Blog Assignment 4

Liu's need to be with other Chinese is very natural. It is fairly true that at some point a man who either lives or studies in a foreign country intend to get into his contryman community, no matter how big his heart was at the beginning. This intention can be look at as seeking for resonance from people who shares more similarities.

These similarities varies from language spoken to life experiences. As society and culture is relatively abstract, their influences on people within the environment is sometimes subtle. And that is the reason why in occasions an unacquainted fellow countryman could have a better understanding about particular things rather than a foreign friend.

Despite of the midterm exams, perhaps this week is just a normal week to most of the UD students. However, for all the Chinese students Wednesday is going to be a big day. Since October 1st is China's National Day, and this time is even more special because China is becoming 60 years old. And due to the time difference between here and China, it will be Wednesday noon time for us. I would say not many students who are not Chinese would know that. Since I already found my Chinese community, I have people who will be sharing my happiness on that day, and most definitely we are going to celebrate our motherland's 60th birthday.

All in all, a person will be more comfortable when hanging out with people who has more similarities to him. And that is the core reason of Liu's need.

Blog Assignment 3

Nonverbal expressions surely played an indispensable role in everyday communication. Facial expressions and gestures are the two major elements of nonverbal communication. Since human-beings are incredibly evolved to have 98 muscles in face, we are granted with the ability of making tons of different facial expressions. This ability enabled us to understand each other even more precise, considering we are not only hearing but also seeing others' emotion let-out.

Because the skills of making and comprehending facial expression come along with birth, and barely vary after birth. The facial expressions used by people from all around the world scarcely differ. Unlike facial expressions, gestures differ quite a bit from culture to culture.

Some of my American high school classmates really enjoy using the quotation mark gesture. It is kind of funny when they do the trigger pulling move with forefinger and middle finger of both hands. I have never seen any Chinese people doing that while talking, although Chinese people love to play with irony.

Another example for gesture difference between cultures is hand gesture for numerals. Once during my AP Chemistry class, I tried to tell one of my classmates my answer to the example problem by using hand gestures. However I failed. And it came out to be the hand gesture that I have been using starting from elementary school is seemingly only used by Chinese. All my Nigerian, Korean, and American classmates are confused and also amazed by how we Chinese can express six through ten using only one single hand.

Nonverbal expressions are not hard to comprehend. Therefore, if we pay more attention about puny details about people around us. There is a huge chance that we are going to figure out something that we will usually ignore. How interesting is that!

The breakdown of first impression

For most people, their social personality is different than their real personality. In occasions, a person would like to, or even sometimes need to hide their real personality while socializing with certain people in order to reach particular goals. In this type of case the social personality shown could be both totally and partially different from the actual one. Meanwhile, some people would simply limit the amount of personality they show to strangers, and the percentage of the personality shown normally increases as the relationship gets closer. All in all, as we are only capable of catching a blurry glimpse of one's personality at the beginning, getting a first impression that is completely distinct from the true side of the person is not a rare thing to happen.

When I first met my high school basketball coach at the varsity team try out, he gave me an impression that this well built, severe looking, six-seven man really should not be easy to get along with. That is a quite legitimate impression you will get from a man like him. However, when the try out begins he changed this whole impression in my mind. I was stunned how humorous he is when he gave the speech that emphasizes the importance of enjoying the daily drills as well as the games; also when he explains basketball is a that simple game since all you need to do is put an orange ball into a similar colored rim. Furthermore, when he teased those senior players for not standing out strong, I realized I was deceived by his appearance.

Since some part of my social persona is quite much the opposite from my true personality, I always make my peers form totally wrong impressions of me. I still remember my close friends' reactions when they heard that I was almost elected to be the quietest senior by my fellow classmates, " Are you for real?" is written on each of their faces. It will definitely be a joke for a talkative guy like me to be granted with that honor.

Building one's image is similar as playing jigsaw, and informations we got about the person are just like the small pieces of the jigsaw. Therefore, in order to complete the image we need to gather all the informations and put them in an organized order. And that is something impossible to be done in a short time contact. So our first impression is always wrong, or at least it is not accurate.

Blog Assignment 1 Pt. 2

In the essay Mother tongue, Amy Tan points out an issue that we use different ways of speaking toward different people and also in different scenarios. That is definitely true. The essay reminds me of my high school life in China. I am very grateful to be blessed with the opportunity to study and live with a bunch of characteristic youngsters. During the two years of time along with my classmates, we as a whole gradually start to share some exceptional talking habits. Eventually, we developed a relatively unique way of speaking, sort like a word usage-wise dialect, we call it the language of Class Five. The dictionary of Class Five is built up by special idioms and funny sayings occurred in daily school life. For instance, one of my classmates quoted a Chinese proverb once during our Chinese class saying "the ocean of knowledge is endless, and only hard work is able to carry you through"; however, he said it wrong, what he said is "the ocean of knowledge is endless, but you should know the shore is right behind your back". Well, technically there is no grammatic flaw or any linguistic error in his sentence, but by saying that he changed the moral from encouraging scholars to work hard into encouraging scholars to quit striving when facing difficulties. Therefore, his word just cracked the entire class up. And for sure, this "meaningful" proverb was honored into the Class Five word bank. The Class Five way of speaking is not likely to be fully understood by people outside of our class, because even some regular words contain different meanings to me and my classmates. Thus, I speak differently to my classmates than to the others.

The major difference between formal and informal ways of speaking is that when you are speaking formally you will make the person, who you are having conversation with, feel that he or she is well respected; and that is a kind of feeling people usually do not get from having conversation in informal language. Personally, when I am talking to seniorities, I will slow down and try to speak as clearly as I can to make them catch the point that I treat them with reverence, I regard them as the ones who are at a higher position as I should. Hence, formal or not formal, it is all about attitude.

Different sorts of "language" is all around us, and mostly they differ in terms and pronunciations. About terms people use, there is the difference between the use of buddies, mates and dawgs. Also there is a saying, that reveals the difference in pronunciations, which is "you say your tomato, I say my tomato". To native speakers these puny differences are more seemingly to be affected by geographic variations. However, to a person who treats the language as a second language, is it more about personal choices.

Colin's Mini- Bio

Hey guys!

This is Colin from Beijing, China right here. I was born on Aug. 2, 1991. I am a sheep of the Chinese Animal Signs or the Chinese Zodiac, a Leo of the European Zodiac. My Chinese name is Lin, Shen; a combination of my parents' last names. This name bears their expectation of me to be able to carry on all their talents and honors; I think it is very meaningful and for sure a good one. And here comes my full English name Colin Lin, Jr. and my dad is the senior Colin.

I am really into music, especially Hip-hop and R&B. I am a rapper myself and I have a pretty fly MC name-- CJ. LOL! Yea... I thought about changing my MC name into Lil' CJ because of my shape, but it did not work out that well. Some of my friends like to play the irony and call me BIG C or Tha BIG C, personally I am all cool with those nicknames, HAHA! I formed a group with two of my high school classmates back in China called BGM. We decided to use BGM as our group title because the other two members' MC names are Bakee and MC- Jimao, and if you put C and J together you will get a G just like my profile picture. Put our initials altogether that is BGM, background music, we wish our music to be favored enough that people will actually use our songs to be the BGM of their videos, parties or whatever. We had a fantastic time writing lyrics, making loops, recording and producing songs. Along with our intensive Junior year in high school we produced two songs. What? Not very efficient? Whatever you say man... Sadly, all these ended in our senior year. I came all the way here to America for my senior year and the other two are facing the life changing College Entrance Tests. We sealed our mics up along with our memories.

So. I had my senior year of high school in West Nottingham Academy, Colora, MD. It is a incredible place. I had my first time experience of being in a basketball team, my first time experience of being a boarder there in WNA, and it is just so much that WNA gave me.

Sorry to be a little bit carried away. So besides music and sports I also enjoy watching animations (One Piece is my beloved one), and playing cyber games such as FIFA, Winning Eleven, 2K, Counter-Strike, etc. Therefore, if you share the same interests with me, please let me know.

I major in Finance here in UD, and I guess it is kind of too early to talk about career goals. At least the image of future occupation is still vague to me, a stockbroker maybe.

My dad works for Marriott international, and my mom is self-employed. They both speak English, and my mom speaks French as a second foreign language. They are both great role models to me and indeed affected me a lot.

Yea, I confess I am a bit shy to people who are not that close to me. But do not get fooled by this side of me, after you know me you will see a brand new Colin standing in front of you. And yes, I will try to be more initiative.


Peace out for now.