Reflection

Time pass in a blink of an eye. Two months have over and mid-term tests are coming soon. Well, I am glad to become one of the members in the family of E02. I have made a lot of new friends from different nations here, and my Singaporean tutor as well. For the first two months, I have tried to improve my language in many ways. Firstly, I learnt how to quote and cite people’s words in a correct style. Secondly, I have been taught to organize my essay by step, from outlining to conclusion, systematically. Thirdly, I have also started leaving comments to my friends in order to improve my error identification skill, as well as my friends’ writing skills. Our relationships are connected with our own efforts. That is a win-win situation indeed. For the next term, I would like to learn more about casual speaking skill in real life communication/conversation. For example, I would like to practice more about the proper way of using words like “Bravo”, “Well” etc. Besides that, I think that presentation is also an important part in our studies. I suggest that we can make more practices about giving clear speeches in order to communicate well with people. Lastly, accurate vocabulary is also a must for all of us to master. I hope that we can learn more vocabulary so that we can apply them in our future essays. I convey my best wishes to all of you who always try to improve yourselves. Thank you. English is special.

W7T1

In the 21th centuries, nuclear reactors have been built for research or power. However, they have possessed the potential of providing the raw material for nuclear booming. With the wide publication of instructions for building explosive devices, terrorism can become a serious threat to every nations today. Normally, terrorists have to obtain fissile material — plutonium or highly enriched uranium capable of rapid nuclear fission. These highly enriched bomb-grade uranium and plutonium which are ideal fuels for nuclear explosives can be found on any nuclear reactors. In fact, engineering play the roles of finding all the dangerous nuclear material in the world and tracking it in order to avoid abusing by terrorists. So there are several steps to protect the materials. Firstly, engineers have to secure those nuclear materials. Secondly, they have to know how to detect them within a distance. Thirdly, engineers learn how to design a potential device safely. Emergency backup, cleanup, and public communication after a nuclear explosion are also especially important. The most importantly, engineers must also have to determine who did it. Besides, for another case like “dirty bombs” which might cause health disturbance, deaths, contamination and economic havoc, engineering changes from monitoring to cleanup, of both people and places. In case, potential sources of radioactive material are scattered about the globe, preventing access is very hard. To certify that a country using nuclear power just for generating energy is not easy. To oppose this problem, engineers have developed a passive device near a reactor which could transmit real-time data on the reactor’s contents, to detect any lost of plutonium. Consequently, preventing their transportation to a place of use has gradually become an significant issue. Individual inspection of each container would be costly and very disruptive as many goods are legitimately imported into the country within large shipping containers. Many ways of detecting nuclear materials hidden in such containers have been used, but most of them bring negative results. In conclusion, engineers have to face these new possible challenges with the time. By the good understanding of nature’s nuclear secrets provided by physics, engineering are to be encouraged to challenge themselves in the future.

Summarized from
National Academy of Engineering, "Prevent nuclear terror," Available at: http://www.engineeringchallenges.org/cms/8996/9134.aspx

W5T2

Everyone does make mistakes, no matter big or small. As well as we born to this world, we are going to make mistakes in destiny. As a normal insane, I did make mistakes and I will not deny that I will continue making mistakes throughout my life eventually. However, to become a better "player" in this competitive world, I have spent plenty of time and effort to enhance my language. And one of my problems I faced currently is the grammar mistake, especially the preposition in sentences. In definition, a preposition is a word governing, and usually coming in front of, a noun or pronoun and expressing a relation to another word or element. ( English Club ) A preposition must be followed by a "noun" but not a verb. The "noun" can be including noun (cat, eye), proper noun (Mr.Yan, Malaysia), pronoun (I, you, we), noun group (my first friend) and gerund (jogging) as well. For an example, I go to school by bus. The "by" in the sentence is actually a preposition and it is followed by noun (bus). Sometimes, using wrong different preposition can give different messages. For instance, "The girl walks into the house." and "The girl walks to the house." show the different meaning indeed. Referring to my last assignment, I can find out my preposition's mistakes are based on the preposition of place and time. Instead of using "on 18th of August", I always made the mistakes by using "at 18th of August". Now I only realized that these are the areas i should pay attention to. In a nutshell, I believe practice makes perfect. In order to minimize my grammatical mistakes, I would not hesitate to make more practice, orally and manually.

Here are some exercises which I retrieved from ESL English Quiz

1. We must finish this job _ next Monday.
2. I stayed in New York _ two weeks.
3. We will have a party _ Christmas Eve.
4. The school library is open _ nine until four.
5. He will leave _ the morning of third.


English Club. ( n.d. ) English Preposition. Retrieved September 13,2008, from http://www.englishclub.com/grammar/prepositions.htm

Kelly, C. (2001,2004) Activities for ESL students: ESL English Quiz. Retrieved September
13, 2008, from http://a4esl.org/q/f/z/zz98bck.htm