Research Journal Entry 15 Eye Contact Is Attractive

There’re researchers in Scotland discovering a way for us to make ourselves attractive to others, and that is just looking straight at them and smiling. The study showed that people are less attractive if they take their eye contact off others whom they’re looking at. The study digitally altered photographs of men’s and women’s faces. One type of picture showed a person looking directly at the camera, while in another one the same person was looking slightly to the left or right. Actually the difference was so small that it was hard to notice it. However, there were 460 volunteers who voted the two photographs, and the result indicated that the former photograph had a higher rating for “attractiveness”. Therefore, in order to enhance my attractiveness, next time I will definitely look straight at others when I talk to them.

Research Journal Entry 14 The pardon of turkeys

I’ve read an interesting article about Thanksgiving. It is about the American president conducting an important event at the White House. The story is about the American presidents who pardon a turkey, or two, annually. Before reading the article, I never know there’s such an interesting tradition practiced in America. Its origin can be traced back to the time of President Lincoln in 1863. Thanksgiving was announced a national holiday and they were going to have a turkey killed to make the dinner. However, Lincoln’s son, Tad, tried to stop them to kill his new turkey friend because he had bounded with the turkey after a few days together. To everybody’s surprise, the president did release the turkey and afterwards it became an annual practice in the White House. Sometimes, when we have a holiday, maybe it’s better for us to find its origin first, because we may find some unknown and interesting story which lies behinds the holiday.

Research Journal Entry 13 Cooperative Learning

Recently I’ve read a master’s thesis about CL (Cooperative Learning). The topic is “The Effects of Cooperative Learning on Vocational High School Students’ English Reading”. In contrast to regular senior high school students, vocational high school students seem to pay much less attention to English learning, because, generally, they had lower English grades in their entrance exam. Secondly, Due to the frustrating learning experiences in junior high school, they might have less motivation to continue with English learning. Third, they tend to put more emphasis on specialized subjects than general subjects. Last, they vary a great deal in their English proficiency so that the teachers can hardly meet each student’s needs in one class period. The author would like to apply this method to enhance students’ learning achievement, to construct cooperative and interactive teaching and learning atmosphere, and to explore the effects of implementing cooperative learning. In methodology part, the subjects are 66 students, who are all males, third-year, and from Wheel Engineering Department. They are divided into two groups. One is experimental group, who accepted CL method, and the other one is control group who took the traditional method. The researcher implemented Student Teams-Achievement Division (STAD) combined with role assignment and peer evaluation checklist to reinforce CL effects. Finally, the results showed that there was no significant difference between the experimental group and the control group. Meanwhile, there’re also some problems found during the experiment. For example, some students indicated that there were group members who did little work in small group learning. Some group members were even doing other non-related things during group discussion. Therefore diligent students felt it was unfair that they made greater efforts than those of free rider, and yet received the same rewards. In addition, the over-achievers were eager to express themselves and answer the teachers’ questions for the rewards. However, sometimes they were too aggressive rather than thoughtful in dealing with other group members.
Also, the unit of the group would be a problem because the members were randomly assigned, whether they liked to be with each other or not. The groups that had a good atmosphere of union learned better than the groups without such an atmosphere did. What’s more, noise produced by group discussion affected the other groups. It was a big problem because the classroom was small, so that there was no spare room to arrange seats for groups to conduct discussion without mutual interference.
Nevertheless, further analysis indicated that while HL (High Level) and IL (Intermediate Level) students benefited from CL instruction, LL (Low Level) students didn’t. HL and IL students showed improvement in English reading and positive attitudes toward CL instruction; the LL students showed less positive feedback in the questionnaire. Therefore, the CL instruction was beneficial, but the students’ levels would be a variable.

Research Journal Entry 12 High School Musical

Today I saw a movie which was originally created by Disney Channel, High School Musical. The plot is that the two leading roles Troy Bolton and Gabriella Montez met each other in a new year’s party by accident and then they happened to be in the same high school. They both have their own proficiency in different fields; one is a super star in the basketball team and the other one is an academic genius. In order to live up to others’ expectation, they both have to hide their real interest—singing. However, at the end of the movie, they both complete their dream and others’ expectation. The reason why I like this kind of movie is that it involves lots of great music and dancing which can magically make my depressed mood alive. After seeing the movie, I can feel that I seem to go back to my high school’s years when I was supposed to be the most energetic and had nothing to worry about. Nevertheless, people will grow up after all, and I know we have to. After we are grown-ups, we are always pursuing happiness. Most of us think money can bring us happiness, but the more money we earn, the less happiness we get. How ironic it is!

Research Journal Entry 11 New Ways of Communication

Nowadays, young people may communicate with each other through some new ways such as email, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo Messenger, and SMS. We may find that this kind of “informal” communicative way is getting more popular than the standard way. For example, we may use some acronym of phrases or sentences such as G.N. to represent “good night”, use the compression of word such as Ths to stand for “thanks”, or use homophony in number or in letter such as 881 to represent “bye bye” or cu and ic to stand for “see you” and “I see”. It’s very interesting to feel the transformation of a language, because it always reminds me that I’m living in the process of historical linguistics.

Research Journal Entry 10 A New Kind of Desktop

We may use computers at home, at work, at school, in banks, etc. Most of computers we use now are pretty much all the same. We may use a mouse to point at and click on files and programs. Recently, Microsoft released a new approach different from the old system. We call it the Surface.
To operate Surface, no mouse or keyboard is needed. Instead, we control all the files by touching it. In this way, the Surface lets your finger paint on the screen or use your fingers to move around. The Surface also has the interaction with the objects place on top of it.
This new interface is still expensive now, and it was mostly only used in businesses like restaurants and hotels at the end of 2007. As the price comes down, the new machine will become available for home users. Then I will be eager to have one.

Research Journal 9 Yahoo Mini Pen

Recently I found a new E-tool from yahoo homepage, and that is Yahoo Mini Pen. This tool is regarded as a powerful software which you can use to look up the relative information once you touch the key word on the screen. It can support many interfaces such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, even the word on your desktop. Through the Yahoo Mini Pen, you can use it to do the translation, to find the related websites, and even to search for the related knowledge from Yahoo Knowledge Plus. Besides, it also provide the authentic pronunciation for people to read the words which they are not familiar with. I’ve downloaded for couple of days and I found it a very useful E-tool. However, I also found some defects after I realized the frequent slow reaction of the system. I think it will be a real wonderful E-tool some day if this defect is overcome.