Writing is one of the best things in the world.

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.

Resource:

http://www.chicagonow.com/going-for-gusto/2013/07/keep-writing/

How English Skills Helps International Students to Find Their Academic Position

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.

Afraid of plagiarism? Just TURNITIN!

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.

Is DRM music a solution or a dead end?

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.