1. First Experience in Blogging

My First Experience in Blogging

Hay there! I want to share about my first experience in blogging. I started creating the blog since I was in the high school, because frankly I love writing more than any other skills. But at the first time, I thought it was better for me to start producing stories through writing on a book. It then made me ignored to publish it. When I attended college, I think it was a good time to spend my days through writing on a blog and I can share my experience for others.

You can enjoy reading within my blog, and you may leave your comment below for improving my blogging skill. And perhaps I can share any others thing for you. Let’s enjoy our new experience in blogging and it will be totally fun!  

 2. How to write The Email for Asking University Admission Information 

    

 UCL is My Goal University!

Dear the administrator of UCL,

With an honor,

I am Farah Hanum, a seventh-semester student of Ar raniry Islamic University Banda Aceh. I am interested in one of Master programs provided by UCL. The field that I am keen on is Education and International Development. Since I am an undergraduate student at Education and Teacher Training Faculty, I would be very pleased and honored to be accepted as a future master student at UCL, specifically in Education programs. For strengthening my insight about current information offered by this department, would you like to share any information relate to fulfilling application requirements and strategies, background information of the department, and university’s admission to my email? I really hope for my successful academic career in UCL and it would be my best accomplishment if someday I am accepted as a master student in this university.  Any feedback from you would be really meaningful for my future study.

                                                               

Sincerely yours,

Farah Hanum

English Language Education Department Student

Young Lecturer at http://lp3ibandaaceh.id/  Lp3i Banda Aceh

Member of http://www.the-leader.org The Leader

Phone: +6282370532717

Email: Farahverona@gmail.com

3)     Second Assignment (Writing The Relevant Previous Studies)

A.   Steve Jobs’ use of Ethos for Persuasive Success in His 2005 Stanford Commencement Address

     By Keith Bistodeau

This journal reveals the persuasive use of ethos in Steve Jobs Commencement speech at Stanford Graduation 2005. The method used by researcher is textual analysis. He gathered the information needed by implementing Burke’s Pentad as a framework to explore Steve Jobs’ use Ethos. This analysis looks for the five aspects of the pentad: Act, Agent, Agency, Scene, and Purpose and uses Burkholder’s model on rhetorical criticism (persona, audience, structure, historical-cultural, contextual audience). 

The finding are based on analysis of Steve Jobs’s Speech. The researcher came out with the result those Steve Jobs framed three stories to tell about himself and establish his persona.  The motivation he gave through the story of “connecting the dots”, “Love and Loss”, and “Death” implicitly allowed the audience to be persuaded by the use of Ethos in which Jobs used the credibility of himself. This can only occur and be effective when all three of these constructs build off of one another to create a strong ethos for a speaker, which Jobs did in his speech. He then managed to create “internal Ethos” which became the part of rhetorical situation. Another finding is defined as “External Ethos”. Since Stanford has external ethos, Jobs forms the internal ethos of the rhetorical act and relates his message to the audience. By examining ethos in this manner, a deeper understanding of the role ethos plays in public speaking situations can be started and addressed, and the role ethos plays within the pentad can be given a new venue for research.

B.    Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X: The Power and Legacy of Prophetic Discourse in the Civil Rights Movement (2005). 

By Shannon Marie Metz

 Metz implements the use of qualitative research in which she chooses textual analysis as its type. The researcher analyzed the texts of Martin Lurther King and Malcom X by using rhetoric aspects. She selected 4 speeches from Martin: Letter from Birmingham Jail,
,"1 Have a Dream", "I've Been to the Mountaintop" , "Where Do We Go From Here?: Chaos or Community" and 3 speeches from Malcolm X :"Black Man's History", "The Ballot or the Bullet". In King’s speeches, the researcher found that rhetorical aspects used consist of religious and dream imagery, metaphors, strong diction, repetition, and allusions as the techniques to analyze the texts.  She later found out that Martin Lurther King applied Christian imagery, allusions to famous prophets, and a sermon-like style to create a sense of collective oppression, build a method of action, and prophecy a future of freedom (Metz). He successfully captured audiences’ hearts with no border of what religion, gender, and social statues that someone has to achieve a hope for equality between African American and the whole American society, specifically to be equal as white community. On the other hand, Malcolm X advocated for ethnic separatism for other African-Americans. He used effective direct language which is persuasive to gain audience’s attention. Metz later acquired that there is an extremely progress in Malcolm X speeches from “Black’s Man History” following the later speech “The Ballot or the Bullet?” In “The Ballot or the Bullet?” Metz discover that Malcom become much more tolerant, persuasive, and open-minded speaker.

C.    The Language of Struggle: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Malcom X’S Speeches
Angela D’Ambrosio

The focus of this thesis is to reveal the relationship between language and power, and in particular the relationship between language and the struggle against the hegemonic, institutionalized and naturalized power of “whiteness” in the USA of the 1960s conducted by the black leader Malcolm X, a personality who has often been misunderstood or even ignored in the history of the emancipation of African Americans, eclipsed by his more famous “colleague” Martin Luther King, Jr. The researcher used the textual analysis as her type of research. The tools she used to analyze the speech is Critical Linguistic and Critical Discourse Analysis, based on the functionalist approach by M.A.K. Halliday. The tools of Critical Discourse analysis, such as the analysis of intertextuality, lexis and language structure, e.g. transitivity. This study lead us to a conclusion that language used in Malcom X speeches is particularly shaped by long revolution and struggle against the white supremacy and domination. This is done essentially through the appropriation and subversion of white American linguistic and cultural features. This is done essentially through language.

D.   Political Speeches of Some African Leaders from Linguistic Perspective (1981-2013)
Dr. Ibrahim Mohamed Al-Faki

This article explores linguistic elements in political discourses in some political speeches of some contemporary African leaders. This study adopts quantitative methods to determine the presence of the examined linguistic tools found in the political speeches of some African Leader. The type of method used by the researcher is textual analysis which gathers information or data by using discourse tools. Critical Discourse Analysis (henceforth CDA), and the sub-field Political Discourse Analysis (henceforth PDA) are used to examine and analyze political speeches from a linguistic perspective. 

The finding of this research is as follows: Pronouns (inclusive we + subjective I"=28, Solidarity=14, Parallelism=5, Metaphor=3, Analogy=2. The use of pronoun “I” becomes the highest pronoun used. The result concludes that the pronoun 'I' is
used when the speaker wants to speak as an individual rather than as a representative of a group. It means that politician found to have a preference in using Pronoun “I” as a sign for being a power of a congress or in a country.

4)     A Sample of Persuasive Speech

The Persuasive Campaign’s Speeches of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton

Speech has a lot of contributions for many changes in the world.  It allows human to dive deeper about its meaning and implicit message. Speech sometimes becomes the power of movement and the fire for resurgence. It may change someone’s life or even the whole nation, depending on how a speaker creates a construction, content, and message that can persuade the hearers. One of speech categories is political speech.

Political speech is a model of spoken discourse which is usually delivered by an affective speaker. Affective speakers have the advantage of voice quality affects as well as facial expressions and postural or gestural system (Al-Majali, Vol.6, No.14, 2015). This speech as stated by Akmal (2008) in his study basically contains the use of political ideology and delivered by a politician. The politicians in particular situation would frequently use language in specific way to create a kind of rhetorical “overkill” (Chilton, 2004). In order to gain the audiences’ attentions and votes, by any means, a politician would use any persuasive strategies as rhetoric aspects to construct the effective communication between him and the audience. Therefore, The speakers apply the certain strategies to make his speech provocative and compatible for intended audiences’ needs. 

Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are the current example of how rhetors use persuasive means to attract and persuade the audience during Presidential Candidacy Campaign in the United States 2016. Kitchen (2016, p. 1) defines that Trump is known for his offensive realism in maximing American Power; Hillary, on the other hand, utilized liberal internationalist, as her strategy to be a dominant candidate. Although Trump has no board experience in political background, he proposed himself as a trustworthy public figure that can help American people rise from the economic crisis and foreign policy’s restraint. Hillary, who has merged early in political environment campaigned the weightiness of establishing the diplomatic relations with other countries in international range. 

Both Donald Trump and Hillary clinton utilized the persuasive strategies known as rhetoric or persuasive means to create a certain effects in their speeches. The effect of the utilizing 3 rhetorical appeals, which consist pathos, logos, and ethos, will then form the persuasive speech; specifically in the campaign context. The voters will mainly consider the most persuasive aims and profitable prospect endorsed by each candidate. They fight against each other in a battle through the discourse means. At the end of campaign process, the most valuable, credible, and trustworthy, would be the most convincing leader to run the United States government in the final election. 

References:

Al Majali, Wala. Discourse Analysis of the Political Speeches of the Ousted Arab
Presidents during the Arab Spring Revolution using Halliday and
Hasan's Framework of Cohesion. Department of English Language and Literature, Mu'tah University, Jordan.

Chilton, P. A. (2004). Analyzing political discourse: Theory and practice. London: Routledge.

Kitchen, N. (2016). American voters’ choice is between Clinton’s liberal internationalism and Trump’s offensive realism. Who wins in November matters to the world. USApp–American Politics and Policy Blog.

5)     How to Have a Critical Journal Reading

Journal article is academic work product which is sometimes not easy to be comprehended at one gaze. It is undoubtedly will make us sometimes feel bored to read the whole chapter. In fact journal article provides much significant information for some fields of study those we need. Knowing the right ways to read the article is extremely important. Here are few steps to read the article journal critically, shifting from one chapter to another.

1.     Take a deep look at the title

Title is like a mark for writing. Title does not mean just a title; it consists of basic information that you might seek.

2.     Focus at the Abstract

The abstract is like an advertisement for a journal article or research. It does cover the whole content of the research. You can take a deep reading on an abstract to find the significant information about variables those will be studied or examined, the methods, and the findings.

3.     Understand the Introduction

The introduction is like a gate for a journal article. It specifies what is the topic will be discussed and studied in the next chapter. Undoubtedly, having a smart article reading will bring you some benefits, because at least you understand about what is going to be studied and why it is important to be examined.

4.     Analyze the method used in the research

Method is a process of how a researcher conducts his research. Being focused on the process of selecting the appropriate methods, choosing the population and sample, collecting and interpretation the data, and analyze the gained data, will provide you lot of useful insight for your ongoing research.

5.     See The result

The result will give you the evidence or proofs of research you have done. It sometimes provides the finding of the research and basically the most important part.

6.     Discussion

The discussion is the author interpretation toward the research finding. We have to take a deep look whether the author describes the research finding as it is or not; or does the author offer the suggestion for the future research or not.

7.     The conclusion

The conclusion covers the whole content discussed in the previous chapters. It sometimes alters the new reflection for the future research. A

6) What is Paraphrasing?

           Paraphrasing is one of requirement in academic writing. It is used in order to avoid plagiarism and protect someone’s writing products, arguments, and ideas. Paraphrasing also represents how deep we understand about one topic; besides, we can also evaluate our ideas in comprehending a study. As far as I am concerned, here are some points in doing paraphrasing. Paraphrasing do not always mean can change the whole words into their synonym: we simply might just present our point of view about what had been stated by someone else.

a. When paraphrasing something, you have to avoid using the writer writing style

b. Do not forget to cite the source in which the article, journal, or thesis you have take

c. Re-read many times and make sure you completely understand about the topic and what did the researcher state in his study

d. Do not change the original meaning and ideas

7) How to Write Persuasive Essays?

Persuading is a tool that we utilize to gain people attention. We common attempt to make people convinced about what we say through written form, especially by writing the persuasive essays. We sometime want people to hear our inner voice, no matter how hard for them to agree with. Writing persuasively can be useful in many aspects, especially in writing thesis, academic essays, and short stories or novels.

When you are working on your thesis, you not only have to put more attention at academic procedure in your writing, but also you have to notice how valuable and catchy your writing for people to read. When people are interested in what kind of topic you are studying and investigating, you definitely will gain their attention.

Writing academic essays is very useful for our future career and studies. We often have to write a motivation letter and supporting statements to support the required application in applying for a job. In this case, a persuasive method that influences your writing is considered as an important part. If your essays fail to catch their attention, they might not choose you as Short stories and novels always become people’s choices. We can see how many successful authors managed to sell millions books to all over the world. It is literally supported by their abilities in making people interested in the stories they offer.

We can start writing persuasively from a basic step like writing a short essays about the things we are keen on it. We can outpour how we deeply love something into a piece of paper and write as if people felt that they might feel that way as we do. When we manage to convince the readers, the persuasive goal is accomplished.

8) Journalism

Do you like to have your opinion published in local or national newspaper? If you do, perhaps you could start to have enough knowledge about journalism. Maybe are already familiar enough with the term of “Journalist”. Journalist is someone who find the current issues and publish them through the media, such as newpaper. Involving in journalism means you have to be engaged enough with the current political issue, society matters, and other human daily aspects. To be a journalist will encourage you to have a strong commitment, opinions, and avoid judgement without enough proof. You also have to preserve the ethical aspects to make your writing appropriate for people to read; and do not forget, you writing must always be persuasive that could catch people attention with your impressive and catchy headline news.

9) Case Study

A case study is a part of research design. When we attempt to have a deep analysis on some objects, we can try to adapt the case study method. Since the case study is a deep investigation and observation toward some issues we are going to find out the answers, it is obviously that we use the qualitative method. In a case study, there are available instruments that we can use to gain the data or information, one of them is the interview.

At the time we were doing a case study with my group, we chose the interview as the instruments. First step is knowing the students background through verifying the documentation. We choose formally three students from Food Technologist Department of Agriculture Faculty Syiah Kuala University.  Then, we held the interviews that each student only interviewed once in three times meetings. The interviews are recorded and transcribed by the researcher. After analyzing the students’ perception by using certain methods, we finally gain the data toward students’ perception.

                                                                                                             

10) Websites and Web Applications Those Can Help You Lean English Better

There are various English learning websites those can be accessed for free in internet nowadays. Some of the them often provide the exclusive needs for English mastery, including free quiz test, free dictionary accessed, English learning materials, and many more. The selected websites those I prefer to analyze are Courser, Udacity, Ted-Ed, Open Culture, Ted-Ed , and BBC Learning English

And here are some websites those can help you in improving and practicing your English Skill by professional English teachers and experts from all over the world.

1.     COURSERA

        Coursera is online courses created to provide some important insight and materials for university scholar through engaged with some famous colleges throughout the worldwide; it is also can be accessed by everyone. We can enjoy having the online lecture by being the students and join the interesting online class by having some attractive exercises. 

2.     UDACITY 

If you are interested in math, numeric, and kind of subjects, you can try signing up for this website. Udacity is a free educational website served to provide the courses related to math for free. The member can join having some popular and useful courses without having the quiz, deadline, and other boring school assignments.

3. OPEN CULTURE

Open Culture is one of education and cultural websites that aims to provide the courses which focus on economic, science, and math. This website is very appropriate for you who is interested in classic and indie movies by mid 19th centuryp; since it gives u the access to have a movie free-watch.

4. TED-ED

Ted-Ed now comes with delightful choices for those who are interested in education. It offers a 10-minutes long video with beautiful pictures and subjects. For bonus, you can get access to quizzes and you may have the discussion with other members.

5. BBC Learning English
Visit at bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish
BBC is a famous British channel which is also very useful to watch for increasing your english skill capability. It gives you some practices, current events issues through videos, quizzes, vocabulary practices, idioms, and so on. It all delivered and shown through British accents.

11) The Sample of Critical Journal Reading

The previous studies about rhetoric and political speeches have been conducted by many former researchers. The more relevant research is from Yusri Ika Widiawardani’s study (2016), entitled “Rhetorical Analysis of Donald Trump’s Presidential Candidacy  Announcement speech (Bachelor Thesis) at Sanata Dharma University”. This research analyze Donald Trump’s speech during the presidential campaign 2015. The motive of why the researcher adapted the method of rhetorical analysis was because Donald Trump is the only one candidate who is not from political background. The researcher aimed to find out the rhetorical appeals and speech delivery in Donald Trump’s speech. The method utilized by the researcher is document analysis or textual analysis. The data were gained by analysing the Trump’s presidential candidacy speech transcript and video; the researcher also does the checklists. First checklist used to find out the answers of rhetorical proofs from speech transcript, while the second checklist used to gain the data about speech act through watching the video. Based on the finding of the research, Donald Trump used all aspects of rhetorical proofs in his announcement speech; but the most dominant proof used is pathos. Trumps also managed to apply the use of speech delivery to make his speech persuasive.

The method of persuasive has also been explored by Silvia Irimiea (2010) on a research entitled “ A Rhetorical  and Comperative Study of the Victory Speeches of Barrack Obama and  Mircea Geoana” in Babeş Bolyai University. The aim of this research is to examine and investigate about the political discourses of two presidential candidates between Barrack Obama and Mircea Geoană (the Romanian Social Democrat party leader). The two discourses looked at in the research are: Obama’s Victory speech presented in Chicago on 5th November 2008 and Mircea Geoană’s (the Romanian presidential candidate’s) about eight-minute speech of his delusive glory delivered on the night of the elections. The findings reveal that Obama’s speech has a great influence on Geoană’s oratorical performance.

Bistodeau (2015) also reveals the persuasive use of ethos in Steve Jobs Commencement speech at Stanford Graduation 2005 through his research. The method used by researcher is textual analysis. He gathered the information needed by implementing Burke’s Pentad as a framework to explore Steve Jobs’ use Ethos. This analysis looks for the five aspects of the pentad: Act, Agent, Agency, Scene, and Purpose and uses Burkholder’s model on rhetorical criticism (persona, audience, structure, historical-cultural, contextual audience). The findings are based on analysis of Steve Jobs’s Speech. The researcher came out with the result those Steve Jobs framed three stories to tell about himself and establish his persona.  The motivation he gave through the story of “connecting the dots”, “Love and Loss”, and “Death” implicitly allowed the audience to be persuaded by the use of Ethos in which Jobs used the credibility of himself. This can only occur and be effective when all three of these constructs build off of one another to create a strong ethos for a speaker, which Jobs did in his speech. He then managed to create “internal Ethos” which became the part of rhetorical situation. Another finding is defined as “External Ethos”. Since Stanford has external ethos, Jobs forms the internal ethos of the rhetorical act and relates his message to the audience. By examining ethos in this manner, a deeper understanding of the role ethos plays in public speaking situations can be started and addressed, and the role ethos plays within the pentad can be given a new venue for research.

 The research about political speeches also captured the attention of many other researchers. According to Van Dijk’s explanation, there are many kinds of political discourses, such as propaganda, political advertising, political speeches, media interviews, political talk shows on TV, party programs, ballots, and so on. This study also explained briefly about the political discourse and the various dimension of the political context, the political process and the political system at large.

12)  An Interpreter or a Translator

These two terms are usually considered have the same term and definition. But guess what, a interpreter and a translator are somehow differs in definition and its practical. Perhaps you ever see the people “who are not a part of summit member” translate a speaker who deliver a presentation or gives the comment during the discussion in a huge conference or an International meeting is held. These people usually translate the words directly without pause. At the other time, you had your favourite English written novels translated into you language, it is a work of a translator. The massive different of interpreter and translator are the interpreter translate orally whereas translator translate in written form. Both may have same similarities in defining the translation mean, but in practical and term they are impressively distinct.

Here are to make a short summary and explanation of both;

An Interpreter	A Translator
1.      Translate Orally 2.      Having a good speaking presentation mastery, excellent listening skill, cultural knowledge, high-level of consentration with good capability memorizing, and high-confidence. 3.      Indirect/ very short time of transferring the words to be interpreted, around 5-10 second.	1.      Translate through written form 2.      Having a very good insight on grammar, cultural knowledge, and knowing a lot of target language terms. 3.      indirect