What I like About This Class

This class is very helpful and useful. The Greek and Latin roots quiz are also very helpful in memorizing vocabulary through the roots. It helped me a lot with my English skills, learned lots of new vocabularies. The readings from the text book and Holt Readers are very helpful in improving my critical reading skills. These critical reading skills are direct help for comprehending articles, passages, or essays. These skills that I gain from the class is will benefit me a lot in SAT, PSAT or other tests in the future and I am passively building up in this class. I am also amused by the jokes the teacher, Mr. McCool throws in from time to time. Although the jokes might be meaningless or nonsense but it's still very good to have fun once in a while in an English Class. Although English classes are boring because of the reading, analyzing stories, tests, quizzes, and other boring things that we just have to do in English class to help us, the jokes make the class bearable. I think the novel choice of Fahrenheit 451 is very good and I think the story is very interesting. Overall, this class is a great success and because of Mr.McCool, the boring English class sometimes has some flavor of entertaining along with the course.

Buddhist Doctrine

The Buddhist doctrine is...

1. Life suffering
2. Suffering caused by ignorance and attachment
3. Suffering ended by overcoming ignorance and attachment
4. Follow the Eightfold Path

The Buddhist doctrine is the very key principle of Buddhism and it must be followed strictly by Buddhist. It is how a Buddhist can achieve enlightenment and by following this principle completing each step you will become the Buddha, the enlightened one. However Siddhartha does not believe that you have to follow this doctrine to achieve enlightenment and he has his own way of achieve enlightenment. He thinks that these are only just a guideline for people that will not fully achieve enlightenment. The true relevation will only happen with self experience and find a way yourself for the perfect enlightenment. I believe the doctrine is just the foundamental but many people view it as the ultimate thing to do and after you're done, you're done. I think one should base this doctrine to begin his spiritual journey and that would be the real way to become enlightened. Buddhism is a very complicated religion because there is no specific way of following it. Everyone has its own interpretation. The Samanas have beat themselves up and feel as much physical pain as they can and they think this is the way to acieve enlightenment. Gotama, on the other hand, is so peaceful that every motion he has is so graceful and peaceful, when siddhartha sees him, he knows he is Gotama.

Why Be A Prodigy

In the story Two Kinds, the mother wants the daughter to excel because she had lost everything in China, family and money. She took Jing-mei to America and wished she can raised her into a successful kid to raise money and have a better quality of life. She wanted Jing-mei to succeed in her life because she didn't for herself. Jing-mei's mother is in some degrees living through Jing-mei and trying to get everything she didn't get when she was a young child herself. Jing-mei wanted to succeed and be a prodigy just like her mother asked her because she wanted to impress her mother. Kids usually don't know what's the right thing to do but know what to do to please their parents. In this case Jing-mei wants to exel for her mother. Parents tend to push children hard because they know if you don't work hard you wouldn't succeed. I think strict is reasonable but if parents just keep ranting on about the same thing it would be quite annoying. Although I understand that by scolding us, we would do better but by repeating the same thing, there's not much improvement because we know what they'r trying to express, It's not that we don't understand or didn't hear. I try to resist but still follow the instructions. I follow the instructions because deep down in my heart I know the juice is worth the squeeze and that studying hard would get me a better quality of life but also because I want them to stop talking.

The Influence of Others

Influence from other people can both be good and bad. Influence can be good or bad. A good physical influence is when someone take you to do a plastic surgery. A bad physical influence is when an orange crushes an apple. In which case the orange is physically influencing the apple in a bad way. An emotional influence is when someone or something influences your emotion, your thinking, your principle, or your reasoning. If someone hit you on the head with a skateboard or cause you to grow a brain tumor it is still physical influence because although you have a brain damage and becomes an idiot and can't function or think normally, it's still physical. However, if someone scared you everything you walk out of a bathroom and cause you to fear the bathroom entrance every time you see the door, it is emotional influence. This is an example of a negative emotional influence and a positive example is when a bear excels in every subjects in the school and beats you in every single test, you will be motivated to work harder and try harder. This motivation will eventually get you into good college and sell gum at a better place instead of the train station. We all have different interpretations of negative or positive influences but by the normal standards, I think my examples are just right.

Character Traits and Making Inferences

Mama is a tough woman in the south. She can do whatever a man can do such as killing a cow and eating its liver, and doing farm works. Mama has to do all these things because she has to feed her daughters, Dee and Maggie. Mama is very proud that she could do what a man could do. Mama is a fat woman and she wears farm clothes such as jeans and rough clothes. She is not very elegant and it is resulted because of her economic status. Mama faced a conflict of deciding who to give their family treasure to, a quilt. She doesn't want to give it to Dee because she felt like Dee has a distance with the family and tradition because she went off to school in the city. Mama also thinks that Dee would not make the quit bigger and pass it on so it would destroy the family tradition. However, Dee wants the quilt. Not because she thinks it is valuable or warm to her but because she wants to show other people that she had earned her way up to the city from the countryside. It shows that she is from a poor family but she made it through. Dee wants to make it a decoration. Mama is angry about this fact. Although Mama is angry at Dee because Dee wants the quilt as a decoration, Mama still loves both of them. On the other hand, Maggie does not care who got the quilt. Mama decides to give the quilt to Maggie because she will honor their family tradition, make it bigger for the next generation and use it for the right purpose, warmth and a sense of family.

Literary Analysis

Mama is the narrator of the story. She is the mother of Dee and Maggie. She is a tough and proud woman living in the countryside. She can do everything a male farmer does and is proud because of it. Mama dislike the city because she felt like the city people had think of them as inferiority but she had to do all the dirty work for them. The characters in the story are all defined through Mama because she is the narrator of the story. Because all the characters are being shown by only 1 character, it can and most likely will be biased. Mama thinks sending Dee to study in city is a bad idea because when Dee came back, Mama felt insulted when Dee read and tell her things that she didn't know. Maybe Dee wasn't trying to showoff but Mama had felt this way because after Dee come back from the city, she is suddenly smarter and knows more things than Mama. Mama also thinks that Dee hates the house, she said she should dance beside the burning house of theirs if she hated it so much. Maggie, on the other hand, is extremely shy. She got burnt in the fire of their old house and if shy ever since.She moves sideways and doesn't look people in the eye because she is ashamed of herself because of the scar on her. The three unique characters makes this story interesting. Mama's dream about going on a show and surprisingly meeting Dee shows that despite disliking Dee because she is citified, she still loves Dee.

Read With a Purpose

The conflict between Mama and Dee is between their family and is about family tradition, or heritage. Mama honors the family tradition of their house but because Dee does not live in the countryside with Mama and Maggie, she is citified. Dee lives in the urban and has a different lifestyle there but Mama doesn't understand and is upset about Dee not following their family tradition. Take the quilt as an example, Dee took the quilt as a decoration to show that she had come from the countryside and she had worked her way to what she is now. The quilt is made to keep her warm and not to showoff and Mama is angry about this. Mama is angry because she is showing off the quilt that should be part of the family tradition to keep her warm. Mama is also angry because at first Dee doesn't even care or want the quilt and now because she needs to showoff, she wants the quilt that her family had made for her to keep warm. Mama thinks if Maggie had the quilt it would be better because Maggie, who follows the tradition very well, will make more quilt and leave them as heritage to the next generation of the family. Maggie truly understands the quilt ore than just a decoration and something to showoff. Mama have always believed that Dee had been too urbanized and should lave the family heritae, the quilt, to Maggie.

Reading Focus Quick Check

Dee is different from Mama and Maggie in that she doest not think of herself lower than Caucasian and she herself being an African American. She does not think of herself inferior to white people so she is not afraid of talking to them. This is primarily caused by her life in Urban instead of in the suburb instead of Mama and Maggie. Due to the urbanized lifestyle of Dee, she has forgotten the true purpose of the quilt of her family tradition, which is to provide warmth just like a family instead of a decoration. Maggie on the other hand still kept the tradition and used it to warm herself. The title of the story is very significant in that it illustrates an everyday use item for a family as a tradition, a quilt, for Maggie and Dee's family. Although Dee had used the quilt for the wrong purpose, a decoration, she and Maggie had still been using the quilt everyday.

Character Traits and Making Inferences

Making inferences means to make an educated guess or to assume something. Implying something is almost the opposite, to hint someone or to say something with a hinted message in it. Usually in a story of any kind, we make inferences of characters base on what we read. Our inferences can be constantly changing because we are constantly receiving new information from the story about the character. Informations that help us infer the character's characteristics are the action of the character, the emotional and physical response it has toward a situation, or sometimes we can know what's going through the character's mind. A character's thought is the best way to define a character because a character's action can be totally different then who he is. For example, if a hypocrite saved a puppy just for the reward promised and we don't know what he's thinking of the reward, we might think he is a hero without flaw with a good heart. Knowing a character's thought can really help define a character and help readers make inferences about the character. Even if you know the thought of a character, it doesn't necessarily means you understand it because a character's thought can always change throughout a story. The best way to identify and infer a character's trait is to know its actions and thoughts.

How Does Heritage Contribute to Character

Character is generally defined as the set of characteristics that defines a person. The character of a person has several contributing factors, physical appearances and personality. A heritage is a key factor that influences a character and has the following components, gene, inheritance, and tradition of the family or region. Gene is the most important factor in that it shapes your physical appearance the most, almost all features of you are shaped by your gene passed on to you by your parents. Another part of gene that shapes your physical appearance is disease or sickness passed down through heritage. Gene can also shape your personality in that you might have similar personality with your parents. Inheritance is a key factor because depending on how wealthy you are, your personality is going to have major differences and maybe even your physical appearance. Lastly, tradition of the family or region taught to you or practiced by you when you are young can greatly shape your personality. Characteristic and heritage are very related because most parts of your character are shaped because of your heritage.