Personal Response (Wall-E)

Consumer capitalism is a big issue that we are facing but we are not exactly aware of it. We just buy things that are convincingly advertised to us by skilled marketers. Buyers don’t realize the big dilemma which is losing their self-worth.

To begin with, they become more materialistic. Technologies changed rapidly. This is what causes people to catch modern products they see to show everyone because of their pride to have it. If they get this, they feel very accomplished and happy. What they don’t know is that they already become greedy.

Furthermore, we tend to rely more on technology especially in doing our own task. For example, in some countries they use robots instead of real people to become a nanny. They made these things with such good equipments in order to function as a person but no matter what they can’t copy it exactly like us. Robots are just machines that require special programs. In addition, it runs out of battery and gets useless if there is no electricity. They are not similar to humans that have feelings and never need electricity to get power.

To sum up, we need more awareness about this issue. We can start by asking ourselves, “Who can do the job better, human or things?” Before we start buying worthless things, let’s consider this as something that we can reflect especially in the future.

'Speak' (a personal response) (stimulus)

Q. Based on the stimulus below, give a personal response and justify it. Choose any text type you have studied in class. Write 150-250 words.

"We are unaware that we are communicating in many different ways even when we are not speaking [...] We are rarely taught about this non-verbal form of communication in school [...] We informally learn how to use gestures, glances slight changes in tone of voice, [...] to alter or emphasize what we say and do [...] we learn these culture bound techniques largely by observing others and imitating them."

I strongly agree with the above stimulus for the following reasons. People usually use non-verbal form of communications, like gestures, glances or slight changes in tone of voice. And this kinds of non-verbal languages help people to communicate with each other much easier. For example, if you see the main character of ‘speak’ which is Malinda, she does not talk that much. Instead of having a verbal communication, she just expresses her emotions by twisting up her face to show that she does not have any interest to talk to the others. Also their ex-best friends did not say anything to Malinda, but when she saw her ex-best friends, she realized that they don’t want to talk to her. So, even people don’t have verbal communication, they can express their emotions. Furthermore, non-verbal form of communications let people express their emotions efficiently, and also they use them to capture the attentions of the audiences. For example, during the speech we can easily find that a lot of non-verbal form of communications like hand gesture and changes in tone of voice. And I think the purpose of the speeches are to show up their own ideas. So I can conclude that the non-verbal forms of communications are really helpful to express themselves.

'Speak' (a personal responce)

Are the pressures fitting in at high school greater than any other point in one’s life? Explain.

I think the pressure of fitting in at high school is greater than any other point in one’s life for the following reasons. First, the pressure of fitting in at high school is connected to the school life of student. To explain, if a student does not fit in at school properly, he or she will not have classmates to play with. So, the student will feel lonely. Second, it can affect other things like grades. If we see the film ‘Speak’, Melinda’s grade drastically went down because she was not able to fit in a clan, and she did not share her problems to the others. Therefore, I think pressures fitting in at high school are greater than other things.

Do parents understand the problems teenagers go through? Explain.

In my opinion, I think parents understand the problems a teenager goes through for the following reasons. Previously, parents were teenagers about 20 to 30 years ago, so I am sure that the parents had similar problems like their children have. I believe that parents will understand the problems. In my case, my parents always listen to my problems, and they even help me to solve them by giving me some advises. Secondly, parents have more experience and are wiser than us because parents lived much longer than we did. For example, if we see our grand parents, they know some more ways to solve the problems. Last but not least, parents know almost everything about their children because they stayed with their children since they were born. Therefore, I think parents can understand the problems that teenagers are having.