Dear Professor Stark,

As time flies, here comes the end of this quarter. I am really appreciative to have had this UWP22 with all the help from Professor Stark and every peer in class throughout this quarter.

In fact, I used to be very afraid of writing and was always struggling in it because I did not know how to express my turbid thoughts into an essay with one thesis. At the same time, I had a lot of grammar problems when I was writing; what’s worse is that I cannot discover them even when I look back and want to revise. However, after having UWP22 this quarter, I’m becoming more confident and starting to know how to write in a professional way. Particularly, I find myself getting better in grammar think to all the time writings in class and the self-editing. Self-editing is really important for a writer. As a matter of fact, everyone makes mistakes in the first draft, so the main standard of judging writing skill is how well they can correct their essays. Eventually, I’ve developed the ability of controlling myself to write something more professional with fewer errors in a very short time now.

The biggest problem for international students has always been the language. For reading and writing are the main tasks in learning and using English, it is urgent for international students to get used to it and catch up with native students. Therefore, UWP22 gives us a great opportunity to practice and improve. During this quarter in UWP22, we have had a lot of long readings and long essays. And now I’m becoming comfortable reading textbooks. Although I didn’t have other classes with writing assignments this quarter, I’ll have classes like Physics and History later, which all require writing reports.

I am a person who has many thoughts, and ideas are truly important for a writer as it decides the level and depth of their essays. So, I consider it to be my strength as a writer.

However, everything has two faces. My various ideas give me trouble about what to choose. Sometimes, my logic in an essay may be confused. So, I consider that I need to be more logical and learn to choose effective materials to have more control of my essays.

In my portfolio, it includes two class papers. One is the summary response and the other is the OP-ED. Both of the essays have been edited a few times by peers, Professor Stark and myself. The process of writing the summary response gives me deep impression. So far, I had written many essays to criticize from different points with the help of information from given articles without knowing them as a whole. But after this practice, I start to learn the ability to control the given information more integrally. Actually, the process of revising was tough because I did not get the purpose of summary at first. In the first three drafts, I picked a lot of main sentences and words directly from the article, which caused plagiarism seriously. I did not realize it until Professor Stark warned me and taught me how to write it patiently. In spite of the hardship during the process, the result turned to be good.

To sum up, I’ve certainly learnt a lot from Professor Stark and made progress in writing. In spite of the end of UWP22, there’s still a long way to go to grow as a writer, for instance, a better ability of developing ideas and a more logical essay structure. Therefore, I’m thankful to have all the UWP classes now and later, and will keep working hard in the following courses.

Sincerely,

Haonan Kuang

Haonan Kuang UWP22

Generally, it is defined by people that a generation is about 20 years. Therefore, as time goes by, different generations have their distinguishing lifestyles, goals, experiences and values based on backgrounds. My grandparents belong to the cultural revolution generation, my parents belong to the sandwich generation and I belong to the Me generation according to Chinese definition. Actually, I found it is true that our opinions toward things have differences. Among them all, I think the biggest changes are the values and lifestyles.

In my opinion, the value a person believes decides his or her lifestyle in a certain extent because a value is an orientation of choice based on cognition, understanding and judgment. Therefore, lifestyles reflect their values.

Almost every Chinese generation has been deeply influenced by the culture of Confucianism and Daoism. Most Chinese people believe they should be kind and justice, so it is the same value that is admitted by every generation. However, relying on their different background of society and policy, different generations have their unique lifestyles and values.

The lifestyles of the cultural revolution generation were very different from other generations’. Distribution system controlled their lifestyles mainly. And the principle of how to allocate was based on their location, seniority and ability. My grandparents were both successfully admitted into universities, which was very hard during their time. This made them to have better distributions than others who did not enter universities. After got into the distribution system, their lives had been set step by step. As a result, their values are struggling and steady since everything would follow a rational line once they get in there.

Comparing with the lifestyles of Me generation, they have much more freedom and choice so they are more “rebellious”. Everything is possible if you want to. They were born in the best period of China. As mentioned by Mary O’Hara-Devereaux in her article “China’s 5 generations: Diverging lifestyles,” “the astounding rapid economic growth of China to the world’s seconded largest economy, the diffusion of cell phones, manned space flight, the rise of social media…” Although Me generation has been always denounced because they like little emperors and empresses who have been spoiled wholly, problems are not formed by themselves, there are many effects that cause these problems. Among all the effects, the one-child-per-family policy in China raises the problem of lacking responsibility, forbearance and team spirit. My parents are eldest brother and eldest sister in families, which may cultivate them to be strong all the time. So, they had learnt to be responsible from a very young age because they have to. Therefore, their generations reached mental maturity in a much earlier age than Me generation. But I believe these problems will be solved little by little when Me generation adept to the society.

In fact, Me generation has their special values when people ignore their problems. Instead of the value like steady of the cultural revolution generation, they are more competitive and creative. Starting a business is very risky in the minds of older generations. However, the born of Internet has built a new world for younger generations to create their dreams. It is now very popular for the Me generation to open online stores by themselves. Even them failed sometimes, they have the ability to recover soon and chase for their aims and goals again and again. They have more courage of trying everything they want and taking the risk of failures.

To sum up, although all the generations have distinguishing problems, every generation takes over the world in turn. I believe that all the things are developing in a good tendency. And from all the differences of lifestyles and values, we could find that younger generations are much more energetic and hopeful. The more energetic people are, the better the future will be. Moreover, in a world with less restrain, the resistance from the outside world should be less too. Hence, facing the best world we have now, younger generations need to consider how to evolve better.

Haonan Kuang UWP22

We have many names: Generation Zs, millennials, digital natives, net generations, trend spotters, futurists, attention-deficit-disorder generations… While the scientific and technological development is rapid nowadays, millennials are growing up with technology. Gradually, millennials are in colleges and technology does have effects on them during their academic lives. I used to believe technology was the best invention. However, there should be a limit for using technology as people, especially millennial students, should not be led blindly and only enjoy the convenience and entertainment given by technology without focusing on striving for their own futures.

Somehow I agree with the pinion of Marc Prensky, an education specialist, in his article “Listen to the Natives” that “schools are stuck in the twentieth century. Students have rushed into the twenty-first century (Black, 2010).” There are two things that have changed over time. The first is how students use information to learn, and the second is how they need to be taught. In our UWP22 class, all the students were distributed into six groups to do separate surveys about whether or not college students themselves think technology benefits their studies. Our group did an electronic survey and had received 24 responses in total with 95.8% female, aged from 17 to 20 among 14 different majors. Most of them are Chinese students, but we also have respondents from Latino, Vietnamese and American. Overall, we found that about 84.2% of them agree or strongly agree that technology is beneficial to their studies in college and 70.3% of them think technology will play a significant role in the field they want to pursue.

Assuredly, technology has benefited college students with all the efficiency it has brought to them, for instance: Googling questions whenever they want, sending e-mails wherever they are and looking up in the dictionary whatever they need…Using technology in colleges also brings efficiency. In our survey results, about half of students prefer to have lectures with technology like PowerPoint and iclickers because they can accept knowledge quickly due to visual learning. So, millennial students are actually trying to take control of learning in a better way. Therefore, they are a generation that earn to succeed, too. But now that they like multimedia as text, videos and sound, it is already a “multi-sensory experience (Carlson, 2005)” when students see the professor, hear his teaching, and read on the blackboard in lectures.

In fact, most situations are double-edged swords; even the best things turn bad if they exceed the extent. Millennial students are smart but impatient. In our survey, 37.5% students admitted that they feel nervous when they leave smart phones or computers behind for a while and the most difficult thing about being a student these days is to “sit through a class lecture without being able to check e-mail, surf the Web, or listen to music (Black, 2010).” Naomi Baron, the American University linguistics professor, also notices that instructors “can lecture for only 10 or 15 minutes before they have to break for a group discussion or an opportunity for the students to talk (Carlson, 2005),” which means college students now have very short attention spans. Nevertheless, the core mission for colleges and professors is to teach students “how to think on their own, how to be contemplative (Carlson, 2005).” Even if it is true that work in groups have effects sometimes, there are situations that students should study by themselves only. But all the temptations from technology disperse students’ concentration, and they cannot forget the momentary happiness technology gives. The recoil force of using technology is strong, so students with low ability of self-control will be easily carried off by technology. Hence, the tendency of giving up traditional teaching to cater to millennials’ character of getting results immediately need to transform in time. They should “integrate technology as a learning tool, not as replacement for effective teaching (Nevid, 2011).” In fact, it is also suitable for learning and studying as we are talking about technology’s influence on students.

However, using technologies has further interruptions. Students are bombarded constantly with information from many sources, which causes fragmented reading, meaning people can receive lots of information and data from websites, Social Medias, short messages in their technology receivers, but they prefer to read information with a broken pattern or even just read titles. So, people need to evaluate the information they acquire with their understanding, experience and ability. Millennials are growing up with this environment, and they are supposed to gradually obtain these kinds of “sophistication (Black, 2010)” in colleges. The reality is that most millennials lack many critical or analytical skills. For them, learning has become a “plug-and-play experience (Black, 2010).” Instead of reading an entire chapter in a textbook, they only focus on the results and build knowledge by jumping from one internet site to another to discover answers. This “mediated immersion (Black, 2010)” way of learning goes against with the original intention of education for helping students gain skills to survive successfully in society. Consequently, millennials should realize its harm and correct it before losing themselves in technology.

To sum up, although individuals in a group have differences, the propensity is mostly the same. Instead of criticizing the disadvantages of technology, we want to warn millennials to use technology in a proper way and not to be controlled by it. “They are more likely to succeed if they have clear expectations and guidelines for success. (Monaco & Martin, 2007)” So, such a collaborative and social generation shall create a brighter future once the millennials stop giggling toward smart technology all the time.

 

 

Works Cited

Black, Alison “Generation Y: Who They Are and How They Learn” Educational Horizons,

88.2 (2010): 92-101. Web

Carlson, Scott “The Net Generation Goes to College” The Chronicle of Higher Education,

52.7 (2005): A34. Web

Nevid, Jeff “Teaching the Millennials” Observer, 24.5 (2011). Web

Monaco, Michele & Martin, Malissa “The Millennial Student: A New Generation

of Learners”Athletic Training Journal 2 (2007): 42-46. Web

UWP 22 “Class Survey,” U.C. Davis March 2016. Print.