Haynam

In his interview with Wade Davis talking about zombies in Haiti , the host employed different tactics to induce the guest to talk about his findings. Some questions and comment he made are planned and some are improvised. From me , one distinct of an unplanned questions is the large use of discourse markers , also known as filler like “ well ” “ uh ” “ you know ” which signifies struggle of expressions of one ’ s ideas in his brain. The interview is about an anthropologist and his book about his research in Haiti. The interviewer had obviously made abundant preparations before the interview because he asked many questions with quotes from the book. So one lesson for a successful interview to me is to be fully prepared to the topic and the people we are going to interview otherwise we are much less likely to receive meaningful response. Another point I get from the interview is to respect our guest. During the talk , there are times when the host were raising questions and the g...

I like how she developed from the research questions in her Master’s thesis to the ones in her PhD. I wonder if it would make a difference had she not fostered a relationship with the children during the learning experiences? Coming from a science background without teaching experiences, it is amazing that she could work with a large number of children in interviews. As Katie mentioned in the QnA, what impact would it have on her interaction/experiences with the children? Were there any ethical consideration/restrictions that potentially hindered her interaction with the children? If so, how did she cope with them? Jingyu&Haynam

I am interested in finding out the advantages and disadvantages of different second language teaching modes-like biligual, immersion, transitional immersion-to find one that would work on an English as a foreign language environment like China the most.

In their paper Effectiveness of Four Instructional Programs Designed to Serve EnglishLearners: Variation by Ethnicity and Initial English Proficiency, Valentino and Reardon investigated the differences in academic outcome of English learner (EL) students in four different instructional programs: English Immersion (EI), Transitional Bilingual (TB), Developmental Bilingual (DB), and Dual Immersion (DI) and concluded that “the English Language Arts test scores of ELs in all bilingual programs grow at least as fast as, if not faster than, those in EI. According to the article, English Immersion program is a program all of whose courses are instructed in English only. Transitional bilingual uses 50% target language at first and quickly increase the proportion of time spent in English as the learner. Developmental bilingual program starts with 50% English use at first as well and increase the proportion each year depending on students’ needs. The difference between TB and DB is that the...

In both observation, I observed multiple targets. I found that I was never able to focus on all the objects--always had to shift attention from group to group.When I was observing a new group, I had totally no idea what the group I had been observing was doing, no matter how long I had observed it and how well I thought I had known their behavior pattern already. That is a perfect example of the hidden bear--I cannot observe everything even all are in my eyes. A difference between observing strangers and acquaintances was that when I observed strangers, I paid more attention to their pattern of behavior and predicting what they might do next while when I observed someone I already knew, I focused more on figuring the reasons behind their behavior--I tried to find an explanation to the behavior based on the facts I knew of them, no matter it was the real reason or not.

It was a Chinese community gathering.The members were preparing for the lion dance in Chinatown on Feb 18. They were divided into 3 groups, one practiced lion dancing, one practiced drumming and the other kungfu. The lion dance group was in the front of me. The coach was teaching two students how to do lion dance. The coach was a little bit bald, in white and had a big stomach. The lion he was holding was black covered withbeads glittering in different colors. He was explaining the steps--each step should drop in the interval of the drum so the dancer should pay close attention to the drum. The dancers were listening to his explanation, both with their arms across their chest. Then the coach asked the drum team to drum. There came the drum. My attention shifted to the drum team. It was consist of five people--one senior grey head, one man in his 30s, three children (two boys and a girl) in 8-10. The senior grey head, Mr Hung, was the head of the team. He was explaining the rhy...

I am in an indoor children playground. There are several children playing on it. Two children have been capturing my attention: a toddler was chasing a slightly older child. The older child was running and made a turn from time to time and the toddler fell everytime the child turns. When he fell, he let out a small cry but seeing his target running away gain, he immediately stops crying and stands up chasing again. The toddler is circling the older child which makes him more easily to fell when the child turns. Falling several times, the toddler finally runs to his mom who has been sitting in the edge of the playground watching. They talk in Chinese, which is especially clear in the midst of children laughter. Suddenly two boys start to play kungfu in the centre of the playground and that swiftly draws my attention. Then the mother holds the toddler to go away. In the playground, there were so many children playing at the same time that even though I tried to observe all of them, it ...

In the article Permitting Creativity in Science the author Janet Bavelas talks about how to encourage novel and creative ideas in science. According to it, as a scientists (or science students), when you notice something different, you should: 1) Avoiding dismissing it as something coincident and remember that “the more important the novel idea is, the more likely it will appear wrong at first, because it would inevitably upset the orthodox view”. 2) Never try to find a category to put it in. That is, do not simply dive into the literature review and simply put the novel idea in any literature. 3) Refrain from resorting to an expert of that field who would likely to underplay the idea with existing theories. 4) Try to design a new mode of experiment instead of simply replicating the existing ones. 5) Think out of the standard format of a journal article in the early stages. 6) Keep calm and carry on. Bearing those principles in mind and conceiving your new ideas, ...