Wednesday, October 29, 2014

Folk Tales from around the world - for Ray Kemal


Beauty is nothing

Once upon a time there was a beautiful girl who lived with her little sister. Her sister was not as beautiful as she was. The boys always liked the big sister; she was asked to marry. She got presents from boys every day. On the other hand, the little sister always dreamed about the guy who may love her. She knew that she was not beautiful and every boy was looking for her sister, but she was okay with it. She was very humble and modest.
One day the big sister thought she found true love. He was the richest boy in the town. She tried to meet with him. She did everything to see him. Finally he noticed her. He was shocked by her beauty. He wanted to get married with her immediately.
They got married. The wedding took 40 days and 40 nights. They started to live together. At first everything was like a dream. They seemed like the most perfect couple ever. They were both good looking. And the little sister was living with them. She cleaned her sister’s clothes, she cooked for them, and she did everything to make them happy.
Therefore, he realized that his wife was not a nice person. She got used to using people. She forced them do something for her.  She always wanted people to obey her because she was beautiful. And he noticed that she was using her sister too. She treated her like nothing. She used her for everything; she was a terrible person.
One day he heard that she was yelling to her sister, "You have to live with us because you do not have anybody, you will always be ugly, nobody will want to marry with you." He got very mad. He never thought that his wife was such a devil.
Then he realized that beauty is nothing; the most important thing is personality. (KNA)

The walker tadpole
There was once the son of a frog Rinrin Tadpole
One morning he went out very stiffly and very pretty
He was in shorts and a fashion tie
With a nice wedding hat and fancy vest on it
“My son please don’t go,” mom yells,
But he very smugly suddenly leaves.

By the road Rinrin found a mouse,
And he said, “My friend you should come with me,
We can visit Mrs. Mouse and have a feast”

The little mouse and Rinrin arrived at Mrs. Mouse's house
And very elegantly the little mouse knocked on the door at once
After two or three knocks, Mrs. Mouse asks, “Who is it?”
“Me Mrs. Mouse, kiss your feet!”

They say hi to each other while hanging their hands
And suddenly the little mouse said,
“Mrs. Mouse, my little friend needs something to drink,
Please give him a beer and let's start to drink”

While the little mouse was drinking the beer
And asking Mrs. Mouse to bring something to sing
The pretty Rinrin was enjoying this time
With some good drinks and nice music to hear.

Although the party was fun for all
With dancing, drinking and a beautiful song
Suddenly Mom Cat and her kitties arrived at Mrs. Mouse's place
And this wonderful party finally ends.

Mom cat hooked the little mouse's ear
And with her terrific voice just said “hi”
The little kitten caught Mrs. Mouse
Once by the tail and once at the foot

The little Rinrin the walker tadpole
Took his hat and suddenly ran,
And quickly said good bye to all

Rinrin the tadpole was jumping so fast
That he tore his vest and lost his hat
He lost himself and while he was turning around
A hungry big duck suddenly ate the little tadpole

And that how it ends, one, two and three,
little mouse, Mrs. Mouse and Rinrin the tadpole;
The cats ate and the duck too
And finally the poor little Mom frog, remained alone.
(MCRB)
Sinbad
Sinbad is a famous character in Arab countries. He is a young boy from Baghdad in Iraq. He made adventure stories with his bird named Yasmina and with his friends Ali Baba and Alaa Adin. He did a series of Sinbad journeys to different destinations.
 
One day, Sinbad decided to sail with his uncle and his bird Yasmina, which had the ability to speak. In the sea, a whale attacked their boat; at this point Sinbad with his Yasmina separated from his uncle. Here started Sinbad's adventure. He got a new land and knew new two friends.  The first was Ali Baba; he works with thieves but he likes adventures, and decided to involve Sinbad. The second was Alaa Adian; he is an old man who also likes adventures. 
 
They fought several strange creatures, such as a giant bird, gigantic snakes, mermaids, genies, Lilliputians, and hostile magicians. At the end of each adventure they were victorious over malefactors. Finally, Sinbad killed a blue monster and the magic was gone, and Yasmina returned to her normal life as a beautiful girl. Also Sinbad survived people who a blue monster had changed to stone, and he went back to his home to live with his family.      (FA)

Shirin and Farhad
The king of Persia in Sasanian dynasty had a handsome and skillful son, named Khosrow. He fell in love with an Armenian princess – Shirin – when his close friend and companion, Shapour, showed him a picture of Shirin and described her beauty and goodness. Khosrow ordered Shapour to go to Armenian territory and try to seduce Shirin by talking about the prince and showing her a picture of him. Shapour managed to reveal a picture of Khosrow to Shirin in Armenia and tell her that the prince was in love with her. Shirin found the picture very attractive and decided to go to Persia to meet Khosrow. On her way, she stopped at a tranquil spring to bathe. At the same time, Khosrow was passing by the spring to go away from his father who was angry with him. He saw Shirin bathing in the pond and found her as beautiful as a legendary fairy, but he did not know who she was. Once Shirin saw him, he turned his face but could not forget that picture. When Shirin arrived in Madaen, the capital of Sasanian kingdom, she found that Khosrow was not there, and Khosrow found the same thing in Armenia. She returned to Armenia but could not meet Khosrow again because he had to go back home due to his father’s death. The two lovers could not meet for a while because of a chain of strange coincidences. When they finally met, Shirin did not agree to marry the prince because he was defeated by Bahram-e-Choobin, who had succeeded to his throne. Hence, Khosrow went back to claim his country to be able to marry the princess. 
Meanwhile, a stone carver, named Farhad, was introduced to Shirin when she was looking for a person who could make a canal between the mountains and her castle to bring milk for her. Farhad fell in love with the princess at first sight and did his best to make her happy by cutting a canal through the hard stone and making a pond of milk by her castle. When Shirin saw his work, she was greatly impressed and gave him her earrings as a reward, which made her even more endearing in Farhad’s eyes. He started writing love letters for her and beautiful poems about her beauty. He became famous for his mad love for Shirin. Khosrow, however, could not resist the fact that another man was trying to steal Shirin’s heart. He decided to use his power by calling him and bribing him to be away from the princess. But soon he found that it was impossible. Farhad was vary determined to win Shirin’s heart. Therefore, Khosrow decided to deceive him into thinking that the princess could be won. Khosrow promised Farhad that if he could cut a passage through the Bistoon Mountains, outside of his castle, Khosrow would let him marry Shirin. Khosrow knew that it was an impossible task and he could never carve a way out of the cliff rocks. But Farhad agreed and it was this point in history when Farhad’s labor of love started. He never gave up and became the symbol of love. People still hear him hitting hard on his blade to cut the rocks. If they do not hear him one night, it means that Farhad is in Shirin’s dream. (SV)

Story #1
Nasrettin Hoca goes to his neighbor’s house and asks him to borrow his big cauldron for a few days. His neighbor gives him the cauldron. After a week, Nasrettin Hoca gives the cauldron back to his neighbor. While his neighbor is checking the cauldron, he sees a little pot inside of the cauldron and asks what it is. Nasrettin Hoca says:
-Congratulations! Your cauldron gave birth!
The neighbor thinks that this is a good profit and takes them. After a while, Nasrettin Hoca goes to his neighbor’s house again and asks to borrow his cauldron again. His neighbor borrows the cauldron enthusiastically. Two months pass by and Nasrettin Hoca doesn’t bring his cauldron back. The neighbor decides to go and take his cauldron back. When he goes to Nasrettin Hoca’s house and asks for his cauldron, Nasrettin Hoca gets very sad, shakes his neighbor’s hand and says:
-"Please accept my condolences, your cauldron passed away last month."
The neighbor gets mad and yells at him,
-"Dear Hoca what are you saying? How can a cauldron die? A cauldron is not an alive thing.
Then Nasrettin Hoca says:
-You were so happy and believed me when it gave birth. Why don’t you believe it is dead now?

Story #2
One day, Nasreddin Hoca buys two kilograms of meat from butcher’s shop and goes to his house. After telling his wife to cook meat for dinner, he goes back to work. After he goes, his wife cooks the food and invites her neighbors and gives them a feast. Nasrettin Hoca comes back to his house at night and his wife gets the table ready and gives Nasrettin Hoca a plate of cracked wheat pilaf. When Nasrettin Hoca sees the plate, he gets surprised and asks his wife,
-"You were supposed to cook meat for dinner! I went to the butcher’s shop in the early morning and brought you meat. What happened to that?"
She gets sad and tells him:
-"Oh my dear husband… Our cat ate all of the meat."
Nasrettin Hoca gets very mad and jumps from the chair, grabs a stick and decides to beat the cat. Then he sees the skinny cat sitting next to the wall. He asks his wife to bring the scale. Then he checks the cat’s weight and then he gets confused. The cat weights two kilograms. He calls his wife and says,
-"The cat weights two kilograms; where is the meat I bought from the butcher? If we assume this is the meat I bought, then where is the cat?"  (SK)

The Story of Hanzhou West Lake Dragon Well Tea

Hanzhou West Lake Dragon Well Tea is the best green tea in China and is well-known around the world. It has over a thousand years of history. The tea’s name originates from a local folk story. Dragon Well is a well in the West Lake district of Hanzhou, China. A long time ago, a single old woman lived near the Dragon Well. The woman was very kind and was happy to help others. She did not have daughters and sons and her husband had died. She had eighteen common old wild tea trees surrounding the well. Her house was very close to an important path for farmers living in South Hill village to the downtown of the West Lake district. In order to facilitate passers for rest, she put a desk and several chairs in her yard. In addition, she cooked a pot of tea for passers every day using tea-leaves taken from the old tea trees. As time went by, she became famous for passers. In the winter of a year when the Chinese Spring Festival was coming soon, there was a heavy snow. It was very cold and the wild tea trees could be freezing to death. The woman worried about it. At this time, there were a lot of pedestrians on the path because people needed to go to the downtown to buy goods for the coming Spring Festival. They had a rest in the woman’s yard as usual. One of pedestrians, an old wise man, found the woman was not happy. So he spoke to the woman and asked her whether her goods for the Spring Festival were ready. The woman took a deep breath and answered that she did not have money to buy goods. And she complained that she was worrying that she could not provide the tea for passers in the next year because her wild tea trees could die of frost in this winter. Suddenly the man looked at an old stone mortar in the woman’s yard and his eyes sparkled with excitement. He pointed to the mortar and told the woman that she had a treasure. The woman could not believe it. She replied that the man could get it for free if he wanted. However, the man would not like to have it for free and he wanted to pay 500 grams of silver to the woman for it. The woman, however, insisted that she could not accept the money. Later, the man said that he firstly went home and then would ask some young people to help him to move this mortar to his home tomorrow. Then he was gone. The woman looked at the mortar and found a lot of rubbish in it. The woman would feel ashamed if she gave such a dirty and old mortar to others. Therefore she decided to clean it up. She took the rubbish out of the mortar and buried it at the foot of the old wild tea trees. She also cleaned the mortar using the water from the Dragon Well. In the next day, the man came with several companions. When he saw the mortar at first sight, he started to yell to the woman. He asked the woman where his treasure was. The woman was surprised and confused since she thought he might be happy because she cleaned the mortar. She pointed at the mortar and said that it was still there. The man shook his head and said no. He continued to ask the woman where she put the rubbish in the mortar. The woman pointed to the old wild tea trees and said that she buried the rubbish at the foot of these trees. The man walked to the trees. Then, he told the woman that it was a great pity because the rubbish in the mortar was unique and was the real treasure that he wanted. He also said the rubbish would help the tea trees a lot. After that, he left with his companions. Later, the spring of the next year came. The tea trees not only survived in the last cold winter, but also put out a lot of new shoots. Moreover, the tea-leaves taken from the trees looked fine and tasted tender and smelt sweet. Later, the neighbors of this old woman grew more of this kind of tea trees across several hills in proximity. This kind of tea grown in this area was becoming famous in the following years owing to its high quality. And people called it – Hanzhou West Lake Dragon Well Tea. (FL)

Wolves are coming
A long time ago there was a shepherd boy living in a beautiful mountain village in China. He owned fifteen baby sheep who were his best friends. During the daytime, he talked and played with these cute sheep and took them back home in the evening. 
One day in summer a really bad idea came into the shepherd boy’ mind when he was in a grove with his sheep. He wanted to play a joke on his kind, nice, and friendly neighbors who lived with him in the same village. He shouted loudly and frightenedly, “Wolves are coming, wolves are coming to eat my sheep!" All villagers immediately ran into the grove as quickly as possible after they heard the boy crying for help. When they saw the shepherd boy they carefully asked him where the wolves were. To be infuriating the boy laughed and said, “You are so stupid!” and “I am joking on you”. With disappointment all the nice neighbors left. The shepherd boy enjoyed this joke very much and pretended to see wolves again a few days later. Kind-hearted villagers came to help again. However, this time villagers realized that this was a kid loving to lie. 
Fall had come. As usual the boy was playing with his sheep when wolves actually appeared. This poor boy shouted for help as loudly as he could. Unfortunately all the villagers thought he was playing the joke and no one cared about him. The boy and his sheep became the wolves’ delicious dinner. 

This story tells us a truth that people don’t believe children who always tell lies, even when they tell the truth.  (YL)

The Three Little Pigs

When the three little pigs grew up, they went out of their parents' house to build their own houses. The first pig built his house of stone, with a nice fireplace. The second built his house of wood, and the third built his house of straw. It could be said that the third built his house of straw because he was busy having a good time, and spent his money on carousing and having fun.
Nevertheless when the hungry wolf came looking for dinner, he came to the third little pig's house first. "I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll blow your house down!" the wolf yelled at the pig. And, unfortunately, he did; he blew the house down, and the pig went running to his big brother's house. "I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll blow your house down!" the wolf yelled at the two pigs hiding in the wood house. And he did; he blew the house down, and the pigs went running to their older brother's stone house.
 
Now, the wolf threatened to blow down the stone house as well, but no matter how hard he blew, he was unable to blow it down. He was determined to get the pigs, so he came down the chimney, but they were prepared and, in the end, the pigs were safe. It's a violent tale, but it shows the value of having a strong house when trouble comes. (TL)


 
Morin Xuur

There was once a man named Xuxuu Namjil who was in love with a girl, but he was called to go away to war.  He had a horse that could fly, so he would fly on his horse from the battlefields to see his girl.  But there was another girl who lived near the battlefields and envied the couple.  So, she cut the wings off of Xuxuu’s horse so that he could no longer visit his girl.  After having his wings cut off, the horse died.  Xuxuu Namjil was very sad, and he cut off the horse’s head and tail and from them, he made the first Morin Xuur (Horse Fiddle).  When he played his Morin Xuur, it sounded like his horse, and this eased his pain. (RB)

Monday, October 20, 2014

speeches

Speech
Dear Lubbock Lion’s Club Members,
My name is Serdar Kaleli I am a student at Texas Tech University, ESL5301 class.
            Today, I would like to introduce you the research that we are going to conduct in our class. As Texas Tech ESL 5301 students, we are going to conduct a research about why and how the Texas Tech students are using social media. As you may already know, the numbers of social media users are increasing every day. Social media are the most popular and easiest way to connect different societies. People are using social media for many different reasons. In our research we will perform surveys among the Texas Tech students and some of the answers we will look for are:
-Why Texas Tech students are using the social media,
-Which social media type is the most popular,
-When they use social media,
-How often they check their social media account,
-What are the differences of usage in between gender, age, and other facts.

            In order to get more accurate results, we need to reach as many students as we can. To do that, we need to print more surveys. Also our students who will perform the surveys require to get paid for some amount of money. As ESL 5301 class, we are looking to share our survey results in exchange of donations. Your donations will create a mutual profit both for your organization and us. As we were looking into your organization’s web page, we realized that your organization has both Facebook and Twitter accounts. However, the number of people are fallowing you are not that many. By using our survey results, your organization can be informed about how people use social media and you can increase the number of followers and reach many people. The ice bucket challenge could be considered as the most successful example of how social media can reach millions of people. Through the usage of social media, the ALS foundation has collected large amounts of donations. We can create an awareness of your organization and you can reach many people by this way. Finally, we would like to thank you for your donations and looking forward to work with your organization. (S.K.)

Speech

                  Technological advances in communication allow people to communicate with people thousands of miles away in seconds. Nowadays it is almost impossible think about communication in any field without thinking about internet resources such as email, blogs, news and social media sites. In this technological growth, social media has become one of the most important tools to interact between people.  Social media has also completely changed the way we communicate with each other. Taking this into account our lives move around those new ways of communications and a lot of our decisions were, are and will be affected by social media.
                  Language change is probably the most interesting aspect if you want to study social behavior around social media. It doesn’t matter what your interest is, knowing how people communicate and what can be the differences between sexes can be very useful if the objective is to transmit an idea in the most effective way. Knowing these language characteristics around social media will be really useful in many fields such as merchandising, publicity, politics and social movements.
                  We want to do this research to look into social media language differences among Texas Tech University students. Also we want to go further in understanding how social media as one of the most important communication strategies today is perceived by the students of different sexes and ages in order to understand better how these people perceive social media. (MCRB)

Speech

Ladies and Gentlemen,
                  I am here to introduce you to our study, which is about Social Media. Since Social Media takes a big part of our lives, my colleagues and I decided to do research on the effect of Social Media on Texas Tech University students.
                  At the beginning, we were curious about the question, ‘Why are they using the Social Media?’ So, we came with many questions. Therefore, we started to analyze the hypotheses on the following by asking students, ‘How many hours do you spend using Social Media?’, ‘Which Social Media sites are you using the most?’, and  ‘What is the reason you use Social Media?’
                  You might be interested in the answers that we ended up with. Our study shows that Social Media takes a big role in their lives. Students use Social Media for different reasons, which actually means the companies, the new brands or the public figures  are able to reach the young people easily. The companies would like to know which Social Media sites they should use for their new advertisement.
                  If you would like to support our study, you will find out every shocking fact about Social Media that you will use wisely. With the information we have gotten for you, you will be able to know how to reach the young population. You can achieve your company’s goals through our study. 
                  Thank you so much for listening to me.  Now, you know what we have investigated, what we know about Social Media. You will not regret standing with us. Have a nice day.
(KNA)


Dear Fundraising Organization Officers:
                  Thank you for the opportunity to be considered for support by the Fundraising Organization.
                  Facebook is considered as one of the most popular social media among college students in the United States (U.S.). Approximately 94% of undergraduate students were reported to have Facebook accounts with a 150-200 friends list. It was stated that 96% out of 364 college students spend 10 to 60 minutes every day on Facebook. Facebook provides a huge amount of information for social media research. Previous studies have shown that social media can be used as an effective tool to explore the personality differences between male and female students. It is very important for teachers to design efficient teaching methods based on better understanding the personality differences between male and female students. For example, when I taught in a high school in China I found boys were relatively more introverted than girls when studying English. In this case, English teachers tried to design activities in class to encourage boys to speak more, which was helpful for boys making progress in English study.
                  In the past few months a survey was taken among 120 students who had Facebook accounts in Texas Tech University. This survey is designed to collect data for our study, which is to investigate personality differences between male and female college students from their Facebook activities. Based on the survey results, Five-Factor Model (FFM) that was invented by McCrae in 1992 is used to analyze personality difference in five aspects: neuroticism, extraversion, openness to experience, agreeableness, and conscientiousness. However, our existing data is limited to neuroticism and extraversion analysis. To have a comprehensive study of personality difference from these five aspects we need more data collection.
Thus, we request $5,000 from the Fundraising Organization for traveling and interviewing fees. We believe that this study is meaningful for improving the teaching quality of colleges in the U.S. If I can provide additional information to encourage consideration of our request, please feel free to contact me. I would also be happy to personally meet with your committee to present this proposal. (YL)

Speech
Dear Gentlemen and Ladies:
                  Good morning, everyone. Today I am very happy being here to introduce my proposal. My proposal is about people’s attitudes toward the real name policy of social media. With the development of internet and mobile technology, social media has become an important part of our lives. We use social media to know what’s happening around the world every day. We use social media to make friends and share our feelings with them. We learn a lot of knowledge from social media via text, picture, and video. On the other hand, plenty of false information such as rumors and hoaxes is spread over social media sites. This information confuses and misleads people. What’s more, it could cause some damages for people and our society. For social media companies, they would not like to see that. So, they implement the real name policy. This policy mandates that social media users use their real names on social media sites because it assumes when using their real names, the possibility of posting rumors and hoaxes by users would decline. But, a few social media users do not agree with this policy because they think social media companies don’t think about their rights of privacy. Therefore, a war named “Nymwar” between these social media users and social media companies has happened. To mitigate this conflict and receive a balance between rights of privacy and information security, it is very urgent and important to conduct a survey to investigate the attitudes of overall social media users towards the real name policy. In our proposal, we will randomly select about 120 Tech students as respondents and ask their opinions about the real name policy. I hope I could get your financial support. Thanks for your attentions. (FL)

The Significance of the Study
It is well recognized that social media have changed the lives of people, especially the younger generation who are high users of technology to share and connect. Education, marketing, communication, collaboration and entertainment are among the reasons people use social media. This study considers how university students, as a prevalent demographic in using social media, utilize YouTube, as a specific form of social media. Results of this class of studies can benefit the companies that design these media. Expanding our understanding of students’ current use of and attitudes toward YouTube will primarily help YouTube staff to create new features and add-ons that can contribute to the evolution of social media. Another advantage is for companies that use social media to promote their services and products. A deeper understanding of their users enables them to optimize the level of social media functionality built into their websites.  
It is also demonstrated that as more and more of the learning process occurs informally, university students tend to use social media sites, such as YouTube, for educational purposes. With this huge change in learning and widely accessible educational resources, universities need to tailor their strategies to ensure that resources are effectively allocated. How much of learning budget expenditures should support formal learning efforts and how much should go for informal efforts? How should the institutional infrastructure be expanded to embed social networking software? These are questions that the current study may help to answer.
Finally, our study can suggest particular directions for future research in this area to ensure that our understanding of the role of technology in society remains up-to-date. The most recent generation will grow up never knowing a time without internet social media. Studies like this can give us hints of how to meet the needs of next generations to improve the positive use of social media. (SV)

Wednesday, October 15, 2014

Proposal

Proposal
Introduction
Nowadays, keeping in touch with friends and relatives is more important than ever in our history. Technological advances in communication let people write, talk and even have video conferences with people thousands of miles away. In this technological growth, social media have become one of the most important tools to interact between people. Social media have also changed completely the way we communicate with each other. Language change for example is probably the most interesting aspect of those changes. Differences between sex and age show the beginning of a new era in communication, when people 25 years and older learn and adapt to the social media, while people between 16 to 18 years old have used these resources since they were really young (Schwartz et al. 2013).  In this paper we want to look into social media language differences among Texas Tech University students. Also we want to go further in understanding how social media as one of the most important communication strategy today is perceived by the students.

Literature review
Social media captures more interest every day. More than 1/7 of the world population uses Facebook or Twitter (Schwartz et al. 2013). This growing pattern of use of social media allows people to communicate with others and express themselves in a more personal way. Also, according to Alter (2014) in social media seems to be more important to people the way they want to be perceived by others than their real thoughts. The combination of high interaction between people in real time and expression of feelings, mood and status updates, allows researchers to obtain a high volume of information when personal and common language is used (opposite to books that are written in an impersonal language) (Argamon et al. 2007).

Language differentiation between gender and age has been an interest of many researchers for a long time. Usually the hypothesis in this topic states that is possible to identify with some grade of certainty the age and gender of a writer based on the word use (Mulac et al. 2013). More recently it has been reported that other good predictors of gender and age will be style and topics (Pennebaker & Stone 2003; Argamon et al. 2007).

When it’s related with sex, articles, prepositions and informational words are used mainly by males, while females use personal pronouns, auxiliary verbs and emotion words (Argamon et al. 2007; Schwartz et al. 2013). It’s also been reported that males use more possessive words (like “my”) and object references, and women use adjectives to describe their partner and talk more about relationships (Argamon et al. 2003). When the comparison is based on the social interaction, females post more photos and are more interested in other people´s relationships; males tend to look for the number of friends and professional achievements (McAndrew et al. 2012). In terms of age, younger people use emoticons, abbreviations and words related to real time status (like home, fun, beer); in older people topics related with professional development, politics and family increase their importance (Argamon et al 2013; McAndrew et al. 2012; Schwartz et al. 2013).

Despite language studies are common and the behavior according to age and sex were well describe, there is no evidence of how people think about this statements and whether people are conscious about differences between ages and sex in language use in social media. Thus study aims to related to age and gender relationships with language in social media is far from over and new data is available every day. This study wants to look into Texas Tech students´ perception of the social media as well as the language used by females and males in two different age groups (undergraduate and graduate students). Finally we want to know whether people agree to the general statements that were made in terms of language use in social media.

References
Alter, C. 2014. The Facebook Effect: Everybody Is So Cliché. Time. Retrieved date: 03-10-2014. Retrieved from: http://ideas.time.com/2013/10/02/the-facebook-effect-everybody-is-so-cliche/
Argamon, S., Koppel, M., Fine, J., & Shimoni, A. R. (2003). Gender, genre, and writing style in formal written texts. To appear in Text, 23, 3. Retrieved date: 03-10-2014. Retrieved from: http://u.cs.biu.ac.il/~koppel/papers/male-female-text-final.pdf
Argamon, S., Koppel, M., Pennebaker, J. W., & Schler, J. (2007). Mining the Blogosphere: Age, gender and the varieties of self-expression. First Monday, 12(9). Retrieved date: 03-10-2014. Retrieved from: http://uncommonculture.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2003/1878
Joiner, R., C. Stewart, et al. (2014). Publically different, privately the same: Gender differences and similarities in response to Facebook status updates. Computers in Human Behavior, 39(0): 165-169. Retrieved date: 03-10-2014. Retriever from: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0747563214003707
Masin, R. & Foubert, J.D. (2013) Effect of gender and Facebook use on the development of mature interpersonal relationships. Journal of Student Affairs, Vol. XXIII 51-59. Retrieved date: 03-10-2014. Retrieved from: http://www.sahe.colostate.edu/Data/Sites/1/journal-of-student-affairs/2014-journal-of-student-affairs.pdf#page=51
McAndrew, F. T., & Jeong, H. S. (2012). Who does what on Facebook? Age, sex, and relationship status as predictors of Facebook use. Computers in Human Behavior, 28(6), 2359-2365. Retrieved date: 03-10-2014. Retrieved from:  http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0747563212002075
Mulac, A., Wiemann, J. M., Widenmann, S. J., & Gibson, T. W. (1988). Male/female language differences and effects in same‐sex and mixed‐sex dyads: The gender‐linked language effect. Communications Monographs, 55(4), 315-335. Retrieved date: 03-10-2014. Retrieved from: http://www.siu-voss.net/Mulac__male-female_language_differences.pdf
Pennebaker, J. W.  & Stone, L.D.  (2003). Words of wisdom: Language use over the lifespan. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85, 291–301. Retrieved date: 03-10-2014. Retrieved from: http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.85.2.291
Schwartz, H. A., Eichstaedt, J.C, Kern, M. L., Dziurzynski, L., Ramones, S. M., et al. (2013) Personality, Gender, and Age in the Language of Social Media: The Open-Vocabulary Approach. PLoS ONE, 8(9): e73791. Retrieved date: 03-10-2014. Retrieved from: http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0073791#references


Maria Cristina Rios Blanco

Tuesday, October 14, 2014

The Effects of Social Media on Texas Tech University Students -KNA


“We think therefore we are, we share what we are.”
                                                              Charles Leadbeater          

I.Introduction

            In today’s world, technology is a big part of our lives. Most people spend many hours using internet. We could call using social media more than once per day ‘social habit’.
            There are many explanations which define what Social Media is. “Social media is the social interaction among people in which they create, share or exchange information and ideas in virtual communities and networks” (Ahlqvist, T. & Bäck, A. & Halonen, M. & Heinonen, S. 2008).
The first social media networking site, ‘Usenet’, was created by Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis in 1979 (Bonnett, C. 2010). The second one ‘MySpace’ was created in 2003 and then Facebook was developed in 2004. Hereafter, the development of social media started.
            Statistical information about social media is totally shocking. According to Jeff Bullas (2013), Facebook has 665 million active users on a daily basis. If it is compared with Twitter, Twitter has fewer users than Facebook has. But, Twitter has more development. It has 44% growth between June 2012 and March 2013. On the other hand, YouTube has more visitors (1 billion monthly) than the other social media networking sites.
            It is well known that young people are more interested in social media than old people. The study shows that 89% of people who are 18-29 years old use social media (Bullas, J. 2014). However, the aged people are not far from using social media. “60% of people between 50-60 years old are active on social media” (Romeri, 2014).
            Social media is something that everybody has some idea about even though they may not have an account on the sites. Obviously the way of using social media depends on age, region, gender, etc. This research includes the difference between females and males while they are using social media.



II. Literature Review

Social media is an important part of our lives. According to Joy Baer, 22% of Americans check their profiles on social media several times in a day (Baer, J. 2012). In the research of Social Media, we decided to investigate the effects of Social Media on Texas Tech students.
            One study shows that 96% of UNH Whittemore School of Business students use Facebook more than the other Social Media websites. The second website that UNH Whittemore School of Business students check more is YouTube (Bart, 2009). We would like to know which Social Media sites Texas Tech University students are using the most.
            According to a study, keeping in touch with family and old friends is more important for women (Smith, 2011). They like to find the old friends and have an interaction with them. It is hypothesized that women use social media emotionally (Joiner, 2014). Texas Tech University students will be questioned about the way of using Social Media.
            Studies show that every social media website has different ways of being used. A research which was done with the undergraduate students at a private university claims that students spend one hour checking their Facebook per day. The reason they check Facebook is update their ‘Newsfeed’ and read what their friends posted (Pempek &, Yermolayeva & Calvert, 2009). On the other hand Americans use Twitter to connect with a public figure, for example, athletes, singer, actor, politician etc. (Smith, 2011). This research will show the reasons for Texas Tech University students using social media sites.
            It is hypothesized that using Social Media ruins friendship. (Burbach, C.)  Young people want to share everything they do. When they meet they have nothing to talk about, because they have already gotten updated from social media what they are up to (Moore, 2011). Also if they get game request from friends, they start to think about ‘unfriending’ them. This research will show how Texas Tech University students feel about their friendship with using Social Media.
            The above mentioned hypotheses will be examined by asking Texas Tech University students.
           

References;

Ahlqvist, T., Bäck, A., Halonen, M., Heinonen, S (2008). Social media road maps exploring the futures triggered by social media. VTT Tiedotteita – Valtion Teknillinen Tutkimuskeskus

Bart, M. (2009, Dec. 30). Do college student spend too much time on Facebook, YouTube and other social networking sites? Faculty Focus. Retrieved (October 2, 2014) http://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/edtech-news-and-trends/do-college-students-spend-too-much-time-on-facebook-youtube-and-other-social-networking-sites/

Baer, J. (2012). 11 Shocking New Social Media Statistics in America Convince and Convert http://www.convinceandconvert.com/social-media-research/11-shocking-new-social-media-statistics-in-america/

Baer, J. & Falls, J. & Shaefer, M. & Webster, T. (N.D.) The Social Habit: Social Media Research Retrieved (N.D.) http://socialhabit.com/about/

Bonnett, C. (2010, May 17). A Piece of Internet History Duke Today http://today.duke.edu/2010/05/usenet.html

Bullas, J. (2013). 21 Awesome Social Media Facts, Figures and Statistics for 2013 http://www.jeffbullas.com/2013/05/06/21-awesome-social-media-facts-figures-and-statistics-for-2013/

Bullas, J. (2014, January). 22 Social Media Facts and Statistics You Should Know in 2014 http://www.jeffbullas.com/2014/01/17/20-social-media-facts-and-statistics-you-should-know-in-2014/

Burbach, C. Ways Social Networking Ruins Friendship About Relationships Retrieved (September 25, 2014). http://friendship.about.com/od/Social_Networking/tp/Ways-Social-Networking-Ruins-Friendship.htm

Joiner, R. & Stewart, C. (2014). Publically different, privately the same: Gender differences and similarities in response to Facebook status updates. Computers in Human Behavior, 39(0): 165-169.  http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0747563214003707

Kaplan A. M. & Haenlein, M. (2010). Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of Social Media.  Business Horizons Retrieved from http://www.slideshare.net/escpexchange/kaplan-haenlein-users-of-the-world-unite-the-challenges-and-opportunities-of-social-media

Moore, E. (2011, August 19). Texting, social media affecting teen sleeping patterns. The Daily Iowan . Retrieved (September 18, 2014) from http://friendship.about.com/od/Social_Networking/tp/Ways-Social-Networking-Ruins-Friendship.htm

Pempek, T. A., Yermolayeva, Y. A., & Calvert, S. L. (2009). College students' social networking experiences on Facebook. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 30(3), 227-238.

Romeri, M. J. (February 2014) New Social Media Statistics You Need to Know. Retrieved from http://www.socialmediatoday.com/content/new-social-media-statistics-you-need-know

Smith, A. (2011, November 15) Why Americans use social media. Retrieved from http://aosresourcecenter.com/file_depot/0-10000000/390000-400000/398422/folder/1145143/WhyAmericansUseSocialMedia.pdf
                                                                                                                   



Hypotheses;
-We would like to know which social media sites Texas Tech students are using the most.
-We would like to know the reasons Texas Tech students use social media sites.
-We thought that women expressed their emotions more on social media.
-We were curios of how many Texas Tech students connected to public figures on social media.

-We want to know how Texas Tech students feel about the influence of social media on friendships.