Advertisement and Culture

In the add that I presented in class we can see a picture of a father asking his child in a calm and quiet atmosphere the question “Help me understand why some kids your age smoke cigarettes". Since we are talking about cigarettes, in my opinion the message that the add wants to transmit is that nowadays teenagers start smoking cigarettes at an earlier age.

 

 The fact that the parent is trying to understand why this happens through asking his child, in my view, tries to say to the audience that one of the reasons why this happens is because some parents do not control enough their sons and daughters. So in my opinion, I would say that the add tries to draw the attention of the parents, to control their sons and daughters and to educate them properly, making sure that they are not going through bad experiences or situations which can lead them to smoke cigarettes.

 

The most important characteristics of the add is the fact that the father is asking her daughter why do teenagers start smoking at an earlier age, trying to understand the reasons behind, which in some way transmits the idea that parents should be aware of their sons’ and daughters’ reasons and situation in order to make sure that they are not forced to any situation that can produce to them the need of smoking to release stress.

 

In my opinion, since this is an advertisement which promotes the idea that cigarettes started being consumed more and more by teenagers at an earlier, it tries to raise awareness about that fact, but it does not say anything about how bad cigarettes are or the unhealthy effects of cigarettes in our lungs, so in my opinion I think that in some way the companies which produce and sell cigarettes are being empowered because the product itself is being publicized. 

Persuasive Argument Post

Should Videogames be considered a Sport?

The opinions about this topic are normally varied. In my opinion I have to say that I completely believe that video-games should be considered a sport. First off we have to know that even if they are not a physical sport, video-games require as much skill and mental focus as physical sports if not more.

Besides of this the competition is at pretty good level, and believe it or not, video-game professional players have to train so many hours. If chess is considered a sport, we cannot deny that video-games is a sport, just as chess, the video-games that are played nowadays at high competitive level, like for example League of Legends, or Star Craft, require so much strategy and skill, which has to be practiced just as chess or any other sport.

Furthermore the coordination needed at video-games is pretty important, if we compare them with football or soccer, there would be no difference of coordination level. Another factor important to consider is that as in professional physical sports, electronic sports are paid so well, a professional electronic sports player can live perfectly just with the salary that his team provides him. Besides of this, nowadays video-games tournaments are played worldwide, and the amount of money that the champion or the finalists can win could be perfectly millions of dollars, as an example we can take the League of Legends worlds tournament that took place in 22 September of this year, where the winners, Samsung White, won 8.5 million dollars. Since we are dealing with millions of dollars, how can we deny that video-games cannot be considered sports?

Lastly, besides of all this facts it is important to know that video-games tournaments have the same crowds of supporters watching them or supporting them as the large number of persons who enjoy watching a physical sport or supporting it, buying merchandising or going to watch the games to the fields. We can take the example of the last League of Legends world’s tournament as proof, where roughly 11,000 persons were in attendance there, and over 32 million persons watched the live streaming of the tournament.

Written Task 1

RATIONAL

I decided to choose the interview as text type for my first written task because in my opinion it is a type of text that allows me to transmit deeply the style and the beliefs of the poet who I am going to interview. I am going to interview Julia Alvarez, a very successful Dominican- American poet who had to move from the Dominican Republic to the United States when she was ten years old. As a Latina writer her most impacting and successful works portray how difficult is to learn a new language, and the impact that moving to a total different culture can create. Besides of this by doing this interview I can portray in a better way, how did she manage to become a poet and writer having to struggle with a new language, and how did that affect to her poetry. My intended audience is the program that is interviewing Julia Alvarez, and all the persons who want to know how Julia Alvarez became a poet, and what does she transmit in her poetry. The purpose of my response is mainly to explain how Julia managed to become a poet, and why did she chose to become a writer. In this interview I express how difficult was for Julia Alvarez to learn a new language when she had to move from the Dominican Republic to New York, and besides of this after becoming a poet, I explain what does the use of Spanish in her poems mean, how is her use of Spanish different from her use of English in her poetry. Using the interview as text type gives me the opportunity to speak in the poet’s voice, an interviewer asks questions to Julia Alvarez while she responds all the questions that the interviewer asks her.

AN INTERVIEW WITH JULIA ALVAREZ

Julia Alvarez is a Dominican-American poet, novelist, and essayist. Julia Alvarez was born in New York in March 27, 1950, although she was born in New York her family is originally from the Dominican Republic. After spending the ten first years of her childhood in the Dominican Republic, Julia moved to the United States because of his father involvement in a political rebellion which forced her family to leave the country.

  In reference to her grants and honors, she has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, several manuscripts that she has written have a permanent home at the New York Public Library, she has received the Lamont Prize from the Academy of American Poets in 1974, and besides this she received the first prize in narrative from the Third Woman Press Award in 1986. Her most important and influential works are, How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, which won the PEN

Oakland/Josephine Literary Awards in 1991 for multicultural view content, In Time of Butterflies, Yo!, Homecoming, and The Woman I Kept Myself.

Besides of this she is regarded as one of the most successful Latina writers of her times. Her first novel, How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, was the first novel wrote by a Dominican- American writer that had that much impact and attention, the main reason that made this possible is the way Julia Alvarez portrays ethnic identity as a problematic in several ways.

Interviewer: First of all we are so glad that you accepted our interview and you came here to our program, giving us a little bit of your time.

Julia: It is an honor for me to be here with you, and to have the opportunity to respond all of your question.

Interviewer: Let’s start with the questions, how was life for you, having to learn a complete new language?

Julia: Well, first off, being honest before moving to New York, I cannot say that I did not know English at all, but the classroom English that I had learnt did not prepare me properly for the American English that was spoken at that times. I had to struggle so much to learn to speak English as a native speaker, I had to pay so much attention for every single word in order to know perfectly when to use each one of them. Besides of this, I discovered the amazing world of imagination and books, where nobody was rejected because of his accent or skin color, so I fall in love with this new and amazing world for me. Reading really helped me to learn more and more English, and besides of this it is the main reason that made me become a writer.

Interviewer: In the Bilingual Sestina you use many Spanish words, and you mix both English and Spanish to write this poems, is using your native language different for you than using English in poems?

Julia: I have to say that I have a special affection for the Bilingual Sestina. It have put so much heart on the Bilingual Sestina, mainly because it describes perfectly what does Spanish mean for me now that I already know English, when I use Spanish in my poems I want to transmit the feeling that even though I have learnt English, Spanish is always going to be my native language, and when I use it I can say that I write with the voice of the real me.

Interviewer: In your book How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents you tell the story of the lives of four girls who have to move to the United States because of divorces, family disputes or cultural change, can we say that the book reflects your own situation in some way?

Julia: We can totally say that, in that book I try to portray how the migration from a Latin country to the United States is, just like what happened to me. The protagonists of the book portray just like in reality how difficult is to leave your own country, having to deal with for example the dislocation of family ties or the difficult cultural adjustments. When I moved from my country I had to struggle with the language, and I had to adapt to a total new culture and atmosphere which is reflected in this book by the four girls Carla, Sandra, Yolanda, and Sofia.

Interviewer: Your works are normally assigned as multicultural and ethnic literature, how do you feel about that?

Julia: Well, I have to say that I do not like the fact that writers are pushed off into a specific area of literature, in my opinion keeping us in separate groups is a way to keep us at remove, as if we were not a set. Besides of this I believe that literature is what unites us, but the way in that we, the writers, are separated goes totally against it. So as personal conclusion of this issue I have to say that do not like to see any of my works as a work addressed to a specific group of people.

Interviewer: And lastly now that you have explained us that your book How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents and the book can reflect some of your personal experiences, does the way in that your family react affect your work?

Julia: Yes, it totally affects, before publishing anything, we have to keep in mind that we live in the world and that we cannot publish stories of others all the time because we have to be responsible for the people around us. For my personal experience I believe that what we write is not what offends our family, is that the writer is not a single person, the writer is all his family, their daughter, their sister, their nieces. But on the other hand I also believe that the stories that we, the writers, tell in our books are magical circles that we draw around ourselves, but sometimes those stories overlap with stories of other important people around us. So, as writers, we cannot use those stories which might be the sacred ground of one person, and we have to respect their privacy and their own stories.

Letter to the Editor

White people, Dreadlocks, and Cultural Appropriation

Sin Dante McAuliffe

13 April 2013

Dear Editor,

first of all, giving my opinion about the Dreadlocks wore by white people I have to mention that I agree with you in the fact that before deciding if it is or it is not a cultural appropriation we all have to accept that this fact exists, what I want to say is that even if some people can deal or cannot deal with this fact, the fact will still exist. In the same way that jazz, hip-hop,  and other "black things" are taken by white people from a different culture many cultural customs, or traditions are taken too because that is how the world works, things change over time.

My point of this, is that as well as Hip-hop has been taken by white people from black people, at one point the fact that a white person could become a successful rapper was a really shocking fact, by the pass of the years, nowadays we can see many white rapper who are very successful in the music scene even though at one point it was not well seen that a white person could be part of this Hip-hop culture.

Furthermore, by mentioning this what I want to express is that there is so much black people

Who get angry when they see a white person wearing dreadlocks, since they believe that wearing dreadlocks is a custom from their ancestors, as well as there can be black people who does not care if a white person wears dreadlocks, but even though there is division of opinions about this issue, it eventually will become normal, as well as Hip-hop or Jazz has become a normal thing among whites.

The thing that I do not agree with you Sir is that many white people who wears dreadlocks takes it as

as a very no important thing while, for the Afro-American or Reggae culture can mean something important. The not being aware of what involves to wear this hair style can be offensive for this culture.

Lastly as a conclusion of my letter, I will say that there can be many opinions about this issue, some people will think that it is a very offensive fact that white people takes dreadlocks to show rebelliousness or for fashion, while some people will think that it is a normal thing that this custom has been taken from another culture, but at the end, with the pass of time it will became a normal thing.

Warmest regards ,

Simon Sein

Language Qestions

What role does language have in your live?

Language is the way I can communicate with all the people around me, depending on which language does the people around me speak, I would have to learn the same language as them in order to be able to communicate with them. To summarize it up in a clean way, language is the set of sounds which create words that are arranged by some rules that allow us to use it properly and to understand perfectly the people around us.

How do you define culture?

If I had to explain with my own words what culture is, what I would respond would be that culture is basically a conjunct of things that a group of people has in common, such as language, laws, customs, and daily practices mostly.

Which culture or cultures do you identify with?

If I had to choose one culture I would say Spanish culture since I lived in Spain during fourteen years. Even though I lived in Spain, football is my favorite sport and I speak Spanish, I do not think that I can include myself in the Spanish culture. My thinking is that every person is different, and every person has his own beliefs and interests, which for me means that culture is a very relative thing. The reason why I think this is that even I am from Spain I can have the same interests as a person from America or Asia, but that does not mean that I am from any of those places.

Have you ever felt excluded from a culture due to language barriers?

Yes, many times. Mostly when I lived in Cambodia.

This is who i am

My name is Simon Sein and I have been born in Timisoara (Romania). I have a sister who is two years older than me, and who in the actuality lives and studies in Dallas (Texas). My parents are both musicians who have been performing for many years in several orchestras and different Blues groups, as well as they have been teaching in many music schools. Two years after my birth my parents decided that they could not stay in Romania anymore, and that they had to try something new, so at the age of two years old I moved to Spain. For me moving to Spain was not a sad thing at all because of the fact that I was so little, so I did not get upset about the decision of moving or anything.

The place where I lived during a period of fourteen years is called Malaga, which is a city located in the South part of Spain. If I had to describe Malaga in a word, I would describe it as awesome, not only because of its beauty, but also because of its atmosphere and culture. Being honest I have never had problems with the language, I learnt Spanish so fast, so the language has never been a problem for me. After some years, when my sister left the country to study at the college and to get married, I realized that because of the Spanish bad economy situation, at some point I would have to move away from Spain, and I started learning English with more interest. Finally in November of 2013, I moved to Cambodia which is a country located next to Thailand in the West part of Asia.

After spending one year in Cambodia, I had to attend my sister's wedding at Dallas (Texas) in September of this year, and surprisingly my parents told me that we would be moving to Abu Dhabi after the wedding. So nowadays I live in Abu Dhabi.

In reference to my interests, what I most enjoy is spending time with my friends, practicing several sports, not anyone of them in special, having to say that my favorite one is football, and finally playing computer games. If I had to answer the question of where does my passion for teamwork computer games come from, I would probably answer that it comes from the fact that teamwork computer games require not only the good performance of one person, but a well performance of the players that make the rest of the team as well as the strategic movements or rotations which must be done by all the players in the team, putting it cleaner the thing that for me makes the game more exciting is the dependence that one player has on the well performances of his teammates.

Talking about my future, I honestly do not know what will happen to me. After finishing high school, I would like to study computer programming, codifying codes, but I cannot say that I will, cause everyday a new idea a new idea crosses my mind, so at the moment all i can say is that I will try my best at high school. A thing that I do know is that if I could choose my future, I would choose one of my dreams, either to become a professional League of Legends (LOL)player for any European team, or to become a programmer for Microsoft. Finally what I most care about is mainly my family and friends. I always keep in mind that I must take care of my good relationships from Spain, and also for me it is really important not to be so far away from my parents and sister.