After I took this class

  This writing class (actually the name of the class is reading) helped my writing in variety ways.

  First of all, I gained many skills about writing. By reading many articles and my classmate's blog, I became more used to English and grammar. Reading other's draft and make correction and some comments really helped me a lot. I can see my errors and by correcting others blog, I can review the grammar also.

  One of the best thing I learned from this class is about punctuation. I have never used semi-colon or dashes before. Of course , I did not know the meaning of these expressions also. However, suprisingly, I understand the sentence with those punctuation and sometimes I use them in my writing! It made my writing looking good and I feel proud of myself whenever I use them.

  For last, by practice writing in this class, My wrting speed got faster. It usally took me a day to finish one blog writing at the begining. I had to write outline in Korean and than translate that in to English all the time. However, after I talked with Mr.Still and while having talk, I made my mind to think in English and write it directly. It was much harder at first. I miss the due date of the homework sometines also. But now it changed. I can write much more faster now! (I am writing directly in English this one.)

  At the starting of the semester, I really did not like writing. My grammar was terrible and I did not know most of the big words. I had to search barely hundred of words just for reading one article and that also happened when I do my writing. But through this class, I gained my confidence about writing. I still have to search words for whole day but, I know I can do it now. MR.Still and my classmates offered me chance to talk and listen English. Especially whenever I have question - whether it is big or small - Mr.Still taught me kindly with some jokes. Also a lot of writing - yes the blog homework - made me get used to typing English. With all these situations, I think I like writing much more than January now. Thank you to everyone in the class.

About 'Yeon Woo Kim'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fc97JarwUEc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSVCyTExGxw

I love listening to music. I put on earphones almost the whole day whenever I have time. There are so many artists and musicians I love. In pop, 'My chemical romance' , 'Tayler Swift', 'Kelly Clarkson' and 'Maroon 5' are my favorites. What I want to recommend to you, however, is about a singer in Korea.

Some of you might have heard about 'Psy' or his hit song 'Gangnam style'. But most of you might not have heard about 'Kim Yeon Woo'. He is one of the best vocalist in Korea, but he was not well known to people before he made an appearance on the TV show called 'I Am a Singer'. That show is now gone, but once it had a great rating in Korea. It was a survial show about singers. Seven singers prepare performances, and the audience votes for the best singer in that show. The singer with the lowest vote is eliminated. Kim entered the show, and it is sad to say, he dropped out in the very first show. However, he made a legendary video, and after that, everyone in Korea realized him as a great vocalist. The You Tube video above is the one that made him famous. The name of the song is "If Like Me" and is one of my favorites, and also one of the most popular songs in Korea.

        There is one more great song by 'Kim Yeon Woo', which is 'Can't Hate You'. In the video above, he in wearing a black mask. That is because that show is called 'King of Masked Singer', and all the people sing a song with a mask on in order to hide their identity. The original singer of that song, in 1995, was BANK and Kim re-made it. His vocal is so clean and stable. He also has power to touch the audience as well. Just in my opinion, this song is so attachable to his voice, and that made this performance much better.

  I know you do not know much about Korean music but, I would appreciate it if you listen carefully to these two songs that I love so much.

About Exam #2

First, I think I did better on the test than last time. I could solve the problem in shorten time than before. Also I could gain my confidence while I figure out each questions. Most of all, there was no question that I can not write down anything, and it made me proud of myself.

The biggest thing I did for preparing the test was memorizing all the terms from the sheet. I noticed the importance of words memorizing from last exam. So I wrote down all the terms and it's meaning for a week. I tried my best because explain the term in English is quite different even I know it's meaning in Korean. As I guessed, most of the words came out in very first page. Unlike last time, I filled out all the blanks in my own words.

Last time, I spent almost all the time reading articles which Mr. Still handed out. This time, however, I did not look over the article at all. Instead, I could earn time to solve almost all the problem in the textbook. After I saw the some of the texts in text book printed on the exam sheet, I was on cloud nine. Without concerning a lot, I could go over smoothly.

In spite of I done much better than before, it does not mean my preparation for the test was perfect. I made a terrible mistake. I miss understood the range for the test. I thought the range for last test is excepted for this test and I did not worked on those part. In the above, I said I filled in the blank with self esteem. But actually it was only for what I studied. I spent a lot of time at thinking other terms. I will never make this kind of mistake again.

I have some parts which are improved and some are not. But Thomas Edison once said like this "Failure is but the threshold of success". With this experience, I got a lesson. In next exam, I will prepare more properly and achieve a better grade.

Bad eating habits.

    People need to eat well. Good eating habit makes people feel fresh and help them to grow up more ideally. Eating well makes us more likely to work on something, such as studying. However these days, many people do not eat well. They possess various bad eating habits.

    First of all, many people today go out to work without eating breakfast. Some people do not get breakfast with any reason but most of these people miss the meal because they do not have time. Especially people in big city are too busy to make breakfast at morning. So they just get coffee instead. 

    With similar reason as above, some people intake fast food all day. People who do not have enough time to get food just visit fast food restaurant and snap the burger. Man with less money do the same thing. Those foods make people full but they also make people difficult to control their mind. As we all know, they make people obesity. It causes many diseases such as diabetes. Most of all, we can hardly take in essential nutrition by eating fast food. It is critical for having healthy body. 
   
    It is not a good eating habit even though you do not eat fast food, if eating time is not stable. For example, there is a person who takes lunch every 12o’clock. Just for today, he is planning to eat at 2o’clock. His mind is thinking about lunch at 2o’clock but his stomach does not. It secretes gastric juice in twelve but nothing is there, which means you get heartburn. On the other hand, there will be no gastric juice when he actually eats, and it is not good for digesting.

    These are some of the bad eating habits. Many people have them. These are especially appears to the social beginner. People who just stand by themselves are easy to get the habits because their mother does not cook for them anymore. I want to cite to them. “Make good eating habit and be healthy!”  

Cellular phone addiction.

Barbara Graham, in her article “Confessions of a Quit addict” says her addition to quitting gave her “a rush”, “a charge”, “a biochemical buzz”. In my case, cellular phone addiction provided me those exciting feelings. I used to play games, text with friends and watch YouTube almost whole free time! However, I lost my benefits while I am raptured by this amazing machine.

First of all, I cannot concentrate my work. I have a lot of stuff to study and plans to work on. However, game sound I just played, funny jokes in the text and the images from YouTube which I watched impressively keep ringing in my head. I have to struggle with those while working and of course, progress did not going well. Also I have no time to start new activity. Our world is full of entertainment! I want to go Africa and watch the sunrise at dune 45 with my best friends. Learning how to play drum and keyboard is also great thing. But temptation of using my phone bothers all these wonderful things.

To get rid of it, I need to find and work on something interesting which can remove my interest from this habit. Having exercising and go to training center can be one of them. I heard that if people move their body, they do not think other things except what they are working on that very time. Or I can start music with my friends. In the above, I wrote that I do not have time for learning instruments. However, starting something I am interested in with someone else might be more interesting than just looking on the screen of my cellular phone.

After I get rid of cellular phone addiction, my life will change drastically. I can focus on anything I do in that very time. Which means, I can be more faithful in living my life. 

About Blow's article ' Library Visit, Then Held at Gunpoint '

To be honest, I am not familiar to any of the writer of three authors: Blow, Rouner, Steinbash. I did not read articles in English before, nor books. However, from now on, I think I will remember one of them, Charles Blow. I like his writing ‘Library Visit, Then Held at Gunpoint’. He share his son’s story and claim about what Yale security officer done to him. Then he cites that the method of solving problem was unacceptable.

First of all, I like the way he develop the story. He explained us what happened in his son’s viewpoint. It starts from “This is how my son remembers it:” He noted down exactly what his son commented, such as “I did not pay him any mind, and continued to walk back towards my room. I looked behind me, and noticed that the police officer was following me.” And this way of writing can make reader think it is about their own experience – indirect experience. Of course it made me more likely to agree to son’s emotion – confusion, scared.

Blow wrote down the climax part at the very first paragraph. “He had been accosted by a campus police officer, at gunpoint!” Also he inserted his emotion – outrage - to the sentence. This writing strategy aroused our curiosity and interest. Moreover, he used the word ‘Gun’. By using this provocative term, he snatched our attention and made us focus on the essay. I have short attention span, but I could finish reading this story with full attention.

For last, I like the way he wrote down with expressing his anger in the middle period. “Why was a gun drawn first? Why was he not immediately told why he was being detained? Why not ask for ID first?” He pointed out the problem one by one in outraged expression. And this kind of writing reduced my fury and stuffy mind which occurred while reading the article. I kept nodded my head while reading this part and I felt like Blow is my spokesman.  

The article ‘Library Visit, Then Held at Gunpoint’ involves personal opinion, but it also has emotional expression – it looks more likely human being. That is the main point why I like this story and Blow. 

About Exam 1

This was my very first test of Reading class. Unlike computer programming and math – which I am attending this semester – I did not have any ideas how to study and what to study for Reading test. Of course, I need to spend more time than I expected in preparing the test. In contrast with computer programming – I prepared about three days – or mathematics – I did not prepared at all for this subject - , it took about a week for studying reading. I studied average 2,3 hours a day.

           First, I focused on the vocabulary in the paper which Mr. Still handed out. I looked over my notes and textbook to find the meaning and wrote it down on my note. I already knew some words in Korean but it was difficult to explain in English. After that, I went over my notes. There were three big things that I have to know in notes. 1. Meaning of Leisure reading and Academic reading, and difference of these two. 2. Some activities we have to do while reading. 3. Some kind of punctuation and when do we use it. My goal was memorize all of it, however I just finished ‘Leisure and Academic’ and ‘Activities while reading’. The last thing I studied was (I thought this one is the most important) reading and summarizing articles we did in class. In Korea, professors used to make questions from here, so I worked on here mostly.

           The most good I did was reading my notes. Almost everything in here came out exactly on the test. It is funny because most I regret while preparing test is I did not focus on my notes. So from now on, while I prepare for the test, I will look up more in notes and print which professor handed out, and do not study article a lot.

           My score will be terrible, because what I thought most important was not on the test. Moreover, I confused the meaning of two terms, subjective and objective. Through this test, I learned what to study. Next time, I will make my study plan differently and receive better score.