Conversation between Hellen Keller and Douglass.

Group Members: Yiyi Ge, Abdulrahman Almukhaizeem, Mashari Aljasser.

Douglass:“ My mistress was, as I have said, a kind and tender-hearted woman; and in the simplicity of her soul she commenced, when I first went to live with her, to treat me as she supposed one human being ought to treat another.

Keller’ teacher translating: I am filled with wonder when I consider the immeasurable contrasts between the two lives, which it connects.

Keller’s teacher again: Have you ever been at sea in a dense fog, when it seemed as if a tangible white darkness shut you in, and the great ship, tense and anxious, groped her way toward the shore with plummet and sounding-line, and you waited with beating heart for something to happen? I was like that ship before my education began.

Douglass: When I went there, she was a pious, warm, and tender-hearted woman.

Keller’s teacher: Light! give me light!

Douglass:  If I was in a separate room any considerable length of time, I was sure to be suspected of having a book.

Keller’s teacher: she led me into her room and gave me a doll

Keller’s teacher: During the time I had played with it, Miss Sullivan slowly spelled into my hand the word "d-o-l-l.”

Douglass: It was some time before I found what the word meant. It was always used in such connections as to make it an interesting word to me.

Keller’s teacher: "w-a-t-e-r.”

Douglass: For larboard aft, it would be marked thus- “L.A.”

Keller’s teacher: Miss Sullivan had tried to impress it upon me that "m-u-g" is mug and that "w-a-t-e-r" is water

Douglass: I soon learned the names of these letters, and for what they were intended.

Keller’s teacher: I was flushed with childish pleasure and pride. Running downstairs to my mother I held up my hand and made the letters for doll.

Douglass: I don’t believe you; Let me see you try it.

Keller’s teacher: I left the well-house eager to learn.

Douglass: I would then make the letters, which I had been so fortunate as to learn, and ask him to beat that.

Keller’s teacher:  I learned a great many new words that day.

Douglass: In this way I got a good many lessons in writing which is quite possible I should never have gotten in any another way.

Keller’s teacher: Like Aaron's rod, with flowers.








Work cited

Hellen Keller, website, "The Story of My Life." American

Foundation For the Blind. October 30, 2012

My Literacy Portfolio

10/20/2012

Dear Classmates:

I am a big fan of reading since I was very little and I have learnt so many things from reading. My literacy portfolio contains the artifacts that remind me the benefits I gained from reading or writing. Those objects can bring back the memories and times that means a lot to me. Things that I brought into our class are a poem, a diary I have wrote when I was 18, two text massages from my friends, a picture of one of my favourite books, a picture of my favourite TV show, my first project in college and several photos.

The first thing I am going to talk about is a book wrote by William J. Bennett, The Book of Virtues. I have read thousand of books in my childhood, this is not my favourite one but this is the one that influence me the most. My mom gave it to me for my 6-year-old birthday. Everyone recognizes these traits as essentials of good character: Responsibility, Courage, Compassion, Honesty, Friendship, Persistence and Faith. This book has contained hundreds of stories to instructing and inspiring anthology that will help me understand and develop those characters. It also provides examples of good and bad, right and wrong so that I develop such traits in great works of literature and exemplary stories from history. It is my initiatory book, which I could get the sources of the ideals by which I wish to live my life.

After I entered high school, I felt like I could do everything like an adult but actually I was not mature enough to be responsible for myself. Then I started to feel confused about the definition of grow up. Now I am going to introduce a poem named Growing Up, which wrote by Cheng Gu, a famous Chinese poet in the 70s. In the poem, he stated that the mark of growing up is neither entering high school nor writing an essay in foreign language. The most remarkable milestone of growing up knows your goal of your future. This really means a lot to me in my whole life.

Our life is short and limited, we cannot make our life longer, but we can make our life wider by experience more different cultures. I set up a goal of study abroad when I was 16. I was born in a well-off family in China so it is not easy for my parents to support me to study abroad. Besides, if I finished my college in 3 years, I can get a job in my mom’s company easily. It seems that I can get a stabile job and live comfortably in the future. But this is NOT what I want. I did many researches about study abroad. My first target country was Australia and then I changed my mind to America. To achieve my goal, I wrote myself a diary as a reminder. Every time when I felt tired for catching on my dream, I read that diary again and again and then put myself back to study.

During college, I got the highest score on my first project. It was a hard time. I have sent thousands of emails to gathering useful data and it took me almost 3 moths to finish that. There are difficulties everywhere. I am so nervous when I facing them. My friends send me massages to support me. One of them said: I will always be by your side. The other said: you should thank to those difficulties in your life because those difficulties make you successful. You become stronger and knowledgeable after you solve the problem. No matter how hopeless I was, I could feel their support by reading these two messages. I am so thankful to my friends.

The last two artifacts are the TV show and a Chinese magazine. The American TV show: Friends is my favourite and teaches me a lot. I am the only child in my family and I was a spoiled girl like Rachel Green—I always do my shopping with my dad’s credit card and crying when I met difficulties. I wish I could find my dream career and become an independent girl like Rachel in the scene after study at CSUN. That’s why I named myself Rachel.

Oversea students are easily felt sad and lonely when the holiday comes. Last weekend, I found a Chinese bookstore at China town that sells Chinese magazines. I have ordered that magazine for more than 12 years so I was really exciting to see that in LA. It could help me get over of my tough time during study at CSUN.

Thus, these are the things that I put in my folder, and they really changed my life.

Yours, Sincerely,

Rachel Yiyi Ge 

Official iPhone 5 Trailer

Rachel Yiyi Ge

Kitty Nard

English 113 A

09 October 2012

The Use of Rhetorical Strategies in iPhone 5 Trailer

Apple is one of the greatest companies in the world because hey are so brilliant at marketing. And the heart of marketing is communication, which is based on rhetorical strategies: logos, pathos and ethos. Logos means logic, facts, reasons and rationalities—the author must be thoughtful and provide good reasons and supportive evidences to persuade the audience that his or her ideas are valid, or more valid then someone else; Pathos is emotion, sense, memory and common experience—communicator need to make people feel the same way as himself or herself and more likely to say ”me, too!”; Ethos is credibility, quote, authority and judgment from professionals—the speaker should be considerate, trustworthily, knowledge or fair. In the official trailer of iPhone 5, all of these three elements are used in combination cunningly.

Rhetoric is an art, which people use to process the message we send and receive. The main purpose of the official trailer of iPhone 5 is to convince people to buy them. To persuade the customers to buy the new iPhone, the speakers—apple’s salesmen must know the need of their clients. In the beginning of the advertisement, Jony Ive, the Senior Vice President from the design department, give a speech to make people think about their relationship with their iPhones. “When you think about your iPhone, it’s probably the object that you use the most in your life. It’s the product that you have with you all the time. With its unique relationship people have with their individual iPhone, we take changing it really seriously.” He states that people spend a lot of time with their iPhones. People text to each other, post status updates on our Facebook or Twitter accounts, check Emails, read books or news and paly games on iPhones. To most iPhone users, who may pay more attention on the new iPhone, he was just describing their daily life. It seems that Ive was talking about the facts that could be considered as Logos, or he was using Ethos because he is an expert in designing iPhone. However, this is neither Logos nor Ethos, he was using Pathos, which could bring audience thought about themselves and feel in the same way.

Ive then start talk about the changes they made on the new iPhone, ”It has been completely re-designed. For the first assignment ever, we have increase the size if the display. By making the screen taller than not wider, you can see more of your content for still comfortably use it with one hand. And yet even with the larger display, iPhone 5 is the thinnest lightest iPhone we have ever made. ” For some people, they take their iPhone with them all the time, so they absolutely want it shaped more comfortable for them to hold by one hand—that is definitely what Ive is going to talk about. He knows exactly what the audiences want! And the video begun to show the audience the new features of the iPhone 5: larger screen, thinner and lighter body, new shape that is easier to hold in one hand, etc. Even though it’s not very specific but it could still be recognized as logos.

 Bob Mansfield, the Senior Vice President of Apple Company, gave the second speech. He focuses more on the specific details of the new iPhone. As a professor, he explained the new features of the iPhone 5. He was trying to show the audience his knowledge of the new iPhone 5 by giving detail fact and features. “18% thinner”, 20% lighter”, “LTE—faster speed of downloading”, “LTE& CDMA chip plus A6 chip—two times faster then the old iPhone”, “new cover glass”, etc. These technical facts support Mansfield’s opinion: the iPhone 5 is “the best product we have ever made.” and he even called the new iPhone an “invention”—that could be defined as pathos. In this part of the official trailer of iPhone 5, Bob Mansfield was using logos the most, and, because he is an expert, there was a little bit ethos.

The iPhone users are not only interested in hardware, but also focus on the software, too. Therefore, the video started to introduce their changes on software. Scott Forstall, the Senior Vice President from iPhone software department, was giving a speech about the awesome software that the new iPhone 5 has with it. He mentioned their new 3D map in the new iPhone. “You can look at things like fly-over” he was using his own feeling of using the 3D map so this is considered as pathos. He also introduced some other highlighted features: turn by turn spoken direction could bring you to your destination easily; the panorama feature could help you get panoramic photos by only use your iPhone; Siri could do more—find place to eat and even make a reservation; built-in Facebook and facetime over cellular data networking, etc. All the information above is supportive evidence to show that iPhone 5’s software is so brilliant and amazing. These are exactly logos. Besides, as Scott Forstall is the Senior Vice President, there was ethos using in his speech.

At the end of the video, Jony Ive showed again. This time he was using logos the most to let the audience know how great the new iPhone 5 looks. The video shows the procedures of making an iPhone 5. They use diamond-cutting technique to processing the surface and brand new material on their product. These are absolutely logos.

The main point of an advertisement is not only to offer information about the product but also to persuade the audience to buy the product. To achieve this target, the salesman must know their audience’s need. By using rhetorical strategies can help them reach their goal easier. In the official trailer of iPhone 5, the speakers are very smart. All of them are experts in their career. They were showing the new features of their production and talking about their own experiences or ideas on using the new iPhone 5. It seems like they were just talking about the facts of life with an iPhone, but it was not. They use three rhetorical strategies—ethos, pathos and logos as a combination.

In fact, rhetorical strategies are widely used in people’s daily life. Rhetoric is not only in advertisement and conversations, but also in body language and films. Most time people just use rhetorical strategies unconsciously, but knowing that rhetoric can help them reach their goal easier. Rhetoric is an art of communication; it can help people deliver their thoughts and ideas to their audience easily. Rhetoric is being used on you all the time. It can be used in any situation, whether you are watching a film or an advertisement. So that is why it is really important to know how rhetorical strategies work on us.

Sunday with My Cousins

I went back to my aunt’s home every weekend. We have other three girls there—my aunt’s daughter Yvonne, and her husband’s children Jessica and Anna. I am familiar with Yvonne because we were hanging out since we were in China. Jessica and Anna are born in America and it was my second time to met them. We visited Yvonne’s apartment today. I am the oldest one so I am the driver—which means I cannot join their conversation during driving. This is a good chance to sit aside and find the rhetorical in what they was saying,

Jessica and Anna are always fighting with each other. It happens every day. Today, we decided to visit Yvonne’s apartment at 9:00am but we did not leave home until 11:00am. That was because Anna—the youngest one—was trying to wear Jessica’s dress. Jessica is only 2-years’ older than Anna so she never let herself lose in their “war”. Anna is a really good speaker and she was trying to attack her sister after she failed to get that dress. I found some Pathos in her words, like “I am so shame for that dress. It was so beautiful but when you are wearing that it was just ruined!” Jessica was angry. But she is not good at hurting someone by words so she just hit Anna. After all, I gave my dress to Anna then we finally left home at 11:00am.

We arrived at Yvonne’s apartment at 12:30. She just bought a lovely tent from IKEA. It’s for the little kids so it is very small. Here was the question: both Anna and Jessica wants to have their donuts in that tiny tent but only one person can get in that tent. Anna knew that her sister might hit her if she argues with her directly, so she came Yvonne—the owner of that tent. “ I have smaller size than Jessica and I promise I won’t make your tent messy. Besides, I am the youngest in our four girls and your tent was made for kids, I am the kid in your girls. Please please let me get inside of that cute tent! Oh and if you let me eat my donut there you do not need to buy me present for my birthday on Monday!!” Yvonne accepted her request. This time, Anna was using Ethos. What a smart talker she is!

I never notice that all people are using so much rhetoric in our daily commutation. In fact I found that people are using rhetoric every second. You need to find out which kind of rhetoric is better for your current situation and decide which one you would like to use: ethos, pathos or logos. By using correct rhetoric, you can get what you want easier. It’s really kind of language magic. I will pay more attention on that and practice more on using rhetoric in daily commutation.