solution, enlightening the people the need for a change in their living habits can be useful. Accordingly, people can preserve the environment themselves through little actions. Accepting inconvenience and raising awareness of the problem can be a way for our sustainble future.

 

          The first action a citizen can do is to accept inconvenience and think once more before acting out. Annually, the use of one-way cups, shopping bags, wrapping papers, diapers is keep increasing. For instance, the consumption of one-way diapers reached six hundred million in 2014. The time spent for these diapers to decompose is 100 years in total. Other than that, people prefer to drive personal vehicles rather than using public transportation. Few of the citizens realizes the importance of daily trifles for the environemnt, and most of them are worried of heavier bags, time spent every moring getting to bus, subway stations.

 

           Another way for a sustainable future that a citizen can do is to raise intrest in environmental problems. In fact, all the citizens do know that they should each protect the environment, but few of them realizes how serious our Earth can be in our near future. For instance, the great increment of  burning fossil fuel resulted in 25% growth in carbon dioxide density. Also, there is an estimate of 1.5 to 4.5 increase in the Green house effect in 2030. This closely relates to the higher average sea level of 20 to 140cm in the same year. Ecologists predict that in our near future, supposing no changes in our enviornment, definitely more people will get a disease.

            As a normal citizen, it is hard to think about the environment deeply. We believe the environmentalists are there for us keeping the Earth from being destroyed. However, environmental problems are keep chasing our lives. Among various ways for sustainability of Earth, small changes from citizens can mke a big difference. Accepting iconvenience and showing interest about our environmental issues can be small but have an enormous effect.

Explanatory Essay: Maze Runner

         It is impossible for humans in our current society to live in one specific place. People think it as oppressive and gloomy. They enjoy their life moving in, and traveling different areas. However, in movies, the setting of the world can be different. Maze Runner is an example of such a movie. The setting, maze, is a very important element of the whole movie because it guides viewers a general structure of the plot, and  is effectively related with the characters.

 

        The reason for the maze to be important in this movie is that it can guide  a general structure of the plot for the viewer. The base is a place where runners, who lost their memory, live in the movie. Blocking this base, there stands the maze, which is the path characters need to escape. The whole plot of this movie advances along this maze. The door for the outside world opens every morning, and closes every night. If they can't return back to their base and get lost in the maze, they are attacked by monsters inside. When viewers follow the steps the runners make to escape the maze, they can get a grasp on the plot of the story. In this way, the entire part of the movie closely relates to the maze which explains just the reason for its importance.

 

          Another reason for choosing this movie is that the movie characters show cooperation in order to escape the maze. In the movie, the characters each have their own special abilites. At first, the runners, who are sent by the mystrious group, Wicked, were all in the mode of combat. This resulted a lot of casualties. Finally as time passes, runners begin to feel the necessity of the ability of other runners. Their abilities as a whole could provide a key for escaping the maze. In other words, the maze in the movie plays an important role in binding the runners. This point literally shows how characters and places are correlated in the movie.

 

           Maze Runner could not have its uniqueness if not set in the maze. Through the maze, viewers can get a grasp of the plot, and movie characters are binded closely. While the setting and the plot is based on imaginary scenes, every human hopes for miracles and fantasies when they are exhausted in real life. This is the reason why people watch movies, films to forget their  common life and envy hero,heroines.

Cause-Effect Essay: Geotourism

            Yangpyeong (Yangpyeong-gun) is a county in Gyeonggi Province, South Korea. Most of the region is covered in forests. The region has a lot of nature based programs for tourists, and a perfect landscape to watch. As a new travel paradigm for traveling, geotourism can also have benefits on this specific region, Yangpyeong. The possible effects of geotourism in Yangpyeong include enhancing the basic value of a trip: nature, and learning the culture or communicating with local people.

 

               One possible effect of geotourism in Yangpyeong is to enhance the basic value of a trip, which is to experience the nature. Nowadays, people tend to understand traveling as various meanings, but Yangpyeong tried to make people do a trip as its original purpose. The region provides water, and trees for tourists, and they can enjoy the nature for free. Yangpyeong provides various nature based programs such as rail bike, resting park. Resting park is a unique place where tourists can rest in hammocks while enjoying the fresh air and forests. Arboretum, ecology parks, rain village all provides the beauty of nature. This sort of geotourism can develop a trip into sustainable, nature-friendly tourism.

 

                Another possible effect of geotourism in Yangpyeong is to learn the culture or communicate with local people. Other than experiencing nature-based programs and sites, tourists become familiar with the culture of Yangpyeong, broadly Korea. The region has various culture programs. Through these programs, people can experience life in traditional farming community. On top of that, Yangpyeong is famous for camping sites owned by local people. These sites are cheaper than original lodging. When tourists get to experience the traditional farming culture, and communicate with local people, it can be seen as a way of effective geotourism.

 

                 To sum up, geotourism can be an effective tool for both nature, and tourists. The nature itself can be practically used for the tour, and tourists can learn the traditional Korean culture with the help of local people.  

Gender in the Wild: Three studies reveal new findings

      The passage mentions three studies, which focuses on how gender impact family relationship among wild animals.

      The first study done by Etosha national park in Namibia shows how gender influences elephant society. In the elephant society, young elephants are raised within extended matriarchal families. This means that young elephants bonds with her birth mother for guidance and protection. Unlike females, male elephants were previously known to be less social. However, males are alo known to make bonds with other males, consequently making rigid lines of authority in order to avoid conflicts.

      The Simen Mountains National Park conducted a second study of geladas revealing female primates with power. In the society of geladas, female ones have the authority to make important decisions, to choose  another male. When a family male becomes weak, the female gelada invites a bachelor male to take over, protect  the family.

      The last study covers gender driven play in chimps. It concludes that male and female animals in the wild also play in different ways. While young female chimps preferred to play with objects, which is a way of preparing motherhood or showing imagination, males showed interest in active play.

First blogging: Self introduction

Hello everyone! I'm Hyongwon Jeon, majoring in Food and Nutrition.This is my second year in Sungshin Women's University. I live in Bundang, and it takes too much time to commute. But I love my school, and am happy to study here. I'm also double majoring in English literature, which brought me here. I like English and I took the Intermediate speaking class last semester. Through this class, I expect to learn how to express my thoughts through writing. Although my major is related to natural science, I am highly interested in language. So, I am currently learning Chinese three times a week other than English. During the free time, I spend time listening to music or watching movies.I listen to all kinds of music, especially ballad. I originally enjoyed watching romantic comedies, but due to my older brother, now I enjoy action movies more than romantic comedies. I hope to share my hobbies with classmates! This was the brief introduction of myself. I still have a lot of things to tell, so please feel free to ask anything. Thanks for reading.