My Academic Writing Journey

My Academic Writing Journey

      Academic writing has always being a challenge for me as a student. My initial academic writing assignment involved writing a short psychological journal, which introduced me to APA citation and pushed me to write from a neutral stand point. Though I had to re-write my journal for several times, I am motivated by the improvements after each draft. Consequently, I was awarded a decent grade for my first academic writing , which gave me the courage to tackle and complete many more academic writing assignments in the future.

      In the beginning, I would feel sad and discouraged to complete my academic writing because it would take up large portion of my free time while my peers would just finish the assignment with ease. In addition, the fact that these people did exceptionally well in their assignments made me envious and attributed my incompetencies to raw writing talent alone. In hindsight, I had neglected the fact the people who excelled in academic writing had writing experience compared to me. However, my attitude towards academic writing took a major turn when one of my Vietnamese friend shared his academic writing journey and how he managed to improve by spending more time and effort on academic writing. Following that, I did expend some time every week to read academic paper and identify some of the key-points of a good academic writing. My experience completing several ES1102 assignments has strengthen my foundation and enable to write more confidently.

 

      In short, my journey had a lot of ups and down, which asserted significant improvement and made my writing experience more positive and enjoyable. Having struggle and work my ways through multiple academic writing assignments taught me about the importance of good academic writing skill. I will work hard and continue to keep up with my regular routine to improve my academic writing.

My Academic Writing Journey Draft 1

      Academic writing has always being a challenge for me as a student. My initial academic writing assignment involved writing a short psychological journal, which introduced me to APA citation and pushed me to write from a neutral stand point. Though I had to re-write my journal for several iterations, I am motivated by the improvements after each iteration. Consequently, I was awarded a decent grade for my first academic writing , which gave me the courage to tackle and complete many more academic writing assignments in the future.

      In the beginning, I would feel sad and discouraged to complete my academic writing because it would take up large portion of my free time while my peers would just finish the assignment with ease. In addition, the fact that these people did exceptionally well in their assignments made me envious and attributed my incompetencies to raw writing talent alone. In hindsight, I had neglected the fact the people who excelled in academic writing had writing experience compared to me. However, my attitude towards academic writing took a major turn when one of my Vietnamese friend shared his academic writing journey and how he managed to improve by spending more time and effort on academic writing. Following that, I did expend some time every week to read academic paper and identify some of the key-points of a good academic writing. 

 

      In short, my journey had a lot of ups and down, which asserted significant improvement and made my writing experience more positive and enjoyable. Having struggle and work my ways through multiple academic writing assignments taught me about the importance of good academic writing skill. I would work hard and continue to keep up with my regular routine to improve my academic writing.

Effect of Social Media on Academic Performance of Students in United States

 

Effect of Social Media on Academic Performance of Students in United States

           In recent years, social media has slowly replaced the role of traditional media as the latest news platform and a place where everybody could interact and form friendship online. Though social media contributed many benefits to the society, problems such cyber-bullying, decline in productivity and health issue are byproducts of social media. In particular, I would like to highlight effect of social media on academic performance of students in United States . Decline in academic performance among the younger generation would be a threat to the economy as it would imply a deterioration in quality of the country's future workforce. Besides that, students who suffer academically may experience low confidence and indirectly affect their career planning. The current proposed solutions include relegating responsibility to the parents to control their children and limit access to social media websites in school computer lab. Although these measures could cope with the problem temporary, but will fail in the long run as students will eventually access social media outside of the school and their house. Therefore, I will attempt to explore impact of deterioration in academic performance on students in United States. Furthermore, I will explore solutions that focus on educating the students on effective usage of social media and making social media an integral part of the school curriculum.

          Firstly, declination of academic performance poses a threat to their confidence and career path of students while the country's future economy may suffer due lack of quality workforce. Students who perform poorly in school will lose confidence on their intellectual skills and lower their self-esteem. Consequently, this lack of confidence will worsen their academic performance because confidence is highly correlated to academic performance(American Society Horticultural Science, 2011). Furthermore, poor academic result may hinder and prevent students from taking degree related to their aspired career due to unfulfilled academic pre-requisite. For instance, a student who fail his or her Biology subject in school would be unable to enroll in Medicine or Dentistry. These students most likely need to take foundation course which will hinder or delay their graduation. In addition, strong academic achievement also helps to promote job attainment in career of interests(College Success, 2009). On the hand, the impact of academic performance to sustain need of the economy for trained professionals should not be underestimated. Generation of students with decent academic performance is required to fulfill the market demands and maintain productivity of the country.

          Present solution to this issue relies heavily parent and school to control social media usage of students. The enforces restriction on amount of time spent on social media website and also include the use of monitoring software by the parents. However, this is simply not effective because it did not focus on altering intrinsic motivation of the students, instead it focus on the infrastructure. The student could still access social media website through other means such as visiting Internet cafe or using a friend's laptop. Research has shown that changing one's intrinsic motivation is fundamental to behavior change(Yogarabindranath, 2013). Therefore, a better solution would be to focus on educating the students on power of social media and its many wonderful uses besides interacting with friends. For instance, social media education should be conducted by the school to teach proper usage of social media and better utilize it for academic purpose. However, it will take time for students to change their behavior overnight;therefore, parents need to cooperate with the school in this programme.

          Another proposed solution is to include social media as an integral part of lesson plan by the school authority. Instead of limiting access to social media websites, the solution take advantage of social media as a tool for teaching. This method is used by Alcohol Anonymous during their session to change the habit cycle of those who suffer addiction to alcohol, and it involves changing the routine when a cue is triggered. In this case, the cue would be visiting social media website and the routine would be surfing aimlessly on the website. Charles Duhigg claims that by changing the routine with the desired routine, one is able to alter his or her habit cycle(Charles Duhigg, 2012). The desired routine would be using social media for school work and conducting academic research which will help to boost academic performance if they students maintain this habit loop.

          Effect of social media on academic performance of students in United States bring about many unwanted consequences such as economic repercussion. Proposed solutions include educating students about proper usage of social media and integration of social media into school curriculum would help to reduce the negative impact in the long run. However, let us not forget that there are other issues such as online sex abuse and cyber-bullying that are equally dire.

References

American Society for Horticultural Science. (2011, April 4). Student confidence correlated with academic performance, horticultural science class study finds. ScienceDaily. Retrieved March 11, 2015 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/04/110404105901.htm

Duhigg, C. (Feb 2012). The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business. Published by Barnes & Noble.

College Success. (2009). 'The Path to Career Success: High School Achievement, Certainty of Career Choice, and College Readiness Make a Difference. College Success. Retrieved March 11, 2015 from http://www.act.org/research/policymakers/pdf/PathCareerSuccess.pdf

Yogarabindranath S.N.(2013). Intrinsic motivation: how can intrinsic motivaion play a pivotal role in changing clinician behaviour? Journal of Health Organization and Management Vol. 27 No. 2.

Reader's Response Draft 2

Did Twitter and Facebook really build a global revolution ?

By Jina Moore

       In “Did Twitter and Facebook really build a global revolution ?”, Jina Moore highlights the multiple roles of social medias in global revolution and how its impact varies geographically. Moore also emphasizes on many occasions by citing communication experts how interaction between off-line and online activism propel momentum of protests. Besides writing about the effectiveness of modern social medias as organizing tool and broadcasting platforms in many Middle East countries, Moore also illustrates how technologies predating Facebook and Twitter was used as a mean of protest. Most importantly, from her writing, she hints that Facebook and Twitter does not play a central role in building a global revolution compared to cultures of online activism.

       Moore with her experience as human rights and post-conflict reporter enabled her to support her arguments with real life testimonies of social activists from around the world. This certainly helps to boost her credibility while drawing the connection between modern technologies and social activism. Moore's writing style that paves paragraphs with contrasting accounts is effective in keeping the readers engaged. In addition, I appreciate the effort to educate the readers with how predecessors of social medias were used by social activists in past revolutions. Therefore, the readers are able to compare and contrast with the roles played by Facebook and Twitter. She also deploy some scare tactics towards the end of the article by introducing the willingness of some social media companies to share your personal data with the authority.

       Moore repeatedly mentions the how the symbiosis between off-line and online activism drives the protests forward by quoting the failure of protesters in Uganda to gain traction on the streets despite massive response on Twitter. This reminded of the viral circulation of “ALS Ice Bucket Challenge” on Facebook that prompts the public to raise awareness of the disease. Though many people responded to the challenge, the actual number of peoples who seek to understand ALS and donate to the fund is pale in comparison to its popularity on Facebook. Furthermore, she adds that social medias may not be able to transcend the deep social division and reach out to those who are disconnected, hinting that social media alone is not sufficient to build a revolution. However, this is not always true as the United States quest to establish the Stop Online Privacy Act(SOPA) was thwarted by Aaron Swartz who encouraged implicated websites to alter their web pages.

       In her article, Moore argues that social media such as Facebook and Twitter does not play a role to organize uprising, instead, she notes that cultures of online activism plays a more pivotal role. She further substantiates her claim by citing the success of protest against President Bashar al-Assad led by a blogger who has 50,000 readers a month. Although I concur with Moore that the newest platform is not of utmost importance, but features such as anonymity, fail-tolerant and ease of use is crucial to build a global revolution that overcomes borders and continents. We learn from this article that off-line activism is fundamental and culture of online activism had been the driving force behind countless revolution. From the evidences provided in the article, it can be said that Facebook and Twitter did not build a global revolution but help to broadcast news of revolution. However, achieving global revolution would require more sophisticated social media platform than Facebook and Twitter that could protect social activists from the authorities. It is time to look ahead of time and think about global revolution in a larger context such as tackling global warming, health education and energy crisis which may require a different tool sets.

Summary: Is Your Social Media Content Infringing on Copyright Law ?

          Rapid proliferation of social media content on the Internet put its users at risk of infringing the Copyright law. There are various copyright issues pertaining to usage of social media content by personal users and businesses. The article highlights the importance for participants of social media to be aware of common misuses and to be educated of possible solution of this issue.

          Many are alluded to thinking that materials without copyright trademark are not copyrighted, which can especially detrimental towards businesses with reputations at stake. Furthermore, social media website's user agreements made the users liable and responsible for their posts. Muckensturm states that the common misuses of social media content involve unauthorized use of trademark, unauthorized use of content without attribution and sharing of content without proper linkage.

 

           It is recommended to use Creative commons licensed work to avoid copyright infringement; database of Creative commons works can be found on Google, Flickr or Soundcloud. Besides that, understanding of the regulations related to copyright such as The Digital Millennium Act, concept of fair use and give credit to owner of the contents. Lastly, it is advisable to create your original content as copyright is awarded to its owner upon creation.

My English Language Learning Journey

         English language is very foreign to me who grown up in a household where almost everyone converse in Hokkien. It was fortunate that my mother had decided to send me to a kindergarten, St.Anne, where I first learnt to write basic alphabets and count digits in English. More importantly, I could never forget how I enjoy the singing session with my classmates every afternoon. Though I have struggled to sing every single words in the song, it was this experience that had truly remove the mysterious veil on English language. Furthermore, it gave me the courage to enrol myself in English related competitions in primary school, such as storytelling, stage drama and singing. 
 

        Learning a language entails the practice of speaking, listening, writing and reading. In secondary school, I have little problems with completing my written assignment because of my daily reading of the English newspaper as well as paying attention to global happenings on the Internet. I was also deeply engrossed in reading fiction and non-fiction books whenever I am free;consequently, I did my managed to acquired solid grasp on vocabularies tested in school. However, speaking has always been my Achilles’s heel, having its root from my lack of exposure to public speaking and exposure to English speaking 

medium. 

 

         Later in senior year, I had decided to take the initiative to improve on speaking and listening skill. Since I was very interested in science and technology, I find videos of TED(Technology, Education and Design) talks very inspiring; non-native English speakers from different walks of life, education background and cultures could converse their ideas with such clarity in English. Therefore, I dedicated a few hours everyday to watch minute details of speakers of great calibre such as Sir Ken Robinson, Bill Clinton and Malcolm Gladwell. It dawned upon me that one could improve his speech by listening to good speeches. It did not stop here, I later volunteered to participate in a UNESCO Youth Peace Ambassador Workshop where I had the opportunity to present my idea of peace and share it with my fellow brothers and sisters from other participating countries.

        English language is a truly fascinating language that allows me to connect with other people from around the world, and till today I still find my style constantly learning beautiful discoveries about the language. This is my story, what about yours ?