Peer Review Comments

All pageantry aside, a peer review in my opinion is a constructive criticism or suggestions, executed with some level of honesty and integrity, with the objective of improving the work of another person while benefiting oneself as well. In Ms. Wright’s English class this spring, 2012, I had the opportunity to review and make comments or suggestions to the works of some very bright students. I approached the assignment with an open mind, with no pre-conceived ideas. It took me two to three readings in some cases to fully grasp the main ideas or the messages of the writers. Perhaps this was due to the fact that English is not my native language, and that I was processing the information differently. Overall, members of my group wrote brilliant papers.

Nevertheless, as I revisit these comments that I left, in contribution to my peers’ paper, I discovered that most of my concerns were related to the lack of substance in my view in some areas. In addition to the lack of substance, there were also the issue of style; I could not attribute the writing to a particular style. The tones were more conversational and simplistic. In some instances, I noticed some similar errors that I tend to make in my writings as well; which are excessive narration or meandering, thereby reducing the effectiveness of the message. My transitions, as I would come to noticed, are also deficiencies that requires improvement on my part, and I am diligently working to improve on that.

With subsequent in-class exercises and questioning, I have learned that wordiness does not necessarily make one’s writing easy to read or effective, however, clear, coincide use of one’s resources does.

I visited the Bank of America (BofA) website. As we all know BofA is a very large financial institution, and their website reflects that.
The first noticeable things are the visually recognizable icons/logos and color combinations, they are well placed. The menu tabs are arranged accordingly – placed strategically. You see, this is a company that knows and understands its customers. As a result every element of the site are preconceived, every action of visitors and account holders are predictable, thus making the entire website a dynamic website.
In my opinion, BofA site serves many purposes, among them are: to maintain existing customers; which involves servicing or monitoring everyday account activities, like checking and saving accounts, online payments and inquiries; another things this website masterfully accomplished is the cross-selling of products and services to existing customers, and soliciting prospective customers, to purchase products like investment products and services, loans, real estates among others.
BofA targets the general public, as clearly suggested by the website. From students, military, ordinary individuals, businesses – large and small, and institutional banking. This is clearly manifested in the way the site showcased the bank’s subsidiaries as well.
Although most of BofA’s clients visit the website to execute just regular transactions, however, the website has links that are redirected to external pages to serve purposes that required less online security than the main BofA website, but in a seamless fashion.
I am convinced, that because this site is a dynamic website, some of the forms and surveys being filled by visitors, are used by the bank to further understand its customers’ current financial habits and to predict future habits to benefit and protect the bank. Overall, this is a well designed website that achieved the expectations for which it was build.

Views of my Views

Meta Blogging

Meta blogging – in my mind, I first thought the phrase meant my views about the ways I express my views - ok, maybe not, but that is the way I processed the meanings of the phrase;

In few words, If I am asked today, to state the top five, most important academic activities for this semester, without hesitation I’ll say; definitely the “Blogs”. You see, at first I was to some extent, annoyed with navigational aspects of Moodle and how to make sure that my blogs gets read by my peers. When I became familiar enough with the system, I regained my confidence to begin expressing myself through this medium called “Blog sphere”.

Generally speaking, I am a very opinionated person. I love to state my opinion about all issues, politics, social or religion and anything in between. I am very inquisitive at times.  In an oral conversation setting, I tend to say more and usually my thoughts expressed, are complemented by body language as well as others gestures. However, the challenge for me then, is manifested when I try to pen down those conversations for others to read.  I find myself fighting against the temptations, to replicate my oral conversation style to written ones. Meanwhile, I soon learned, through our numerous classroom discussions and other on-going class projects, like the “Literacy Inquiry” papers, that writing for others, must, in the end, be clear, concise and to the point. This made me take a rather different approach, one that is risky and perhaps vulnerability for me.  After all, I am writing for others not just for my personal journal.

Although there are, apparent, multiple styles of writing present in my various blogs, however, this is mainly due to the emotions that are evoked during my oral conversations on certain subjects. I am a strong believer in the phrase; “practice makes perfect”. I feel that by constantly blogging – identifying and correcting my mistakes, I’ll become a great writer one day. But for now, let’s Blog on…

The Fellow Review

The Fellow Review

The process was really fun. All cliché out the door, I truly mean that. It was great to have experienced the reactions of others to my writing; it truly was for me anyway, to know what my fellow students thought of my paper about “Literacy”, from a different cultural perspective.

Here I am, trying my hardest to interpret sounds, emotions, situations, events, words and everything in between, into some short and sweet English verbs, adverb and adjectives, just to set the background of my story. Before I realize that my paper was too long and boring, I was already on page five. But my fellow reviewers were graceful in their comments.

You see, it’s important to absolutely understand a question one is being asked to write about before writing your first line. Because once that pen hits a surface, one can only imagine where it’ll end. It truly depends on the subject matter. Here I am, writing about LITERACY in a society with extremely complex cultures, not just one or four or even ten, we are talking about tens of languages influenced by several hundreds of other languages. Had it been another topic I would understand the need for short and sweet and right to the point, but it is about Literacy. No matter which part of my society one was from, the mere idea that his or her experiences or definitions of Literacy could be fully expressed in a couple of pages is difficult.

From the fellow review, I learned that short and precise is better at times for one’s readers. As I mentioned earlier, my group was constructive in their comments and they also took interest in my story during our oral discussions in the classroom. I learned a few things about myself, through this process.

Timeout or Prison Biz?

I still do not fully understand the philosophy behind the great American “Time Out” as a top form of punishment for American children and adults alike.

My understanding so far, is that adults may send their under-age children to Time Out (T/O), for whatever reasons the adults deemed not worthy of their praise or approval, with the hope that if the children executes the Timeout as ordered, they might one day be worthy of this glorious praise. Yes, this is a highly recommended form of punishment and corrective measures by authorities in America.

The more I think about the timeout method in modern America, the stronger I am of the convictions that it could not have been like that, a century ago in America. Think for instant; when a child throws tantrums or gets out of control, the proper corrective measure used is Timeout; Child throws books on the floor after a warning not to do so, they gets Timeout; …steal a cookie, gets Timeout; Refused to do chores gets Timeout; Aggressions in any form against anyone, gets timeout.

This is where I ask my first question, what is the philosophy behind throwing our children into isolation, hoping that for whatever reason we send them there, will absolutely improve or maybe eradicated? In my unscientific opinion, this is laughable. When I reflect on the Timeout method culturally, from an outsider’s perspective, I can almost draw parallels between it and the entire Prison system of modern America.

The American adults whom were once children, goes to the Penitentiary today, for exactly the same acts or behaviors for which Timeout was used as remedies or solutions. Adult “Timeout” in modern America today is Prison, let us call it what it is. Unfortunately, there are more beneficiaries of system today than was a hundred years ago. This brings me to the second questions; who ordered the studies that led to suggesting that Timeout  is the best way to punish a child for doing anything that is not worthy of our Praise as a society?

I recognized, studies or discussions are needed as a society regarding this topic. I believe that as a civilized society, the isolation of our children from cradle to grave is wrong.

No, I am not totally dismissing the effectiveness of timeout, in some areas it serves well. But I will say this, before we send people to the corner..., toddlers or adults, we should try to use less cruel methods to address the causes for which a person is send to the CORNER/JAIL. Timeout in my opinion is temporarily taking away ones freedom to participate in life and whatever life means to them at that moment. My views may be adversely stated here, so, please give me your thoughts about this topic…because I am still not clear about the philosophy behind it, after all those years.

MS

Little Voice

I was sitting around thinking about something to share with my class, on my blog. Suddenly, an idea dawn on me, why not let your classmates know how you felt after the venture activity. Well, little voice, you are right, that is exactly what I will do.

I did not know what to expect from the venture activity, scheduled by our English professor. All right, maybe a little. The name somehow give me a little hint, it suggested some sort of adventure or collaborative effort/exercise, perhaps.  

The morning was awesome. Temperatures in the upper fifties, could not ask for a better spring morning. I mean a superb weather for a 7v7 mini soccer warm-up.

When I arrived on campus, I headed straight in the direction of our regular classroom. But half way there, I saw a group of my classmates, standing in sort of semi-circle, while a student, whose back was turned, speaking and displaying some gestures, like plane or a bird or something like that. I was about few yards away and I could not figure out who was the person. When I got there, I saw it was John. (THANK YOU John). You see, John is in the US Army and have served several tours overseas. Here he was retelling some of his fun memories on board an aircraft; everyone seemed to take keen interest to what John was saying. I was too, when I got closer to the group. For someone like John, this venture activity was going to be a breeze, I assumed, because he has been a part of the Ultimate Team, the U.S Army. My assumptions were right on the point. As the morning went by, the other classmates trickled to the designated spot, one by one. Now come our professor, whom I must say, had equally, as much fun as we did. At first, some students seemed a little shy or maybe reserved. Then the exercises started, progressed and ended. Due to time constrains I will not elaborate on the games in this post. However, it is worth mentioning, from my perspective, that the participants of this venture activity are an awesome bunch, with different, but unique personalities and characteristics, and if put to use properly; will serve humankind a great deal.

So, if one asked me how I feel about my English class now…?  I feel reassured of success in this class.

Thank you little voice...

M.S  

Say something…and I’ll

Say something…and I’ll

Say a sentence and I can tell where you are from. This is how some people are so good with sounds. As soon your teeth gets out of the way and your tongue and the other parts of your talking crews starts to move, your brain sitting in the driver seat, they start making strange and unusual noises, that people around you hear.  You see, the earlier you train this talking crew, (i.e.…the mechanism that allows you to make sounds), to any specific sound, that is the sound it will get used to. This includes various talking muscles.

Excuse my preceding junk, non-scientific analogy here. Nevertheless, what I am trying to say here is this: from early on, an individual can train himself or herself to speak in any accent and any language without much distinction from the indigenous of any location. Take for example; I know a kid from Liberia, West Africa. He arrived in the U.S. at the tender age of five, with a very strong native accent. Today, he is seventeen. However, when this kid speaks English, one would not recognize that he is from Liberia, given the fact that, Liberian English is just as accentuated as the “Jamaican English”, easily recognizable. In addition, when the same lad is speaking among his peers, an ordinary person not from Liberia will never understand a word coming out his mouth. This is what I call linguistic adaptability or, you may call it flexibility, talent, skill…whatever. The moral here is, it is great to have keen ears for sounds of others, but it is always a beautiful thing to be open-minded, different and to accept people as such.

Without those crazy sounds from different places, the world would be a very BORING place to live. Therefore my friends, enjoy the crews that make those ugly sounds from our mouths.