Periods are pretty easy to use. Or so i think. I always thought it was just after a regular sentence.
Rule 1. Use a period at the end of a complete sentence that is a statement.
Rule 2. If the last word in the sentence ends in a period, do not follow it with another period.
Rule 3. Use the period after an indirect question.
http://www.grammarbook.com/punctuation/periods.asp
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Who is michael Moore?
To be honest, i didn't even know who Michael Moore was until i read his essay "Idiot Nation". My first reaction to the essay was that of shock. I was really surprised how negative he is. He just looks at the negative side of everything and not the good side. Its probably pretty easy to just look at the negative side of everything, but much harder to look at the good side. I think that its always better to look at the good in people, and not just their recognize their faults. No one is perfect, including our leaders, and that is life.
He did, however, present some pretty interesting facts. It is true that sports is huge in our society. Probably even bigger than politics. I agree with a lot of the irony he presented in his essay. He talked about his childhood when he was in school. I found it interesting when he wrote of how there are schools opening up without principles. Teachers do get a pretty bad rap most of the time.
Michael Moore definatly made me recognize a different aspect of our young nation. I had no idea that there are so many people that are completely uneducated, and those that are educated wasting much of their time watching television instead of reading. Overall i would say that i surely wasn't bored while reading this essay. It was interesting to see a much different perspective on the nation.
He did, however, present some pretty interesting facts. It is true that sports is huge in our society. Probably even bigger than politics. I agree with a lot of the irony he presented in his essay. He talked about his childhood when he was in school. I found it interesting when he wrote of how there are schools opening up without principles. Teachers do get a pretty bad rap most of the time.
Michael Moore definatly made me recognize a different aspect of our young nation. I had no idea that there are so many people that are completely uneducated, and those that are educated wasting much of their time watching television instead of reading. Overall i would say that i surely wasn't bored while reading this essay. It was interesting to see a much different perspective on the nation.
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Families
I thought this essay was pretty interesting. It is always interesting for me to look into or study the different views and opinions people have about the family, what the family unit is, and how it should operate or function in society. I lived in Denmark for a few years and most of the people over their looked at the family a little differently that we typically do here in st. George or even Utah for that matter. For them it is normal to live together and have kids before you even think about marriage. A lot of them didn't even get married, they just lived together as sort of a family unit, similar to the way we live in family units. I think that here, especially in a mormon culture, many people view it as pretty normal to get married first, and then start your family. So i could see that it varied a little even from our culture to theirs.
The research the author used was interesting to me. I thought it intriguing how within the different classes of families, there are different goals and ways of living of the families. For example, middle class families tend to share linearly (parent to child), rather then among extended family and close friends as it is in working class households. Just reading about the defferent ways each class lives fascinated me. Aulette used a lot of research in her essay. From a lot of different sources as well. She incorperated it into her essay very well i thought.
The Moynihan report was interesting. I don't agree with it. Maybe it was an excuse to get black males to join the army, i don't know. Aulette noted the Carol Stack research right after talking about it in her essay, and the research pretty much shot down the moynihan theory. So i think Aulette could have maybe disagreed with the theory because she put that right after, even though she didn't really take a standpoint herself. I don't know. Overall, i really enjoyed reading the essay.
The research the author used was interesting to me. I thought it intriguing how within the different classes of families, there are different goals and ways of living of the families. For example, middle class families tend to share linearly (parent to child), rather then among extended family and close friends as it is in working class households. Just reading about the defferent ways each class lives fascinated me. Aulette used a lot of research in her essay. From a lot of different sources as well. She incorperated it into her essay very well i thought.
The Moynihan report was interesting. I don't agree with it. Maybe it was an excuse to get black males to join the army, i don't know. Aulette noted the Carol Stack research right after talking about it in her essay, and the research pretty much shot down the moynihan theory. So i think Aulette could have maybe disagreed with the theory because she put that right after, even though she didn't really take a standpoint herself. I don't know. Overall, i really enjoyed reading the essay.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
grammar post # 2
Exclamation points!!
When should i use them, and how often? This is the question i ask myself at times. I think my problem is not that i overuse them, but that i never use them. The rule goes as follows:
The exclamation point is used at the end of a sentence or a interjection to show strong emotion or emphasis.
Example: I hate you!
http://englishplus.com/grammar/00000066.htm
When should i use them, and how often? This is the question i ask myself at times. I think my problem is not that i overuse them, but that i never use them. The rule goes as follows:
The exclamation point is used at the end of a sentence or a interjection to show strong emotion or emphasis.
Example: I hate you!
http://englishplus.com/grammar/00000066.htm
Friday, January 16, 2009
Manipulation??
I really got a kick out of this one. The political cartoon is pretty self explanitory. It illustrates how the media manipulates people without them really knowing it. The guy in this one is HYPNOTIZED. He thinks he is just watching great and wonderful programs.
The indended audience would probably be the average american who is subject to the media, the average joe/jane, or the guy in the chair. I think the cartoonist demonstrated his desired message very well, making the cartoon easy to understand cartoon and pretty straight forward. The cartoonist definately thinks that the media is manipulative and demonstrates that in the picture.
I like how the picture is staged in a relaxed home setting, suggesting to the reader that this is the type of people that usually get manipulated by the media.
This is another funny one. It shows how the media often times overdramaticizes situations. It makes these farmers appear to be really excited about voting and politics by what the news reporter is saying. It is as if the news reporter is trying to make something amazing and interesting out of nothing by blowing the situation out of proportion. very funny.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
semicolons?
so i pretty much never use semicolons in my writing. Actually i probably have at one point or another, but typically, not. So i thought it a good idea to find out how to use the things, then i can start using them.
So there is pretty much about 5 rules to using semicolons in writing. They read as follows:
1. Use semicolon in place of a period, when seperating two sentences without using a conjunction.
2. Use before words such as, for example, therefore, and however.
3. Use them to seperate units of a series when the units contain one or more commas.
4. Use the semicolon between two sentences joined by a coordinating conjunction when one or more commas is used in the first sentence.
Okay so i know that sounds really confusing, so it might be beneficiary to look at this websight and see some of the examples that they use.
http://www.grammarbook.com/punctuation/semicolon.asp!
So there is pretty much about 5 rules to using semicolons in writing. They read as follows:
1. Use semicolon in place of a period, when seperating two sentences without using a conjunction.
2. Use before words such as, for example, therefore, and however.
3. Use them to seperate units of a series when the units contain one or more commas.
4. Use the semicolon between two sentences joined by a coordinating conjunction when one or more commas is used in the first sentence.
Okay so i know that sounds really confusing, so it might be beneficiary to look at this websight and see some of the examples that they use.
http://www.grammarbook.com/punctuation/semicolon.asp!
Sunday, January 11, 2009
The good ol' 1950's
"Looking for work" by soto made me think about myself and reminded me what it was like to be a kid. i remember my brothers and i used to watch movies like "rocky" and "superman" and after it was over we would pretend we were rocky in a fight beating up on our opponent or that we were superman flyingthrough the air and invincible.
In soto's short story he tells of how as a child he much wanted his family to be just like the "picture perfect" ones he would see on television. He tried to get his family to wear shoes to the dinner table and asked his mom to make turtle soup or something so that they would be more like the ideal families he saw on television. Soto wrote the story from his childhood perspective. I think that was good because it made you think as a child when you were reading it; bringing back memories and helping you relate the soto as a child. I think the ideas in the story were pretty much right on as far as how kids think and are influenced by things such as the television. Soto, in his story, thought that the families on television were just examples of how normal families are and live. He didn't understand that that wasn't reality. That the typical family functioned far from that. If only family life was that simple and care free. Unfortunately, most families don't function in that way, but that is usually not the message that people get if they watch shows like "leave it to beaver". In fact i think that same principle is true today of things like advertising, television, magazines, and the media. Images of "picture purfect" models and people are presented and is recognized or seen by the world as normal or ideal and if you don't fit that criteria and look like them, then you are not normal. The truth is that you are more normal that you think you are and the "fake" people advertized are not normal. They are usually made or changed to look or appear that way. Sometimes even the use image editing is behind it, but we don't realize that.
In "What we really miss about the 1950's", Stephanie Coontz writes about the popular myth of the 1950's were the ideal decade for the American family. I think she did a very good job. She used a lot of statistics to back up her writing which really strengthened her argument. She also looked at both sides, which was also good. I think that she was trying to say that things weren't as picture perfect as they appeared back then. There was a lot more than meets the eye. They had problems back then just as we have problems today. They had to deal with issues like gender roles, discrimination, race, and much more. Most of that is probably overlooked a lot of the time.
I thought it was interesting how both stories were about this sort of "picture perfect" family, but were written in completely different ways. Both made me look at the subject from completely different perspectives and i think that is cool.
In soto's short story he tells of how as a child he much wanted his family to be just like the "picture perfect" ones he would see on television. He tried to get his family to wear shoes to the dinner table and asked his mom to make turtle soup or something so that they would be more like the ideal families he saw on television. Soto wrote the story from his childhood perspective. I think that was good because it made you think as a child when you were reading it; bringing back memories and helping you relate the soto as a child. I think the ideas in the story were pretty much right on as far as how kids think and are influenced by things such as the television. Soto, in his story, thought that the families on television were just examples of how normal families are and live. He didn't understand that that wasn't reality. That the typical family functioned far from that. If only family life was that simple and care free. Unfortunately, most families don't function in that way, but that is usually not the message that people get if they watch shows like "leave it to beaver". In fact i think that same principle is true today of things like advertising, television, magazines, and the media. Images of "picture purfect" models and people are presented and is recognized or seen by the world as normal or ideal and if you don't fit that criteria and look like them, then you are not normal. The truth is that you are more normal that you think you are and the "fake" people advertized are not normal. They are usually made or changed to look or appear that way. Sometimes even the use image editing is behind it, but we don't realize that.
In "What we really miss about the 1950's", Stephanie Coontz writes about the popular myth of the 1950's were the ideal decade for the American family. I think she did a very good job. She used a lot of statistics to back up her writing which really strengthened her argument. She also looked at both sides, which was also good. I think that she was trying to say that things weren't as picture perfect as they appeared back then. There was a lot more than meets the eye. They had problems back then just as we have problems today. They had to deal with issues like gender roles, discrimination, race, and much more. Most of that is probably overlooked a lot of the time.
I thought it was interesting how both stories were about this sort of "picture perfect" family, but were written in completely different ways. Both made me look at the subject from completely different perspectives and i think that is cool.
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Response to introduction
To be an american citizen means more than just hamburgers, french fries, and football. Its being an honorable, upstanding citizen who obeys the law and accepts the consequences for ones actions. Its also knowing that you are free to choose, think, and act in whatever way you choose, and that you are not forced to live in a certain way or believe in a certain thing. To be an american citizen also means that we have rights.... I like that.
In the introduction to Rereading America it talks about critical thinking and cultural myths. I don't know about you, but i could definitely try to see other points of view more often in connection with other cultures and certain ideas. I like the fact that you can have an opinion about something and feel very strongly about it, and at the same time be able to see the other side of the argument and respect it. Often times when i study the other side of the argument my perspective changes and occasionally i change my opinions. I think this book will help me to be able to see more clearly both sides to an argument or matter of opinion.
I am excited about this class because i want to become more tolerant of others and the way they think, even if i don't agree or see "eye to eye" with them. Being able to step back and see the big picture will be beneficial. I think Rereading america will help with this. This is also one reason why i love being an american citizen because we can use our minds, critically think, and voice our opinions.
In the introduction to Rereading America it talks about critical thinking and cultural myths. I don't know about you, but i could definitely try to see other points of view more often in connection with other cultures and certain ideas. I like the fact that you can have an opinion about something and feel very strongly about it, and at the same time be able to see the other side of the argument and respect it. Often times when i study the other side of the argument my perspective changes and occasionally i change my opinions. I think this book will help me to be able to see more clearly both sides to an argument or matter of opinion.
I am excited about this class because i want to become more tolerant of others and the way they think, even if i don't agree or see "eye to eye" with them. Being able to step back and see the big picture will be beneficial. I think Rereading america will help with this. This is also one reason why i love being an american citizen because we can use our minds, critically think, and voice our opinions.
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