Blog 5

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhnZP1fy6-I

  I chose the idea of syntactic ambiguity. This video helps explain how syntax which is the sentence structure of language, can help deal with the confusion of syntactic ambiguity. Syntactic ambiguity is when a sentence can have more than one meaning so finding out the structure of the sentence can help decode the meaning. The girl in the video demonstrates how drawing syntactical trees can help to see all the possible meanings of a sentence.

Blog 4

   This was just a short video on how language is really just how you perceive things. It is made up and people follow it so that we can make sense of things and categorize. I chose this because I think perception is really interesting. It is related to language because it explains how language is just what we say it is. I thought that it was interesting how he said that an apple is only called an apple because we say it is. There aren't any reasons for some words other than we wanted to name something.I agree because language is really abstract. I definitely want to learn more because I want to know why language was created the way it is now. My topic affects the world because everyone around the world uses language and all of them are just what somebody decided to make up and use to communicate.

Blog 3

    This video was about a woman of color's view on men and the expectations that society has of her. The video shows a man trying to get a woman's attention by using pick up lines which the woman at first ignores then gives her reaction. Her reaction is to put him in his place by explaining the struggles that women face and specially a woman of color and how his attention is unwanted.

   I picked this video  because I not only like spoken word but also think the issues expressed in this video are very important. This is related to language because it is a way to use language to express yourself and spoken word uses language in many ways. What I found most interesting was the whole video and the message that it has. I totally agree with what was said in the video. Society puts a lot of pressure for women to look a certain way and ethnic women also are pressured in a way to conform to another race's idea of beauty. I have been interested in this topic already for a while so this just makes me want to learn more. This topic affects the world because it is around the whole world where women are not treated equally and the media is always pushing a certain type of beauty to women that is unrealistic.

Blog 2

http://www.pbs.org/indiancountry/history/boarding.html


  The article that I picked for blog 2 is about Native American assimilation schools. The article explains how after the Civil War the U.S. had more troops to take over the natives but did not want to kill them all. Reformers of the U.S. decided to take away the heritage of the natives and teach them the ways of the whites which meant stripping them of their language as well as way of life. Assimilation boarding schools were set up where young natives would go to and live there for a long period until they forgot their own language and only knew English.

  I picked this article because I feel like this kind of movement still exists in today's society. There are laws in schools right now that forbid students to speak in their native languages. It is related to language because it is about people losing their language and having English forced upon them. I thought it was interesting how the article seemed to be biased in the way that they seemed to think it was not a horrible event. I strongly disagree with what happened to the Natives. They were treated unfairly and had no choice in the matter. The article does make me want to learn about the topic so that I can compare it to what is happening currently in the world. This is a topic that is always affecting the world because there are many groups that take over another group and force their language and their ways on the weaker group.

Blog 1

http://www.iallt.org/iallt_journal/realizing_the_potential_of_mobile_phone_technology_for_language_learning

 
    Almost everybody wants to learn a different language but buying an expensive disc set or hiring someone to teach you a language is not an option for many people. This is where mobile phone technology for language learning can come into play. Using a mobile phone however can have drawbacks as well like intrusion of privacy, cost, and difficulty of use.

    I chose this article because using my phone as a way to learn a new language never really came to mind before and it's actually a really good idea. I think it's interesting how much technology has advanced and all the things we can achieve with it and I totally agree with it. There are probably a ton of language learning apps and ways to learn about a different language and the culture surrounding it that I will be looking into because it is so convenient. I feel that many people in the world probably already use some kind of mobile device and using it to learn a new language is so practical. If everyone in the world used something like this than we could all learn multiple languages and communicate with different cultures easily.

Introduction

My name is Michael Barahona and I like watching movies and listening to music. My hobbies are the same as my interests and I speak English and Spanish. I am taking ENG213 because I like English and it will help towards my major. An experience that I've had related to language or language learning is when I was little and started learning both Spanish and English. I also took two years of high school French class.