Feedbacks on English listening skills course.

1.  Write a list of listening skills that you learned about from each of the units that we studied.  Find them on - page 9, page 35, page 58, page 82, page 107.

page 9 - identifying main ideas

page 35 - making inferences 

page 58 - listening for examples 

page 82 - recognizing appositives that explain

Page 107 - organizing notes with a T-chart




2.  Which listening skill (mentioned above) did you find the most valuable?  Why?

"organizing notes with a T-chart" is the most valuable one among all. In fact, the reason is quite simple, which is this skill is the most comprehensive one. While organizing notes, skills such as identifying main ideas, making inferences, listening for examples and recognizing appositives are required. We've been trained to strengthen these skills individually, but what's more important is how to put these information in a well organized order for further usage. Comparing to other formats of note taking, the T chart offer the clearest overview of information by catagorizing the details in chronological orders, which makes it still the easiest way for readers to understand what the notes trying to say.

3.  What are some ways in which your listening in English has improved this semester?

I feel the great improment on my listening skills when I tried to watch and listen to those dialogues in video clips. Even though I did watch a lot English videos and listen to English songs, but Not until now I started to take it seriously and tried to understand almost everything in a song or video. What's more, It's my first time to try an all English blog, and I found it becoming more and more interesting. Most importantly, it really helps to enhance my listening skills as the more English video clips I see. My blog keeps all the records of learning, its easier for me to evaluate the improvement of learning. It's almost amazing to see how I can do in a semester whenever i can connect to the internet! 

4.  What are some challenges that you still face in your English listening?  How do you plan to overcome these challenges?

It might still cause some misunderstanding whenever I hear British English with strong accent for I am so use to American English accent. However, this might be troublesome to me because I'm learning English but still can't get used to its oriential Pronounciation! To overcome this serious problem, I will started to watch BBC instead of CNN for the source of world news and look for interesting British accent TV series and movies. It's equally important to recognize the special usages and meanings of words in British English and American English as well.

5.  Based on your experience with listening to many different types of activities in English this semester (listening to radio reports, radio interviews, TED talks, the audio book, a song, etc.), what is the most efficient way that you can train yourself to improve your English listening on your own?  Explain your answer.

TED talks works best on my listening skill. Comparing to other options, TED talk have both advantages and disadvantages. For example, it's well organized, therefore it's far more easier for learners to catch the ideas in predictable order; most of the talks are within 18 minutes, which is proper for learners to keep their concentration and the content will not be too many for them to digest; last but not the least, the topic discussed are all thought provoking, learners have the chance to receive innovative thought and the latest issue in the world which they should know. Yet, some of its advantages are disadvantages in the view of a foreign learner. For example, the talks are so well organized, therefore listeners might not be able to hear something they can use in daily conversations; some thought provoking topics include bunch of contents, and with the length limit, the speaker has to speed up the speech and sometimes are too fast for a beginner. In short, these different types of learning strategies should be used all together, but if i only have a little time, TED talk will sure to be the first choice of mine.

Music Video - Passenger, Let Her Go

Why are you sharing this song?

While more and more pop artists like Miley Cyrus, Justin Bieber...etc, started to copy the way how meaningless pop songs success and produce more trash to their audience, it's getting harder for me to find one song that worth looking at its lyrics. Thank god! We still have "Passenger"! The vocal's voice is quite distinct and brings me the feeling of sadness, however it's an necessity to perform very emotional songs like this one. Most importantly, the song is very poetic written while using simple words, which makes it easily to understand and remember.

What is the meaning of the lyrics?

The meaning of the lyrics: The song is about the sense of regret a person will have when they decide to let their lovers go. The song is following a specific pattern, which is "You only need/miss/know/hate something when you're burning/feeling low". Apparently, the song uses a lot of  antonyms to emphasize the contradiction in the two choices. The loop keeps repeat and repeat, which ensures the chorus been deeply remembered by the audience and also representing the truth people keep decide and regret. However, it's natural that people tends to think of those they couldn't have is better than what they currently have, and people keep letting old ones go and pursuit for the new ones; However, what mostly happened is that people couldn't tell whether the new ones are actually better or not. In the verse he sings, "Staring at the bottom of your glass, hoping one day you'll make a dream last, but dreams come slow and they go so fast.", which is a realistic feeling a person will overcome while they started to question themselves about satisfying their current status or pursuit their great perhaps. Yet, after people make their decision, they started to regret. Therefore, he sings,"Staring at the ceiling in the dark, same old empty feeling in your heart, 'cause love comes slow and it goes so fast ." The empty feeling after we let the old ones go is strongly been written and sang,  I think the writer of the song wants to remind his or hers audience to cherish what they have now. While in his or hers experience, "We only miss the sun when it starts to snow, only know you love her when you let her go."

TV Commercial in English - LG G2

What is happening in the commercial?
    The guy in this video introduced himself as a camera men, and he tried many ways to find the best solution for taking steady shots of moving object while moving. He even tried to combine the camera with a football helmet and wear it while taking photos. However, none of his methods work well. One day, he happened to see a video clip about the fact that chicken have the ability to keep their head stable no matter how their body moved. By curiosity, the cameraman had the idea of putting a remote camera lens on his chicken Lizzy's head. After a series of testing, the amazing stabilization of the chicken camera proved the theory right, and Lizzy was no more been left at home.


What is the product or service?
The product is the LG G2 Smartphone.

Who is the target audience?
The target audience of this commercial could be youngsters, especially those who likes to watch and share online videos. Young heavy internet users are the essential of anything to go viral on the web, and this group of people tends to find the latest news and funny videos spontaneously, therefore this commercial disguised as a hilarious video clip in the first place. Apparently, the essential of this commercial is to show how their product learn from nature's wisdom. Eventually, this commercial does go viral on the video sharing website and got millions of clicks and views.

What emotions does it use to persuade the reader to buy the product or service? (fear, guilt, excitement, humor, etc.)
    This commercial is first a little suspenseful and later hilarious. At the beginning, the cameraman lead the audience into his workshop and demonstrates his inventions of new and exciting systems made to improve his craft. The watcher might not get the clear idea of what's going to happen next until the guy shared about his recent problems and his surprising solution, which really gives the watcher a sense of excitement and entertainment.

Does it do a good job in persuading the watcher to buy the product?  Why or why not?
    I think the commercial is a real success. Nowadays, there are too many commercials flashing and moving around users' webpage, which actually eliminate user's willingness to click and watch. However, commercials like this one,  first appears as a hilarious video clip made by another crazy cameraman who managed to use a chicken to take steady photos, really catch their target audiences' attention. Even though the clip is actually a commercial by another smartphone company, it's still worth watching and it's fun. What's more, the "chicken head stabilization" theory once again been proved true and applied to the company's products, this convinced consumers about the reason why they should choose this one instead of others. It's scientifically proved and it's so much fun.

Animal Documentary - Dogs

Why am I sharing this documentary?

    Apparently, the reason is because dogs are so lovely, playful and intelligent. Canines are my favorite among all animals. In this documentary, they uncover some reasons why so many varieties came out between dogs with the species. That reminds me about the same question I always wondering, what makes my Maltese unique from that of my uncle's? Therefore, this documentary produced by BBC draws my curiosity, and in fact the video clip do offer some explanations for the questions given. As long as dogs are one of the best companion by human's side, it's more likely that we should know more about our friend for life.


Summary of the Documentary

    
    The BBC documentary of dogs is discussing four topics one by one. Which are, why are there so many extreme differences came about on the same species, why the great hounds are the fastest of all, revealing what makes some dogs such awesome swimmers, uncovering why some dogs are so hairy while some are hairless. The investigation starts from observing directly at the dogs brought by the residents from the local community, and then they asked several experts of each fields for advisory and to find out the exact reason revealed from their researches. 

    First of all, the most obvious difference between dogs are their body sizes. Why are some dogs so much bigger than others? The height of a mature dog ranges from 6 to 25 inch, from a Labrador Retriever to a Chihuahua, respectively.The result from historic and genetic studies indicate that the sizes of the dogs have strong connections with both human's the nature's selection. Take Chihuahua for example, this small breed of dog is originally from Mexico. The ancient Mexican dogs were given the task to be an exterminator, they had to do a lot underground hunting. Therefore, the smaller the size they have the better skills the have to hunt down the pests. In order to fit its working environment, the individuals with small sizes were than breed into large numbers. It's almost the same procedure for every kind of the dogs can be seen nowadays, they are manipulated for doing jobs for human to later fitting human's preferences. As time passes by, human began to deliberate the tame ones of the species and eventually we created the wolf that won't bite. As a result, the wide variety of dogs body sizes are actually one of the most incredible creation of humanity.

    Later in the next three parts of the documentary, they found out that the reason why the great hounds are the fastest of all species of dog, why some dogs are such swimmers, and why some dogs are hairy and some are hairless, are all related to the dual effect of the natural’s and human’s selection. Human first through careful observation to discover what every original kinds of dogs can do, then started to keep the ones with the best function and the way dogs appear began to change.

   To be honest, this documentary has more than one episode. Thus, there is no actual conclusion in this video clip. Still we can infer from the context and draw to the conclusion. As a result, these surprising discoveries of dogs are again reminding people how snobbish human beings are. However, dogs are in turn seen us as their best and lifetime friend. Their relatively short life are all depend on us. While gaining more background knowledge about this lovely animal, hopefully more people will cherish the companion provided by dogs than before.

TED Talk - Simon Sinek : How Great Leaders Inspire Action

Summary:
    Simon Sinek is now an author of the bestseller "Start With Why", the book was named after his famous quote given in this speech, and he now puts a lot of effort into inspiring people to do what inspires them. Simon came up with a question that as both being great leaders, why some succeeded buy some failed? With that in mind, he did some research on famous commercial failure case and successful examples. Finally he reached a conclusion which was not a new idea but was illustrated in a new way, the "Golden Circle" theory along with his well-known quote "Start With Why". The "Golden Circle" gave us a visual concept of how great leaders inspire people's action. The secret is to communicate to people from the inside-out of the circle, which is from "why you do it" to "how you do it" and ends with "what you do", otherwise we can't drive people's behavior to do whatever they are being inspired to do. This rule can be used on occasions like election, products promotion, etc.

What can listeners learn from this talk?
    Simon's concept of "Golden Circle" can also be interpreted as a philosophy of life that everyone of us should think "Why we do it" before we take our first step to do something. Moreover, for those who want to start their own business, Simon indicated that the recipe for success is not only about being funded by wealthy ventures, or having the best minds your money can find and happened to be at the right time of the market condition. Without knowing clearly the "why" and expressing the change this new business is about to make, success still won't be as smooth as it seems. Therefore, he said “[Martin Luther King, Jr.] gave the ‘I have a dream’ speech, not the ‘I have a plan’ speech.”  Listeners should keep this way of thinking in mind no matter what they do.

TED Talks - Andrew Fitzgerald: Adventures in Twitter fiction

Summary:
    Andrew Fitzgerald works as a member of the news and journalism partnership team at Twitter, is also a writer of a novel, an editor and a Tweeter. He experiments with new and creative ways of story-telling in his spare time, and the outcome was pretty much interesting, which draws the outline of digital story-telling on social media. In the speech, Andrew Fitzgerald showed three good examples of how creatively can platforms like Twitter can be used for writing fiction and non-fiction stories together with Tweeters. Andrew explains that, in fact, several series of fiction novels have published by initially coming out as a short story on twitter. Later on, there are multiple  perspective and feedback from readers involved as a part of the story, which in turn makes it possible for the fiction characters to engage with the real world and eventually came out to be great series of artwork. At the end of the speech, he suggests people to make good and creative use of these digital tools, and to think of the new structure of digital story-telling.

What can listeners learn from this talk?
    Human beings are born to be story tellers, and people do love to tell stories. Luckily, we're now living in a digital generation with a wide-open accessibility to powerful tools on the internet, such as social media websites and blogs, which can spread our ideas or stories rapidly with little effort. In other words, even though we didn't intent to tell the world our stories, it might just go viral by itself if the story is considered interesting or inspiring to the readers. However, not everyone have the talent or been trained for literature. In this case, by following the way the speaker suggested, every single person can take part in a story and be a co-author only by posting their lines on Twitter. Thanks to technology, real time story-telling has blurred the line between fact and fiction, and the line between writer and reader as well. Writing a novel haven't become so easy for either the author or the reader, the writers get enthusiasm from feedback to keep up their good works and the readers can find what they want to read easily and leave comments simultaneously, which is a whole new experience of reading. I'm pretty much looking forward to this online co-working trend of writing novels to go viral and someday to involve in one of them.

Movie Clip - We're the Millers

Which movie does this clip come from?

This clip is from the movie "We're the Miller's", released on July 2013. 

What is this movie about?
     "We're the Miller's" tells a story about how a drug dealer make up a fake family to ship weeds from the boarder of  Mexico back to the US, and those funny things happened during the whole trip. David was a local marijuana drug dealer, and was pretty satisfied with his single situation. At the age of marriage, he merely had the thought of having his own family. He was robbed afterwards with nothing left and the drug lord forced him to carry more drugs from the us-mexico boarder to clear his debt at once. However, to make the whole illegal shipping less suspicious, David decided to form a fake "Miller" family, with the member of a stripper, a runaway teenager, a virgin 18-years old neighbor and a drug dealer himself. During the trip back to the state, the fake family came through several emergencies that could possible reveal their real characteristic and been sentenced to jail. Each family member always had their ways to explain the ridiculous facts. At the end of the movie, David realized they would never carry back the weeds on time and meet the drug lord's request. He gave up and turned to work together with the DEA agent he met on their trip. Eventually, the evil drug lord was arrested. The Millers were more like a real family at the end of the movie, living happily together.

     This is definitely the funniest movie I've ever seen in recent year! I've never laugh so loud in the theater! If you love comedy then you will love this one!

What is happening in this clip?

     The Miller's family was about to enter the boarder pass station, there they met the Fitzgeralds' family. By no reason, David hit the break too hard and the weed fell on Rose's lap all of a sudden. Rose had no choice but to cover the drug with a blanket which make Mrs.Fitzgeralds mistaken it as a baby. They were almost in a trouble but David came up to give the drug a human's name, LeBron, an irony to the famous NBA player who was caught smoking marijuana last year.