Alliteration

 

Alliteration refers to the repetition of the initial consonant sound, like ‘Peter Pan picked a peck of pickled pepper’. One important factor of alliteration is the fact that it depends not on the letters but on the sounds. Therefore, ‘know-nothing’ is alliterative, whereas ‘chemical change’ is not. The purpose of alliteration is to create a consistent pattern that will catch the eye of the mind of the readers. Therefore, writers aiming for a way to draw readers’ attention to a particular scene usually use alliterative phrases in order to focus the readers' attention. Alliterative phrases are used occasionally in poems, song lyrics, tongue twisters, quotes, and even in brand names.

 

 

Let me give you some examples of alliteration. Firstly, let's look at the poem 'The Raven', written by Edgar Allen Poe. In this poem, there is a phrase saying, 'doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before'. In this phrase, the same initial consonant sound repeats, making a rhythm that acts as an efficient way to draw the readers' attention.

 

 

Alliteration is also used in tongue twisters, as it can easily make rhythms that can sound fun. One famous example is 'Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers. A peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked. If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers, how many pickled peppers did Peter Piper pick?'. Additionally, alliterative phrases appear in many quotes, such as 'Busy as a bee', and 'Make a mountain out of a molehill.'

 

 

As alliterative phrases can draw people's attention easily, it is used frequently in brand names. Famous companies like Coca-Cola, Dunkin Donuts, Best Buy are perfect examples of this. Many bands also use alliteration for their band name. Good examples of this would be 'Franz Ferdinand', 'Foo Fighters', 'Beastie Boys', and so on.

 

 



Oxford University

It would be good for me to firstly talk about going to Oxford University. Before I actually went there, I imagined that Oxford University would consist of old-fashioned buildings, a beautiful campus like many other universities in Korea and America. This imagination broke apart even before we arrived in the destination, when the tour guide told us that the university is composed of diverse colleges located independently in the city of Oxfordshire. Therefore, there wasn’t any ‘campus’ that I have imagined of, which disappointed me at first. Luckily however, I could easily become so excited to find out that Oxford was more beautiful than I imagined.

Just after arriving at the city of Oxfordshire.(This building is one of the oldest museum of U.K)

 

I don't exactly remember why I took this picture, but anyway, I'll post this here.

 

As I expected, there were a lot of beautiful old buildings, letting me imagine about what they would have looked like when they were first built. It is quite well-known that the university has a history of 1000 years, enhancing the human civilization by producing countless scholars who strived to deepen the knowledge of mankind. Scientists would have verified their hypothesis, and philosophers would have expressed their opinions freely throughout the history of Oxford. I came into thinking that this was the Great Britain could have the glory it had throughout its history, as the works of these scholars would have surely led to various technological and social advance. The buildings of the university looked so beautiful and meaningful for me now that I had these thoughts. Of course, there were also modern buildings which added to the beauty of the university.

 

I don't exactly remember where this picture was taken

 

This is a library.

 

Some parts of the movie 'Harry Potter' was filmed here.

 

I was also impressed by the system of the university. Oxford University was quite different from other universities that I knew of, most of which are located in Korea and America. Firstly, as I have mentioned, the university composes of colleges, and in order to enter Oxford, students should apply to a specific college. Secondly, Oxford has a tutorial system. Students have a tutorial class every time, and by doing the work that the tutor demands, students can improve their skills by great extent. This factor made me feel as if Oxford University has more interest to every individual student.

Trinity College

I might have mentioned earlier in this blog that I am planning to go abroad after I graduate from this school. Since I had that plan, I have only thought of going to a university in America, mainly for three reasons. First, I had more information about American universities. Second, I have experienced education system of America. Third, I have an American citizenship, which makes me feel at least a bit comfortable about America. However, by going to Oxford University, I came into thinking that planning to go to Great Britain for university might be a good choice too.

 

The city of Oxfordshire itself was also beautiful.

 

 

 

 

 

The start of the vision trip-May 8th

On the 8th of May, which was roughly about 10 days ago, I took a flight heading towards London, the capital city of the United Kingdom. The flight was quite enjoyable, and I spent time watching a few movies like Banchanggo(반창꼬), Wolf Boy(늑대소년), Hobbit, and some documentaries about soccer and American football.

Me and Woo-Hyeon at the Incheon airport

 

Waiting to get into the bathroom

Although the movie was fun, the superior external feature of the actor Song Joong-ki made me feel inferior.

 

It was about 6 o’clock in the afternoon when the plane arrived in London, and we went to a restaurant where we ate dinner. Although I remember the meal to have been quite good, I do not remember what we ate that day. I do have pictures I took in the restaurant, so I will post some of the pictures here.

 At the restaurant

 

 

Hello, Seok-Jun!

 

After dinner, we went to the hotel where we would spend two days. It was not a bad place to sleep, except the fact that I could not use the Internet. Therefore, I turned on the TV and watched a comedy program which I don’t remember the name of, which was funny enough to let both me and my roommate to spend some time laughing. I remember to have fallen asleep in the middle of the show. What a peaceful night to start a trip!

Nacirema-What it tells us

The essay about the Nacirema describes how cruel and hideous the civilization is. According to the article, people from the civilization often commit cruel acts, believing that it is good for their body. Therefore, members of the society of the Nacirma go through magical procedures in order to protect their bodies from illness. The article states with examples that a certain amount of sadism is involved in this procedure, and that most of the population shows masochistic tendencies. The procedure usually involves harming people in immoral ways, such as poking them with sharp object, and making a hole through their teeth.

Reading this article brought total disgust to me. Therefore, as I was writing the in-class essay, I kept on writing about how cruel and inhumane the culture of Nacirema was. However, I also considered the concept of cultural relativism, and therefore stated that we need to understand this culture. I thought that as we have a ‘superior and civilized’ perspective, we could not truly understand the culture of Nacirema, which I considered to be uncivilized and inferior compared to our modern society.

However, what Mr. Menard told us few days after we wrote the in-class essay brought total shock to me. He told us to read ‘Nacirema’ backwards. It is quite evident that I, like all the other students in my class, was impressed to find out that ‘Nacirema’ was ‘American’ spelled backwards. We couldn’t say a word, and Mr. Menard just kept laughing at us, looking as if he was extremely pleasured.

Everything in the article of ‘Nacirema’ became so clear at that instant. We could easily find out that all the inhumane acts committed by the fictional civilization were just sarcastic parodies of the daily routines of the American culture. For example, the shrine represents the bathroom, and the holy-mouth-men represent dentists. All the features of the civilization of Nacirema that have brought unpleasant emotions to me all proved to be features of American cultures. The only difference is that the culture was observed in a different perspective, a perspective presuming the American culture to be an ancient culture.

As I have read this essay, I unconsciously thought that the culture of Nacirema was full of violence and irony. It is probably because I unconsciously had the prejudice that I was living in a ‘superior’ and ‘civilized’ culture. However, reading this article, which observed America in a different point of view, I started to feel a sense of disgust without an objection. Therefore, I came to a conclusion that my perspective of ‘civilized’ and ‘superior’ was somehow wrong and quite prejudiced.

At the end of the essay, the writer states that it is easy to think of the Nacireman culture to be cruel when we try to observe them in a higher position. Therefore, I believe that from the writer was trying to tell us that we are usually wrongly prejudiced in diverse situations, and that in order to fix this problem, we should try to observe these matters at a different point of view. Furthermore, this essay was written in 1956, which was the time when many incidents related to ‘prejudice’ happened, especially the ones related to racial segregation. For example, in 1955, Rosa Parks was arrested in Montgomery for refusing to give her seat to a white person, which led to Montgomery bus boycott. In the same year, a fourteen year old teenager was killed for not showing respect to a white woman. It was an era when many people suffered from racial prejudice. It was also an era when these issues started to turn into serious social problems. Therefore, it was becoming necessary to get rid of these prejudices. From this evidence, we can conclude that the writer would have wanted to convey the importance of thinking in other points of view to get rid of prejudice. Through his essay about Nacirema, the writer showed to us how our prejudices can block us from making wise decisions, and also the fact that we need to change our points of view to stop those prejudices.

'Age of Stupid' film review

     The movie starts by hurling from bigbang to 2055 at light speed, only to find the debacle of human being by seeing the dystopian image of drowned London, buried Las Vegas, and burning Sydney. Why did the collapse of human civilization, which once ruled the whole planet, happen? The clue to the question is given by the Archivist (Peter Postlethwaite), who shows to us the lives of six people from the early 2000s, the era he calls as ‘The Age of Stupid’.

     Piers Guy, a wind farm supporter and a wind turbine developer, tried to develop a wind farm in central England, but faced severe opposition from the neighbors. Eventually, he failed to persuade the neighbors, as they were so opposed of building a wind farm near their town just because it would harm the aesthetics of their views. Even though they were cognizant of the importance of wind farm for saving the environment, they just didn’t want to change their conventional and comfortable way of living and overcome their NIMBY mentality. Human instinct definitely seeks not for any loss but for profit, which becomes an obstacle in other situations, especially when it is related to saving the environment. It is an evident truth that we must overcome this in order to save ourselves.

     The development of human civilization is also causing an extreme amount of harm to the environment. ‘The big problem is flying. Just one return flight, say London to New York, would blow our entire carbon-budget for about three and a half years.’, said Lisa Guy. Apparently, apart from ‘crimes’ such as dumping oils to the river and setting the forest on fire, flying is one of the most disastrous thing an individual can do to the environment. However, most individuals are not aware of this. Who of us would have thought that we were doing one of the worst thing we could do to the environment when we were on an airplane? This film shows that the advanced human civilization, along with the ‘stupidity’ of human race, may make it harder for us to protect the environment. Of course, scientific development may act as an effective way to soothe the environmental problems. Scientific technology can be used in various situations, such as developing ecofriendly energy, and capturing CO2 gas. Thus, we will need to have an insight about the consequences that would occur from every footstep that we make.

 

     The film tries to make a pathos appeal in order to bring sympathy to people’s mind. Fernand Pareau, who has experienced the climatic change and its effect on Mont Blanc for the last 50 years, explains to the Guy family that the glacier had melted by 7 to 10 meters in that year while taking them on a tour. Nevertheless, it is quite evident that the environment is now starting to get out of control. Such evidence can be found in current natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina, which was a disastrous hurricane that struck regions including New Orleans. Natural disasters nowadays are becoming stronger. According to a report by Oxfam, the rate of natural disasters has risen by 400 percent in the last two decades. It also concluded that the rise of the number of natural disasters was mainly due to the effect of global warming

     As the archivist ends his recording, he says ‘I find it surprising, that after so much effort the final act of our existence should be suicide. So why build this archive? It's a cautionary tale. Not for us. It's too late for us. But for, well, for whomever, whatever eventually finds this recording.’ The archivist is from a fictional future, a future that we might have to face. The archivist has made this record for us living in ‘The Age of Stupid’, facing the same situation that the archivist would have faced before the end of his factional world. In the film, we saw not only the selfish and ignorant attitudes of people, but also the ones who changed. The people from Chamonix made a protest in order to stop the tunnel from being widened. The Guy family changed their way of living in order to reduce the amount of CO2 they emit. Having watched this film, we must not be stupid anymore. We should not only be cognizant of the danger we are facing but also the importance of the changes we have to make. As the aphorism ‘Little drops fill the mighty sea’ tells us, every change we make will come into a big change that might save both the environment and ourselves.

As I was resesarching, I found a video you might like.

Speech script

Have you ever done something that failed you, both physically and mentally? Well, I have. I’ve done something that harmed both my health and hope, hope I had as a pure youngster full of passion and expectations.

A few days after the summer of 2006 faded away, I was told that my aunt had invited my family to Japan for a trip, which made me feek excited as I was fond of Japanese culture. For instance, my favorite animation characters were from Japan. Plus, many kinds of food that I loved originated from that country. These were enough to make a nine years old like me full of passion.

So, from the day following the announcement, I started preparing for my trip. I was so passionate that I even tried to learn Japanese by looking up words with my dictionary. Sadly, my language learning strategy was extremely ineffective, so all I actually learned after a few days were the most basic expressions like ‘Nan-da-yo’, ‘So-deskka’ and ‘Arigato’, which are still the only expressions I know. Even though this was the reality, I was really looking forward to my trip which was then only about two weeks left.

Time flew until the mid-term test, and there were only about three days left before I could sense it. I remember having spent the remaining days very cheerful and carefree, which is probably why I didn’t care about the due date of the milk I had with the cereal the day before the trip. Unfortunately enough, I already devoured two bowls of cereal when my mother started scolding me for drinking something that should have been thrown away at least one and a half weeks ago. I was able to assuage her by saying that everything would be fine, as the milk was in the fridge.

If everything was okay, however, I wouldn’t even be saying these things here right now. From the very next day, when my family arrived in Tokyo, I started to suffer from food poisoning. It was three hours after the arrival in Japan when the pain struck me. Imagine…I was just an innocent, pure child who was nine years old, crying and screaming, feeling as if every part of my organs were being torn apart. My body temperature peaked 39.0 degrees Celsius. The situation got worse as time passed, and we eventually had to call the emergency.

After I arrived at the hospital, I had to get the IV injection, and as I expected, I found out that my body was not in a good condition. I remember being told that the number of white blood cells in my body had risen by more than six times than usual. The doctors told me to get enough rest, and not to eat any kind of food that might stimulate my organs. Thanks to that advice, my family’s schedule for the trip in Japan was immediately canceled. Instead, we had to spend the week in my aunt’s house, constantly checking the state of my body. I was totally depressed about this because I had high expectations about this trip. I even prepared a list of 20 things I wanted to do in Japan, but only one of them was accomplished. Arriving safely in Japan. I couldn’t even grasp a chance to fulfill the other wishes. I was mentally broken, and it took me quite a long time to relieve the shock I got from it.

From this, I learned a lesson that I should be cautious about everything that I do. Everything I do, not only in important moments, but also in daily life. I have learned so thoroughly from this experience that one tiny mistake, such as ignoring the due date, can result in a disastrous consequence. We experience this kind of things a lot in our lives. We make mistakes when having conversation, taking tests, and keeping promises. These mistakes can be reduced if we just care a bit more. Keep in mind that the most disastrous incidents usually do not happen because of the biggest mistakes, but because of the small or normal mistakes that occurred just because we didn’t care. So, be cautious. Think about the consequences before you unconsciously do something. Even though this might make our lives a bit complicated and noisy, it would someday help us thoroughly.

My experience in USA(personal narrative essay)

It was five years ago, when my family moved to America to spend one year there. I was extremely excited about going to USA, because I always considered myself as part of USA, as well as Korea. My parents are both Korean, but I was born in a small city named Boulder, which is in Colorado, a state in America. Therefore, I have both American and Korean citizenship. So, I always thought without a doubt that I was part of both Korean and American society, even though I hadn't been to America since my babyhood. However, when I lived a 'real life' in USA, I had to realize that I was wrong.
My family settled in Seattle, Washington on Feburary, 2008. On the following day, I started to attend Echo Lake Elementary School, which was the closest school from my new home. I was full of excitement when I first entered the classroom. Everyone welcomed me, and I introduced myself to them shortly. This made me feel so comfortable, as if I was in a home that has always been mine. Unfortunately, this feeling turned into despair and embarrassment in the next few hours.
It didn't take me long to realize that I had a serious problem in English. I had to spend about 20 seconds to interpret every sentences that other kids said, which made it impossible to catch up what they were saying and participate in their conversation. I also couldn't understand my teacher's lecture and directions. Thus, I had to rely on other Korean students, and attend in ESL class, which was for those who were not capable of using English fluently. All of these happend in the first day, which made me feel wretched.
That day, I stayed up all night, thinking about how foolish I was to believe that a citizenship is the only thing I need to belong to a society. I spent all night thinking about what I should do, and I came up with a solution. The best solution was to find out the cause of my problem, and find a solution about it. After thinking about my own difficulties, I came up with a conclusion that I had to improve my speaking and listening skills.
From the following day, I tried to use English as much as possible in my daily life. I tried to speak in English with other Korean students, and I asked them to speak to me in English. I also used English when I was with my family. It was hard, and needed a lot of patience. But I had enough passion in increasing my English communication skill, so I kept the promise I made to myself.
My hard work really paid off. I could graduate from ESL class in only three months, and could have a normal conversation with other students two months later. Just before I came back to Korea, I could use English as comfortably as Korean. This enabled me to make lots of friends, and get a lot of invaluable experiences. I could finally feel myself as part of both Korean and American society. Even though I realized nowadays that reality is a bit more complicated than that, this was a feeling that I would always remember.
I also learned a lesson from this experience. Whenever you face a problem, find the cause of the problem first, and try to find a solution to it.