Blog #7

Kim Liebhaber

Blog #7

As an urban country in southeastern Africa, Malawi deals with major poverty issues; as a poverished country, Malawi struggles for survival and sustainability. (6- compound sentence using a semicolon)

Due to the high amount of poverty; both rural and urban areas, the country’s population stands at a staggering 16,320,000 people. (7- super comma)

 With this large population it is in fact still growing and drowning in poverty. This country lacks basic water needs and services to provide proper sanitation for everyone in the community, leading to huge problems for the population.

BECAUSE it takes money to develop facilities to regulate water control, being a very poverished country, Malawi struggles with that challenge as well. (Start a sentence with a “because”)

When they already lack basic water needs and a drought hits, there is an impeccable chance that Malawians receive the water they need to maintain to stay healthy. It is hard to sustain healthy water wells BECAUSE there are not proper climate patterns. (End a sentence with a “because” clause)

Proper climate patterns aren’t holding this poverished country back; proper money funds are. (5)

Without access to safe drinking water, disease, infection, and death occur among the population. Considering if the people are drinking unsafe water, but water in general, they can still die of disease and infections. I feel like this is a huge challenge because it is flourishing the community and water is what sustains it. In the mean time, THOUGH the Government of Malawi is coming up with ways to try and figure out how to sanitize and access clean water for this community, they want to prioritize and set goals but it is hard without money.  (Use, though, to interrupt a main sentence)

Blog #6

Ethnic labels are thrown out in American society everywhere with every race. Abdulaziz Kamus even wonders what ethnic label defines his own self in America. I agree with him because he brings up the concern for what is defined as African American in this country and what is not. He states that he is African, he is an American citizen, and that he should consider himself an African-American. IT MAKES SENSE; AND HE DOESN’T DIG DEEPER INTO THE MEANING OF HIS OWN RACE. He states that if he walks down the street white people would see him as an African-American, not think about his family roots 200 years ago. As much as it pains for me to say it, Americans perceive other Americans externally firsthand, not internally. Alan Keys brings up the definition of African-American differently. It should be used for only those whose families that endured the hardships during American slavery and segregation. That, I do not agree with. Whether it being black family descents of slaves from the US or black immigrants, Barack Obama makes a clear point to ethnic labels. They share greater similarities than differences even through all the hardships.

It should be used for only those whose families that endured the hardships during American slavery and segregation. BUT, I do not agree with.

 I agree with him because he brings up the concern for what is defined as African American in this country and what is not. He states that he is African, he is an American citizen, AND he should consider himself an African-American.

Kim Liebhaber

English 326

Blog #2

Dora

Exploring New Boundaries With Punctuation 

At the beginning, the teacher wanted Dora to connect the letters with sounds. Easily, Dora would write down the letters that went she thought matched the sounds initially from what she heard in the words. For example, “YER” portrayed the sound as “We are.” Then the teacher simply asked Dora to separate the letters and create them into words. The separation of words led to periods and Dora putting periods after every word she thought had ended. This helped her understand what letters broke off into words. Noticing that every word didn’t end in a period Dora started to understand the spacing between each word, she caught on without the teachers help. Now the punctuation aspect plays a role in the rules Dora needed to figure out. At such a young age children, like Dora, are taking on major steps of writing, whose main goal plays a huge part in further punctuation learning.

The teacher allowed Dora to read her “sentences” out loud and helped her define what a true sentence was and what an unnecessary marking was. Dora initially focused on writing instead of punctuating her sentences and over loading them with period markings. “Periods go at the end of the page,” this was Dora’s logic and went with it without the teachers help.

The teacher chose to not approach Dora with her learning habit. Children grow with their intellectual abilities, just like spelling, they learn to catch on as to what is wrong and what is right. By learning through mistakes Dora could incorporate why certain punctuation has its abilities to be swapped around with different meanings. The teacher guiding Dora in the right direction didn’t want to suffocate her with what she will be able to grow into. She allowed Dora to talk and reflect on her work and criticize it how she wants it. She begins to formulate her sentences, not with proper punctuation, but through further writing experiences. The teacher allowed Dora to explore her own writing by not following a particle format, the context and format being entirely theirs. Theirs to understand and guidelines that didn’t have deeper explanation that confused them more.

It was hard for her to catch on to the concept of sentence-end-marking because she seemed more focused on writing what she saw. She didn’t understand what word usage you needed to use to make up an actual sentence. She didn’t understand the definition of a sentence but she heard it. She was unaware as to what she saw on the paper. What she communicated with the teacher was a lot different than being able to break it up onto a piece of paper. It was hard for her to perceive the word how she wrote it which made it difficult for her to break apart each line into a sentence.