My UWCSEA Learning Journey

Retired pediatrician –  child doctor – kidney expert ] Looking after children with chronic kidney disease, which is essentially a build-up of waste – Dialysis – removes this waste from the kidneys. Kidney donors, brain stem deficient – relatives. Limited amounts of donors.

Needs to follow ethical procedure – the child’s best interests

Has a consensus about the process, perspectives on what to provision and what not to provision.

Question asked: Would it be more ethical to give a transplant to someone without brain defects, as opposed to giving a transplant to someone with brain defects?

Best transplants are from close relatives of the patients.

Parents may not accept the transplant for a child.

1985 was when he treated his first kidney in the program.

Huge amounts of stress faced upon the doctors and the families of the patients.

What is the brain defect – how important is it? Trauma for a child, benefits have to outweigh the costs. Physco and social.

Speaker: Andrea Mcdonald

She worked in Africa, primarily in wildlife conservation. She worked through an NGO called the Elephant outreach program. This summer, she is to go back to Botswana and do Elephant conservation again. Lions are present and the local African government has had very successful conservation efforts with rhinos. Hyenas ripped open the fridge at their stay. Hippos could be heard at night. Large bird density, there are however water problems in the delta. 2/3 of the global elephant population live in Botswana due to the lack of poachers, safety. Climate change is threatening their habitats – there has been drought there for over a year.

Reason for her story: Taking a passion and doing good with it, try to show what should change, help others.

Questions I brought up:

What was the most enjoyable part? What do you enjoy the most about elephant conservation?

At this current point in English, when we are in the midst of the “telling stories” unit, I would say that it is of great importance to understand why we write stories and tell them to others. From my perspective, the greatest reasoning for it is to spread information, which one likely believes will be able to entertain and create a connection between the listener(s) and the story. Stories ultimately allow for the conservation of thought, through memory, and the conservation of past events.  That is why they are so important because they are vital to the spread of information and human connection.

What really makes stories interesting and worth displaying is that they allow the opportunity for people to connect based on past experiences, achievements, and failures. This allows for connection between people when emotion, empathy, and sensibility are exchanged. That is the origin of the regard and interest in stories.

The role which journalists play in telling stories is paramount, they are the ones who mutter words from other people’s mouths. They are so important because the stories they tell should be truthful, unbiased and create an accurate representation of the subject being discussed. The research, edit, write and then publish work that is seen by audiences small, or big and should, therefore, create truthful stories, corroborated with facts and devoid of biases.  A great journalist is one that takes into account all audiences and talks about both sides of the coin, covering both sides of a story.

Some observations which I have made about the method of storytelling in both the UWCSEA perspectives articles and the featured articles are that they always introduce the subject effectively and are usually highlighting changes in that subject with evidence. A specific observation is that a majority of the UWCSEA perspective articles do retain positive bias, as teams that came 6th or the 7th were said to have done an “amazing” job which seems to be a little too uncritical and almost arrogant to state in light of the placements.

During the writers fortnight I hope to achieve more knowledge and growth in how to write articles, especially in terms of structure and I expect it to be useful for my growth in English.

Language is what allows us to communicate with each other and will therefore obviously change depending on which social groups we communicate with. I have adapted my language to all different varying social environments as a result. With my Swedish friends, I have found that I speak in a much more laidback and calm manner, due to our close relationship ever since we were around 5 years old. Through my research and analysis of my sociolect, I would say that my sociolect is quite varying and is often hard for me to realize as it has become second nature to me.  

When speaking to friends I always shift the tone to that of a casual one, because it allows for a relaxing environment where the whole group feels calm and allows us to distance ourselves away from the continuous pressures of school. This is the complete opposite when working in group tasks in school, especially with people I don’t know that well as the language we use can easily allow for a judgment of a person. During these tasks, I predominantly use formal language as in a school setting one would like to appear as professional and therefore educated as possible. 

When speaking Swedish I actually rarely change my sociolect, because of my lack of understanding of social and language norms in different groups and social situations in the utilization of Swedish. The only exceptions would be when speaking to teachers or elders as in those situations I am well versed in the tone of respect in my language. 

When it comes to family I have found that the majority of my English in that sector would originate from new words which my parents learned at work while working and also using English for the first time in their lives.

My family has definitely had one of the smallest influences on my English language as I had and still rarely talk to them in English. However, when speaking Swedish with them I tend not to use complex and formal words and phrases. This would be due to the social environment having a shared sense of relaxation and in a way an attitude of carelessness towards formality. 

Throughout this, I have come to wonder if even there is such a thing as an idiolect perfectly unique to one individual. We are always inclined to change our way of speaking depending on the social group communicating. If the method of communication always changes depending on the social constructs than a true form of an idiolect doesn’t exactly exist, the only form of which could be in your inner thoughts. I get that your idiolect is the specific use of languages, such as your use of vocabulary and phrases, but those always change depending on the social situation, and since all forms of communicating person to person have a social aspect then a true definition of an idiolect shouldn’t really exist.

To conclude I would state that my different sociolects vary in utilization every day. This is due to the fact that the international school which I go to is extremely diverse in cultures, nationalities, and languages and therefore has many different social groups and ways of communicating inside and between them.

Research:

Google Search, Google, www.google.com/search?q=principles&safe=strict&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj7qoeEpu3kAhVXiXAKHQdFDnAQ_AUIEigB&biw=1356&bih=721#imgrc=9c1VRHBG-PopNM:

“Does Language Impact Personal Identity?” Languages, rampages.us/thyagarajana/2016/04/04/does-language-impact-personal-identity/.

Educator, The. “The Impact of Language on Learning.” The Educator K/12, 9 Aug. 2018, www.theeducatoronline.com/k12/news/the-impact-of-language-on-learning/253500.

“General Linguistics.” ELLO, www.ello.uos.de/field.php/Semantics/SemanticsDialectsandsociolects.

What I have revealed to myself in the context of my language through my time spent thinking and researching about it has come to change my perception of my language. I was born in Malmö, Sweden on November 7th, 2004. I lived there until I was around 4 years old when my family and I began our culturally shocking move to China. There I was enrolled in an English speaking international school where I began learning and using English for the first time. My age played an important role in this, as I was young enough to basically forget my other language and adapt in favor of the much more useful English. As with all learners, my English gradually improved over time. Again, because of my age, my accent hadn’t formed yet, meaning that my English accent wasn’t manipulated or changed by my Swedish one. I adapted my accent to that of the American, and Canadian English speaking teachers at the school. Meaning that I had gradually subconsciously changed and adapted my accent as well as vocabulary to fit in with the different sociolects of the school community. While living there I can recall that my language use there was more laidback and less controlled than it is now. This came as a result of the relaxed type of social pressure which I received from the school and community while living there.

When I moved to Singapore I can remember that the differences in language usage in my old school compared to my new one were quite drastic and so I gradually changed a large section of my idiolect. I did this in order to fit in with the community as well as to be able to relate to the language identity of the school. The shift from a majority American to a majority English speaking school environment had profound changes in my language. To elaborate I would have to change much of vocabulary, shifting from shortened words such as “sup” meaning “what’s up?” to basically not using that word or having to fully spell out “what’s up.” Other words and phrases that would also have to change would include “Ni Hao” (Used as a casual greeting, rarely used but sometimes used a joke when greeting friends), “Whatcha doing?” and “hey” which is rarely used anymore. In summary, my language had shifted from a predominantly American and casual form of speaking, to a more international and formal way of speaking. 

Through my research, I discovered that my language use is mostly formal, as it involves a greater majority of formal phrases and words than it does with informal ones. This is a result of my upbringing.  As a child, I was brought up with certain principles such as respecting those older than you, being respectful to others and caring for others. To give deeper context to this my grandfather’s family had been poor and so he had grown up with high discipline and responsibility. He had these traits and so was able to work his way up and become a successful market and building chief through one of Sweden’s growing companies (IKEA). He then passed on those principles to my father who then passed them down to me (at least I think so, maybe). My school also greatly reinforced using thoughtful and respectful language, they even gave away awards to kids every year if they showed commitment to care and respect for others in the school. 

To summarize I would say that my idiolect has gone through drastic changes throughout my life. These changes have come as a result of a change in languages, countries and the cultures which I have become exposed to.

My idiolect, however, still remains unchanged in many ways, because of the grounding principles which I have been given throughout my upbringing.  

Research

Google Search, Google, www.google.com/search?q=principles&safe=strict&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj7qoeEpu3kAhVXiXAKHQdFDnAQ_AUIEigB&biw=1356&bih=721#imgrc=9c1VRHBG-PopNM:

“Does Language Impact Personal Identity?” Languages, rampages.us/thyagarajana/2016/04/04/does-language-impact-personal-identity/.

Educator, The. “The Impact of Language on Learning.” The Educator K/12, 9 Aug. 2018, www.theeducatoronline.com/k12/news/the-impact-of-language-on-learning/253500.

“General Linguistics.” ELLO, www.ello.uos.de/field.php/Semantics/SemanticsDialectsandsociolects.

What is it about reading that I don’t often read?

If I don’t read, it means that I either don’t have time or that I don’t find it is as enjoyable as other means of using my free time. Recently I have been increasing the amount of time I spend reading, as I do truly believe that it is important to read in order to find out more about the world and myself. 

My reading goals:

My reading goals are to read longer and more advanced books that will be able to challenge my ideas, thoughts, and views on the world. This would mean reading from a larger variety of books and reading more frequently. I would also like to include books that have the ability to support my understanding of certain subjects in school, such as reading a book that involves economics or reading a book which has historical content and significance. 

I think that the most effective way to achieve this would be to set a schedule or a time frame for when I should read and for how long. This would, in theory, create a habit of reading for me, and habits are great to have. 

Here is a list of books which I want to read this year:

• Lord of the rings (Series)
• Animal farm
• The art of war
• A short history of nearly everything
• Jumpstart your business brain
• Cosmos

And here is a reading table which will track my reading this year.

Book Table: