Jose Luis Perez T2-11 house, Yachay Tech 30/11/16 Dear Portfolio Reader, My name is Jose Luis Perez. Thank you so much for letting me share my English Language Portfolio. It is a collection of my best work in English, and it shows my ability as an English language learner at Yachay Tech. My portfolio consists of three essays, a reflection, and a research project that I developed with so much effort in my level 6 English course. The essays I have choosen are my argumentative essay, my interpretation essay, and my response essay because I consider they are my favorite works. I am very happy to contribute with my portfolio for the next generations’ learning, and I'm ready to continue my academic career in English. When I arrived to Yachay Tech I had already studied some English before. I began studying on level 5 and now I am in level 6. I have learned many things, specially to write structured essays. In high school my essays were never structured, I only began to write my thoughts until I fulfill enough words for the teacher. Then when I came here I had too many problems with the essays, I tried to write essays like in high school but the teacher always said it was incorrect. I had to learn to write structured essays with introduction, hook, background information, thesis, body paragraphs, topic sentence, supporting details, conclusion, advice. This was very uncomfortable for me and I felt like the teacher was too demanding with me, but I finally learned to write structured essays and my grades turned better. I also improved my speaking skills with the help of expositions. Speaking English everyday with teachers has helped me to understand when other people talk to me in English
or even for singing English songs, I used to understand words in songs but now I am able to understand sentences in songs. I have learned lyrics of many songs like All Star from Smash Mouth, It’s not my Time from 3 Doors Down, Sorry from Falling with Glory, Me Against the World from Simple Plan, Falling Apart from Zebrahead, Numb from Linkin Park, etc. Many indie rock songs feel good for learning English, or if you like another rhythm you might use it. At level 6 I had problems with punctuality and absences, but now I come early everyday. The teacher said that I have good grades but unpunctuality is my weakness and it could make me fail the semester. Punctuality is necessary in life, when I was in high school I was always late but as I was the best student of the class it didn’t matter too much. But when you grow up you will need a job and bosses won’t tolerate frequent unpunctuality, even if you are a good employee. Or if you have your own business customers won’t choose you if they know you will delay at work. This is what English course has helped me in my personal life, and I hope it will help you too. Thank you again for reading my portfolio. I’ve put a lot of dearness into my portfolio, and I hope you could get inspired by reading it. I am confident that you will agree with me that I have become more proficient in English and am ready to pursue my career. Sincerely,
Jose Luis Perez
Forget University Video Jose Luis Perez Yachay Tech University L6 - 005 22/09/2016
Forget University Video Could Self-Education replace formal Education? In the last decades many people see that some men have become millionaire without having a formal education. People like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs or Marck Zuckerberg had built great companies without finishing college and this makes people think that formal education is not necessary for life. These people often drop out from school but they don’t have the same success as Marck Zuckerberg. Then they realize self-education is not as easy as it seems to be. Self-education requires more discipline than formal education because when you self-educate you don’t have a system obligating you to study, so you only study when you feel like it. And most of the time people don’t feel like, eventually they stop studying in their free time then they just work for a salary and go home to sleep. Till H. Groß says education depends on 4 factors: develop skills, learn from the best, learning is more important than money, hustle before passion.
In order to have a good education it is necessary to develop skills by practicing the new knowledge. Develop skills means not only assisting to classes but to keep investigating after classes. You should ask the teacher what books may you read and then use your free time to explore that knowledge. Look for internet sources, scientific articles or just find some information about new discoveries on your topic. This new knowledge will fertilize the formal education that you use as ground, and later this soil will give extraordinaire fruits in your life. When you are tired of studying think about the people you love, your family, your parents, your future wife and children if you don’t have them yet. Think that you will give them a better life. Your parents will be proud of you, your wife will be happy for you, and your children will have more opportunities in life. But overall these good reasons do it for
yourself, because the one who will be happier is yourself. Another important factor in education is learning from the best.
When you want to be good at something you have to learn from the best. A master will help you to learn the most important things for your career. Remember your master should be someone with a lot of experience on the topic. He or she should be very kindred to you because you will spend a lot of time together. One good example for this is that when an athlete wants to find a trainer he or she looks someone with the same nature as he or she. The athletes always look for a trainer with the same kind of body and the same guts, they know that a master will make them similar to him or her. In order to apply the previous facts we’ll have to give learning more importance than many other things.
You can gain experience if you work for free while you are studying. Practice makes the master. A person who is working while learning will develop better skills than his or her classmates who are not working. Many millionaire people that want to enter to a new industry start working in it. They become employees of bakeries, restaurants, factories, fishing boats, or any kind of business. That way they realize if they like the industry or not. To perform these factors is necessary to find your passion.
If you want to know your vocation remember hustle comes before passion. Many people think that when they find what they love they will start to work on it, but the reality is that when you work hard on something is when you realize if you love it or not. You don’t know if you like a fruit until you taste it. You don’t know if the water is hot or cold until you put your feet in. But passion will not overcome only by trying a major or job, passion is
different than pleasures, it will only appear when you become sodden with something. Passion will be the fuel that will take you to achieve your dreams.
Formal education is necessary as a base for your knowledge but to become a good professional you need to add self-education to your formal education. A person who only has formal education will be an average professional but a person who has formal education plus self-education will be an excellent professional. If you want to become an excellent professional you have to become formal+self-educated.
References: TEDx Talks. (2014, October 20). Forget university? 4 steps to design your own education | Till H. GroÃ&#x; | TEDxKlagenfurt. [Video File] YouTube. Retrieved 26 September 2016, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUnpSYMNEhY Young, S. (2010). Why Self-Educated Learners often come up short. Scott H Young. Retrieved from https://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/2010/02/24/self-educationfailings/
How To Interpret A Famous Piece Of Art Loachamin Dennis, Pérez José Luis, Suárez Katherin, Vega Oscar English for Academic Purposes II L6 – 005 Yachay Tech University November 16, 2016
How To Interpret A Famous Piece Of Art Paintings can capture human’s imagination and inspire some great ideological changes. Art is a expression of feelings and emotions that a painter shapes in a canvas, painting or fresco. According to a contemporary American Painter called George Tooker, “Painting is an attempt to come to terms with life. There are as many solutions as there are human beings.” He expresses that with paintings human being can understand better what does life means; this statement has been presented since the beginning of human life. For example, in the Renaissance a man who helps to understand better life was Michelangelo Bounarroti that on request paint the fresco called Sistine Chapel with includes the painting “The creation of Adam”. In this paper, we will talk about how to understand better this piece of art describing what we see, analyzing the content and interpreting based on researches and results. The painting named “Creation of Adam” could cause many feelings depending of the ideology of each person. If a religious person seen the painting at first sight, he going to interpret that all his ideas and knowledges about the creation of the life in the Earth are correct. But if a person with scientific knowledge’s look the painting, he going to deduct that it as a sample of the human anatomy. Generally, this artistic work in the religious part may cause a sense of curiosity for knowing why did God give Adam the power; God who is the father of everything exists in the Earth´s surface gave a responsibility to Adam who represents humanity, this happened trough the contact between their index fingers. But in the scientific part, in this painting is apparent the knowledge that Michelangelo had about the scientific field named anatomy; because represent clearly many parts of the human body. (Poter, Roger). For example, the cupola that surround to God have shape of human brain and the green cloth is the vertebral artery. (Careaga, 2013).
“The creation of Adam” tries about the creation of Adam as the first perfect human in the earth who was beautiful, muscular, and strong and for this reason represents the greatness of God. For one hand, in the paint Adam is completely naked as if he was a newborn sitting on a green surface which represents the earth as her future home. And for another hand, is God surrounded by many cherubs which are on a blue and white surface that represents the heaven because according to the religion these kind of divine figures only live in the heaven. The most important in this paint is how the hand of God tries to get together with the hand of Adam because he wants to give life to Adam and create a relationship between humans, religion and him. Also, is important remember that this paint was complete after four years because during this time Michelangelo had many works that must be done to the Pope. Today in one of the most important works around the world and according to Kats (2009) Michelangelo unveiled the work in 1512, he had succeeded in creating a transcendent work of genius, one which continues to inspire millions of pilgrims and tourists in Vatican City each year. Interpretation cannot be learned from a book alone, but only through a combination of study and steady practice. (Nolan, 2005). How can we transmit our ideas, our knowledges, our feelings? the most effective way is by interpretation. In the fresco “The creation of Adam”, we interviewed some friends, and people in general to enlarge the actual perspective. We realized that can be some interpretations, the realistic where many people without many knowledge of paintings give us details, and the concise part where some researches gives us many paths to interpret it. The realistic expressed that this fresco separate our lives in two sides the real part where we physically live in, and the spiritual part where our soul is, because of many people said the most attractive thing they realized, it was the position of their hands. According to this the concise part shows us that this fresco give us two suggestions, one of them and lesser accepted is that god represents a human uterus meaning
that with him whole life began; and the most accepted theory reveals us that god represents a human brain where god and Eva (near to him), are located in the part that represents love and affection. The Creation of Adam, by Michelangelo, is a very important piece of art. It represents a historical change when the science tried to become independent from religion, and Michelangelo showed that they might complement each other. For this reason he painted God and the spiritual world with the shape of a human brain, showing that divinity gives us intelligence. Eva in the place of the hypothalamus, responsible for love. And the creating arm of God coming out from the hypophysis, responsible for imagination. God and Adam have their arms in the same position, showing that humans were created in the image and likeness. From the underground a creepy hand comes out trying to touch Adam, showing that materialism could distract human beings from their original purpose. As God is Adam’s father and creator human beings should try to pay attention to him, because fathers always want the best for their childs.
References: Writing about Paintings (2013). Visual Rhetoric/Visual Literacy Series. Retrieved from: http://twp.duke.edu/uploads/media_items/painting.original.pdf Poter, Roger. nd. A Reflection and Analisys on the ‘Creation of Adam’ Sistine Chapel Fresco. Departament of Theology. Retrieved from: http://www.biblicaltheology.com/Research/PorterR04.pdf Careaga, M. (2013, December 19). La anatomía oculta en las obras de Miguel Ángel. Retrieved from: http://culturacolectiva.com/la-anatomia-oculta-en-las-obras-demiguel-angel/ Nolan. James (2005). Interpretation Techniques and Exercises. Retrieved from: http://tienganhdhm.com/Images/file/IntepretationTechniques%20and%20Exercises.pdf Kats, J. (2009). The Measure of Genius: Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel at 500. Smithsonian. Retrieved from: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/the-measure-of-geniusmichelangelos-sistine-chapel-at-500-123313873/?no-ist=
Does language affect ethics? Why or why not? Jose Luis Perez Yachay Tech University L6 - 005 152/11/2016
Does language affect ethics? Why or why not? Scientific American shows that foreign languages make people think in a colder way. When people were confronted to a moral dilemma in a foreign language they tended to think more about numbers, but when people were confronted to the same dilemma in their mother language they thought more about feelings than numbers. (Sedivy, 2016) Language affects human ethics depending on the conditions given with the learning of that language. Our mother language is related to our childhood which is full of feelings and innocence. Foreign languages are often learned during the adolescence and even when teenagers are not as mature as an adult they have suffered more than when they were children, so they are not as innocent as before. In an opposite case where the person suffered more during childhood but in the adolescence the person could forgive all the pain and live happy, a second language could be associated with serenity and joy, while the first language would be associated with chaos and sorrow. Julie Sedivy explains how she feels her mind acts in a distinct way when speaking varied languages: “I often have the sense that I’m a slightly different person in each of my languages—more assertive in English, more relaxed in French, more sentimental in Czech.” (Sedivy, 2016) This means when Sedivy was learning English she had a confident personality, when she was learning French her life was calmed, and when she was learning Czech she was a passionate person. Learning is always associated with feelings and feelings are associated with ethics. Every new knowledge comes in to people matched with emotions, these emotions will determine the use of the new knowledge. In order to improve the way to
think and the human ethics people should learn new languages associating them with happy and peaceful moments.
References: Sedivy, J. (2016). How Morality Changes in a Foreign Language. Scientific American. Retrieved 15 November 2016, from https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-morality-changes-in-a-foreignlanguage/
Ethics on Playing with Life in the Lab Jose Luis Perez Lv6-005 Yachay Tech University 22 November 2016
Abstract Technologies have advanced a lot in the last years and now scientists have begun to discover the secrets of life. However, this knowledge brings new challenges like cloning animals or modifying genetics. The problem is that playing with life in the lab is not considered very ethical. What are the reasons for not considering it to be ethical? Gene transfer means many risks like toxicity when the vector dies or dangerous reactions of the vector when interacting with another virus. Cloning animals is very dangerous also because it generates too many sick animals and most of them must be euthanized due to the health problems that they carry. In the case of Dolly the sheep, she was the first animal that was successfully cloned in history and she suffered from arthritis because of genetic mutations. These and more arguments will be discussed in this research report.
Ethics on playing with life in the lab Is there a limit for the human rush on science development? Human impetus has given an advanced science to the world. Scientists developed vehicles and electricity, but also developed weapons and drugs. As technology progresses so does delinquency and inequality. 20% of the people has the 80% of the world’s money and 80% of the people has the 20% of world’s money. Lots of people live in misery while a few people live like kings and queens. People lose their jobs and commit suicide or decide to rob other people. NASA spends millions of dollars looking for life in Mars while pollution kills life on Earth. Oil companies build great pipelines to transport petroleum while many communities in Africa cannot access to clean water. The current controversial technology is animal cloning. Animal cloning pretends to give humans supreme control of nature, but nature had done well without human participation. Then there is no necessity for changing the natural order. Animal cloning exists only to satisfy an insatiable human ego, resulting the destruction of social virtues and harmonious life on Earth.
Dolly the sheep is considered a triumph for the cloning science but represents the human cruelty against animals. Dolly was cloned in 1996 and since then cloning science have achieved new goals. “To date, scientists have successfully cloned many other species, including a cat, horse, gaur, rabbit, deer, chickens, cows, mice, goats, pigs, mules, and, most recently, a rat.” (Fiester, 2005) Cloning is very painful for new animals and involves many deaths. Genetic mutations make the newborn very weak and ill. “Dolly suffered from severe arthritis and lung disease due to genetic mutations that occur during cloning and had to be euthanized at the young age of 6 years – half her species’ natural lifespan” (Mountain, 2013).
Animal cloning presents some advantages for science. NYLN shows an opposing point of view for cloning enemies. This technology allows farmers to clone the healthiest of their animals. In that case the milk, meat and wool production would be increased; cloned animals grow faster and therefore consume less food. Cloning opens the door for modifying the genetics of the food, allowing scientists to create anything they could imagine like a chocolate flavored milk or spicy cow meat or sour fish meat. Genetic modification could also create fluorescent trees to light parks at night or create plague resistant corn and beans. Then these technologies are projected to develop genetic improvements for human beings, like blue eyes or strong arms, giving people the capacity to choose their appearance. Animal cloning would help to protect endangered species or even bring back extinct species. ("Cloning Animals Pros and Cons List", 2015) Scientists talk about cloning endangered species for repopulating the biosphere, or maybe bringing mammoths back to life in order to study their behavior. Or also bringing back the beloved deceased pets of people. Many people have lost a beloved pet and science allows pets’ owners to get exact copies of their pets. Scientists always want to show only the beautiful part of their researches, but beautiful things usually hide unpleasant things.
Cloning the healthiest farm animals could be catastrophic. The reason is that genetic variety would be reduced to many individuals with the same exact genetic code. And as there is no perfect genetic code on Earth any kind of genetic code is vulnerable to some kind of illness. “If the specific genotype used isn’t resistant to a particular invader, then the whole crop could be lost if the pathogen establishes itself in the environment” ("Historical Perspectives of Plant Diseases", 2016). People would choose
to clone the animal immune to known sicknesses, but when a new virus appears this animal results not to be so healthy and immune and as the whole flock has the same genetic code the virus is spread easily, then all the cloned animals expire. And if a whole country has animals cloned from the same animal that country is doomed to famine when an unknown virus attacks the cloned animals.
Animal cloning technology has expanded to gene modification, creating transgenic food and transgenic animals, which means an animal or vegetable has received genes from different species; these technologies are actually planning to expand to human genes modification. But genetic modification is even more dangerous than cloning. According to Kimmelman J, in 2016, there are five 5 risks associated with gene transfer: “1. Active agents used to transfer genetic material are capable of combining with a virus. 2. Gene transfer increases health risks because it participates directly in gene expression. 3. The vector might interact with pharmacological medicine. 4. Long exposure to transgenes make vectors gain toxic properties. 5. A lot of toxicity may result from the death of a vector.� (Kimmelman, 2016) Ethical issues always come out when scientists talk about animal cloning and genetic modification and people reject both of them. People are afraid of the abuse of this technology by irresponsible men and women who would use genetic modification in the same way as plastic surgery. Nature has an order and breaking the order means creating new problems, just like when pollution causes global warming. If a scientist breaks the natural order many problems come out. For example when insect resistant beans are
created, then insects adapt to the new bean and they become stronger, these strong insects not only eat the new beans but they eat any other specie which is near.
Some scientists want to use animal cloning in order to resurrect extinct species but this is even crazier than just cloning a living animal. In the case of Dolly the sheep having a successful clone from a living animal resulted to be extremely hard and caused many deaths, then how many thousands of embryos’ deaths would result from trying to clone an extinct animal like a mammoth or a dinosaur? Spending a lot of money and time to bring back extinct animals instead of taking care of the endangered species is debatable. “What is the validity of promoting the revival of mammoths, for instance, when Asian and African elephants will be lost by 2020?” (Mountain, 2013). In the ideal case that scientists could clone a mammoth successfully, what kind of environment would it have? The world is not even able to return endangered animals from a zoo to an existing natural habitat. “Only a handful of species have been successfully reintroduced into the natural habitat” (Mountain, 2013). Promoting the idea of resolving the extinction of species by cloning is very irresponsible because if people do not take care of endangered species even knowing they will not come back, they would take less care if they can clone extinct species. That would increase animal abuse and indiscriminate hunting. People would take less care about global warming and habitats’ destruction. It would bring chaos to common thinking and pain to living species. Ancient species would become in conflict with the existing ones, just like when pirates took goats to the Galapagos archipelago and some species became extinct. Sometimes the extinction of species helps to rise new ones. For example when dinosaurs became extinct, the mammals could evolve and master the world (Alvarez & Asaro, 1990).
Cloning a pet sounds amazing, but the whole story is not so marvelous. On August 3, 2005 the first cloned dog was announced. Scientists said this new technology would help to improve animal medicine, then dogs would live longer than humans. But the rest of the story is not very encouraging. “It took 123 tries to create two puppies. The other one died of pneumonia in 22 days” (Britt, 2005). Cloned animals don’t even have the same personality than the cells’ donor. Clones might look the same but they don’t act the same. This is not the future a sane human being would desire. If cloning one single successful puppy means 123 embryos’ death and one 22 days old dead puppy a right person would be able to realize animal cloning results on the destruction of harmonious life.
Animal cloning matches many disadvantages related to cruelty and ecological disorder. When animals are cloned many embryos fail and die, then if a newborn succeeds it would be very weak and would probably die for an illness in a short time. When animal genes are exchanged the natural order breaks up, resulting in more powerful and resistant plagues. Maybe the solution is scientists shouldn’t focus on cloning animals but regenerating dead cells to create living tissues, new organs, or new extremities for people who have had an accident and became disabled. Living organs made from the own patient’s stem cells would be healthier than transplanting a heart from a dead person or a pig, then would be no risk of immune rejection. Tissues cloning, without genes transfer, is also a good idea because farmers might sell cheaper meat without deforesting to feed cattle and without having to sacrifice animals for getting food. Even when scientists use animals for testing drugs, tissues cloning would be way better because drugs can be tested on the tissues, and animals wouldn’t have to suffer the painful reactions of this drugs.
References: Advantages and Disadvantages of Cloning Animals. (2014). Occupy Theory. Retrieved 1 December 2016, from http://occupytheory.org/advantages-and-disadvantages-ofcloning-animals/ Alvarez, W., & Asaro, F. (1990). An Extraterrestrial Impact. Scientific American, 263(4), 7884. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/scientificamerican1090-78 Animal Cloning - Pros and Cons Discussed. (2016). Manataka. Retrieved 1 December 2016, from https://www.manataka.org/page1033.html Cloning Animals Pros and Cons List. (2015). NYLN. Retrieved 1 December 2016, from http://nyln.org/cloning-animals-pros-and-cons-list Britt, R. (2005). First Cloned Dog Raises Issues of Science, Ethics and Policy. Live Science. Retrieved 20 September 2016, from http://www.livescience.com/359cloned-dog-raises-issues-science-ethics-policy.html Fiester, A. (2005). Ethical Issues in Animal Cloning. Perspectives In Biology And Medicine, 48(3), 328-343. http://muse.jhu.edu/article/185555 Historical Perspectives of Plant Diseases. (2016). APS. Retrieved 5 December 2016, from http://www.apsnet.org/EDCENTER/K12/TEACHERSGUIDE/PLANTBIOTECHNOLOGY/Pages/History.aspx Kimmelman, J. (2016). Recent Developments in Gene Transfer: Risk and
Ethics. British Medical Journal, Vol.330, No. 7482. Retrieved 1 December 2016, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/25458620?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents Koffmar, L. (2015). Genetic variation is a necessity. Physics. Retrieved 5 December 2016, from http://phys.org/news/2015-04-genetic-variation-necessity.html Mountain, M. (2013). Four Reasons Why Cloning Extinct Animals Is Wrong - Earth in Transition. Earth in Transition. Retrieved 20 September 2016, from http://www.earthintransition.org/2013/04/four-reasons-why-cloning-extinctanimals-is-wrong/