MY COMMENTS ON MY FRIENDS' JOURNALS

http://serifbaltaci.blogspot.com/2012/11/being-too-much-occupied-wi-th-digital.html

http://halealbayrak.blogspot.com/2013/01/video-reflection-1.html?showComment=1358788748112#c8432596660877955723

http://tugceaslan.blogspot.com/2012/11/nature-i-want-to-talk-about-nature-it.html?showComment=1358790201524#c4806155788421725928

http://orhanaydin61.blogspot.com/2013/01/journal-entry-4-i-brain-odtu.html?showComment=1358790853173#c8641125809791712970

VIDEO REFLECTION 3 FIRE OF ANATOLIA

         I want to talk about one of our national success. The thing that I mentioned about is ´FIRE OF ANATOLIA'. It is a special project which includes a lot of dance figures from all over our country. Fire of Anatolian was established by Mustafa Erdoğan in 1999. Previously, it was a group called as Sultan’s of The Dance. He had a dream which aimed to introduce our cultural structure to the world. He wanted to make his dream real, so he decided to enhance this group. Firstly, he collected ninety skillful dancers and they started to work intensively during a year and a half. Finally, they showed their first performance for he first time in 2001. Their aim is to introduce our culture to all of the world and they have been displaying their marvellous performances fort this aim in several countries such as, Germany, Belgium, Holland, Switzerland, Israel, China, the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Egypt, Jordan, Hungary, Italy, North Cyprus, Siberia, South Korea, Qatar, Lebanon, Bulgaria, Azerbaijan, Russia, Japan, Mexico and Greece..Fire of Anatolia is regarded as one of the world’s best dance group and It is also the first group that performs in the Bodrum Antique Theatre after 2300 years.It is exactly an achievement and it is a proud for our country. I cannot forget the day when I watched their performance for the first time on TV and the excitement that I felt. Whenever I see it, I realize that my excitement will never end for them. Their works  are really praiseworthy.

                                                 

         I selected a video for my blog because everyone should see this excitement. I chose this one that was performed at Eurovision  2004 Song Contest Turkey. This show starts with belly dance and ends with our folk dance called 'horon' from Black Sea Region. I like both belly dance and horon, but the horon in the video fascinated me. I cannot understand how they become such fast.  They must have worked so hard . I really appreciate and watch them without a wince. If I had a chance ı would like to be one of them :)

VIDEO REFLECTION 2 / 3 IDIOTS

    

              I want to talk about one of my favorite films ‘3 Idiots’. I watched this excellent film for the first time when I was in high school. I guess I have watched it at least five times, but I have never felt bored. If one of my friends comes and wanst to watch it together I cannot refuse his or her offerJ.  3 idiots is an Indian film produced and played by Aamir Khan who is the most successful actor, director and producer. It is about the malfunction in the education system. Ranço who is played by Aamir Khan is the main character of the film. He is a lover of engineering, but he is object to the education system based on rote-learning. He wants to learn and be taught functional information and do not want to memorize some unneeded knowledge. He has two friend in the film ‘raju’ and ‘farhan’. Firstly, he wants to make them aware of the fact and, they understand the aim of Ranço and appreciate him. The message that the film is trying to give us is told in an entertaining way. There are also saddening scenes on the film and they are perfectly blended. Actually, the reason why I like this movie so much is the fact that the system in the movie is so similar to ours. We are supposed to learn and memorize things without knowing their real meanings and usages like a race horse. The movie precisely tries to make us aware of this fact.

I chose this video because it is the most related one to main point that I want to mention about. In the video the teacher is symbolizing the rote-learning education system and he wants his students to define the meaning of machine. Ranço tries to tell about its useful and understandable meaning, but the teacher are furious with him because he is used to hear animal-like answers. I like so much this scene of the movie because of the answer which Ranço gave to the teacher. I also like the way he expresses himself .He makes me laughJHe thinks that it is not adequate to memorize definition to know something. It is necessary to know what it is and how it is used. Actually, we are faced with same the situation in our education process sometimes, but instead of criticizing we did whatever the system requires us generally. I want to be a teacher to end all these mistakes.

JOURNAL ENTRY 3 REVISED VERSION

      There is always a dream  for university in every student’s mind because the university years  may be the best times of our lives.We make friends and learn so many things in this process ,so people never forget their universities and want to spend these excellent times as good as possible. I started to dream and consider my university in my high school times.In that times,I saw university only as a school to go,yet this idea disappeared after I came here.

      The university which I always desire has so many characteristics.It’s proved to be an efficient university.It has a splendid name like METU. METU is known for its success  all over the world.The people who graduated from this university are well educated and qualified.Their professions are the most prefered ones.I saw lots of politicians,poets,journalists and CEOs who graduted from METU.It has also qualified instructors. These features are the academic ones.It has also social features.It has a very big campus.The buildings are new,well-equipped and good-looking.Our METU campus is as big as I want but the buildings are not  the ones in my dreams.My dream university has a seaside.I wish METU were in izmirJ I always want to live in the campus area,so my dream university has dorms  in it.This dorms are far from each other and each of them has its own characteristics so that the students can choose whichever they want.METU provides so many dorms for us.In addition to these,my university includes restaurants,shops,markets and whatever a student needs.METU has most of them,but the transportation could be better than now.It has a good security system.No one else from university students can enter the campus area without a reference.

      As seen,METU is my dream university in many characteristics I said.Except from the seaside, it involves everything wished J

JOURNAL ENTRY 2 REVISED VERSION

When I first heard of METU’s fame , I was thinking and worrying about this challenging university .After coming here,I learned that this reputation of METU is even less than it deserves.It is not only an enviable university, but it is also a luck for us to be an efficient person.Being a student is more wonderful than I expected.

     METU has so many opportunities and facilities for students.First of all,our campus is too big to deal with but it provides ring services for us to arrive easily wherever we must go.There are also public transportation buses to go city center.Secondly, our shopping center contains shops such as, supermarket, hairdresser,banks,restaurants and many others.We don’t need to go city center to buy our requirements.Thirdly, our dormitories are well equipped and most of them  have a canteen and computer lab and finally, the whole campus area is covered with trees and plants.This is the best one for me.If you look at the campus site, you can easily see the  difference between METU and the city.Everything is in order in this lovely area. As a student you have many opportunity here to live and learn. In METU you can change and develop yourself  however you want in both academic and social ways.

      The courses are not as funny as this.You have to study more and more and regularly.The more you try,the better you become .It is up to you.This is a challenge for me now, but I hope it will my pleasure in a short timeJ Another challenge for me is the truth that you are all yourself  here.You are alone.You must deal with every trouble that you face with by yourself.You must be powerful and resistant, but I am so happy to be here in spite of everything that can be seen challenge.

FOOD PRODUCT

                                           

                                                     STEAK TARTAR A LA TURCA

    

   Steak tartar a la turca  has been so popular for several years. Initially it was peculiar to east region of Turkey where it first originated.  However nowadays there is hardly anyone who has not heard of it. There is a legend about the origin of steak tartar a la turca. A hunter hunts a deer and brings it to his wife. He wants his wife to cook this meat but the wife says that there is no wood to cook the meat. The hunter wants to her wife solve this problem and find a solution.  Then the woman starts to press the meat by using a stone. She adds creak wheat, pepper, salt, green onion, parsley and impastes this mixture. In this way steak tartar a la turca comes into being. However there are certain differences in its preparation now.

Ingredients:

*fatless veil

*fine creak wheat

*red pepper paste

*tomato paste

*isot (a spice)

*onion

*garlic

*mint

*parsley

*green onion

*black pepper

*caraway

*salt

*allspice

*basil

   You should mix all of these ingredients and impaste at least 2 hours. Moreover it is a tradition to throw away a bit of it to ceiling. If it stays on the ceiling it means that it can be eaten. Steak tartar a la turka is usually eaten with lettuce by Turkish people. It is also possible to eat with thin bread.

Our international company decided to introduce this marvelous product to Indian people because they like eating spicy meals so much. We are sure that steak tartar a la turca is exactly what they need. Also, it does not cost you too much on the contrary it has a reasonable price for Indian people.

                                                                                                                               

                                            

                                                                                            MERVE BAYRAM

                                                                                            SEDA AĞIRBAŞ

                                                                                            HALE ALBAYRAK

                                                                                            ELİF AYDIN

JOURNAL ENTRY 1

Is Language Unique to Humans

When Alex unexpectedly passed away after only thirty-one years of life, his last words to his dearest friend were, "You be good. See you tomorrow. I love you." A touching sentiment indeed, but all the more impressive because Alex was an African Grey Parrot. Over the course of thirty years of work between psychologist Irene Pepperberg and Alex, purchased from a Chicago pet store at one year of age, the parrot amassed a vocabulary of some 150 words. According to one report, he was able to recognize fifty different objects, could count quantities up to six, and could distinguish among seven colors and five shapes. He also understood the ideas of "bigger" and "smaller", and "same" and "different".

Alex isn’t the only non-human to display such talents. Kanzi is a 31-year-old male bonobo who lives in a small social group with others of his species at the Great Ape Trust in Des Moines, Iowa. Bonobos, together with chimpanzees, are our closest living relatives. After years of working with primatologist Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, Kanzi can now understand several thousand words, and can communicate using a kind of keyboard that contains around 400 visual symbols called lexigrams.

Then there's Rico, a border collie who knows the labels of around 200 different items, and can retrieve them on command. Compared to Alex and Kanzi, this might not seem particularly impressive or interesting. However, Rico can learn the label of an item that he's never seen before after only hearing the word once. If there are 20 items in front of him, 19 of which he already knows the labels for, and he is instructed to retrieve an item using a word he had never heard before, Rico can infer that the unfamiliar item matches with the unfamiliar word. Weeks later, he still remembers the pairing. This process of word-learning, called fast-mapping, is identical to the process through which young children learn new words. 

Not to be outdone by the feathered or furry, there is the female Atlantic bottlenose dolphins Akeakamai and Phoenix who lived at the Kewalo Basin Marine Mammal Laboratory in Honolulu, Hawaii. A famous paper by marine biologist Louis Herman and colleagues in 1984 described Akeakamai and Phoenix's abilities to understand sentences in visual or acoustic artificial languages.

The researchers gave the dolphins instructions constructed entirely of familiar words, but in various combinations that would only be understood by knowing the grammar of the sentences, not just the vocabulary. For example, "Phoenix Akeakamai Over" was an instruction for Phoenix to swim to Akeakamai and jump over her, while "Akeakamai Surfboard Fetch Speaker" instructed Akeakamai to get the surfboard and bring it to the speaker. In each case the dolphin had to interpret the verb "over" or "fetch" according to the noun: did "fetch" apply to the surfboard or to the speaker, for instance?

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20121016-is-language-unique-to-humans/1


THREE EXAMPLES FOR EACH CATEGORY


Adjective : last, impressive, different

Verb :  understand, give, apply

Transitive verb : love, display, see

Intransitive verb : pass away,work, call

Linking verb : be able to, is, seem

Action verb : retrieve, swim, jump over

Stative verb : live, remember, learn

Place adverb : over, there

Time adverb : after, tomorrow, now

Adverb of  manner : unexpectedly, particularly, entirely

Direct object : object, quantity, idea

Indirect object : symbol, word, instruction

Subject : Chicago, Alex, Des Moneis

Phrase : thirty-one years of life, fifty different objects, new words

Interrogative pronoun : who, which

Personal pronoun : he, it, you

Indefinite pronoun : all

Common noun : year, word, friend

Proper noun : Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, Kewalo Basin Marine Mammal Laboratory

Singular noun : speaker, noun, dolphin

Plural noun : talents, researchers, languages

Dependent clause : 19 of which he already knows the labels for
                                     
                                     that the unfamiliar item matches with the unfamiliar word

                                     that would only be understood by knowing the grammar of the                                               sentences,not just the vocabulary

Independent clause :  he is instructed to retrieve an item using a word he had never 

heard before

                                         He also understood the ideas of "bigger" and "smaller", and "same" and "different".