15. Essay Exam

The essay exam was held in today and I'm feeling relax now. Writing with pen was a bit different especially in the exam. However, it was a nice experience but I need to admit that my paper was look like a mess. A peace of s-ht I can say:) but I hope not in value...Anyways I'm glad that left all of them behind. I'm gonna miss my 101 class but not Sonja because I'll do my best to choose her again but you know add-drops are so complicated. Who knows what'll happen... Begüm Bener presents proudly from his last blog of this semester.

14. Practise Essay

Compare and contrast how women and men are "marked" in the text marked women and killing us softly.

As women and men are biologically differing from each other, they also have some differences as an image in advertisements and in their social life. In this essay the topic will be discussed by referring “killing us softly (Katz) and “marked woman” (Tannen).


For some people women have an advantage because they are weak, vulnerable. And it is thought to be that they get help from the others and get protected so they have superiority because there is no one to give a hand to men. Actually it is not that simple and the usual case which applies for women in real life is not such that. As (Tennan) discussed in marked women, women are the one who usually categorized by some reasons. Even she found herself categorizing the women in a conference unconsciously. Because men have standard clothes and hair cut whereas women have a lot more details which give clues about them. When we try to reverse the situation and make the women to be simple clothed as men, the categorization will still be there. This time the women will be “marked” as not caring about how she looks. In that case women have no freedom to be unmarked whereas men can choose not to be marked by just being an ordinary man. Tannen stresses that women don’t even have a change to fill out a form by not giving clue about themselves because of the differences between Miss and Mrs. In contrast men have only Mr. which is the same for a married and a single man. On the other hand men are also marked and that is their chromosomes XY. Two X makes a female but two Y makes nothing unless it is attached to a single X chromosomes. But it is obvious that this is not a visual thing that strictly classifies men and women as the Miss and Mrs. and this is not the same thing where the women are victim. Also there is a “marked-unmarked” situation in surnames. Women mostly have their husbands name and it shows that a woman has traditional values. If she chooses to keep her surname as well as her husbands than it makes an impression that she should have done something important when she has her family name.

Quiet the same thing applies in media where the producers try to sell their products by the help of effective advertisements in which women’s body are used as an object. Being an object in ads. rather than a subject brings a concept of women’s place in the society which is shaped by the mass media. When the mass media and its one the most important tool advertisements show an image of beautiful, silent, passive women which affects the women’s self esteem in a negative way. Because according to ads. women need to be painfully thin as models and if they are not than they do not have a right to be happy, successful, rich etc. In the same way according to (Kilbourne) the men should be though, muscular, active and sometimes aggressive to be a real a man.

As a person in the society you can not be respected by just being you. You should put yourself into a box whose line is determined by someone else and if you can not conform than you will be marked as man. However as a woman you can not run off from being marked whether you conformed the norms or not.


( Sonja, I tried to stick with the time line that you give and I planned 10 minutes before and 5 minutes to proofreading and 60 to write. I will be happy to get your comment on this)

13. Two Big Thumbs Up

Here and now we’re doing well with watching films for the course. Also I’ve been keep up to watch some other things.

Recently I watched the film “Lantana (2001)”. Actually it was kinda old movie but anyways I found it interesting as we consider the year of the shot.

The summary of the movie; you shouldn’t be trust in women, also men at all only you can trust in gays?? Yeah that was the first thing that pops into my mind. There is a detective Leon Zat (Anthony La Paglia, I am a great fun of him from the TV serial “Without a Trace”) is cheating on his wife with a woman in the same dance course of him and his wife. (How dare he?). His wife tries to cheat on him ones just to take revenge, but can not succeed. Also there was a missing shrink (Barbara Hershey) whose one patient is Leon’s wife and a gay guy. As the session goes on with the guy Dylan (March Dwyer) Valeria gets suspicious about her husband that he may be seeing Dylan. When Valeria got missing Leon took the case and things start to reveal.

When you watch the film you'll see that everybody has something to hide and some can end up bitterly.
By the way the Dylan’s story will confirmed and it’ll seen that he is honest. There you go, gender in media? How can you interpret this?

For those who want to see more on Lantana, here its theatrical trailer
http://www.spike.com/video/lantana-theatrical/2414583

The poster is retrieved 3 January 2010 from http://www.impawards.com/2001/posters/lantana.jpg

12. Welcome to 2010 (Avatar)

As Simge named her post as “the first post of 2010” firstly I wanted to congratulate her and add my first blog of 2010 about the film Avatar. I feel that many of us probably went to see the movie since nearly all the sessions were full one or two days before in several cinemas.

I had been eagerly waiting to see that movie because I saw its trail about months ago and really exited. On top of that because the movie will have been in 3 dimensions and because I have never seen a movie in 3D apart from child films that make it more attractive than anything else even than 2012.

When I went to see the movie it was a great fun in the first half. In the second half the images started to make my stomach bad and also my head started to dizzy. It was really bad and I felt into a conflict of continuing to watch the film or keeping my eyes closed in order not to vomit in the middle of it. For a moment I thought to take of the glasses but it was even worse than watching it with my glasses on. At the end that was a big decision for me to keep my eyes closed in the movie that I’ve been dying to see for nearly a year. Any way it was good to use my imagination by just hearing the voices.

I strongly recommend the movie for those who haven’t seen it yet and I can assure that it will be an unusual experiment for them but I can’t guarantee that there will be something off the beat in the last half hour of the movie which ruins its whole fame.

Photograph is retrieved 3 January 2010 from

http://i.imgur.com/TBDZn.jpg

Note: I am not sure whether some grammers are correct or not. If there are mistakes I'd be appriciate to correct them. Thanks Sonja...

11. The Last Presentations

The last one was worse than the practice one that's for sure. I mean, I could be better but It finished though. Also the next ones need to work on holiday which is quiet unlucky of them. After our presentation the Omer's group was the next and I realized that V for Vendetta was really hard to present since it includes a lot more detailes than Boys Don't Cry. I heard from the other classes that they have films which can not even be found on DVD stores. At least we didn't have such adventures:) While we're finishing the course hope to have happy many presentations in the second semester...

10. Effective presentation

I think presentation is an important thing since the word is presenting. If you don't express, present yourself enough or truely than you'll usually be misunderstood. And actually that is annoying. So we all need to know how to be an effective presenter (not on TV but It can apply for me no problem cause I love to be on the screens:)) of ourselves. When we present something we also present ourselves together with the topic. If you cannot express yourself well than nobody will know that whether you studied or not.

First;

• You need to be aware that you're powerful than the audience. So there is no need to be get excited because spectators are there to learn something from you. They (hopefully) will listen to you eagerly.
• You shouldn't be definitely standing behind the desk even if you have something to do with laptop. ( you can pull the laptop near to you towards the front). Because If you stand behind the desk that will biologically send a signal to the aducience that you don't feel comfortable speaking in front of the people. That also make a negative impression that as if you try to draw a line between you and the audience.
• You need to put some black clothes on the day that you'll have the presentation. I don't know the reason for that but I heard it...
• You shouldn't be stable while presenting and try to walk if possible or at least make your arms and head move to refresh the audience attention. (I know from Metin Kunt's 'sps prof' lectures that he is stable all the time and stands behind the lectern as a result nearly all the students can not help themselves to sleep)
• You can also ask questions to students randomly from the class or from the lecturehall to make them awake and concentrate. I remember from the high school that Emre Kongar has been giving one lecture and used this method. After one victim who cannot be able to answer the question of him then everybody started to listen to him with all ears.
  
• Also eye-contact is important but we've talked much about that on class already.

But all in all, presentation skill is something which develops gradually so we need to take some time.

9. Eror Correction

The pronunciation was my best on that sheet that's for sure because I take a heed of pronunciation. Maybe we can have some time to work on "how to speak like Sonja?" :) I think accent is one the most significant think about learning languages. When you have an accent like a native speaker than you probably have a good English. (at least it makes an impression like that) I'm trying hardly on speaking with accent but wonder... whatelse I can do??

Whatever... the other thing on the same cover of the page is eror corrections;

What is wrong with these phrases?

• the use of "the" here is wrong because Jim Hawkins is a person and already special and unique
  
• I think we cannot say for a person that he/she is lack of self-confidence. Instead, he is not self-confident should be more suitable.
• I think there is no such a world like "poorness" in English but we have poverty:)
• He couldn't succeed to be a man can be good instead of success to be a man.
• open ?? open what:)) I see some direct translations from Turkish to English here:) turn the tv on might be work well here.
• I think we need to be more specific here because anybody who read this sentence can interpret it in a different way. Are they bad people because they are behaving bad or you think they are bad in the first hand because they behaved bad to you. Actually they can maybe treat you badly or something but not behave. Hope everybody got what I mean here.
• Ohhh who sad that or Is he sober when he sad this:)) Is it necessary to say what is wrong here?? Okey, okey If you are a man and also you have a husband not a wife than probably you should be living in Holland or something...
• What are you growing?? An artichoke in "farmville"?? Heyy you have children mannnn... I think that is our problem you know we thought that it is as easy as growing something on a field. So we should be carefull RAISING our children and not to over irrigate them, all right...
• listen to them might be well. Not rasping at least.
• We can say that Marie joined or was the contestant in the show...was called, named as "Dotto" which was famous with the notebook scandal.
• our wearings??? clothes maybe... Clothing
  
• Hmm let me think... Men with similar dresses. If you wear them at the time and if you're Dustin Hoffman in "Tootsie" you may be men with similar dresses.:) actually "men who have similar dresses" but If you're carying the dresses but not wearing yet you should be men with same clothes. There was a movie called Men in black. If you say men in black clothes and have "-es" at the and that means you have more than one men who all wear black. You don't need to say similiar. By the way what on earth am I blathering on??
  

I now feel a bit uncomfortable, I'v been making fun of the mistakes nearly half an hour but What if I had mistakes as well:DD