Chapter2: The Social Origins of Mind

Chapter two of Geography of Thought talked about the folk metaphysics, the beliefs about the nature of the social and physical world, of Chinese and Greeks.

Nisbett mentions about "field dependence"(p43) and he says that farming people are more field dependent and they have better memory for faces, and sit together with others. I wonder if whether one is field dependent or not really changes the memory or the actions.

In page 45, it says that Westerners use logical rules more to understand events than Eastners. I do not know if I can agree with this because I think both Westerners and Asians are logical and there is no any big difference.


Yesterday, my dad came back from the US and after a long time of living separated, all the family members gathered today and had dinner together! I had been having a good time with my family today and I really did not feel like working on homeworks...but I had to...:( I think there is too much things to do for ELP.....:(
and why do we have classes tomorrow????D: lol

4/28/10

Today, we didn't have group discussion for the first time!
Rab taught us how to write a good paragraph, with topic sentence and concluding sentence.
I had learned these stuffs in high school but it was kind of hard to choose the order of the supporting sentences.
We did some practices on writing a good topic sentence and a concluding sentence by reading the rest of the example paragraph and I could do this well.
I now have to make sure that all the paragraphs of my essay are logic and well structured.

In the tutorial, we had a technology session and we learned about some great ways for research such as wonder wheel, time line, and many other searching options in google.
I hope I can use these well and find some nice sources for the essay!

4/27/10

wow wow...I had been forgetting about posting blog entries for this week...

On Monday, we discussed our essay topics choosing one of the classmates who seems to have very different opinion. I paired up with Yusuke and we discussed about our essays. I took too much time on talking about my essay and sorry for him not being able to talk much about his:S
He gave me a lot of new ideas that I didn't come up with, and I felt like I'm a little bit more prepared for the essay than before. Thanks Yusuke!
Oh and NP by Rab was really interesting and I now don't know what is true and what is not for the news I see in the TV or in the newspapers. I think it is really important for us to think, not just believing the information that the media gives us.

In yesterday's class, we got into groups and went over the Meiland/ Morgan test preparation questions. I just remembered the main points of the book so it was a good chance to remember and made the content of the book clear. I'm nervous about the test but the what I am scared the most is being late... I hope I wont:(

After the class, we went to Loyal Host for dinner. The food was good and I had a lot of fun talking with everyone! There are a lot of people who couldn't come yesterday so I hope we can hang out again;)

Chapter1: The Syllogism and the Tao

I finally finished the first chapter!!
This chapter was easier to understand than I thought and it was pretty interesting.
It basically talks about the difference between ancient Greece and ancient China.

In Greece, the personal liberty was important while the community and society were concerned in China. I thought this was interesting because I think this has effects on today's world that Chinese and other asians are tend to be in groups than the people from other parts of the world.

The part that says "the lacked logic and principle of contradiction made a little progress in geometry" interested me too because I hadn't thought the way of thinking and math are related.

I now understand the meaning of the Sign of the Tao, which was the sign I have seen in everywhere. To my shame, I didn't know that it was from China.

The chapter was looong... it will be hard for me to finish this book:(
I hope I can be a fast reader through the ELP.

4/22/10

Everything Rab taught us today was new to me.
Today's topic was Zotero.
I didn't even know that such thing as Zotero existed.
So...

Here is the Introduction to Zotero.
http://www.zotero.org/support/quick_start_guide

It is just useful!
You can easily create MLA, and other ways of citing sources.
I was shocked because I now know that I've wasted such a long time finding the author, the date, the publisher, and so on for my work cited part during my high school years.

I still have to understand more about it because I do not know clearly how it works yet.

By the way, the video Rab showed us was really funny.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnuULmbon14

4/21/10

I learned a lot in today's class, in which Rab taught us how to write an attractive essay.
It was new for me that the title has two parts, the eyecatching part and the detailed part.
I have written essays at high school but I hadn't thought so deeply about the way of deciding the topic so I hope I can come up with an eyecatching phrase for my essay.

He also taught us about the structure of the body and the conclusion.
I learned that we must try our best to create the essay that grasp readers' attention by considering well the structure of the essay.

And I'm not gonna change my reasearch question. It will be:
how should Japanese education change to make students more active?

4/20/10

In today's class, we discussed about Meiland and the essay we are going to work on.
We discussed in the group if there is assumption and dogmatic in our research questions and I learned that they make the argument weak in the writing.
It was difficult for me to find the assumption and dogmatic in the statements that Rab gave us and the research questions of my group members.

I think my research question will be:
How should Japanese education change to make students more active?
Is it too normal?

4/19/10

Today, we discussed about Meiland and learned about how to write an argumentative essay.

During the group discussion, Rab talked to us about the huge demonstration happened in 2003 in all around the world against the war in Iraq. We discussed why just a few of the Japanese students join the demonstration. After listening to the other people's opinion, I think that is because the Japanese students are used to not speak up for their opinions due to the education in Japan. It was a great chance to think how the Japanese education should be to make the students more active.

Also, I learned that the thesis statement of the essay is like the promise to the reader of what I am going to write about. Rab's explanation was very interesting and easy to understand.

posting video

Today I recorded a video in which I spoke about the two videos we watched.
It was the first time for me to record myself speaking and I realized that I should speak up more.
Also I have to improve my speaking skill because I still have to think a lot before speaking.

It was also my first time to post a video to the blog.

I learned a lot today such as how to record a video, how to post a video to the blog, and how make the link.

The first video we watched, mother of all funk chords, was amazing because I didn't think that each of the people who appear in the video is playing different songs. It is still hard to believe the song is consisted of may different songs because it is too perfectly blended.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tprMEs-zfQA

The second video we watched is made by putting many videos of different people singing the same song, Angels on the Moon. The first one was much better than the second one because in the second one, each person's singing level, the tone, and the speed of singing are different.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjY3UvQ2n98

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