Audreleine Tanya Prof. Magno
303B – AB Literature and Literacy Expository Reading and Writing
2nd draft
Topic: Why David Karp made Tumblr and made it a better social site for its users
Thesis Statement: Tumblr takes on a farther step from other social and blogging sites as David Karp mixes traditional blogging with tumblelogging and multimedia to make posting blogs easier and appealing while maintaining a sense of identity and community on the users.
We have all heard about teenagers dropping out of school because of various reasons (pressure, anti-conformists, breakdowns, etc), but we were never really ready to see them, in the future, to become big-shots in companies, much less if they had been dreaming about them ever since. David Karp is one of those teens who dropped out of High School who seemed to be destined to become one of the most recognized young entrepreneurs on the World Wide Web business. Having read HTML for Dummies at the age of 11, his interest in software programming peaked; by the age of 15, he dropped out of the elite Bronx Science High School to pursue his first career full-time. With the blessing from his parents, he began his own software consulting company, Davidville, while resorted to homeschooling. While at work, he sometimes had to lie about his age, fearing that being a pubescent software consultant could make clients not take him seriously. Nevertheless, his mother Barbara Ackerman, a Science teacher in The Calhoun School in the Upper West Side of Manhattan, commented that he “was like a little adult,” after she and her husband agreed to pursue his job (Shafrir, 2008).
His internship that started when he was fourteen under Fred Seibert, who runs an online animation company called the Frederator Studios and was his mentor, had also given David Karp an opportunity to go to Japan to work for UrbanBaby, a consulting site for urban parenting, as a chief technology officer (Shafrir, 2008; Welch, 2011). He was 17 when he had been in Tokyo for five months working under UrbanBaby. The staff did not mind that he was still a minor, which was a change from his previous time at Davidville where he feared his age would become a liaison to his job.
By the time David Karp turned 19, a new word had entered lexicons: “tumblelog”, a short-form of blogging and does not follow traditional formatting blogs. Fascinated by this new form of blogging, David Karp kept waiting for a blog platform that uses “tumblelog”. He decided upon himself, just a year later when no tumblelogging platform was still established, that he would make his own blog platform (Shafrir, 2008). Naming it Tumblr, he launched it on the 19th of February 2007 (More Intelligent Life).
The number of users increased from 170,000 from the earlier months after its launch, growing to billions with 20 new blog posts each minute, with 255 million pageviews in the year 2009 (Deleon, 2010) and had surpassed WordPress this January 2011 (Kessler, 2011). The ease of use of making an account, as it only asks for a new user an email and password, to posting tumblelog features: posting blogs with sentences with one word only; posting pictures, audio and video to add to the content of your blogs and even quoting other notable works gives the users’ the sense of personalizing their Tumblr accounts. Other notable features include ‘following’ other people so that the user can see their posts in the Tumblr dashboard; reblogging certain posts that one likes and sharing them in the process; the Like button—in the shape of a heart—that functions as a way of showing appreciation to a certain post. David Karp shares that it was from his work experiences from UrbanBaby that he learned how a social community works on the net and felt that it should be on Tumblr as well, who added multimedia features as a way for users to have a great affinity to these posts that they feel should be shared. It is also here on Tumblr that users give a sense of identity on their blogs, as they can redesign their templates, backgrounds, or even upload a design of their own from scratch, besides posting of favorites in a user’s account. “If blogs are journals, tumblelogs are scrapbooks,” so says the Tumblr website (Shafrir, 2008). It even boasts multiple services where a user can still be online from other social networks, such as Facebook and WordPress, as the user posts on Tumblr.
For David Karp, the business of Tumblr is a dream come true. “This is what I like about my job,” said Mr. Karp when asked by The Observer. As for the business side of Tumblr, things have, so far looked well. Mr. Karp once sold a small part of his company for 25% in October 2008, to a group of investors from Spark Capital, Union Square Ventures, among others, giving Mr. Karp and his company a value of $3 million (Shafrir, 2008). David Karp is not the typical CEO of a company either, as he had honestly said that he is very much ‘an anti-schedule person’, not wanting to have his creative flow be interrupted by an appointment. His meetings are also very unconventional; their meeting room is full of couches and sofas, not a big desk is in sight at all, and they would even have lunch together while they discussed their latest projects or issues in the website. His warm and laid-back relationship towards his employees—who he dubbed as all “autonomous” and are capable of hiring their own new member even without him—seems to have a great impact on how they deal the finances of the company and its programming business (Welch, 2011).
Running for the past four years, Tumblr has been growing in an increasing rate that it not only has surpassed WordPress in terms of the number of blog posts, but also its popularity amongst its users, mostly teenagers that have become rampant online(Ingram, 2011). It may seem that Facebook and Twitter are still the “top dogs” when it comes to a staggering number of 160,000 and 25,000+ unique visitors per month which is more than what the 5,000 is in Tumblr per second (Lipsman, 2011; Ingram, 2011), but with 8.4 billion pageviews per month and 355 million of actual visitors in total, according to Quantcast, it should be noted that this is a great achievement in an Internet company to have loyal users to have given Tumblr such a result. It had even made it to the Top 25 Websites in the World. As for Tumblr’s popularity amongst teens, which had a hand in the rise of the statistics of Tumblr when compared to social and blogging sites, its combination with the traditional blogging of WordPress, Blogger, etc. and its tumblelogging feature, as well as its Twitter-esque way for users to ‘follow’ others and the ease of posting media makes it more appealing and less complex. Also, journalists from the notable New York Times also switched from using traditional blogging platforms to use Tumblr to post news as well, resulting in staggering numbers from reblogging alone and thousands of comments (Ingram, 2011).
Despite the mounting fame of Tumblr, the CEO and his employees are still hard at work at maintaining its essence of community that David Karp learned from his previous career while improving it with new ideas and getting collaborative work from different fields. On an interview in More Intelligent Life, David Karp shares the reason that Tumblr is what it is today because it is focused more on what the people wanted to post as it shows more about themselves—their identity in the community—by sharing what they know, what they’ve created and what they love to the Tumblr community (“More Intelligent Life”, n.d.).
One of the new steps that Mr. Karp is working on is highlighting creative communities from fashion and film in Tumblr (O’ Dell, 2011). His concern to promote the users in Tumblr shows this. Recently hiring Richard Tong, who started a fashion site called Weardrobe, owned by Google, became the Fashion Editor for the fashion community on Tumblr, since 18% of the blogs are fashion related and Mr. Karp intends to reach for the demographic as well (Welch, 2011). David Karp also has great hopes that by the end of 2011 the company can have 70 or more new hired hands to increase the current staff so that it will be able to meet the demands of the future plans and projects of the company. The engineers in Tumblr are also hard on work as they further improve on how users can have a great experience on Tumblr, especially since it now has an application on the iPad and on other mobile apps (O’ Dell, 2011).
Tumblr still has a long way to meet the current status of Facebook and other very famous social networks, but it has already gone through such a radical change in a short space of time, all of which were from Mr. Karp’s aim for Tumblr on focusing “real content and real viewers instead of valuation” (Shafrir, 2008). His focus for the community on Tumblr had gained it much acclaim and, of course, the response of its users is evidence to that. For the future plans and developments of and for Tumblr, besides that Mr. Karp has revealed that the company would focus on promoting the different communities on Tumblr, there has not been news on that one lately. But according to Kit Eaton, he states that since Tumblr is being used as a means to share and promote content in simple posts and uses imagery for the appeal, the number of users that are advertising these brands will double while other traditional blogs will soon find ways of how Tumblr is promoting content by adding multimedia features and ease of connectivity to other social networks (2011) and perhaps Tumblr would soon become an advertising tool for these famous brands.
Tumblr takes on a farther step from other social and blogging sites as David Karp mixes traditional blogging with tumblelogging and multimedia to make posting blogs easier and appealing while maintaining a sense of identity and community on the users. However the future of Tumblr turns out, perhaps the concern should be focused on how the present should be handled, as David Karp already has expectations on reaching out to more communities, as how he had already envisioned Tumblr should be about: the community.
Works cited:
Deleon, N. (2010, July 19). Tumblr is on Fire. Now Over 6 Million Users, 1.5 Million Pageviews A Month. Tech Crunch. Retrieved July 19, 2011, from http://techcrunch.com/2010/07/19/tumblr-stats/
Eaton, K. (2011, June 16). What Tumblr’s Success Means To The Future Of Blogs. Fast Company. Retrieved July 18, 2011, from http://www.fastcompany.com/1760460/what-tumblrs-success-can-teach-us-about-blogs-twitters-future
Ingram, M. (2011, June 28). Is Tumblr The New Facebook or The New MySpace?. Gigaom.com. Retrieved July 24, 2011, from http://gigaom.com/2011/06/28/is-tumblr-the-new-facebook-or-the-new-myspace/
Kessler, S. (2011, June 15). Tumblr Now Has More Blogs Than Wordpress.com. Mashable.com. Retrieved July 20, 2011, from http://mashable.com/2011/06/15/tumblr-surpasses-wordpress/
O’ Dell, J. (2011, Jan. 15). Tumblr’s Roadmap Heads Straight For The Creative Community. Mashable.com, from http://mashable.com/2011/01/15/tumblrs-roadmap-heads-straight-for-the-creative-community/
Q&A: David Karp, Founder of Tumblr. More Intelligent Life. Retrieved July 22, 2011, from http://moreintelligentlife.com/blog/molly-young/qa-david-karp-founder-tumblr
Shafrir, D.. (2008, Jan. 15). Would You Take a Tumblr With This Man?.
Observer.com. 1, 2 and 4. Retrieved July 14, 2011, from http://www.observer.com/2008/would-you-take-tumblr-man
Welch, L.. (2011, June). The Way I Work. Inc.com
1-3. Retrieved July 16, 2011, from http://www.inc.com/magazine/201106/the-way-i-work-david-karp-of-tumblr.html
Thursday, September 1, 2011
Sunday, March 20, 2011
Alan Rickman and Daniel Radcliffe reads Shakespeare's Sonnet 130
S.A.P. #18
In my Literature 2 lesson with Ms. Paraan, we discussed about the meaning of love by reading and analyzing the sonnets of two of the most famous renaissance poets: Petrarch and Shakespeare.
Now I want to digress a little bit about the difference between Petrarch's and Shakespeare's sonnets. Petrarch's sonnets, at least sonnets 3, 11, 74 and 276, talk about the ideal woman in comparing her to beautiful things, like roses, the sun, how she smells great and such, how she is very delicate and powerful whenever the narrator speaks about how he becomes awed by her beauty.
In Shakespeare's sonnets 18, 27, 71 and 130, he talks more about how love is beyond mere physicality or one's own preference of the image of the ideal partner.
Sonnet 130 expresses Shakespeare's view of love going beyond someone's looks and instead sees love as rare and just as something beautiful.
These videos from YouTube actually presents Alan Rickman and Daniel Radcliffe reciting Sonnet 130.
Sonnet 130, for me, presents how Shakespeare is definitely beyond his time. His sonnets all present love as something uncontrollable by time and space, as something we all should treasure and definitely something that makes us complete.
In my Literature 2 lesson with Ms. Paraan, we discussed about the meaning of love by reading and analyzing the sonnets of two of the most famous renaissance poets: Petrarch and Shakespeare.
Now I want to digress a little bit about the difference between Petrarch's and Shakespeare's sonnets. Petrarch's sonnets, at least sonnets 3, 11, 74 and 276, talk about the ideal woman in comparing her to beautiful things, like roses, the sun, how she smells great and such, how she is very delicate and powerful whenever the narrator speaks about how he becomes awed by her beauty.
In Shakespeare's sonnets 18, 27, 71 and 130, he talks more about how love is beyond mere physicality or one's own preference of the image of the ideal partner.
Sonnet 130 expresses Shakespeare's view of love going beyond someone's looks and instead sees love as rare and just as something beautiful.
These videos from YouTube actually presents Alan Rickman and Daniel Radcliffe reciting Sonnet 130.
Sonnet 130, for me, presents how Shakespeare is definitely beyond his time. His sonnets all present love as something uncontrollable by time and space, as something we all should treasure and definitely something that makes us complete.
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
Listening: The Key to Productivity
S.A.P.#16
Last meeting in our S.A.P. class, we viewed a guide-video about how listening enhances our skills and productivity in our work. The narrator went on to show us examples of what happens when we don't listen and the consequences it'll have in the future. The video we had watched was actually more about how listening is 'the key to productivity' in an organization and how effective it is when a simple thing, such as listening, can actually affect the whole company.
Distractions seems to be the number one problem in listening, because when an employee/employees don't listen to what their bosses are saying, then the assignment that they are meant to do will go to disarray. Another interesting thing about listening is that the supervisors/bosses/managers, etc. actually do all the listening in the company. It is because they are the ones in charge of everything, they should listen and know of what's happening or the goings-on of their company to be able to sustain the needs and requirements that need to be done.
Apart from just how bad it is when we don't listen and the consequences that can possibly happen, there are many types of listening as well. One is called discriminative listening, as one should be able to differentiate the ones that should be heard from the rest of the distractions. Second is Comprehensive Listening, where a person is able to understand the message in totality. Critical listening is when we analyze the information and decide how we can criticize on it. Another is Empathic listening, where a person is being attentive and supportive to the speaker. And lastly is Appreciative Listening, where this applies to listening to the arts and music, like poetry and sounds and music.
So listening is a very important part of our life, as it is a key to how we respond actively and appropriately. It is in listening where we learn new information, analyze correctly, hear the sounds and the words that could alert us about danger and entertainment and, of course, a big part in increasing productivity in our work.
XD
Last meeting in our S.A.P. class, we viewed a guide-video about how listening enhances our skills and productivity in our work. The narrator went on to show us examples of what happens when we don't listen and the consequences it'll have in the future. The video we had watched was actually more about how listening is 'the key to productivity' in an organization and how effective it is when a simple thing, such as listening, can actually affect the whole company.
Distractions seems to be the number one problem in listening, because when an employee/employees don't listen to what their bosses are saying, then the assignment that they are meant to do will go to disarray. Another interesting thing about listening is that the supervisors/bosses/managers, etc. actually do all the listening in the company. It is because they are the ones in charge of everything, they should listen and know of what's happening or the goings-on of their company to be able to sustain the needs and requirements that need to be done.
Apart from just how bad it is when we don't listen and the consequences that can possibly happen, there are many types of listening as well. One is called discriminative listening, as one should be able to differentiate the ones that should be heard from the rest of the distractions. Second is Comprehensive Listening, where a person is able to understand the message in totality. Critical listening is when we analyze the information and decide how we can criticize on it. Another is Empathic listening, where a person is being attentive and supportive to the speaker. And lastly is Appreciative Listening, where this applies to listening to the arts and music, like poetry and sounds and music.
So listening is a very important part of our life, as it is a key to how we respond actively and appropriately. It is in listening where we learn new information, analyze correctly, hear the sounds and the words that could alert us about danger and entertainment and, of course, a big part in increasing productivity in our work.
XD
Sunday, February 27, 2011
What IS a man? Final Fantasy Machinima: Real Men (FF Machinima).
S.A.P.#15
In the previous poem that I had read entitled 'If' by Rudyard Kipling, he talks about the importance of being a true humane person, but directs it more to a male audience, thus making the poem an inspirational tool in advising what a true man should be to his fellow people.
Then something had to ruin the importance of the poem's message, I saw YouTube video about a parody of this video game. Entitled 'Real Men: Dissidia Final Fantasy', two of the main characters argue which one of them is manlier and point out how real men should look and act like!
Totally hilarious, with insane random (il)logical dialogue and witty, sarcastic quips, get ready to go LOL on their take of being real men!
XD
In the previous poem that I had read entitled 'If' by Rudyard Kipling, he talks about the importance of being a true humane person, but directs it more to a male audience, thus making the poem an inspirational tool in advising what a true man should be to his fellow people.
Then something had to ruin the importance of the poem's message, I saw YouTube video about a parody of this video game. Entitled 'Real Men: Dissidia Final Fantasy', two of the main characters argue which one of them is manlier and point out how real men should look and act like!
Totally hilarious, with insane random (il)logical dialogue and witty, sarcastic quips, get ready to go LOL on their take of being real men!
XD
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
The Beginning of the English Month
S.A.P.#12
February 2011 is known for dozens of different occasions, at least where Filipinos are concerned. There's the People Power Revolution to celebrate (Feb. 25), President Noynoy's birthday (Feb. 8), the Chinese New Year (Feb. 3). This is also the Month for Pro-Life members of the world. And, of course, who could forget that this is also the Month of Hearts, or in other words, Valentine's Day (Feb. 14).
But just this recent morning, I now count a new event for this month, which is (drum roll please), The English Month (Tah-dah!).
As a second year student majoring in English, my fellow classmates and I have to do the facilitating for the upcoming events of the English Month and I had felt that this task proves to be challenging, but at the same time truly a good way to exercise my ability to help, improve, assist, etc. for these events. It's too bad, though, it would mean I can't join an event at all since we'll have our hands full in hosting, assisting, etc. for these events.
Just today, I had had the pleasure in hosting one of the first events of the English Month: the Research Forum. I felt like every fiber of me is responsible in rolling the event as 'smoothly' as possible. I was a bit tad nervous if everything will turn out alright, but I guess all in all me and my fellow hosts and the presenters of the program had done a deal of a great effort to put on a very intellectual show in sharing the research they had done.
I look forward to more events concerning English Month and Linggo ng Wika, as both had become the capable Tongue of the Scholasticans.
XD
February 2011 is known for dozens of different occasions, at least where Filipinos are concerned. There's the People Power Revolution to celebrate (Feb. 25), President Noynoy's birthday (Feb. 8), the Chinese New Year (Feb. 3). This is also the Month for Pro-Life members of the world. And, of course, who could forget that this is also the Month of Hearts, or in other words, Valentine's Day (Feb. 14).
But just this recent morning, I now count a new event for this month, which is (drum roll please), The English Month (Tah-dah!).
As a second year student majoring in English, my fellow classmates and I have to do the facilitating for the upcoming events of the English Month and I had felt that this task proves to be challenging, but at the same time truly a good way to exercise my ability to help, improve, assist, etc. for these events. It's too bad, though, it would mean I can't join an event at all since we'll have our hands full in hosting, assisting, etc. for these events.
Just today, I had had the pleasure in hosting one of the first events of the English Month: the Research Forum. I felt like every fiber of me is responsible in rolling the event as 'smoothly' as possible. I was a bit tad nervous if everything will turn out alright, but I guess all in all me and my fellow hosts and the presenters of the program had done a deal of a great effort to put on a very intellectual show in sharing the research they had done.
I look forward to more events concerning English Month and Linggo ng Wika, as both had become the capable Tongue of the Scholasticans.
XD
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
Scott McNeil - A Talented Example of a Voice Actor!
S.A.P. #11
In watching cartoon and anime shows and even movies and video games, I have always admired those people who were behind it all in bringing the characters in these shows and games to dynamic life. One of them is Scott McNeil.
Canadian-born, 48+ years old, long-haired and totally bursting with 'Otaku'-like enthusiasm, Scott McNeil has voiced dozens and dozens of characters over the course of his whole career as a voice actor, voicing punks who are ace pilots of Gundam robots, popular mutant heroes to anthropomorphic characters who happen to be archnemesis to an evil iguana.
Totally talented, funny and kid-friendly (depends on the show he's lending his voice to), here is Scott McNeil.
In watching cartoon and anime shows and even movies and video games, I have always admired those people who were behind it all in bringing the characters in these shows and games to dynamic life. One of them is Scott McNeil.
Canadian-born, 48+ years old, long-haired and totally bursting with 'Otaku'-like enthusiasm, Scott McNeil has voiced dozens and dozens of characters over the course of his whole career as a voice actor, voicing punks who are ace pilots of Gundam robots, popular mutant heroes to anthropomorphic characters who happen to be archnemesis to an evil iguana.
Totally talented, funny and kid-friendly (depends on the show he's lending his voice to), here is Scott McNeil.
Thursday, January 27, 2011
What we did with nouns--Act them!
S.A.P. #10
Just this recent Thursday we began our new lesson non-verbal communication and it was here our teacher assigned us to do an activity: guessing the word the 'actress' is conveying.
So the mechanics went like this:
The group has to guess as many nouns as possible, with one of the members doing the acting while the rest guesses and all of this has to be done in three minutes. The group that has many guesses wins.
The words like 'horror', 'confusion', 'bitterness', 'bravery', 'hope', 'tension' and more were, to me, not act-able, as I found it hard to do 'horror' without screaming at the top of my lungs and crawling around like Sadako in 'The Ring' and 'hope' turned out to be a joke as I tried 'look hopeful' while having slightly wistful but silly eyes, my hands clasped together in my chest like a hopeless nutcase.
I know this was in all due fun, as I was laughing my head off, both because of my clumsy acting and from the other group's really aggressive take on trying to guess what she was acting about.
I remember a similar thing that my cousin, my brother and I did this last Christmas. We have named the game 'Daring Consequence', because we mixed the 'Dare' in Truth or Dare and Consequence because we have to act what was said in the slip of paper which we will pick at a random pile.
It was just the three of us, but it was a hell lot of fun. I remembered trying to act like the ugly duckling, quacking and trying to look ugly to them and one of them guessed I was trying to be a cow(seriously? a cow quacking?). We laughed our heads off when we saw our brother dancing almost like Micheal Jackson while singing Kesha's song 'We r who we r!' and my cousin clapping his hands in a weird manner and we couldn't guess what he was trying to portray. 'I was a scissor!' he told us, then we hollered at this maniacally.
Life is good.
XD
Just this recent Thursday we began our new lesson non-verbal communication and it was here our teacher assigned us to do an activity: guessing the word the 'actress' is conveying.
So the mechanics went like this:
The group has to guess as many nouns as possible, with one of the members doing the acting while the rest guesses and all of this has to be done in three minutes. The group that has many guesses wins.
The words like 'horror', 'confusion', 'bitterness', 'bravery', 'hope', 'tension' and more were, to me, not act-able, as I found it hard to do 'horror' without screaming at the top of my lungs and crawling around like Sadako in 'The Ring' and 'hope' turned out to be a joke as I tried 'look hopeful' while having slightly wistful but silly eyes, my hands clasped together in my chest like a hopeless nutcase.
I know this was in all due fun, as I was laughing my head off, both because of my clumsy acting and from the other group's really aggressive take on trying to guess what she was acting about.
I remember a similar thing that my cousin, my brother and I did this last Christmas. We have named the game 'Daring Consequence', because we mixed the 'Dare' in Truth or Dare and Consequence because we have to act what was said in the slip of paper which we will pick at a random pile.
It was just the three of us, but it was a hell lot of fun. I remembered trying to act like the ugly duckling, quacking and trying to look ugly to them and one of them guessed I was trying to be a cow(seriously? a cow quacking?). We laughed our heads off when we saw our brother dancing almost like Micheal Jackson while singing Kesha's song 'We r who we r!' and my cousin clapping his hands in a weird manner and we couldn't guess what he was trying to portray. 'I was a scissor!' he told us, then we hollered at this maniacally.
Life is good.
XD
Poetry Night - Aria 955(...555) XD
S.A.P. #9
The day of judgement has come. I was perspiring a bit as I heard the news from my classmate, that our teacher is going to play the finished product of our project in poetry reading. I calmly drew out a breath as I know that logically, this isn't going the world, no!
Then, the inevitable arrived: we were going to hear ourselves read our poems out loud while she(our teacher) played it in her laptop. My hands went clammy. I remembered that I stammered when I was reciting my poem during recording. This is a bad omen. This is it!
I buried my head in resignation inside my arms as we(my classmates) laughed it off, trying to shake the horrible feeling of embarrassment. Well actually, it was funny, hearing ourselves recite the poem with all our hearts while we are now in a classroom, completely not in our 'poem phase'. It was as if the voices we were hearing aren't really ours and it's hard to believe that we had made it this far as to recite these poems with total grandiose.
Anyway, I did feel finally great to have heard my own voice speaking my poem like any poet would voice out theirs. I just did what I have to do just to put my shoes in the narrator in the poem (by the way, my poem is 'If' by Rudyard Kipling).
I did feel for my poem and I felt very happy for the presentation we had all achieved to do.
Maybe in the future, I could find a job as a radio DJ or something and I'll name the station to Aria 955 LOL! XD
The day of judgement has come. I was perspiring a bit as I heard the news from my classmate, that our teacher is going to play the finished product of our project in poetry reading. I calmly drew out a breath as I know that logically, this isn't going the world, no!
Then, the inevitable arrived: we were going to hear ourselves read our poems out loud while she(our teacher) played it in her laptop. My hands went clammy. I remembered that I stammered when I was reciting my poem during recording. This is a bad omen. This is it!
I buried my head in resignation inside my arms as we(my classmates) laughed it off, trying to shake the horrible feeling of embarrassment. Well actually, it was funny, hearing ourselves recite the poem with all our hearts while we are now in a classroom, completely not in our 'poem phase'. It was as if the voices we were hearing aren't really ours and it's hard to believe that we had made it this far as to recite these poems with total grandiose.
Anyway, I did feel finally great to have heard my own voice speaking my poem like any poet would voice out theirs. I just did what I have to do just to put my shoes in the narrator in the poem (by the way, my poem is 'If' by Rudyard Kipling).
I did feel for my poem and I felt very happy for the presentation we had all achieved to do.
Maybe in the future, I could find a job as a radio DJ or something and I'll name the station to Aria 955 LOL! XD
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
The International Phoneme Alphabet.
S.A.P. #8
Since the end of Midterms, all that we have been learning from (S.A.P.)class is pronunciation, enunciation, assimilation, phonemes, etc. In other words, how we pronounce the English words clearly and correctly.
Recently, we've been learning in our S.A.P. class of the symbols that correspond to what kind of pronunciation we should produce when we see this, most especially in dictionaries.
For example, the long 'ee' sound in words like 'equal', 'seat', 'meat', 'easy', etc. has the phonetic symbol /i:/; so if you encounter this on a dictionary, thesaurus, or any kind of pronunciation book that can help you pronounce words that has this pronunciation.
The short 'ee' sound, in words like 'hit', 'kit', 'ship', 'furniture', has the phonetic symbol /I/.
The 'Eh' sound, in words like 'edge', 'set', 'merry', 'egg', 'head', have the phonetic symbol /E/ or an inverted number three that is actually like an epsilon in Greek language.
/a:/ is the phonetic symbol for a long 'Ah' sound, like 'part', 'calm', 'lock' and more.
Diphthongs are a pair of vowel sounds combined together:
/eI/-for 'age', 'drape', 'cape', 'bake', 'lake'.
/aI/-for 'bite', 'pirate', 'deny', 'ice', 'eye'.
/(I/-for 'oil', 'joint', 'joy', 'boy', 'coin'.
/au/-for 'plow', 'out', 'loud', 'cow', 'owl'.
In Consonants, most of it is easy, since what we have basically learned about how we pronounce it in elementary is still unchanged.
But words like 'thin', 'ether', 'path', 'think', 'breath' has the symbol /θ/, which is a voiceless 'th' sound, compared to its other voiced 'th' sound that has the symbol /ð/, for words like 'that', 'the', 'either', 'this', 'then'.
The 'sh', 'zsh', 'ch', 'juh' sounds have the respective symbols /sh/, /3/, /tS/ and /d3/.
If you want to look up for more of what the symbols look like, we have the internet and the libraries for research. All in all, the lesson was a great topic, something I knew I would need when I see a very difficult word that I cannot pronounce and I have to see the dictionary for it.
See you and have a good day! XD
Since the end of Midterms, all that we have been learning from (S.A.P.)class is pronunciation, enunciation, assimilation, phonemes, etc. In other words, how we pronounce the English words clearly and correctly.
Recently, we've been learning in our S.A.P. class of the symbols that correspond to what kind of pronunciation we should produce when we see this, most especially in dictionaries.
For example, the long 'ee' sound in words like 'equal', 'seat', 'meat', 'easy', etc. has the phonetic symbol /i:/; so if you encounter this on a dictionary, thesaurus, or any kind of pronunciation book that can help you pronounce words that has this pronunciation.
The short 'ee' sound, in words like 'hit', 'kit', 'ship', 'furniture', has the phonetic symbol /I/.
The 'Eh' sound, in words like 'edge', 'set', 'merry', 'egg', 'head', have the phonetic symbol /E/ or an inverted number three that is actually like an epsilon in Greek language.
/a:/ is the phonetic symbol for a long 'Ah' sound, like 'part', 'calm', 'lock' and more.
Diphthongs are a pair of vowel sounds combined together:
/eI/-for 'age', 'drape', 'cape', 'bake', 'lake'.
/aI/-for 'bite', 'pirate', 'deny', 'ice', 'eye'.
/(I/-for 'oil', 'joint', 'joy', 'boy', 'coin'.
/au/-for 'plow', 'out', 'loud', 'cow', 'owl'.
In Consonants, most of it is easy, since what we have basically learned about how we pronounce it in elementary is still unchanged.
But words like 'thin', 'ether', 'path', 'think', 'breath' has the symbol /θ/, which is a voiceless 'th' sound, compared to its other voiced 'th' sound that has the symbol /ð/, for words like 'that', 'the', 'either', 'this', 'then'.
The 'sh', 'zsh', 'ch', 'juh' sounds have the respective symbols /sh/, /3/, /tS/ and /d3/.
If you want to look up for more of what the symbols look like, we have the internet and the libraries for research. All in all, the lesson was a great topic, something I knew I would need when I see a very difficult word that I cannot pronounce and I have to see the dictionary for it.
See you and have a good day! XD
Monday, January 3, 2011
January 1st of 2011 in my neighborhood had been the safest first day.
S.A.P. #7
Note: This entry will also serve as a journal to remind me that fireworks don't need to be the only equipment to celebrate the start of a New Year.
"Imbis na bumili ng paputok, bumili na lang sila ng pagkain, para salu-salo lahat sa bagong taon," says an old lady from Tondo as me and my family, while driving back home on the evening of the last day of December, listened to the AM news radio as both my parents agreed to what she had said.
She was right. Not only do we have to celebrate the coming of the New Year with our closest people and with our brothers and sisters, but we have to celebrate it wisely and safely.
Take this example on the night when 2011 came:
Jan. 1st, 2011, 12 midnight. My cousins and I decided to head to our grandfather's office despite the fact that the whole neighborhood was going gaga over the fireworks display they were doing just so we can greet him a Happy New Year. Luckily he was already on his way out of his office and we saved the time of going in.
after the pleasantries of greeting other people, we resumed to one of our usual reflexes: Watching the fireworks display.
So okay everything was dazzling, but suddenly one of our neighbors was going to light his firework when--BAM!--his firework fell off his gate and came exploding its sparks on the ground, almost burning a kid's foot when his parent got him to safety!
But besides that incident, nothing mortifying has endangered us and the whole neighborhood. But a few days later, I kept hearing and watching news that people are getting hospitalized because of accidents regarding fireworks.
What's the point of a great banging New Year if you're going to put yourselves in danger? Why is also that people are still firing up fireworks when the New Year has already passed?
People have to learn that safety is a priority and I just hope that when New Year 2012 comes people should come to their senses about their safety.
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