Wonderful Blog

The First Wonderful Speaking Class
Since I came to CESL, I hope to have a speaking class in which we can communicate with native speakers. This year my hope became real, so I was very happy and interested to have this class. The last Thursday was the first speaking class that was very interesting. During the class, there were many groups and in our group, there were nine members; two native speakers, three Saudis and three from Japan, Korea and China. At that time, we discussed many issues such as gender differences, school system, some American cities and using different ways of communication with friends. The most interesting was different school systems from a country to a country. In America, there are differences between public and private school in terms of uniform; a few public schools have the formal uniform, but students in private schools should have the same uniform. In Korea, the school system nearly is the same as American school system. But in Saudi Arabia, the system is diiferent; student should have the same uniform nevertheless the kinds of school. In addition, we had different opinions about using internet to communicate with friends; most of us said that facebook is the best and others said that skype and hotmail are the best. Moreover, I learned some American cultures, especially formality when speaking to strangers that is very different from our country. That day was wonderful, but class length was very short.
Written by SAEEDA
EAP2 A

Culture through Media - Student Clips

EAP2A
Ahmed A. - Travel Guide California
Saeeda - Los Angeles Apartment Living Guide
Elsie - Go wild in South Beach Miami
Mesfer - Saudi Arabia Yours to Discover
Seung Kyu - Fixed Gear Review - State Bicycle
MJ - Get an Insider's View of Jeddah
Bin - History of Pizza
Aurelie - Secrets of the CIA - Congo
Nour - History of the Women's Center in Carbondale, IL

EAP2B
Summer - Chongqing Hot Pot
Baker - Fastest growing city in the world - Dubai
Mars - How to spend only $100 dollars in Hong Kong ($100HK)
Ray - Problems with Disneyland
Hyun Ho - A tour of Detroit's ghetto
Ahmed A. - AlJouf Saudi tour
Yuki - Akihabara - Life in Tokyo #16
Ahmed F. - Top 5 things to visit in Turkey
Haitao - Dim sum discussions with Chua Lam

Culture Media - Possible videos

Los Angeles
Los Angeles Documentary (3:34)
Downtown Los Angeles Tour (music only) (5:29)
>Los Angeles / Santa Monica Beach 2008, California (5:41)

New York
How to visit New York on $100/day (3:55)
Tour of Greenwich Village (Habitat) (3:36)
Adventure Guy Tours pt. 1 (6:15)
Adventure Guy Tour pt. 2 (3:33)
Adventure Guy Tour pt. 3 (6:04)
Driving around New York City - 1928 (5:11)

YouTube
Reasons why "We Tube" (5:21)
The Anonymity Project (5:54)

Chicago
Mag Mile (1:28)
chicago august 2010 (4:08)

Homelessness
Homeless in America (2:37)
The Homeless Crisis in Los Angeles (2:33)

Las Vegas
Driving down the Las Vegas Strip in HD (4:09)
Ben's Tours - Las Vegas at Night (3:07)
My Las Vegas Trip 2008 (5:11)
Dunes hotel & sign demolished (3:55)

Culture & Media - Class videos

1. Moving to Los Angeles
2. SoHo Tour - New York City
3. You tube and popularity
4. VEGAS - Neon Boneyard (2:11)
*****
(Midterm)
1. Las Vegas Travel Guide (5:39)
2. Travel Guide - Los Angeles (4:14)
3. Hunting the homeless in Los Angeles (8:13)
*****
4. Digital Frontiers - Social media and social change
5. Facebook addiction - Growing issue (5:07)

welcome back Salukis!

Sky
Author
Alissa j. Rubin
Title
Afghans to Form Local Forces to Fight Taliban
Publication
The New York Times
Date
July 14, 2010
Summary
According to the article, the NATO will help Afghan to create local forces that are easy to fight with Taliban. This kind of force will release the NATO’s army stress. The U.S. army will train local forces to protect their communities by themselves. These forces must belong to the government. Local forces will be set up in a lot of places, which do not have enough army and police. These local forces focus on defense.

Issues
1. Why the Afghan government worries about the local forces?
2. Doe local forces will help NATO to protect Afghans?
3. How to avoid the local forces helping Taliban?
4. How to lend local people joining to the local forces?

Opinion
This is good for NATO and Afghan government, because NATO will not send a lot of armies to Afghan, and the Afghan government can easy to flight Taliban in some small towns with out NATO’s help. Therefore, many small towns use their power to get the peace by themselves. A lot of NATO’s armies can go back to their counties. On the other hand, the NATO and Afghan government should avoid these local forces help Taliban to fight NATO’s armies, because it is easy to happen some places.

Sky
New stalk
Reference:
Westing, A. H. (2010, February 18). Overpopulation and climate change. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/18/opinion/18iht-edwesting.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=overpopulation%20and%20climate%20change&st=cse
Summary:
In “Overpopulation and climate change”, Westing (2010) population includes two environmental problem, population increasing and emission per capita. The increasing energy demand by fossil fuels is quicker than energy producing by low-emission. A part of global warming is from population. People pay attention to use emission-control, because there is not way to work out population rapidly. Persistent education and publicity are very important. People need follow with interest the attention atmosphere. A safe and sustainable way is cap-and-trade in global world. People have responsibility to share with the other living things and reducing population.
Opinion:
Overpopulation is a huge problem is the entire world. It effects the earth environment and damages other living creatures’ places. More greenhouse gas emissions by people damage the earth environment quickly. The number of countries still thinks how to do carbon-trading scheme with many developing countries that cannot deal with the problem. People need paying attention overpopulation. There are a lot of places has not enough resources to supply because of too much people. People must sacrifice some present advantages in order to insure to itself future ones.
Questions:
1. What do you think the relationship between overpopulation and climate change?
2. How to reduce the carbon emission in your life?
3. Do you agree cap-and-trade schemes? Why?
4. How dose the climate change affect your life?
5. Many people said people had their eyes on long-term development, not just immediate needs, so what do you think? (According this article)