Individualism is one of the Americans' values

Summarize: According to Gary Althen, the most important thing to understand Americans is devotion to individualism. They like to consider themselves as separate individuals who are responsible for their own lives. They believe in something called "freedom." This allows them to choice their own decisions. However, we can see the individualism in the way of how they treat their children. One of the author's examples is a story about a mother and her son. He was at a local shopping mall, waiting in the line to buy some stuff and behind him, there were a mother and her son. He could listen to them. The boy said to his mom, "Can I get an orange Julius?" the mom said, "No, you don't have enough money left for an orange Julius. Remember, you bought that cookie a while ago. You have money for a hot dog only so you can buy a hot dog now, or you could save your money and sometimes later you could buy that orange Julius." If people from different counties heard this story, they would be wondering why that mother did that to her son. Unlike Americans, if they heard the story, they would understand why she did that to her son because Americans know that the mother is helping her son to learn how he can make his own decisions and the individualism.(American values and assumptions P 5,6)

Personal response: I agree with individualism. In fact, we have it in my country too. However, I don't agree with the above example, I mean the way that mother treated her son because he was about three years old and I don't think boys in his age would understand this. I would agree with her if she did the same thing with a boy of seven years old. In general, in my country we do treat our children as the same way. The parents are trying to make theirs to learn how they can be responsible about their own decisions. Also, they are trying to make them more an accountable for their money. For example, my parents taught me when I was young how I can be responsible for my own money. When I decided to come to the United States, they told me," You have to earn your money. Then you can go to the United States." And this is what I did, I used to work for three years and after I saved money, I came here. In the beginning, I couldn't understand why they treated me like that but later, I realized that they were right.

Can we evaluate people from their behavier ??

Summrize: There was a story about two families who were in the park and were haveing fun but something happened made both families act in different way. there were two boys palying in sandbox. one of them ( Joy) was throwing sands into the other boy ( Larry). However, from there, both boys' fathers were fighting by using their personality traits. Larry's father was more politly then Joy's ones. By the end, Jarry's father took his family and left the park and on the their way tohome Larry's mom was upset and shout because of the way father handle the situation. The auther tried to send a message through this story to us that everyone always acts as their background and how childer act like their parents.

Personal Reflection: If i had the same situation or any, I think I would react as how the person is going to treat me. So, I say here that we have to use " It depends. " For examole, If I were too late and I want to catch my class and I have been looking for a parking for half an hour then after I found one, Someone came and took that parking. I would talk to that person first then if that person acts in bad way, I think I would make a big problem with that person. However, if that person explained to me why he or she took that place, I would just ignore the situation then leave.

The Heaviest Man In The World Is Getting Married On Oct, 26

The article: MONTERREY, MEXICO (AP) - The world's most obese man is getting hitched. Manuel Uribe says "He will wed longtime girlfriend Claudia Solis on Oct. 26 in Monterrey, Mexico." The two will be married in a civil ceremony at a location still to be decided.
Uribe is unable to walk, and leaving his house means being towed through the streets on his specially made bed.
This year the Guinness Book of World Records declared Uribe, who tipped the scales at 1,230 pounds in 2006, the world's heaviest man.
The 43-year-old has shed about 550 pounds with the help of Solis. The two met four years ago.
Uribe said "Wednesday, he will have a bite of wedding cake for photos, but won't eat any more because his diet prohibits it." (the Washington Times News, on Oct, 2)

If you are interested to read more about this article, you can visit below websites :

* http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/oct/02/worlds-heaviest-man-is-getting-married-1/
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manuel_Uribe
* http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/06/11/manuel-uribe-photos-pictu_n_106607.html

Personal Response: I took this article from Washingtontimes news. I have been thinking for almost an hour why this article grabs me? Is it because the heaviest person in this world is getting married? Or because the love is sometimes blind? Then I realized that none of them were the answer. In fact, there was something more interesting atleast to me about this article. It was about what this guy did and how was trying to make his life better as much as he could. His weight was 1,235 pound (560 kilo) but within two years, he lost about 700 pound. Also, he hasn't moved from his place since 2006 but even though he never gives up. However, what I want to say here is about our targets. That example shows us that we have to work hard and never give up. I do agree that everyone has a different goal but we all have something in common that we came from different countries to a new country for making our dreams true. Yes we might face many problems but that should make us work harder and look for more solutions. On the word, I can say that wherever is going to happen, don't give up! Because we will feel happy after we have done what we came for it.

L2 Learning & Successful

Summary: According to Mitchell and Myles,( the second language learners are people who embark on the learning of an additional language. the learners may be childer, or adults. they may acquired L2 ( Second Language) from a schools, works, or through the community by being with native speakers. "Indeed, in the late twentieth century, the target is highly likely to be English; a recent entmate suggests that while around 300 million people speak English as their first language, another 700 million or so are using it as a scond language, or learning to do so." ( crystal 1987,p.358). Also, the learner as language processor shows that Linguists and Psycholinguists have typically been concerned primarily with analysing and modelling the inner mental mechanisms available to the individual learner for processing, learning, and storing new language knowledge. As we sall see, there is some controversy among researchers in this psycholingusistc tradition on the question of age. Do child and adult L2 learners learn in essentially similar way? or , is there a critical age which divides younger and older learners.The balance of evidence has been interpreted by long (1990b) in favour of the existence of a better in the long run (Singleton 1995, P.3). Also, the book shows that there are differences between individual learners. In a recent two-part review (1992, 1993), Gardner and Maclntyre divide what they see as the most important learner traits into two groups. The first one is COGNITIVE which is evidence some factors. Intelligence: there is clear evidence that L2 students who are above average on formal measures of intelligence and/or general academic attainment tend to do well in L2 learners, at least in formal classroom settings. Language aptitude: 'Modern Language Aptitude Test' assesses a number of sub skills believed to be predictive of L2 learning success like phonetic coding ability, grammatical sensitivity, memory abilities, and inductive language learning ability. Language Learners Strategies: much research has been done to describe and categorize the strategies used by learners at the different levels, and to link strategy use to learning outcomes. The other group is AFFECATIVE which is also evidence some factors as well. Language Attitudes: social psychologists have long been interested in the idea that the attitudes of the learner towards the target language, its speakers, and the learning context, may all play some part in explaining success or lack of it. Motivation: for Gardner and Maclntyre, the motivation individual "is one who wants to achieve a particular goal, devotes considerable effort to achieve this goal, and experiences satisfaction in the activities associated with achieving this goal" (1993, P 2). Language Anxiety: "is seen as a stable personality trait referring to the propensity for individual to react in nervous manner when speaking in the second language" (1993, P 3))..... (P 17-20)

Personal Response: I do agree with the author and I like the ways she described them but there was a point which I don't agree with it. "Younger = better in the long run", it might be true but what I believe that if someone had a goal or a target, he or she would fight in order to get that goal, and it doesn't matter how old is he or she. If we took the English Language as an example for a second language, I think we would consider a strategies that we should go through them. So, the age has nothing with it. It's about how much we need to learn and how. For example, let's say there are two persons (young boy and old man) and both of them want to learn English as a second language and they both started from level 1 then after a few months, the young boy stopped going to the school and thought he had enough of learning English but the old man kept going so who do you think is going to be better than other?? However, the author mentioned a lot of strategies and ways to how we can learn a second language and I believe that all of them are helpful to us.

Welcoem!

Hi everyone!.... welcome to my world ;)