Argumentative Essay Literary Analysis
PORTFOLIO LETTER
Andrea Tonato F1-6 Universidad Yachay Tech
December, 9th
Dear Portfolio Reader:
My name is Andrea Tonato. I am very grateful for all the time you are giving to read my portfolio letter. It is a summary of all the work that I have done during my semester on level 6 with my teacher, Josephine Javens. The content of this summary will be based on the development of my different skills such us reading, speaking, listening and the most important writing. Also, I would like to share some of my ideas in order to still improve my English as a user of this language. And, to conclude, I consider that it is important to give a feedback to my teacher and me because as everyone knows nothings is perfect, during the semester the students experienced really good moments, but also other ones not so good. First, when I entered to level 6, I knew that it was going to be really hard on writing skills. I thought that the only thing that we were going to do in all the semester would be writing essays, but I was wrong. We learned not only how to write essays, but also we practiced a lot of speaking, reading, and sometimes listening. So the daily practice of these things has helped me to grow as a student, and as a learner of English. Each day that I went to class I corrected my mistakes, and I
learned new things. The principal errors that I have in my essays were the organization of my ideas, and the development of those ones. In general, I could improve my writing. Another important skill that I could develop was speaking, I think that the presentations in front of the class were really good. My classmates and I had to prepare speeches for the class, while we were preparing it, we corrected our grammar, and enriched our minds with academic topics like technology, ethics, art, among others. Also, we could practice and learn different body expressions in order to have a better presentation in public. I am a person that prefer speaking than writing, so I could say that giving presentations in front of the class was a really good experience for me. And the other skills, but not less important were reading and listening. I have always thought that those skills are very important if you want to have a rich vocabulary, and a better pronunciation. We watch some interesting videos that prepared our ears for some conferences that we could have in the future. And also, we read a lot to prepare our essays and our presentations, each reading taught me a lot, in each of them I learn a new word. So I could say that at the end of the semester my vocabulary and my pronunciation have had a notorious improvement. To conclude, all the skills that I got until now are going to grow. I finished level 6, but I am still being a university student, so I never stop watching, reading, listening, or learning things in English. Although, I will not have that possibility, I would like to find English speakers to keep practicing, or watch Tv shows also could help me. In summary, I am very happy to finish this semester, I learn a lot. I need to be more responsible and collaborative in my classes, but I will change it. And for my teacher I am grateful for her patience with me and with my classmates. Her effort to teach us something new has been very important. I finish level 6 , but I will start a new stage, and all these knowledge will be useful for my future.
RESPONSE ESSAY
How Do You Define Yourself? Andrea B. Tonato YACHAY TECH
How do you define yourself? Since many decades before, people started to worry about their physical appearance. Men as well as women have put a lot of effort to achieve the perfect face and the silhouette of the “ideal woman or man”. Men went to the gym to gain muscles and women started to use tones of make up in order to look like those beautiful people that appear in the media. It is great that someone wants to look good, but it becomes a problem when people start to judge others or even themselves by how they look. It changes of beauty during the years have brought many problems to the society. The most important issue is that people have started to suffer because they do not feel beautiful. It represents lack of self-love, selfesteem, confidence and feelings of worthlessness. It is for all these reasons that I consider that Lizzie is a good example of how all the superficial things do not mean anything if we do not love ourselves. I totally agree with her speech about how you define yourself because I also think that we do not have to permit that our appearance manages our lives. Feelings, values, perseverance and effort are going to give us a good life, not a face from a magazine. Lizzie is a girl that born with a rare congenital disease. It is a disease that prevents her from accumulating body fat, among other symptoms. In her speech, she shares with us how difficult was her life in the past. She said that she could not understand why the other kids did not want to stay with her. They called her “a monster”. As a kid, she was very innocent to realize all the refusal of the people. And it just was beginning. Her problem was even worse when she was a teenager. People called her “the ugliest world’s woman” (L. Velasquez, 2013). She suffered too much. But her family always gave her lots of love. They gave her all the support that they could so that she can be happy. She was on the brink
of trying to end her life. There is when she understood that she is a good woman, full of love, and that all of the things that people talked about her were not words that can define her. Then, she started to ignore all the negativity from the people. She knew that the only person who can define her or judge her was herself and her actions. Thus, she used all the bad vibes to make a ladder to climb to her goals, and now she is teaching us how to be successful, and the most important do not let bad people or bad things define us. I agree with her because sometimes many people, including me have let others hurt us with bad comments about how we look. Some people who follow those beauty standards are not able to accept someone that looks different, or someone who does not meet their expectations. They could be so rude with people and judge others without knowing them. It is for these reasons that in these days, not everyone is completely happy with her/ his appearance. People are more concerned about their clothes, their make-up, and fitness. Thought we might not believe it, at least once in our lives we have judged someone because of the appearance. Now I realized that I am not the only one that can be emotionally hurt, I also can hurt someone with my words. We must stop doing that, but the more important is “do not let people define us� (L. Velasquez, 2013). We have to be lovely and good people in every aspect. We must work to achieve our goals, and to make all the things that someone has told us that we cannot. We need to strengthen our self-esteem with positive things. We should be the best version of ourselves. The purpose of the speaker was to motivate people to find the way to define their selves. Telling us her experience, she achieved to transmit people different emotions like happiness, sadness, anger, among others. She is a good example of how to be strong in order to tell others a very hard and sad life experience. She is worthy to admire because of
the way she can tell us a bad story. Making some jokes she called the attention from the audience. So I could say that her speech was very interesting, emotional, funny and motivational. As a consequence, the whole presentation was very effective, and the message was very easy to understand. Through the years, people have been persuading by the media, creating in our minds an erroneous model of beauty. This idea that has been taken seriously is causing many problems of confidence and self – esteem in some people. People need to know that we could loss the beauty in any time, and the only thing that going to stay with us is our personality and our strength to face difficult moments. In order to make us understand this important point, here we have to Lizzie Velasquez giving us a motivational speech. She wants to give us a life lesson based on her own experience. According to Lizzie (2013) “we are the ones that can define us, we are those unique people that can decide if we want to go for a bad path or a good path”, and I totally agree with her opinion, because many times we let people define us. We feel bad because someone judge us because of our clothes, make up or haircut, and it is wrong. We pay a lot of attention to those people who only want to hurt us, instead of that, we should use those bad vibes in order to “make a ladder to climb to our goals” as Lizzie (2013) said. To conclude, it has been a very nice speech because it was very motivating and interesting, so if Lizzie could face her problems and be successful why we do not?
References Lizzie Velasquez. (2013, December 5). How Do YOU Define Yourself Lizzie Velasquez at TEDxAustinWomen. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6Aqlzvqk
ARGUMENTATIVE ESSAY
Andrea Belén Tonato (L6- 009) Josephine Javens Argumentative Essay 29, November 2016 Technology to learn a foreign language In the last years, there has been a very important impact in the world of technology and science. Both are questionable, but technology has grown up so fast that it has replaced some human tasks such as: writing letters, doing some mathematic operations, and even going to shopping. But also technology has helped people to make contact with those who are far away. Now, it is possible to have a long conversation with someone who is in another continent. It is for this reason that using technology can be helpful for learning a foreign language because it helps people connect with native speakers, in case they cannot travel, it permits them to find different content in many languages, and technology can be useful to keep practicing. To star, everyone knows that the best way to learn a foreign language is travelling and living on your own in the place where your chosen language is from. But not all people have that possibility here is when technology comes in, and as a super hero helps people to keep in contact with different people, places, culture and languages. Genevieve Roberts (2015) says “I type. Press enter. Almost instantly, a raft of answers and articles on screen” (p#2) , and this fact is absolutely true because nowadays, without having to take a step, a person can be talking with someone in Asia for example. And also with some apps like google earth, people can experience the emotion of being in another country. In addition, technology is really helpful to find different content in whatever language the user wants. Movies, music, books, TV shows, all of those things can be found on internet. These things are useful for learning a foreign language because if a person wants to train their listening skills, a movie or a song are going to be very important. If a person wants to improve on vocabulary, the best option is a good book, and as Andrew Keen (2013) said “Everything now is accessible” (p#4). If everything mentioned before were not enough, technology is very important to practice a foreign language. Now, there exists many apps, and online classes that could be very helpful to keep training your skills, and with this way a person does not forget the language that he or she is learning. All of these reasons to use technology to learn foreign language could seem awesome, but there are some people that believe that the more electronic tools a person uses, the dumber this person will become. According to Roberts ( 2015) “A recent study
suggests 90 percent of us suffering from digital amnesia� ( p#4). Many people, it does not matter for what they are using technology, they are becoming dependent on it. It could be very useful for learning a foreign language, but also to increase our knowledge in other fields. Some people do not understand well this idea, and they are abusing this tool in a bad way. All of the facts mentioned before can be true, but for this reason we have to teach people from the time they are kids How to have a good use of technology tools. Roberts( 2015) said “We pay less attention to life itself and become worse at remembering events from own lives� ( p#3), and it is true, but if we manipulate well these tools, we could be lucky.
INTERPRETATION ESSAY
“The course of Time” Andrea Tonato And Diego Suntaxi Yachay Tech
Art is our soul’s expression, and it could help us to communicate our ideas with other people. “The course of time” is a painting draw in 2015 by Erick Heredia. He is an ecuadorian painter who is 20. He studied visual arts at Superior Institute of Art in Cuba. After he came back to Ecuador he started to think in a painting that can represent his perspective about life. This painting was exposed in a exhibition at Nacional House of Culture in Ecuador in September 2015. This painting has different meaning for every person because everybody can see their own life on it. Therefore, the picture “The pass of the time” represents for us the course of the time in our life, and how each person is the owner of his/ her time.
One interpretation for this picture is that it represents the curse of the life. The clock and the chains represent a relationship within the life of a person and time. Nobody can stop or come back the time. Also the sun and the moon represent the good and the bad days in daily life. There are going to be dark and light moments in our life because they are part of it. The two phoenix represent two different lives. It means that you can only live twice. One life that when you live in autopilot, and the second one when you take responsibility of your decisions. The leaves are the representation of hope. Because they are placed after the moon, so it means that in our dark days we have to find the hope to fight and achieve our dreams. The last thing to notice is the word “Kaizen”. It is the principle of constant improving, and it is placed below the clock. It means that every second you can improve something in your life in order to be the person that you dream to be. In addition, another interpretation of the picture is that “ a person is the owner of his time”. It is a work of art with many and different figures that could be interpreted of
different manners. some of those figures are the phoenix. The phoenix can represent determination and force because the phoenix was a mythological animal that revived from its own ashes. Another thing that people can see in the picture is an old clock that obviously, it represents time. Material things could be repaired or kept untouchable, but not the time. It runs forward, and it never comes back. And the last representative thing in the picture is the little word “Kaizen”, It is a chinese word that means “change to be better”. If all of these objects are mixed we could see that a person is the owner of his time, because if someone is determined in doing or changing something, that person is the only one who can managed his time in order to improve or not. In conclusion the art is a good way to express ideas, and emotions. An this is the way that Erick Heredia has decided to follow, and he has drawn a good visual art called “ The course of the time”. This painting in general means “Time” but it depends on who is admiring it. It could have many different meanings, two of those are: “ The course of life” and “ a person is the owner of his time”. People interpret these meanings making analysis of all the figures that the painting has, and also seeing colors. Whatever the interpretation, the art is something where people could have their own interpretation of anything. Art makes people are more open minded.
LITERARY ANALYSIS
Andrea Belén Tonato (L6- 009) Josephine Javens Literary Analysis 13, October 2016 The story of an hour – Kate Chopin (1894) How the author uses some of the literary elements to portray the theme to reader? “The story of an hour” is about a couple (Mr. and Mrs. Mallard). According to the author, this couple was not in the best moment of their relationship. It is for this reason that when Mrs. Mallard received the news that her husband had died, she did not have the reaction that any other woman would have had. She cried too loud at the beginning, but then her attitude had a big change. She felt calm and free, and it is that make and interesting story. And to make it even better, the author decides to catch our minds telling us that Mr. Mallard was not really death. This fact is incredible for us, and also for one of the main characters of the reading who is astonished by seeing her husband alive in front of her. For these and many other events I consider that this story is very descriptive. It is and story that make to activates our imagination and our senses. As a consequence, I am going to make and analysis about three events of the story that belong to the imagery group. To start, it is important to mention one of the first events that happen in the story. “She wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment, in her sister´s arms” (Chopin, 1894.P.1). In this scene, clearly the reader can imagine how it is happening. Not only the sense of sight is in our minds, but also we could listen to Mrs. Mallard crying with sadness. So, this is an example of imagery because in this event, the reader could feel as bad as Mrs. Mallard, and also, the reader easily could feel the affect and the support of Mrs. Mallard’s sister. In addition to the event below, it is important to mention that after Mrs. Mallard was sad, she had very calm and relaxed moment. That moment was when she felt free and full of happiness. While she was feeling awesome in her room, people outside of it thought that Mrs. Mallard was dying or hurting herself. Here is when a new imagery element appears. “Josephine was kneeling before the closed door with her lips to the key hold, imploring for admission. “Louise, open the door! I beg …..” (Chopin, 1894.P.2). In this scene, the readers could also feel anxious about what is Mrs. Mallard really doing behind the door. To finish, it is good to know what happen at the end. “It was Brently Mallard who entered, a little travel – stained, composedly carrying his grip – sack and umbrella” (Chopin, 1894. P.2.)”. In this part of the story is when all the readers will be in shock. Everyone is going to imagine not only the fact that Mrs. Mallard is alive, but also what he
was doing. It is a moment whit a lot of sensations. We could see in our minds to Mr. Mallard entering, and also we could imagine what the reaction of his wife and friends was. To conclude, it has been a really good story, full of emotions, and mystery. With this story, the author could catch our attention, our feelings and our sense. In a few words, I could say that it has good examples of different literary elements, especially imagery. It is a good story so that the reader can see, listen and feel different moments and actions that the main characters could be having. And this is very important if the author wants to have a big audience References: K. Chopin. 1894. The story of an hour
RESEARCH PAPER
Ethics, a Good Reason to Forbid Human Cloning Andrea B. Tonato Yachay Tech
Ethics, a Serious Obstacle to Human Cloning It is a fact that technology and science have shown us many incredible improvements. Different companies produce a bunch of things that can make people’s lives easier and better. The advances are not only giving people new toys or electronic devices; they are also changing nature and some biological aspects of living organisms. All these developments have created some controversial topics such as cosmetic surgery, organs donation, human genome, and even cloning. These surgical procedures have made different associations dedicated to fight for human rights create a big discussion in order to familiarize people with the ethics on these techniques. And also to inform people the danger that these procedures could cause to the humanity. For these reasons it is important to be focused on what human cloning is, and its dilemma in the society. Hence it is important to emphasize that cloning is a process where scientists can make genetic copies of different organisms, even humans, and give them life. Since the first attempt in artificial embryo twinning in 1885, cloning has always fascinated many scientists from all over the world, so much that they started to work hard in the enhancement of this technique. Thus, they started their studies with a simple organism, a sea urchin. Then, they tried with other more complex species such as vertebrates, until in 1996; a group of scientists led by Professor Sir Ian Wilmut created “the first mammal (Dolly) by somatic cell nuclear transfer� (Learn genetics, 2014). Their creation was a sheep which could live for six years; of course it was not perfect. Dolly had some problems in her DNA; this meant that Dolly looked older than she was. But this was not an obstacle to have a normal develop as any other sheep; she even gave birth to six lambs. Over time, she experienced some diseases such as lung cancer, arthritis, and the last one, a cough that provoked some tumors in her lungs, so the decision was made to euthanize. Dolly was put
to sleep on 2003. This very important project demonstrated humans that clonation is possible; as a consequence, scientists were still practicing this technique with more mammals like gaurs, mouflons, and rhesus monkeys. Over coming decades of technical challenges, in 2013, Shoukhrat Mitalipov and colleagues could create a human embryo, using a skin cell. This underscore that human cloning is a fact. All of these has created a big controversy in the society, not only because of the medical risks that a clone could have, but also because cloning brakes some social, natural, religious, and ethical laws (Learn genetics, 2014.) Having a better knowledge about this topic, people can realize that it could mean a risk because of all the experiments that scientists need to do with animals and people before to achieve their goal that is “human cloning”. Taking into account the ethics of human cloning, the practice of this technique in the future should be forbidden. First of all, it is truly necessary to know how big the link which exists between human cloning and the ethics is. To understand this, it is necessary to be informed that cloning produce identical copies of the same genotype. In other words, clones are like twins but in different times. They would look similar, but they would have different characters and preferences. It is a proof that a clone would have feelings, and could be like a normal person in this society. Here is where ethics come in action because the created new person would not have parents, neither family, nor own identity. So, if the clone can behave as a normal person, it means that they also will have rights. But, nobody can be sure that these rights are going to be respected. One of the human rights that could be violated is “the basic fundamental right of the child to have and to live with its father and mother” (The international Bill of Human Rights, 1948). It will be violated because a clone could be done with just one of the two parents. Another violated human right is to have an own
identity because a human clone is identical to someone, as a consequence, the original person and the clone lose their nature and their personal identity. After knowing all of these, it is important to expand and analyzed a very important opinion about the prohibition of human cloning in the future. According to The European Parliament (paragraph B, 1998), "[T] he cloning of human beings . . . , cannot under any circumstances be justified or tolerated by any society, because it is a serious violation of fundamental human rights and is contrary to the principle of equality of human beings as it permits a eugenic and racist selection of the human race, it offends against human dignity and it requires experimentation on humans,". So, if people do not stop the practices of human cloning, the world runs the risk of that this technique falls on the wrong hands. It represents that some people without values wants to create something in their own benefit. So everything about gender equity and social inclusion will be worthless because in that time, humans will be deciding how people are going to look like. In addition to the argument above, there exist more supportive arguments that build up the human conscience in order to be more careful with the practice of the method “to play God”. One of those arguments is that using people as an experiment in order to make perfect the human cloning technique is unethical and dangerous. Everyone has to imagine how many times a scientist needs to fail so that he can accomplish his objective. To create Dolly, a lot of animals have to die or to experiment dangerous diseases and deformities. A human has a more complex structure, scientists surely are going to fail a millions times, and centuries of humans must die or suffer as the animals used for the creation of Dolly. There is a very important principle that says that humans should not be manipulated as instruments to accomplish someone’s goals. The principle is “Act so that you treat
humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end, never as a means only” (Kant, 1785). All of the reasons mentioned before are valid to make clonation a forbidden practice in the future, but like in everything in this world, not everybody thinks the same. There exist some people that claim that human cloning should not be banned because it could be beneficial to the shortage of organs donation, and for the advancement of medicine. In the arti¿¿le “Human Cloning Should Not Be Banned” (Jason brown, 2013) argues that “human cloning has been one of the best discoveries in the history; it is for this reason that scientists want to benefit from this technique”. But also Jason brown says that many people are not well informed about it, as a consequence, they ignore the fact that human cloning can be helpful for the shortage of organs donation and the cure of diseases such as diabetes, cancer, and tay- sachs to name a few. Cloning could become to be a very useful practice so that medicine has an incredible improvement, but before of all of the benefits there are a bunch of experiments. Human cloning as every artificial work generates many risks that people should not take for granted. Through some medical studies, it has been stablished that the induction of genes in any organisms could provoke cancer, and even death. A good example is “Dolly” to create her, 8 embryos were begotten, but only 1 could survive. With this figures, it is possible to estimate how many people could die to create a clone. Dr. Alan Colman (2001) said that cloning causes anomalies in the placenta, abortion, premature deaths, lung diseases, malformations, among others. The statistics of failure are too big, even though the positive benefits, the risks are bigger. And not only the surgical problems are important, but also the ethical ones. Scientist must not play God and violate human rights.
Humans are very intelligent, they have shown their skills in different fields like math, art, sports, medicine, and others. Humans also have had many challenges, and one of the most representatives have been cloning. A group of scientists could prove themselves with the creation of Dolly that they are awesome, and that humans are capable of everything, even human cloning. In the last years, they have been trying to perfect the technique of cloning. Nobody says that it is impossible, but all these attempts to create a clone have caused different discussions. The ethics play an important role in this topic because human cloning could be very risky for the society. There are three important aspects to discus, the first one is the violation of some human rights such us the right of having a mother and a father, and the right of having an own identity. These rights are violated because a clone could be made just with one of the parents, and it will be very similar to a person, so the clone and the person will lose their personal identity. The other topic in discussion is that every artificial work represents a great danger for the clone, and for the organism that is going to be fertilized. These two elements could have deformations, serious diseases like cancer, and different genetic disorders. And the last argument is that humans must not be used as experiments, people are not objects, and scientists cannot play with human lives. With just these facts, it is possible and acceptable to say that human cloning should be forbidden in the future, although there are many people who think that human cloning could be very benefit to the field of medicine. Positive things can be a lot, but people cannot ignore the other risk that human cloning could have.
References Genetic Science Learning Center. (2014, July 10) The History of Cloning. Retrieved December 03, 2016, from http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/cloning/clonezone/ Dolly 20 years. ( 2016) The Life of Dolly. Retrieved from http://dolly.roslin.ed.ac.uk/facts/the Ife-of-dolly/ Robin Beck Skarstad. (2014)The European Union's Self-Defeating Policy: Patent Harmonization And the Ban on Human Cloning. Retrieved from http://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/jil/vol20/iss2/3 John Jarris. (1997) "Goodbye Dolly?" The Ethics of Human Cloning. Retrieved from http://jme.bmj.com/content/23/6/353.full.pdf+html Yvette Pearson. (2016, July) Never let me clone?: Countering an ethical argument against the reproductive cloning of humans. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1500819/