Persuasive essay – We should exercise and exercising is important to us.

        Why we should exercise and why exercising is important to us? It is because exercising is one of the most important things that we should and supposedly we do in our life. In Malaysia for example, heart disease is number one killer which can easily be prevented by doing exercise.  More than 1.6 billion people in the world are either overweight or obese and Malaysia is one of the countries that stated the highest rate of obesity. For your information, exercise not only reduces your risk for health problems and several diseases, but it also has an effect on overall appearance. Exercising can improve self-esteem and confidence and it has been proved. The truth is when we are doing exercising, it can be even fun and it has numerous benefits that we can that. It is important for us to exercise so that we ca live in a healthy condition, live longer and live more happy.

Let me tell you the reason why people should exercise. For number one reason is because it will help you to keep fit and healthy. As we can see, Malaysians are eating numerous amounts of fast foods these days, so heart disease is becoming more and more common. One out of every four Malaysians is suffering from some form of heart disease and it has become silent killer in this country. Obesity is the main cause of this condition. The more body fat that we have, the greater our risk for heart disease. However, we can easily prevent this disease by doing exercises. Exercising makes the heart muscles stronger.

Next is the second benefit to exercise. It can improve self-esteem and your confident level. Most people think of exercising as only being a physical activity but it is also a mental activity. There experts has been studies and show the evidence that people who exercise have higher self esteem and their confident level is higher that people who does not do exercising. It also showed that active people are less likely to have depression and anxiety. Not only that, exercise can give people more energy which will help people to have positive outlooks on life and it helps to relieve tension and stress. When we do exercise, our body releases endorphins, which are chemicals that create a happy feeling in brain. Plus, when we are exercising we will bring more oxygen into our lungs and our brain.

Next, it will help you to improve your brain function and your memory. From my own opinion, the best reason why we need to exercise is because it is really fun actually. I know that most people think that exercising takes up a lot of time and it requires too much work. Actually, when people take the time to try exercising, they will realize that it is an enjoyable experience. It does not matter how you do the exercise but it depends on as long as you are being active. Everyone enjoys different sports or activities, so it is important to figure out which is the best for us to do it. It is important because when we are having fun, we do not even realize that our exercising and we will look forward to it every day. Setting goals and rewards will help us stay motivated and consistent with exercising. We must know that, there is no greater feeling better than achieving a weight lose goal and being able to feel good and confident about our own body.

In conclusion, exercising is the key to making your life healthier, longer, and happier. It is one of the most important things in life and it's one hundred percent beneficial. Many people come up with plenty of excuses to not exercise; however, if you truly want to improve your mental and physical health you will find the energy and time to exercise. Everyone should take time out of their days to exercise, so they can improve their lives in many ways. So next time you are deciding whether or not to exercise just think of the benefits you will experience from it. It is extremely rewarding and worthwhile.

Cause and effect essay – Global Warming

Today the world biggest problem is global warming. Many scientists believed that our production of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases is having a heating effect on the atmosphere and this could be very dangerous for human life. There are some problems that related to the global warming and some suggestions for some ways of solving the problem.

           As we all know, there are many problems that could be the result of global warning. But one of the biggest problems is the rising of the sea level. This could result in the flooding of low lying coastal areas and cities, such as Egypt, the Netherlands and also Bangladesh. The most that frightened is some countries might even disappear completely. Not only that, there are another problems that caused by global warming is the changes in weather patterns. Some areas of the world are experiencing increased hurricanes, floods and other unusual weather. Next, the third problem associated with global warming is the effect on animals. For sure this will affect the population of the fish while the disease might become more common because of the insects which spread the disease.

As people said, if there is a will, there is a way. Actually there are a lot of things that we can do to solve the problem of global warming. One of the solution or method that we can use is to stop producing CO2. We can do this by switching from oil, coal and gas to renewable energy. Next, the other thing that we can do is by plant more trees. It is because trees can absorb carbon dioxide and produce oxygen, which is not a greenhouse gas. The third solution is we need to use less energy and to recycle more products. The most important thing that we need to remember is generating electricity is one of the main sources of carbon dioxide. Then we will produce less CO2 if we use less electricity.

In a nut shell, if we make small changes now in the way we live, we can avoid huge changes in the future. Scientists, governments and individuals must work together to overcome this world problem. United we stand, divided we fall. 

Compare and contrast essay - Social Media; A good thing or a bad thing?

A big question needs to be answered. Social media is a good thing or a bad thing? That was the most frequent that has being asked lately. Well, there are always two sides of everything. It is because it depends on your perception and how you perceive it. Plus, everyone has their own opinions, so we do not have any rights to ask them to follow our opinion. The same goes to the social media, most people admire it as a revolutionary invention and some seem to take it as a negative impact on the society itself.

As a good human being, we supposedly complied some of the positive and negative opinions from others. As we all know, social networks started as a place to connect with our friends in the terms of much better way. To be honest and from my own opinions, many of us might have found our old pals from school or college who were out of touch due to one reason or other. Well I would say that I have and I thank to social networks for this matter. Plus, social networks have provided us with the opportunity to communicate and of course to get connected with other people. Not only that, because of this connection we can build better relationships with friends with whom we are unable to meet face to face or personally, and let them know about our life and take input about their lives and events happening with them.

With this social networks we are able to communicate even the distance separated us no matter how far it is. Not only that, we are able to communicate out thoughts and perceptions over different topics with a large number of audiences and we also can raise our voice. The sharing feature available on the social networks will make our opinion about any topic reach huge number of people even to those who are not on our friends list. Then we have to make the option to make groups with people who are like minded and share the related news with them and later ask for their opinion or input about the topic. To make it easy, there are a number of options that are available for us to communicate with others on these social networks.

Many of us have made social as a crucial part of them. We do not even noticed about this but when we opened our desktops or our laptop to access to the internet, we sub-consciously open our favourite social network to the latest up dates. Business has noticed the value of social networks in our life and they were using different techniques to promote their own product with their own way. On the social platforms, there are number of customized applications that have being made whose the main purpose is to promote their own brand or product. As a social marketing is cost effectively and brands have a huge audience, they are shifting more towards to social marketing. 

The extensive use of social media can actually cause addiction to the users and this has been shown by many studies. They feel to post something on their pages or check others posts as it has become an important part of our life. This experienced is based throughout their day.

Extreme usage of social media has reduced the level of human interaction. Because of social networks the interaction with other people has become effortless and people have isolated their lives behind their online identities. Face to face communication and meetings has been reduced and many of us have lost the flavour and charm to be together under one roof.

Mostly, businesses used social media to find and communicate with clients. But it is a great distraction to employees, who may show more interest in what their friends are posting than in their work tasks. We can see that even though new technology products have become available that allow social networks to be blocked, but their effectiveness remains spotty.

As a conclusion, we stated and mentioned a few positive and negative points of social media but it does not have the explanations whether social media is a good thing or a bad thing. So it stands somewhere in between. Plus, it depends on our own perceptions. Do not forget that everyone has their own perceptions – do we think social network is a good thing or a bad thing? 

Narrative essay – A holiday I would never forget

Holidays it is a time where everyone gets hyped up over and most of parents will planning what are the activities that they will do for the whole family to spend their quality time with. Holiday is the best time for students, teachers or even lecturer to have fun, waking up late, celebrating and best of all, going for a vacation! In my case, a holiday that I would never forget is a fruitful one that I experienced two years ago, where my family and I went for a vacations and spend for a week in the land of K-Pop and ‘kimchi’-Korea.

            Finally, after ages n the plane, our family arrived in a beautiful Korea. The moment when we are stepping out from the plane, we could feel the chilly weather to our bones. We were never experienced that kind of weather before in our country so my siblings and I were so excited. When we passed through the immigration and baggage claim, we were talking animatedly about our surroundings. Since we went there with tour group, we knew we were in good hands.

The first thing that happen was we were supposedly needed to take a bus to check in at the hotel as instructed. I guessed I was overeager without thinking. Then I ran to a random bus and knocked the door. The old bus driver opened the door and locked me with a puzzled expression. He started asking me a question but he asked me in his languages, something in Korean which of course I did not understand what he was talked about and then I tried to reply in English. Luckily, my father came before I could make the attempt and he quickly apologized to the driver bus and walked me back to the tour group who was watching from far, shaking with laughter.

            It was a bit past lunch time when we were done checking our hotel. Suddenly, everybody’s stomachs were grumbling. I have no ideas why but thank God after checking in, we were going to have our lunch and do a bit of sightseeing. While waiting for the others outside the hotel, we walked around nearby. There was a row of vending machines that sold various snacks and beverages, including Haagen Dazs ice-cream and instant noodles. My mother had a craving for Nescafe, so she spent her first Korean money on that thing.

At the restaurant, a delicious meal was already spread out for us. To be truth, that was my first time we all tried to eat kimchi, a spicy and sour vegetable side dish. I did not think it was horrible, but for me I preferred the fish kimchi much better. We all used chopsticks, so that was quite awkward for me and my family as we were not skilled at using them yet. Being Malaysians, we used to eat rice, so I think it was a good thing that the Korean meal included rice and a few other side dishes, eaten from a Bento box. At first, it was weird though the rice was sticker compared to the rice that we used ate at home, perhaps it mainly to make it easier to eat using chopsticks. There was also hot and scrumptious miso soup together with the meal. Since my sister and my brother did not like it much, I finished it. Then I gulped the warm soup down my throat. It was a nice contrast from the shivering weather outside.

The most unforgettable moment that I want to highlights is when one of our activities that we did when we were in Korea which is skilling.  Everybody from the tour group was looking forward to that. But what impressed me is even the 52-year old couple travelling with us. They do not have any problems during the tour yet they were eager to do all the activities. Since it was not fully snowing yet, the hill was covered with artificial snow. After grubbing our ski gear, we listened to a briefing by the instructor. He was very kind and helpful especially toward the elders. Plus, he likes to smile.

            Feeling jumpy and hyperactive, my sister and I made our way to the cable car and successfully skied down a slope. I thought, “We’re natural at this,” and my sister do not agree with me that time when we see how our parents and brother doing. Then my brother suddenly started to throw a snowball towards me and my sister. No doubt, it hit me and we started having a small snowball fight of our own, just like in the movies. It was so fun because we cannot have this kind of moment in our own country, Malaysia. I guessed we got a bit out of hand and my sister accidently hit a man’s back. At the time when he turned around, he had and angry look on her face and started to walk towards us. Quickly I hurried my siblings to continue skiing with our parents and we ran away from him before he could catch us. Thank God we can run from him safely. It was one of the moments that we could never be forgotten as we recapped the moment.

 In our way, skiing is like swimming. Why do I say so? Well, when swimming, you will feel tired, but you would see the effect when you get ravenous and eat more after a session or when you intend to take a nap, but it is extended to long hours. The same goes to skiing. When we arrived at the hotel after skiing, we were drained out and starving. Instant noodles saved the day! We all ate curry-flavoured Maggi together, savouring the momentary pleasure. We also dozed off quite early that night, right after going for a walk to enjoy the amazing night view of the mountains, and breathing the cool, fresh winter air.

        Shopping in Korea was also different compared to Malaysia. Its malls were packed with small shops or stall on every floor. Big boutiques were not seen as much as the quaint kiosks. Nevertheless, I found shopping at their markets more enjoyable, especially because you could haggle the price. Their specialities   were crystals, fabrics and outerwear. Apart from that, I also liked their wet markets, mainly because they were very clean and they did not have that fishy smell. I remembered a shocking incident when walking through the stalls of the wet market. A large fish jumped out its aquarium and onto the floor. I stared at it and suddenly, I saw a huge cutting knife slicing through the fish's neck! It was the owner of the stall's doing. Then, the owner left the fish flapping around lifelessly without a head.

 There was also a treasure trove among the stalls of the wet market- a tiny shop which served grilled seafood. My family stepped into the shop and ordered some grilled fish and cockles.

After saying our prayers, we devoured our mouth-watering find of the day. Dripped in a type of sauces, the seafood was the best I had ever eaten, as you could taste the freshness. Or maybe I was just hungry after a full day of activities.

If it was up to me, there were so many things to write on my memorable trip to Korean. Not only we got to spend quality time together as a family, but we also learnt countless new things and even discovered hidden talents. My father always said we should travel with an open mind and an open heart. This is when you get to see your capability to adapt to changes. Just enjoy the simple things in life and be thankful of what you have. So, do just that. Who knows you might discover a part of yourself you never know existed?    

This song is for you Miss Amreet and thank you for everything :)

Argumentative essay – Health or wealth, which is better?

“Look to your health and if you have it, praise God and value it next to a good conscience; for health is the second blessing that we mortals are capable of a blessing that money cannot buy”. (Izaak Walton)

            This is example words of wisdom and there is no one would question their validity. But there are times when people do value money over their own health. When a person has been desired of a thing for too long, he logs for it and money is the commodity most in demand people wants money to fulfil their needs. They think that money can buy anything they need. It can help rent or build house. It can buy medicines, clothes, fruit and food. Not only that, it can pay for the small pleasures of life as well as the big ones.

            Health is more important than wealth. Health is the necessary condition while wealth is the sufficient condition. Wealth is important but we need both of them in order to live happily. But as you can see, the necessary condition is more important. Health is the necessary condition which means you cannot get anything that you desire unless you are healthy. This is the most important factor.

            Wealth is just a sufficient condition, as there are many way to be successful not only being healthy. You can try to become a famous singer or a well-known artist of professor without having a lot of money. All you need is just being healthy. O the other hand, we cannot buy health with money. Today, there are some diseases which have no cure. We need to remember one thing, wealth does not always make life more healthy and happily. Even if you are billionaire, you will feel unsafe because afraid of being killed or kidnapped for your fortune will speedily harm their health and shorten their longevity. Furthermore, without being health, how can you enjoy your health? As an old saying, “Where there is health, there is life”. That is why health is more important than wealth.

There is no denying the value of money and the pleasure of enjoying it. I know that everyone needs money to live as well, but there are basic issues involved. If money can be got only after a huge amount of sacrifice, is it worth? Is it really necessary for human beings to go on increasing their needs and temporary pleasure? Or would it be wiser to impose a self-restraint on one’s needs? Nowadays, people get so busy in getting money and then they forget how to enjoy with that money. Engaged in getting money, man has no time for his family or his friends and at times no time even for his health. On the other hand, the pursuit of money may adversely affect both his physical and spiritual health. He may overcome his initial scruples in his desire for power and money. The big question then is how much evil is justified to get to the good.

            The statistics are clear that people who are healthy live longer and more happily than the rich people. The majority of rich people are taken effect by money pressure, it will make their life uncomfortable because they always have to think about their money, money and money. They never stop to think about how to produce more money and how to protect their money. We can see that today, many young people use almost all their time to earn as much money as possible. They do not care about themselves because they think when they have money, they will get want they want and money can make them healthy. This is completely erroneous. People earn like mad until they have stress and waste their money on treatment. They have forgotten that after they die, they will leave everything behind.

            As a conclusion and from my view point, I would like to be healthy instead of wealthy. It is because I can do anything includes becoming rich but I cannot just work hard, drop my health and live the rest of my life just in bed. I do not what that to be happen. It is good to live healthy and remember that money cannot buy health. 

Links to academic web pages :

http://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/
http://www.examenglish.com/PTE/pte_general_level1_listening_part1.htm
http://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/
http://www.englishpage.com/verbpage/verbs14.htm
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/grammar/learnit/learnitv343.shtml

Reflection - week 14 (last week)

I am quite upset because this is the last reflection for my blog because this is already week 14. The last week and last lecture for this course, Writing for Multimedia and The Web. Supposedly we have class on next Monday, 15 September but Miss Amreet said that she wanted to take a leave on that day so we need to make replacement class. We decided to do our replacement class on Wednesday, 9 September.  On that day, we only have presentation on our Digital Story Telling project. There were three groups left so they need to do the presentation on that day because it was our last lecture for this course. Muhammad Syarafuddin’s group was the first who presented their video followed by Puteri Liyana and Zul Hanif’s group.

At the same time, Miss Amreet called our name one by one because she wanted us to sign for our assignment requirements. Before she dismissed the class, she gave the last words and I am touched. Even though she is quite strict to us, but I know it is all for our own goodness. She wanted us to be the best. I got the opportunity to take picture with Miss Amreet. 

Reflection - week 13

I cannot believe that this is already week 13. It means that next week is the last week for this semester. To be truth, I am not ready to sit for final yet I still have assignments to do. So I do not have time to make a revision or study for my final. I hope I still have time and it is not late yet.

Today, in Writing for Multimedia and The Web class, we need to present our digital story telling video. There were three groups who presented their video and my group was the first group who presented our video. The title of our story is “The Ship That Never Sinks”. We did not act in our video, but we use the cartoon animation. It is because we do not have much time to act out and we thought that this is the best way to do it. Calvin, Jayson, Lim Sue Chin and I decided to use Domo Animate as a platform for our digital story telling. Since both of Calvin and Jayson were busy with their work, we need to divide our work equally. So we decided Calvin and Jayson they do the scripts. Sue Chin and I do the animations and edit the video. After presented our video, Miss Amreet asked us few questions regarding on our Digital Story Telling assignment. She asked us how we can get the title and why we choose the theme of friendship in our video. Not only that, she asked what the challenges we faced during completing this assignment. 

Yes, I admit that there were challenges during doing this assignment. First of all, we need to choose the platform. There are many cartoon platforms that available but we need to check it one by one because some of it was difficult to use it. At last, we decided to use Domo Animate because it is easy to use. Plus, the characters suit us. Next challenge is we need to do the cartoon animation on each dialogue same when we doing the recording. We need to record each dialogue. There is a part when we need to record the voice more than one time. The hardest part is when we need to edit the video. It was our part, Sue Chin and I. We need to adjust the animation time with the dialogue voice. The part of editing was the hardest and it takes time. 

Reflection - week 12

We do not have any lecture for this week - holiday.

Reflection - week 11

This is week 11 already. On this week, Miss Amreet does not do any lecture about our course. What she done is she checked each of our blog and then she gave the feedback and also comments about our blog. Some of us, they need to add pictures or maybe some quotes or a video to make their blog alive and interesting. Unfortunately, some of my classmates have not completed their reflection until week 10. So far, when the time she checked mine, everything is okay she did not say anything. 

As you can see, I chose vintage theme for my blog because I do love vintage style so much. I have post my reflection until the latest week and I have complete all of the three essays; My Family, My Friends and My Self. Not only that, I added song in my blog playlist so that when people read my blog, they can hear my favourite songs and this will not make them bored. Plus, I had posted pictures and quotes to make it more interesting.

Later, I need to update my blog because I still have to do the reflection until the last week which is week 14. Not to forget, I need to post six different types of essays in my blog. At the same time, my group and I working on in our last assignment, Digital Story Telling and we need to present our video next week. 

The music of the Piano Guys was like balm to my soul!

Reflection - week 10

              This is week ten and we continue our lecture with Miss Amreet as usual. She is a very responsible person because she always came to the class on time. I admired Miss Amreet because of her work, she prepared everything before she come to the class. In this week, she gave a lecture on the topic best practise for writing for the web. She was using power point slide on her lecture. It is all about the style of writing.

            First thing first if we want to write we need to write succinctly. It means our writing must be clear, clean and the sentence should be active sentences. Plus, it should be crisp, snappy sentences that can attract and hold our reader’s attention. They will keep on going to read our writing then. The most important thing is we need to make our readers to stay focused. Not only that, we as a writer should be positive. Means that we need to write only the positive statements.

            To sum up, we need to eliminate excess words; we need to use bullets in writing and remove redundancies, means that we keep saying the same thing. As a writer we supposedly can use the right and better words to be used in our writing. 

            Other guidelines that we should follow when we want to do writing for multimedia and the web are we need to keep the sentence and also the paragraph short, chunk the information, use the correct way to write the title and subtitle and last but not least we need to set the right tone. It is important and if we did not follow the right way to write, it will give an impact to the readers.   

            Before she ended our class on that day, she reminded us about all the assignments. She asked all of us whether we have finished our assignments or not.  

Reflection - week 9

As usual, we have class on Monday for three hours lecture. It is already week nine and it means final is just around the corner. To be honest, I am quite nervous and I am not ready yet to sit for the final because I have not made any preparations. For this time, I have a lot of assignments to do and I need to finish it all first. For Miss Amreet’s assignments, I still have not completed for my Homepage because I still need to edit and check whether there is any mistakes or errors. For the digital storytelling, we are still in progress to finish it. We need to do it as soon as possible because we need to submit it on week twelve.

On this week, what we have done is just we got a lecture from Miss Amreet about the important styles for informative websites.

We have several manuals of style for academic, technical and scientific writing. The first is MLA Style Manual and Guide to Scholarly Publishing (Modern Language Association), APA (American Psychological Association), The Chicago Manual of Style (University of Chicago Press) and last but not least is Scientific Style and Format: The CBE Manual Format for Authors, Editors, and Publishers (The Style Manual Committee of the Council of Biology Editors). But mostly, universities in Malaysia including my university itself are using APA style to do the citation.

In formal studious mood, it included academic, journal format and abstract section in front matter should be including in paragraph. For an example, explaining the journal contain. Next is GEMA online, which is a journal of language studies.

I learnt something new which is there are two types of research that we have to know; quantitative and qualitative, and results are being used in quantitative.  

Not only that, she also has explained about the differences between references and bibliographies. For us, it is just the same thing and often we used it synonymously but actually there is a difference in meaning between them and it is totally a different thing. References mean the items you have read and specifically what you had referred to in your assignment and your list of sources at the end the assignment will be headed. Bibliographies means a list of source materials that are used or consulted in the preparation of a work or that are referred to the text. After that, Miss Amreet had given several examples of English words borrowed from foreign language.

In a nut shell, like the other week before I am happy to have a Writing for Multimedia and The Web with my beloved lecturer, Miss Amreet and all my fellow classmates. 

Reflection - week 8

For this week, it was the first week after the hari raya holiday and it seems like everyone still in their raya mood including myself. To be honest, I still wanted to continue my holiday and if I could I wanted to stay at home just for a few days more. However, we have to back to the reality as we are a student. Student life – Go to class, do assignment, presentations, quizzes and sit for final exam. As usual, our class on Monday will be started at 4.00 pm until 7.00 pm. It’s quite a tiring day because we have classes the whole day.

Once Miss Amreet entered the class, everybody started to quite and focus on what she wanted to talk. Before anything and before she started with the lecture, she informed us that starting from this week, which mean week eight, it will be the monitoring weeks for the lecturers. It means that all the lecturers need to monitor their students’ progress in their assignment and also the attendance to the lecture. She also warned that she will issue a warning letter to those who are absent and those who are not managed to come to her class without any valid reasons or letter before and after this.

She even called for those who are absent to her lecture without any valid reasons and letters. I am one of the person who did not came to her class. I did not come to her class because I went back to my home and because of that, I cannot give her any valid reasons or even a letter. She called us as a reminder for us because we are in risk of getting a warning letter. She said to us that for the first warning, it will be just a verbal warning, but if we are absent again, we will get a second warning, a letter from the department. She said again, if we absent again, we will be bearing from the exam, means that we cannot sit for the final and we have to take this course again next semester. I talked to myself that I cannot fail to come to her lecture again. If not, I am dead.

Later on, she continued with her lecture. In the class, she asked us to find or browse for three good websites and three bad websites. The purpose of this task is to make sure that we can differentiate and recognised which websites are good and which are not. Good websites means the websites that followed the correct style of writing for the web which Miss Amreet has explained to us last week while the bad websites are those who not followed the correct format of writing for the web. She did not a limit to find any kind of websites that we want. It does not matter whether it is a personal blog, blog or even a business blog. It is up to us. I do this task as a pair work with Nurul Aidawate bt Abd Abha because she did not brought laptop that day, so we need to share. We have problems during finding the bad websites because all the websites we were found was the good websites. But at the end, we managed to find three bad websites too. These are the links:

Good websites:

http://www.examenglish.com/PTE/pte_general_level1_listening_part1.htm

http://www.zalora.com.my/

http://www.jessmarksphotography.com.au/

Bad websites:

http://www.wrdaonline.org/

http://www.goetzskyvu.com/GOETZ_THEATRE/GOETZ_SHOW_&_TIMES.html

http://www.bombshell201x.com/

Then, after we had found all the good and bad websites, she asked us to post the links in wikispace.com where she has created a section for her students to post the list of the websites that they found online. Once we have done that, Miss Amreet called one by one to explain about their websites. Unfortunately, Nurul Aidawate and I are not being called to explain about our websites that we found. We considered the websites are bad because of some mistakes such as the fonts, background, languages such as grammar and swear words.

Not only that, later she called the leader for digital story telling assignment to ask about the progress for the assignment. I am in the same group with Sue Chin, Jayson and Calvin, so Calvin and Jayson had met her in front. Unfortunately, none of us had started the work. Thus, Miss Amreet told us to come up with title, theme, plot and also the story line for our story by this week and she will be meeting us again by next week as we just meet her once in a week just to know about the progress. I know that we do not have much time left and we still have to present our digital story telling assignment in week 13.

In next session, Miss Amreet let us to continue with our homepage assignment. This task is a pair work and my partner is Lim Sue Chin. She also showed to us few examples of homepage. I know it was a reminder for us to work on our homepage as soon as possible as we need to submit it on week 10, it means two weeks left. After that, Miss Amreet also gave her lecture on Commercial Styles such as business style, database style and marketing style.

Descriptive Essay - My New Teacher

            I still remember when I was in my secondary school, I have one favourite teacher and she was my English teacher. Her name is Madam Yanti. But she had been transferred to another school. So my classmates and I would be getting a new teacher. It would be hard to take over Madam Yanti’s place. She was thoroughly organized and he had the syllabus down to what she would teach on each day, with all the key points on handouts. Plus, she was very caring and patient person. She also often entertained us with her jokes. We all love her and we would never forget her.

            One week later, we have been informed that we will get a new teacher to replace Madam Yanti’s place. When she walked into the classroom, I heard a few girls giggling. Miss Sarah, the new teacher and she looked very ordinary. In fact, she was rather thin, short and young. Some of the girls commented that she did not wear make-up at all. On her first day, Miss Sarah introduced herself briefly and explained how she would approach teaching English Literature. She told us that she wanted it to be a “living” subject because human life is complex and wonderful. Indeed, we could all learn about life from the stories written by great writers. She knew that many people do not like to learn literature because it is bored.  So she wanted us to change our mind set about boring literature.

            She also asked us to write on a piece of paper a short description of what we each like and dislike, and what we want our lives to be. I have no idea what actually she wanted to do. When we handed it back to her, first of all I thought that this exercise would end up like the others before. Usually, it would be forgotten by us as well as by the teacher. But, she proved me wrong. Each time when she talked to us outside the class, Miss Sarah seemed to remember the details we wrote and showed concern about our interest and expectation of life. She tried to make a conversation with us based on how what we have wrote before.

She told us to enjoy reading, we have to imagine that our mind is like multi-dimensional television set. When we read, we do not realize that actually we create pictures and images in our mind. If the book is the good one, we can also feel the emotions that the characters in the book are going through. Reading a book is an imaginative experience that cannot be duplicated by any technology. Nowadays, people prefer to play with their gadget rather than reading a book.

            Miss Sarah would often ask us to give our interpretations or views the overall of the book. She always considered our opinions carefully and never used the word ‘wrong’, in this kind of way, many of us lost our fear of literature. She is a very calm and patient teacher. In fact, we enjoyed offering our views and we looked forward to her interpretations which she explained in a clear manner.

Whenever we had covered the lessons and had some free moments before the class ended, Miss Sarah would tell us about her study. She studied in University Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) and also worked as a teacher at Sekolah Menengah Kebangsaan Bukit Damansara, Kuala Lumpur. Her journey of life had taught her that there are many universal emotions and needs that unite people all around the globe. That is why we can learn to enjoy literature written by a writer of any race or from any period of history.

On the last day of class, Miss Sarah gave us a list of books which we might want to read during the holidays. She promised to all of us that we would enjoy reading them. Our class gave her a book “A Great Teacher.” We thanked to her for making us enjoy and love to learn a subject which many of us had considered dull or difficult.

What she said was true. That time, I was enjoyed reading the books. Until now, reading has become my hobby. This hobby gave me a lot of advantages. It is not often that we get a teacher, who not only teaches to prepare us well for the examinations, but she is the person who also cares for us as individuals and she was like my mom. 

Reflection - week 7

It is already week 7 and I am presented my Prezi presentation in this week. Yarmine became the first presenter for that day and she presented on the topic of weird culture & traditions in many ethnics.

            The second presenter is me. I presented about the Halloween. I gave the introduction about the origin of Halloween and then I told them about the activities and the traditions that they do during the Halloween such as pumpkins carving, wearing costumes & masks, trick or treat, lighting bonfire and apple bobbing. Actually there are many activities more during the Halloween but I cannot present all because of the duration time of the presentation. There is a limit.

            Next is, Ummil Atiqah. She presented about borage. Borage is a kind of a herbaceous plan with bright blue flowers and hairy leaves, used medically and as a salad green that has the unique name of it. She explained to us what is actually borage is.

            The person who will be the last presenter for that day and the last presenter for present Prezi is Wani. She presented on the topic Cyber Bullying. As we all know, cyber bullying is the use of electronic communication such as cell phones, computer and many more to bully a person, typically by sending messages of an intimidating or threatening nature.

            After all the presentation is done, Ms. Amreet gave some words to us and she thanked to all because manage to present well during the presentation. The she reminded us about the other assignments. She told that we need to put URL of our personal blog and also for the advertisement at the web that she has provided because during the holiday, she wants to evaluate the work and give the mark. Lim Sue Chin is my partner for the pair work so we decided to show Ms. Amreet our web advertisement. We came in front of the class and showed her our web advertisement. Overall, she said it was okay and everything is fine. We were so relieved because our work is accepted without any wrong.  

It is me, Sue Chin and Jayson. 

Reflection - week 6

I did not attend the class this week because I was at my hometown. We have class a day before Nuzul Al-Quran holiday and that is why there were quite numbers of students who absence. The presentations went on because Ms. Amreet does not want wasted the time. She just proceed the presentation like usual. When I am back here, I asked Sue Chin what has going on in the class during my absence. She told me there are several students who presented their Prezi. They are Amira, Geetha Baskaran, Fatin Syamimi, Wardah, Insyirah and Aidawate. She briefly explained to me about the topic that they were presented.

            As informed, Amira was the first presenter and she gave the information about yawning. It is a fun topic to be shared and we also can know why we yawn. What I know is everybody does yawn. Suddenly, I feel like I want to yawn.

            Next is Geetha Baskaran. She was presented on colour psychology. Sue Chin told me that she gave a paper contained a few questions to analyse which colour are we. She gave it to everyone in the class and each colour has different personality. So this activity can help us to define our personality. I think it is interesting and if I could, I want to be in the class and do the test to find my personality through the colours.

            Then is Fatin Syamimi and what Su Chin has informed me, she has presented the topic on facts about French. Sue Chin said to me that she likes the image of Eiffel Tower that Fatin Syamimi had made it her background image. Wardah presented about clinical vampirism. Before that, what I know about this topic is it is kind of obsession with drinking blood and yes, it is true. It is an interesting topic but to some people it might be disgusting to them because it is involved blood. Some people afraid of blood and they even cannot see a blood. But for me, I am okay with it.

            Not only that, Sue Chin told me about Insyirah’s presentation. She presented on the topic myth around the world and Sue Chin found so impressed when she heard there is a people who cut his ears down. To be truth, I am impressed with that fact too. For the last presenter of that day, who presented on vegetables and the person is Aidawate. She talked about how vegetables can make and help us pretty. I love this topic because I am a vegetables lover. I love to eat vegetables and I know it has alot of advantages.  

Reflection - week 5

Time come so fast. It is already week 5 of lecturer. Many presentations from students have been done this week. Unfortunately, Ms. Amreet was not feeling well and she came late to the class because she had gone to see a doctor. Right after she came in to the class, presentation started. The first presenter of the day, Shafika has presented a topic on the clearest water on earth and she gave ten interesting and beautiful places which have the clearest water on earth. At the same time, we got to enjoy those beautiful scene and pictures that she shared. She asked us where the most wanted place do you want to go and for me, I chose Maldives. The reason why I chose Maldives is because it is one of the sequestrated holiday destinations, worldwide. Plus, The Meldives as we know it is a thread of little islands, where luxury meets nature. We will be safe from any pollution and it is all about fresh air, crystals clear waters, beautiful scenery and the beautiful underwater life we can explore. Everything is designed for pure loosening and it is like a world paradise.

Then, proceed with the second presenter, Syarafuddin. He has presented on the topic, Zodiac Killer. He created a creepy situation by making scary background music. He has presented an interesting topic but I am wonder why the killer like to kill other people? And why the cases cannot be solved until now. Then, the topic Jack the Ripper was presented by Halim. The story is about a killer who killed only the prostitute. I do not know why and this question makes me wonder again. Syarafuddin and Halim have shown the tragic pictures that how people were killed.

Later, Zul gave us information about the mystery of Oak Island and he talked about treasure which many people had talked about it and try to find it for the rest of their life. But until now, no one managed to find what is actually have in there. Sharveena then presented about Greek Gods and Goddesses which for me, it was interesting topic to be shared as she included a short animated video during her presentation. Last but not least, the last presenter for that day is Lachvini. She presented a topic on plastic surgery. During she presented, I gave my fully concentrated on it because the topic is very interesting for me. She told about the advantages and also the disadvantages of doing plastic surgery. Eventhough the advantages is to make people prettier and have a good figure to make them more confident to be in public, but for me, I will never do plastic surgery because there are risk. I am very grateful with what I have right now.  

Reflection - week 4

This week, the Prezi presentation will be started. Ms. Amreet said the volunteers will be present first. There are several volunteers on that day which Jayson as the first person do the presentation followed by Sue Chin Lim, MimiWahida, Musliha Sulhajjar, Puteri Liyana, Calvin and also Hasnol. During the presentation, there a photography who will take the pictures during the presentations.

            Jayson a/l Sehsu started the presentation on that day very well. He explained the topic on Narcolepsy. Narcolepsy is sleep disorder that causes excessive sleepiness and frequent daytime sleep attacks. It affects the control of sleep and wakefulness. People with Narcolepsy experience excessive daytime sleepiness and intermittent, uncontrollable episodes of falling asleep during the daytime. These sudden sleep attacks may occur during any type of activity at any time of the day. To be truth, I know nothing about this kind of illness but after Jayson gives the details explanation about this, I knew it. He gave the clear point and all of the students can understand what he wanted to say. 

            Next person is Sue Chin Lim. She present and gave the informative topic on Natural Herbs. Natural herbs are very effective in boosting the immune system, increasing the body resistance to infections, healing the allergies, and raising and renewing the body vitality. She gives a lot of information regarding on natural herbs topic. There are many new things that I learn from her. All the points are clear and she explained it well.

            The next topic is there are ten ways on how to recognize a liar and the presenter is MimiWahida. This topic will help us to know whether someone is lying on us or not. Mostly people lie for many reasons, but depending on how skilled they are, it can be difficult to determine when someone is lying to us right. Actually we can know they are lying by some signs that they make. The signs are the person who is lying to you won’t make eye contact to you or make too much eye contact, avoid using contractions, make weird body language, and provide more additional information. Actually there are several more.

            Next person is Musliha Sulhajjar. She presented on the topic ‘Does UFO really exist?’. She explained the the meaning of UFO. UFO stands for Undefined Flying Object. Many perceptions had been received from all over the place. Puteri Liyana talked about ‘taboo’. Taboo means a social or religious custom prohibiting or forbidding discussion of a particular practice or forbidding association with a particular person, place or thing. She also gave the explanations about ‘taboo’ and also the examples of it. Proceed with Calvin and he talked about FIFA at Brazil and last but not least, Hasnol gave the information on the topic Syiah vs Sunni. 

Reflection - week 3

Reflection week 3.

This is week three. I am busier that the last week because I need to complete my Prezi by this week and be prepared for the presentation as well. I need to make it all prepared. I need to check for spelling, punctuation, grammar, capitalization errors. Then I need to make myself practice my presentation alone to make sure that it works and looks the way I want it to. If I have trouble with pronouncing certain words, I need to replace them with words that mean the same meaning but easier to say and pronounced it.

Plus, this week, Ms. Amreet said that she will proceed with the blog. We have to do and create our own blog which is considered as personal blog. Creating our own blog is one of our assignments and it carried out 30% from our marks. It is a lot of marks and I think I need to do it perfectly.

First thing first, she gave us the basic information to become a blogger and why we need to have our own blog. As compared to a website, a blog is way easier to start. We do not have to consider complex designs and many other different stuff as we do for a website. She taught us how to create our own blog. We can either choose a free blogging platform like WordPress.com or Blogger.com to set up and create our blog. It is up to us.

 I never have my own blog before but after this lesson, I feel that publishing content or post on our blog is very easy.  If we know how to type in a Word document, we can easily write blog post. It is really that easy. It would be great if we add some relevant pictures and links to other sources. Now, I have my personal blog and I can anything that I want in my blog. I can share my beautiful moments with other people.

It is true that it is my blog, but it is an academic blog. The reason why I create a blog is because I need to do it as it is part of my assignment. So, in this blog, I have to add several things. The things are, I need to do an essay about myself, my family and friends. Not only that, I need to do reflections for every week within this fourteen weeks without failed. In that reflections, I have to write and put anything that related to this course. Starting from this day, I need to start update my blog. Later, Ms. Amreet will check my job to evaluate it.

Reflection - week 2

As promise, on this week, Ms. Amreet will do a Prezi workshop. Even though we have learnt about Prezi on the last semester, we still need the workshop from her because every person has their own skills and creativity. So we need to learn new things from her too. Before she proceeds with the workshop, she asked me to show to her our topic and explain briefly what we will put in our Prezi later.

I have met her before the class started with Sue Chin and Jayson at her room personally. So I have shown her my topic and told her briefly what the things that I will put in my Prezi later. Luckily, my topic accepted and I do not have to find another topic for my presentation. As addition she asks me to find some images and videos to be added in my presentation and she told me to make it interesting.

While the others are busy showing their topic to Ms. Amreet, Sue Chin, Jayson and I were busy finding for more information about our topic and find some images and interesting videos for our presentation. I need to make it fast because this is week two and we need to present it on week 4. So far, I have found all my information and all the images and videos that I need. I can start make my own Prezi later on.

After all the students had shown their topic, Ms. Amreet started the workshop. First she asked us whether we have our own account for Prezi or not. Of course we have it because we have learnt it before. Then she said this will make everything easier. She does not have to show one step by one step to us to start using the Prezi. She gives a briefly talk on how to use Prezi. Before we end our class for that day, Ms. Amreet told us that we can start our Prezi if we already have enough information about our topics.

I chose blank Prezi because I want to make my own theme regarding on my topic, Halloween’s Eve. I decorated and designed my Prezi by my own. I applied whatever that I have learned before to this Prezi. I do my best to make it interesting. I chose the best point to be put in my slide. I connected all my text point and images with transitions so that my slides can be read and understandable. Not only that, to make it more interesting, I added some clip arts and bullet points so my point will be  more clear.

The reason why I chose Halloween as my topic is because I found it interesting. Why? It is because in Malaysia, Halloween is not celebrated grandly by all the people. Usually, Halloween is celebrated in many others Christian countries around the globe. Halloween takes place on 31^st of October and it is one of the popular celebrations in the world.