Time does fly. Here comes the last blog of this semester. 14 weeks, 14 blogs. They are at my company with any tiny progress in my written English.When I look back, I would appreciate this experience. Even though some of the topics are strange enough and make me out of words. They are all precious memories and worth looking back at after years of work. At that time, perhaps I would open my blog and read some pieces from it. What would I feel at that time? Would I miss this season in the sun? Would I show them to my children and the children of my children?
Language is the best present human being got from the mother nature. It makes us able to communicate, cooperate and the most important, reserve memories. The whole human history is constructed on the base of language. For the common individuals like me, the magic of language is that we can reserve the moment. Where we are, what we are doing, what is happening, what is on our mind, we can put them down on a paper and transform them into words. Then we can save the feeling of the moment, and turn this moment into infinity. Time will wear out mountains, fill up oceans, but what remains is the memory of the mountains and the ocean. As long as we put it down into words with our emotion, we make them immortal. Isn't it beautiful?
The semester is meeting its end, but I will keep on writing. I will admire the beauty of nature in my own way. I will chant the goods and disparage the bad. I want others to see what I see and feel what I feel. The truth of the universe would always be my pursue. Internal harmony would be where I am going and I hope I can bring you with me too.
The topic of this week is interesting. We are free to talk about any progresses and challenges we have been come across for now in improving our academic English, which includes writing, reading, speaking and listening.
My English skill has obviously been improved since I got here. I guess most of the international students have the same feeling. The English skill I have gained can be separated into two parts, everyday living English and academic English.
Living English is different from what we have been learning so far for TOFEL test and GRE test. We do not intend to learn it but progresses are made without notice. This kind of English skill includes the chatting skill with your adviser and your colleagues; the vocabulary we gained whenever we went to the supermarket. We never learnt names of vegetable or deserts for TOFEL before, we just pick them up because we need them to survive and live a good life here away from home, from everything we have been familiar with.
However, the main point I am going to make today is academic English. It is different from casual speaking English and has more significance, because it makes us recognize the social position we have. We are here not only to take in information. We also need to interact with other scientists. We need to offer out own opinion and get ourselves heard. This is what makes us different from tourists.
To obtain an academic position, we need to dig into our field and find our own interest. This needs a huge amount of reading, named literature review. This process is often neglected by students, but actually it is the fastest way leading you into a new field. By learning others' work, you can easily have an overview of your field and establish a structure of past achievements, present researches and potential problems to be solved in the future.
By locating your own interest through literature review, you have already gained a vocabulary in your field, now it is time to attend some seminars or conferences in your field. It is also a process of information accumulation,however this time you have more interaction and with some luck you might be able to express your opinion and share your idea with other scientists. It is also a very good way to learn. From this experience you can not only get advises for your project development but also develop a good etiquette for official occasions. Your speaking skill is also improve to another level, with which you can freely talk about professional topics with others. Your position is showing itself at this stage. You will feel like being involved, not an outsider any more.
Writing skill is something I am still working on. I have been learning several academic writing strategies on 5901, such as critical review and data analysis. I still feel reserved while I am writing. The solution is still to be found. For now, I think more reading and writing practice is the only way to improve writing. There is no shortcuts. Only accumulation little by little can lead you to a higher level of academic writing.
After all, language is just a tool we use to receive and share information. It is your idea that makes you unique and significant as a scientist.
For the data analysis writing, the class were asked to take a short survey. The first three questions in the survey are around a specific case to see the students' attitude against plagiarism.
From this case study, we can see that the attitudes of the students are quite uniform. More than one half of the students have a caution and choose to cite the resource whenever they think they use some important information from others. Around 30% of the class still think when the line becomes blur there is still some space of discussion between guilty or not. There is no need to be too harsh and cite every single thing. Besides these two groups, there is still a few people (around 12%) have a high tolerance of plagiarism. From this first part of the survey, we can tell that most of the student gain some degree of caution of citing and try to avoid plagiarism as they can.
In the next part of the survey, some questions about the utilization of the website turnitin.com were asked. Here are results of question 4 to question 7.
From the results we can see that, the overall comment to turnitin.com from the students are positive. Students find it helpful and acceptable for teachers use to prevent plagiarism, and they are ready to use turnitin.com by themselves if available. From this we can interpret that turnitin.com is fully accepted as a product preventing academic misconduct. What is interesting is the last question about the main reason that the students do not use turnitin.com for now even though they offered a positive attitude towards it.
The reasons why international students do not use turnitin.com are quite different. Some students think it is too expensive to use. Some other students think it is time-consuming, which means not convenient enough for use. There are also students think there is not need to use because they are confident enough. After all, turnitin.com is only a tool. People are free to choose use it or not at their own decision. Turnitin.com is developed to make writing easier but not more complicated.
Here is the video we are supposed to discuss this week. The content of it is quite straight forward, and I do not think there is much I could say about it. From the video, we can learn that to use others' digital intellectual property,we do not always have to ask for permit. However,there are still four criteria that we need to follow. First, we have to transform the material into our own by adding voice or put some pictures together. By adding or editing, you transform the work into your own.Secondly, we can use some sentence from other's work without permission, but if we are using a whole image we probably should ask the original author before use. Thirdly, if you are not making money by using other's intellectual property, then you can use it for free. If you are making money, you would have a "negative economic effect" on the creator which is illegal.Finally, you have to cite the resource of the material you borrow properly. Only if you follow these four criteria, you are using digital material correctly. Even though our teacher gave us four criteria to follow, the line between legal and illegal using of online resource is still blur. For example, the BGM I used in my digital story is downloaded from the internet. Of course, I did not pay for it. The soundtrack I use is called Annie's Wonderland made by Bandari and released in 1990. It has been around for a long time, so it is quite easy to download from the internet. I will do some transformation because I will add my voice into the video and the music is a background sound. I will not make money from my work and I will cite the resource carefully. Does this make my downloading and using of this piece of music legal? I am still not very sure. I think similar thing happens all the time. You want to listen to or use some soundtrack. You do not intend to download it illegally, but it is like everywhere and so easy to get. Under this circumstance, you would become so confused that do not know whether you could use this music at all. A feeling of being both a theft and a victim develops in your heart. Basically, it is the chaos of illegal music sharing websites to be blamed. To solve this problem, DRM(digital rights management) is invited. It is a special technology used on the music file. The quality of the music drops with every copy. Or it can makes the music being played with certain application, or on certain devices. This technology makes the illegal music sharing impossible and exterminate the concern that we might come across some illegal music without notice. However, this technology seems to be abandoned so after its release. The mean reason is that it is very inconvenient. People do not like it. So they will not choose DRM music which leads to a lost of benefits to the record company. As a result, itunes, amazon and many other music provider have DRM-free music now. What we can learn from this story is that costumers are really hard to satisfy. DRM failed, but the battle against illegal music is still on. Hope we can finally come up with some solution which makes illegal music disappear and meets all people's expectation.
Our topic this week is about the intellectual property. First let me show you a little piece of video:
This video mainly talk about how we transform others' work into our digital story. According to this Thomas Jefferson, we have to build our work on the basis of others' work. This is how our culture grows. However, we still have to give credits to the original producer of the material, so they could be inspired and provide more good stuff for us.
I have no idea about intellectual property tort in the US. In China, it is quite a problem. To be honest, it is still a serious social problem. It is so hard to control because most people are actually benefiting from it. Even though, piracy is making our life easier, it is not a warrant for harming those people who created the resource.
Imaging you are a designer and your work is to create resource material for website designs. You worked late into the midnight to bring your idea into life. It is like your child because it is you who witness the whole creating process, from a piece of blanket paper into a fascinating image. It is art, it is your star. You love it so much, as you are so frustrated when you see it appears on a website you have never known. How does it get there, you have no idea. The only feeling left for you is that one part of you is getting peeled from your body. Your mind is robbed and all that night of work seems vain. How would you bestir yourself, get over this and design again? Impossible.
This is why we need to admire the hard work of others. One might say, the fact that I would choose his work is showing respects. This is not enough. Do remember, the people who bring you the good resource are making a living on it. Piracy has no difference than murdering. You will find your own hand on the handle of the knife if you download and use illegal resource. Even if there are hundreds of thousands of hands on it, it cannot deny the fact that you are one of them.
Expect of the bad things happening on the Internet, there still some good signs. There are new websites like www.nipic.com and www.pixiv.net which makes sharing of pictures more professional and only under notification. Live-streaming video websites also pay more attention to copyrights. I believe there is one sentence that we cannot be more familiar with: Sorry, this video can only be streamed within Mainland China, which makes me extremely homesick:(
After all, I am quite proud of what we have done for the long-lasting battle against piracy.
Here is one of the pictures I would use in my digital story. I think this could make quite a story.
It is a postcard. In the picture, we can see some sheep grazing on the turf surface. Actually, it is a golf course at the Mt. Kineo House on the shore of Moosehead Lake in Maine. This picture is taken in 1900.It has a line on the bottom of the picture says Mt. Kineo House Lawn Mowers on Golf Links.
Before the invention of mechanic mowers, sheep are responsible for the mowing job on golf courses. In fact, sheep worked on the fairway department, while greens belongs to another department, which is occupied by rabbits.
The cutting surface by our animal colleague cannot be compared to the work achieved by machines, but there are still some high lights. First of all, it is 100% environmental friendly. sheep do not consume fossil fuel, neither do they emit greenhouse gas. Secondly, it is 100% labor-free. To operate mechanic mowers, we need at least one man for each machine. As to sheep, only a shepherd is needed. What is more, sheep will automatically remove the clippings for you and turn them into organic fertilizer. If you do not want to use sheep drop on your golf course, you can sell it at a nice price to farmers nearby.
There are so many advantages of sheep mowers, why do not we use them today? Surprisingly enough, we do. In the Silicon Valley, where most of the world's high intelligence and cutting-edge technique lays, you can see sheep there working as they used to be.
Though we cannot use sheep mowers on golf courses any more, it is still a good idea to have them take care of our huge suburban grass land, where is too remote to be maintained well but still important enough so we cannot just let go. Sheep would be a significant option. They work hard and they love what they do. No need to worry about them being slack of work. What a good idea!
I am quite confused with this week's topic. Let me show you a short video first.
This is an advertisement released by Samsung on Oct 06, 2013. The new Samsung Galaxy Gear creatively introduced the fantasy in generations of scientific fiction-- a watch with computer in it. It is not a tool of showing time any more.Samsung has indeed put apple in threaten with this remarkable concept, a watch as powerful as a smartphone, a smartphone as handy as watch.
My point today, however, is not advertising this product. What I will focus on today is actually the advertisement itself.
In the video, there is no direct introduction of the Galaxy Gear, but several properties from classical si-fi movies. Which leads the audience to the theme gradually. The Galaxy Gear is on the scene for a very short time, but its characteristic is more than clear to the audience. This is because of the utilization of analogy. With several pictures of si-fi movie properties, the audience can easily combine the similarity pieces together into a whole piece. With no words, the characters of Galaxy Gear are shown: watch-like, high-tech, image and sound displaying information-carrier. There is an old saying in China, stones from other hills may serve to polish the jade, which means sometimes it is better to bring in other's material to make your own point standing out.
This is the same as the critical review. In critical review, we bring others' arguments together and analysis each of them, including the advantages and shortcomings. When we can see one problem from different aspects, we can avoid bios and have a more objective evaluation about the situation, which makes out point generate itself from a high level. We do not to explain much, the point will make itself clear.
I think this is all I want to say about the critical review. It is hard to put the youtube video and the topic together. I have tried my best...
Now, I want to make another point. Technology is booming especially in the mobile phone industry. Mobile phone industry is threatening not only the portable device industry, but also the whole internet commercial system. Walkman, CD-player, electronic dictionary, electronic note are like history to us,because with smart phones we can achieve all these by a single device. Why would we need all the rest then. With the widely spreading of smart phones, more and more attention have been paid to it. With different applications, we can do even more things on our phones than our computers. Where people go, ads follow. Where ads go, money follows. Future is hard to tell, but there is one thing for certain: mobile phones will be playing a more and more important role in everybody's life. Grab this revolution, then we can take over the leading place of each industry. Just like Samsung took over Nokia's place. Go mobile and offer point-to-point customized service.
Our topic this week is how to make one's digital story more dramatic.In my opinion, it is almost impossible to make a dull daily life into an attractive story.If someone's life is nothing but eating, sleeping and working, how can we put any dramatic elements into it without making up stuff from no where? In one word, a good story only comes from a man with stories.
Do you still remember the time when we were all kids. At that time, life was full of adventures and surprises. Anyone except Mom were strangers. Anywhere except home could be dangerous. We were afraid of, at the same time curious about everything, spreading our little antennas to sense this world. At that time we did not even have any idea what "world" stands for. At that time, we thought the whole world must be raining, because it was raining so hard outside my window.
Now, everything has changed. We are trying to meet and cooperate with strangers. We are not afraid of new environments any more. Now we know that the world is so big while we are so insignificant. We used to be the center of our little world, but now we are only passers-by of this age. There is no more excitements, because we are so occupied to work so we can maintain a position in this society, as we think.
I am not saying the socialization is bad. We need it for our civilization construction. However, we have gone too far. With the maturity of socialization, people are more and more like parts of this big machinery world. Once you fit into a position, you are not longing for anything new. You would be tired of changing, you were afraid of being replaced if you showed your resentment. You feel like living in a sh*thole, but you would not jump out because all the rest of the world are nothing but sh*tholes.
It is time to leave everything behind your head and look for dramatics in life. At least, one day per week. Let's say a "different Saturday", which means we do something we have never done before on every Saturday. Try board-skating, try sand-painting, try hanging out with the homeless for one day, try running out of town until you have no strength left and have to take a ride home. There are so many things we have not tried yet and life is so short. Do not live it pathetically. Get out of your box and live it dramatically!
That is what I would do to make my story dramatic.
Nowadays, more and more machines are taking humans' job on the golf courses. They are faster, and of course, cheaper. However, the best courses are still maintained by hand. Take Scioto Country Club,where I did my internship for example. All the greens and tees are mowed by walk-behind mowers. All the 82 bunkers are hand-raked everyday(God, I remembered so clear!!) Fairways and roughs are mowed by machines, but all the divots are fixed by hand. As I recall, most of my time spent on the course was wandering around with a basket full of sand and seed mix, fixing divots all day long. Is it really necessary to do all these job by hand? Does it worth?
In Scioto Country Club, we have 4-5 long-term workers and 6-7 temporary workers in the summer breaker, which makes approximately 11-12 labors working for the course. Each of us get about $1500 per month, which means about $18,000 labor cost one month, 216,000 per year, not including the lunch fee, health insurance or other welfare.
While on a low maintained public golf course, the "green-keeper" group usually consists of 3-4 people. This leads to $72,000 per year of labor cost, about 1/3 of a labor intense golf course. And this all achieved by mechanization.
The cost of machines can be very high. For example, a new Toro Greenmaster Triplex reel mower would have a price about 20,000. However, to achieve the same work with hand, we need two walk-behind mowers, which is around 8,000 each. There is not much money saved on the equipment. By the way, a second-hand triplex could get a price at about $5,000 and a second hand walk mower 2,000, even less difference there.
Money is saved with machines and less labor work, but there are still courses use human hand to do the job, because definitely human are more flexible than machines. More detailed and fine job could be achieve with hands. This is what superintendents with too much money to spend on the course would think. But with the development of computers and the artificial intelligence, I wonder how long this advantage will last.
Every aspect in our world is getting more and more digital. So is the golf turf maintenance industry. Now it is not that obvious, but we should be well prepared that one day mowers with GPS with positioning and navigation system will take our job. There are already some computer and mechanic geeks working on this project. What should we do then? Just remember it is always better to keep your eyes open, because with the power of the information exchange capacity of the Internet, everyday is a new era.
In my opinion the ability of telling a good story is not only useful for television or radio media, it can be applied to many other aspects in your life. Everyone needs to be a good story teller. It is essential to get yourself heard and have your thought broadcast.
From the radio, we can abstract the two main characters of a good story. First, the sequence of actions. You can "grab" your audience by making them feel like your story is something which is still taking place, at least to them who have no idea of the consequence. You take advantage of the audience's curiosity and make the best use of it by arranging suspense. " What on earth is going on?" is the first commend you ever want to achieve from your listeners. Another thing of a successful story is the "reflection", the answers to all the questions you have laid out. You can present them all at once to provide kind of a mind-blowing/astonishing ending, or you can unveil them each at a time with some new questions arisen to make the audience feel like drifting in the turbulent current created by you. They have no escape but riding with your fast-moving story.
One example I want to present is a famous application currently, called Vine. It is amazing because all the users can only post a 6 second video each time. How could you tell a whole story only in 6 seconds and still be attractive? First of all, the story is presented in time sequence, which is apparent because they are mini videos with no room for flashback. Second, the scene changes rapidly with reasonable logic. Questions rise whenever there are changes in the scene. Some of the answers you can find at the end of the video, some of them can be found in the title. In my opinion,these 6-second mini video posts succeed because of those dramatic changes within only seconds makes people want to watch again and again without being bored.
I think I would like to talk more about why we all have to be good story tellers in the next blog. Perhaps, I could also write a story to see how well I do except for all these theoretical things.
The topic of this week's blog is our opinion about the video above, called 'Annotative Bibliography Assignment'. I do not know others' situation, but I am struggling getting information from this video because of all the broken sentences and strange pronunciations. It is a great video with a load of useful information, so I decided to put a transcription of it. It took me some time. I hope my action could help others who have difficulty understanding this video and almost missed the true meaning of this extraordinary work.
M=Male F=Female
M: Our first
assignment is an annotative bibliography. What is an annotative bibliography?
What does annotative mean?
F: We have to choose 5 articles in our major. They should be
on the similar topic. Then we should have to summarize each of them in 5 sentences,
and write another 5 sentences evaluating each summary. So each summary is 10
sentences time 5 is 50 sentences, more or less.
M: Why do they have to be on the same topic? Why can’t we
just choose any 5 articles?
F: It makes your life and this class easier, because if you
choose articles on the same topic you can use them for out of the course. In
the next paper, you will have to write a critical reviewing. You can choose 2
or 3 of your summaries to compare and evaluate, then you can write a research
paper using the information from all the articles. See, easy.
M: So how do I get started?
F: First, you have to read the whole article. You can use
articles you have to read for other classes if you want. Don’t just read the
abstract or the summary because that is written in a different way than you
need to write for this course. First you need to identify the key problem in
the article and focus on how the author tried to solve the problem. Life is
easier here if all the articles address the same problem but you don’t have to
do that.
M: How do I organize the summary?
F: The summary is organized into three parts. The first part
is a descriptive summary where you write one sentence summary of the article.
Then you can write 4 or 5 informative sentences where you summarize the key
issues or problems and what the author wrote about them. Then you need to write
5 sentences giving your own opinion.
M: How is the sentence written?
F: Each sentence has its own form. A descriptive sentence
begins with the name of the author, then a reporting verb, and then the direct
object. For example, the author discusses finding a solution to the traffic
problem. Notice that I choose the word ‘discusses’ as my reporting word. ‘Discuss’
is a very objective report that describe what the paper is about. Also, notice
that it only takes a direct object ‘traffic problem’. If you want more information,
you can look at the work sheet of the descriptive verbs on the course pallet
wall.
M: And what is a reporting verb?
F: In the first part of your summary, you are summarizing
what the author thinks, so you have to attributing every time the name of the
author, so it is clear that the idea is from the author, not yours. So you have
to start each sentence with the name of the author or a pronoun or some way
acknowledging that this sentence is taken from the article. Then you have to
paraphrase the idea you want to report. Finally you have to choose a reporting
verb to link the author’s name and the idea.
M: I still don’t know what a reporting verb is? L
F: If you don't know the idea of the author, you still can
express your idea about it. Later in the course, you are going to use the ideas
of the author to either to make your own claims, support your claims or show
how your work is different from the author’s. The reporting verb in the case,
is what your attitude towards the claim. For example, when you used ‘discusses’
that means that this is for fact. The author really discussed it. There is no dispute.
But what you think the argument is only the opinion of the author, then you
might say ‘the author believes’.
M: What if I think it’s an argument?
F: Then you could say: ‘the author argues’.
M: What if I don’t agree with the author?
F: We have found that writers often use the word ‘claim’. That
is the author claims that is true, but it isn’t.
M: What about the evaluation? How do I do that?
F: In evaluation, you express your own opinion. Why you think
the research is important, interesting, problematic, whatever you think. Try to
evaluate only the key points of the summary. Don’t summarize again. Only discuss
what you have already summarized. The important thing to remember is that in
the first part of the summary, all the information belongs to the author. Why
you have to use the name of the author. In this evaluation, everything you
write belongs to you, since there is no attribution, so you don’t have to use
any names or pronouns. If there is no attribution, it is your idea.
M: Right! Now I just have to find a topic for this paper.
In the annotative bibliography, I have to first conclude the main idea and key points of the author. Then write some evaluation about the article. The introduction portion, we have to first write a description sentence about a overall review of the article. Then provide some highly summarized informative sentences about the opinions presented by the author. In the evaluation part, we have to express our own opinion towards either the issue or the author's point of view.
This piece of dialogue happened in a pharmacy and we have no idea what is the relationship between them.
The little man seems to have several complains about referring to others' articles and is tired of citing and paraphrasing. The female on the other hand is correcting his attitude by answering each of his questions.
In my opinion, this video is very realistic. Students do have problems like this little young man. "Why do I have to use all these text in my paper?" "What a waste of time citing all the sources." "Paraphrasing is difficult because I have to think of words and grammar forms." When you see students struggling against their writing assignments, this kind of complains is very common and tarries inside their head only to make writing even more difficult.
It is not hard to see the reason for this situation. Those students who have difficulties writing their paper because they do not understand what they are writing for. In their mind, they still think it is an assignment which have to be accomplished. The only reader they expect is just the professor. After they handed in the paper, they will have nothing to do with it any more, like a pair of old shoes put back in the farthest corner in the attic.
These kind of students are writing for the professor, not all the others in the academic area, neither themselves. That is why I would refer this kind of students as an "Outsider". They are not ready for becoming a part of the academic area they are in. They do not want to absorb information by learning different materials and abstract links and variations among them. Neither do they want to develop and express their own point of view.
Why do we write? What are we exactly writing for? In the blog, we write to express your point of view, just like what I am doing now. Academic writing is all the same. We are writing because we want to present our idea in a way which can be shared and understood by others. Human intelligence is amazing. We have been using it to build our civilization for thousands of years. However, this splendid civilization is not achieved by any individual. We are strong because we have collective wisdom by sharing and handing down all the sparks of intelligence lighted in our mind.
If you still think it is hard to write a paper, if you still find yourself paraphrasing word by word, you do not get the meaning of writing. We cite materials not because we are avoiding plagiarism, but because we are processing information from our position.Getting involved, that is the way to becoming a professional.
First of all, I want to make a short introduction of an article I read recently. It is a short story written by Mike Rose.In the article, Mike Rose states a story that Marita, a new
student of UCLA, was accused of plagiarism during her first writing assignment.
According to the author, Marita had some
difficulty finishing the argument on the topic of creativity. Therefore, she
turned into the encyclopedia and referred from it without proper quotation. The
arguer presents fully understanding of Marita's circumstance that she is
writing beyond her acknowledge. This reminds him of his own experience when he was overwhelmed and found himself incapable to handle the
material he cited. In the end, Mike Rose
concludes that Marita came cross a problem which many other students are
facing, but her practice cannot be accepted by the academics and challenged the
authority of the school's law.
Plagiarism, is no different than stealing, as I was told again and again. It is emphasized to another level from my first day in the Ohio State University. Several cases were presented to inform us that how serious the result can be if you were caught of plagiarism on the International Student Orientation. In my opinion, it is astonishing that plagiarism is still considered as a big problem at this academic level.
The school makes it quite clear that plagiarism is not allowed and punishments would follow. Then, why are there still people doing this? The voices you can hear from both the video and the article of Mike Rose are "I did not know I am plagiarizing.""I made a stupid decision.""I regret so much." However, I think we should go beyond the fact and look at it from a overall view.
First of all, can a student be accused of plagiarism without precaution? It is possible but at a very low chance that what you have written by yourself is exactly the same with a published work.It is almost a miracle,isn't it? As the case stated in Marita's case, most of the cases of plagiarism happen when students are referring to other articles. If there is no referring, there will be no plagiarism. Is it possible then? I am afraid not. Once I was reading an article about human race civilization. In the article, the author pointed out the importance of library in the broadcasting and inheriting of knowledge. The library is defined as all source of language work including books and oral presentations. "If I have seen further(than Descartes), it is by standing upon the shoulders of Giants(Isaac Newton)" The nature of the accumulation of knowledge is that we need to gain new point of view on others' finished pieces. As a result, referring is unavoidable. When you are bringing others' work, you should know that you are at a chance of plagiarism and the only solution for it is proper paraphrasing.
Further more, how could a student fail in the process of paraphrasing and be accused of plagiarism? In Mike Rose's story, we can learn that Marita has the self-consciousness that she was utilizing the material from the encyclopedia, but she failed to understand what she is using. What she did is simply bring the stuff directly into her piece. As Mike Rose said, people cheating always have no idea of the material he is using. The work scraped together is just like "little fleckes of knowledge sticking to the fiber of the broom". What is more, the thing you pasted on your essay does not equal to what is gained in your head. Simple copying with out assimilating and expressing is not the way we learn, neither the way we gain knowledge.
In my opinion, the right way to prevent students from this kind of trouble, is not only present them the severe results after they get caught. People always have fluke mind and will challenge the authority of the academic conventions. We should let students know that, when one is behind schedule and decides to cheat on the paper, it is not the professor or the school but himself being betrayed, because he give up the original goal when he first started. That is to learn, to gain, to sublimate, and this cannot achieved by plagiarism.
As an assignment of my 5901 Advanced English class, I should make it as formal as deep as possible. To find your own position in the your academic area,as Mrs. Carreon told us. However, it is not a professional paper that I am writing. It is a blog, where we can broadcasting, or expressing ourselves and make it fun for reading. So let's begin with a small introduction of myself to lead you to my whole big world. I was born in 1989 and lived without a name or a long period of time. Fang(房) is quite a unique family name in China. That is why my father put more efforts than necessary finding me a good first name which can match this ancient and royal family name he gave me. Finally,the wind carried the good new. A blown-open book offered the final push to this long-struggling task. Chen(宸） which designates the emperors became a part of my identity.
My English name, Evangeline, which means GOSPEL, actually comes from my favorite Japanese animation called Evangelion. As simple as it can be. There is no more big story behind it, no more deep meaning of it. I just simply choose it because I like it. This is one of few decisions that one can make in his life. There are a lot of things that matters in your life but you cannot even put a hand on it, like my major. I am major in turfgrass management during my five years of undergraduate school. The only reason my parents were willing to support this major for me is that I could get an internship in the US and two bachelor degrees from this joint program. As time went by. After five years of study, I found myself on the crossing of choices again. Finding a job or going to graduate school? If I am going to graduate school then where should I go, China or the US? Do I stay in the same major or do I transfer to another major? Different futures are lying behind all these choices, pouring down from my top to toes. It appeared to others that I am quite a promising girl with a lot of opportunities, but to me the future at that time is as dark as night, and I was waiting for the dawn. Now I am at the Ohio State University, in the turf research team with my adviser Dr. Street. Did I made my choice. It is complicated enough to tell clearly. I did not choose the OSU. It is more like the OSU chose me. A nice adviser with a huge amount of financial support, this is not what you can simply ask for. On the other hand, I did make my choice. If the position is a great offer like a brand new car, I am the one who is going to drive it, operate it and maintain it to keep it in a good condition. Then I start to understand that, life is full of both possibilities and choices, benefits and losses, opportunities and risks. There are things you can choose like my English name, there are also things you cannot fight against like fate. If you cannot accept what life gives to you, either fight against it to death or take it as a new pathway you have not met in your secret garden, which I prefer. Where does it lead to? Let's just go and see.
