THESAURUS QUIZ
We were given a task to try a quiz out. It is basically tests us on our synonyms. It really helped me in my summary and I could think of various types of synonyms for a word. These are my results for a few attempts:

The Importance of Listening - When, and why

My teacher actually gave this topic because she was apparently triggered with a few of us in class who was talking when there were people who were presenting their ULBS presentation. I was honestly wondering what is the point of scolding us because we have nothing to do and its not like we were the panel or the ones presenting. But oh well, I still have to write this blog.

Listening should not be taken for granted. Before the invention of writing, people conveyed virtually all knowledge through some combination of showing and telling. Elders recited tribal histories to attentive audiences. Listeners received religious teachings enthusiastically. Myths, legends, folktales, and stories for entertainment survived only because audiences were eager to listen. Nowadays, however, you can gain information and entertainment through reading and electronic recordings rather than through real-time listening. If you become distracted and let your attention wander, you can go back and replay a recording. Despite that fact, you can still gain at least four compelling benefits by becoming more active and competent at real-time listening.

When you focus on the material presented in a classroom, you will be able to identify not only the words used in a lecture but their emphasis and their more complex meanings. You will take better notes, and you will more accurately remember the instructor’s claims, information, and conclusions. Many times, instructors give verbal cues about what information is important, specific expectations about assignments, and even what material is likely to be on an exam, so careful listening can be beneficial.

Besides that, when you give your best attention to people expressing thoughts and experiences that are important to them, those individuals are likely to see you as someone who cares about their well-being. This fact is especially true when you give your attention only and refrain from interjecting opinions, judgments, and advice.

When you listen well to others, you reveal yourself as being curious and interested in people and events. In addition, your ability to understand the meanings of what you hear will make you a more knowledgeable and thoughtful person.

When you listen well to others, you start to pick up more on the stylistic components related to how people form arguments and present information. As a result, you have the ability to analyze what you think works and doesn’t work in others’ speeches, which can help you transform your speeches in the process. For example, really paying attention to how others cite sources orally during their speeches may give you ideas about how to more effectively cite sources in your presentation.

Free Topic- What I Love Or Abhor About It

Our English teacher, Puan Monica, gives us blogs to do every week and every once in a while she asks us to do free topics. There are many reasons why I love about it.

First, it gives us freedom on whatever we want to talk about. We can basically write about anything we want. Sometimes when my teacher gives a blog topic, I do not have any idea on what to write about. However, when she gives us free topic, it is much more easier to write as I can write about whatever I like. 

Besides that, writing free topics helps us to think more, free topics helps in building up a creative mind which can be used in our work and school.

 Write about an event that makes you angry. Give reasons why the event makes you feel this way. (Dear Mr Kilmer)

The novel that I studied was ‘Dear Mr Kilmer’ by Anne Schraff. An event that made me angry was when the Schermers’ tavern was vandalised. I was angry because of two reasons.

Firstly, I was angry because some Turtle Lake people were being unfair to the Schermers. They vandalized the Schermers tavern. They painted “Dirty Huns” all over the walls. They said that the Schermers were Huns. Some Turtle Lake people believed that Huns were a barbaric clan originated from Germany. They said that the Schermers were unpatriotic because they spoke German and served Hun food at their tavern while a war was going on against Germany.

Secondly, I was angry because Richard’s classmates were being unkind to the Schermers after the Schermers’s tavern was vandalised. Mrs Hansen brought a card to express regret for what had happened Mrs Hansen asked her class to sign the card. The troublemakers like Abner, Harry, Blanche and Peggy refused to sign the card. They warned other classmates not to sign the card. The boys were afraid Abner and Harry would hit them. The girls worry that popular girls like Peggy and Blanche would not speak to them. However, Richard was the only student who signed the sympathy card for Hannah Schermer. After school, Richard took the card from Mrs Hansen. He wanted to give the card to Hannah. Hannah accepted the card reluctantly. Later, Hannah apologised to Richard for being rude. This was the beginning of their friendship.

In conclusion, the event where the Schermers was being mistreated infuriated me. I truly believed that discrimination was unjust.

My English Blog

I am having Puan Monica as my English teacher both last year and this year. She makes our exams so hard because we have to do our work and BLOGS ESPECIALLY. When she told us we had to do blogs, I felt very weird because she is the first teacher that has ever asked her students to do blog. But I guess it helps me in both my English language and essay.

I have been doing my English blogs for the past two years and I feel like I have got used to it. I will usually do my blogs at the last minute which is straight right after an exam ends or I will do it right before an exam starts. I will usually stalk my friend’s blog and copy some of them.

What I learned from my classmates’ and my ULBS Presentations

So for the past few weeks, we have been told to do ULBS presentations for our SPM. I am doing it because it is for SPM and I do not want to fail.

What I learned from my ULBS presentations is that keeping in topic during our presentations are very important. We had to do our ULBS twice and my first try was very bad. I did not really follow the topic and it was sort of out of the topic. If that was my actual ULBS presentation, I think I would have failed where as the second time, it was the official ULBS presentation. I think I learned from my mistake and I guess I did quite well.

As I was giving comments to my friend’s presentation, I also learned a lot from it. I had to give comments on Lacshen and Farisha’s presentation and they did very good, it was honestly very hard to find a negative comment but I realized that we have to show evidence about the facts that you are presenting from the novel. This gives me a lesson to help me in exam so that I will not repeat the same mistake.

Sleep ( free topic )

Sleep is a naturally recurring state of mind and body, characterized by altered consciousness, relatively inhibited sensory activity, inhibition of nearly all voluntary muscles, and reduced interactions with surroundings. It is distinguished from wakefulness by a decreased ability to react to stimuli, but more reactive than coma or disorders of consciousness, sleep displaying very different and active brain patterns.

Sleep occurs in repeating periods, in which the body alternates between two distinct modes: REM sleep and non-REM sleep. Although REM stands for "rapid eye movement", this mode of sleep has many other aspects, including virtual paralysis of the body. A well-known feature of sleep is the dream, an experience typically recounted in narrative form, which resembles waking life while in progress, but which usually can later be distinguished as fantasy.

During sleep, most of the body's systems are in an anabolic state, helping to restore the immune, nervous, skeletal, and muscular systems; these are vital processes that maintain mood, memory, and cognitive function, and play a large role in the function of the endocrine and immune systems.The internal circadian clock promotes sleep daily at night. The diverse purposes and mechanisms of sleep are the subject of substantial ongoing research.

Sleep is a highly conserved behavior across animal evolution

Humans may suffer from various sleep disorders, including dyssomnias such as insomnia, hypersomnia, narcolepsy, and sleep apnea; parasomnias such as sleepwalking and REM behavior disorder; bruxism; and circadian rhythm sleep disorders. The advent of artificial light has substantially altered sleep timing in industrialized countries.

How I’m going to utilise my English period on Monday 25 February 2019.

I’ll be utilising my English period on Monday 25 February 2019 is by doing homework that I have accumulated for the past one and a half months. I was really lazy and I procrastinated a lot. Therefore, I wrote all my homework down and I decided to do it all at that time. It is rushing and hard but at least I am trying. I hate doing homework. Bless my soul… I can die. 

I will also do my tuition homework. My life is boring I know. 

Malaysia is a multicultural country. Describe a festival you celebrate in Malaysia

A festival that I celebrate in Malaysia is Chinese New Year (or generally referred to as Lunar New Year globally) is the Chinese festival that celebrates the beginning of a new year on the traditional Chinese calendar. The festival is usually referred to as the Spring Festival in mainland China, and is one of several Lunar New Years in Asia. Observances traditionally take place from the evening preceding the first day of the year to the Lantern Festival, held on the 15th day of the year. The first day of Chinese New Year begins on the new moon that appears between 21 January and 20 February. In 2019, the first day of the Chinese New Year was on Tuesday, 5 February, initiating the Year of the Pig.

Chinese New Year is a major holiday in Greater China and has strongly influenced lunar new year celebrations of China's neighbouring cultures, including the Korean New Year (seol), the Tết of Vietnam, and the Losar of Tibet. It is also celebrated worldwide in regions and countries with significant Overseas Chinese populations, including Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, the Philippines, and Mauritius,as well as many in North America and Europe.

Chinese New Year is associated with several myths and customs. The festival was traditionally a time to honour deities as well as ancestors. Within China, regional customs and traditions concerning the celebration of the New Year vary widely, and the evening preceding Chinese New Year's Day is frequently regarded as an occasion for Chinese families to gather for the annual reunion dinner. It is also traditional for every family to thoroughly clean their house, in order to sweep away any ill-fortune and to make way for incoming good luck. Another custom is the decoration of windows and doors with red paper-cuts and couplets. Popular themes among these paper-cuts and couplets include that of good fortune or happiness, wealth, and longevity. Other activities include lighting firecrackers and giving money in red paper envelopes. For the northern regions of China, dumplings are featured prominently in meals celebrating the festival

FAMILY (FREE TOPIC)

 In the context of human society, a family is a group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth), affinity (by marriage or other relationship), or co-residence (as implied by the etymology of the English word "family")[citation needed] or some combination of these.[citation needed] Members of the immediate family may include spouses, parents, brothers, sisters, sons, and daughters.[citation needed] Members of the extended family may include grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, nephews, nieces, and siblings-in-law.[citation needed] Sometimes these are also considered members of the immediate family, depending on an individual's specific relationship with them.[citation needed]

In most societies, the family is the principal institution for the socialization of children. As the basic unit for raising children, anthropologists generally classify most family organizations as matrifocal (a mother and her children); conjugal (a wife, her husband, and children, also called the nuclear family); avuncular (for example, a grandparent, a brother, his sister, and her children); or extended (parents and children co-reside with other members of one parent's family). Sexual relations among the members are regulated by rules concerning incest such as the incest taboo.

The word "family" can be used metaphorically to create more inclusive categories such as community, nationhood, global village, and humanism.

The field of genealogy aims to trace family lineages through history.

The family is also an important economic unit studied in family economics

My impression of Dear Mr Kilmer

When my teacher, Pn Monica gave us the Dear Mr Kilmer book, she told us to go home and read it. I was really lazy so I didn’t.

She gave us work regarding about the book because she was not here for a month. As I was doing the work, I read the novel too. It was a very interesting book. The fact that the book is about Richard Knight’s passion on writing poems just motivates me to do things that I love. The novel also tells me that I accept what other people does and that I should not judge or discriminate. After all, we are all humans.

Besides that, we should also love our family members. For example, how Pa actually loved his sons by accepting what Richard does in the end. He was also worried for Gus who served in military.

‘Ping.. My mobile phone lit up with a message from Pn. Monica....’ Write a story starting with the above sentence.

‘Ping… My mobile phone lit up with a message from Pn Monica and my happiest day has been ruined by that message. It was supposed to be my most memorable day as I was having an amazing time in Bangkok for my holiday. There many things to buy and shop. I usually do not like shopping but somehow I loved it when I was in Bangkok. But a message came from Pn Monica and I was really sad because she told us to finish our composition homework.

In my heart, I was asking myself whether holidays are supposed to be a time to relax or a time to be stressing out with school work. It drove me up the wall. I had to release my anger as I did the work. I tore the book into pieces and I did not care whether if I will get scolded or not. It is honestly very ridiculous to give work to the students during holidays. Can’t the teachers emphatize with the students?