Survey Accounts

Process of Finishing Surveys

When I started to collect my surveys I thought I should go to one of the coffee shops near campus so that I could find many Texas Tech students. Finding students was the easiest part. I am so glad that everybody filled out the survey willingly. This is because our survey was about something that everybody had some idea about. All of them seemed interested in our study. So, I could say that I was lucky, because I did not have any problem getting people to fill out my survey.

If I talk about the time, they all give it back in 3-5 minutes. So, I could say that they were focused on the questions. The only problem I realized after I got back the surveys, was that most of them did not fill out the ‘from international, from USA’ part. I believe that they missed out because of the font. I did have to ask them to fill that part.

Overall, I found 5 American males, 5  American females, 1 international female, and 1 international male. I believe I have done very well to complete this process. (KNA)

My Story of Collecting Data

Although I did not have direct access to my friends and colleagues in Texas Tech, I had no problem with data collection. In order to make an online survey to be sent to respondents, I started with checking out Survey Monkey, as I had used it before, and it was a familiar tool. However, it could not be used for this study because of its limitation on the number of questions in the free plan. After a short search, I found that Google has a similar service, called Google Forms, for creating forms of all kinds, including quizzes, surveys, and questionnaires. I transferred the final questions, which were discussed in class, to an online form and sent the link to my friends. The following note was written in the email that I sent them:

Hello friends,

I hope you are all having a wonderful weekend.
Sometime in the middle of your free time (which is probably too much!), once you’re in the mood to help me with a study, please fill out a survey by clicking on the following link. It’s for my ESL 5301, where I practice advanced writing with other international students.
Questions are about using social media by TTU students. So, it’s all about fun stuff! Let me know if you have any problem or question while filling it out.

Thank you so much,

Shabboo

After one hour, a friend of mine, who was the first respondent, texted me and mentioned a problem in one of the questions. I had forgotten to provide the second choice for question number 8, which was NO. Fortunately, his reply to this question was YES and it did not affect his response. Other than that, I did not receive any feedback. I could check out the responses to see how many where completed. When the desired number was reached, I exported the responses directly to Excel sheets. (SV)

The story about collecting the survey

I asked one of my colleagues in my lab to fill out a survey for social media. When he looked at the survey at first sight, he thought the topic of the survey was very interesting. He immediately asked me why I did this survey and I answered him that this was for my English writing class. He commended that the class was very interesting and closely followed the trend of the modern society. After he looked through two-page questions of the survey, he said that there were too many questions. I explained that this survey included all kinds of questions proposed by different classmates in my class. In addition, he mentioned that he met his wife on a social media site. About three years ago, he was in Beijing and his wife was in Shanghai. Beijing and Shanghai are very far away. He had never been to Shanghai and his wife had never been to Beijing. However, one day, he found a girl from Shanghai that followed him on a social media. He looked at the pictures of this girl and immediately felt that his heartbeat sped up. He found that this girl was the one that he was looking for for a long time. Later he and the girl became friends and they discussed everything. They were surprised that they had so many common interests and they could understand each other very easily. After that the girl became his girlfriend and he moved to Shanghai. Two years ago, they married in Shanghai and had a boy. He told this story with a great smile on his face. I could feel that he was very happy. I was so impressed about his story. At the same time, I was astonished about the power of social media. Later, he spent about 3 minutes to fill this survey out. When he gave me the survey, I said thanks to him, not only for his answers, but also his story. When I reviewed his answers, I found he missed some questions. I thought it might be because the characters on the survey were small and then asked him to supplement it. (FL)

Survey collection

I conducted the surveys mostly in my department and people mostly filled them out willingly. I had a total of 14 surveys filled out; 11 of them filled it out on paper; 3 of them filled it out online. I, my wife Tugce and an American male friend from my department filled out the survey online. Overall, people thought our survey was interesting and fun to fill out. The first two people who filled out the survey were my female friends. While we were in our graduate studio, I asked them to fill out our survey if they had 5 minutes and they agreed to fill them out willingly. While they were filling out the survey, one of them told me that she just realized how much she uses Facebook. The other lady asked to get a copy, because she thought our survey is quite interesting ,and she wanted to use our survey as an example for one of her class. After they were done with filling out their surveys, I asked another graduate student to fill out our survey if she had 5 minutes. Since she is a new student and doesn’t know me a lot, she was not sure about filling out the survey and I was completely ok with that. But at that time, the other two ladies told her that they also filled the survey and it was fun; in the end, she was convinced to fill out the survey. One of the male students from my department told me about how much he hates the ice bucket challenge while he was filling out the survey. Another male student, while he was filling out question number, 1 told me that he has both Facebook and Twitter accounts and he is actively using them; on the other hand, although he doesn’t have an account, he visits Vine and YouTube web pages regularly to watch videos. He explained to me that he checked both have an account and post regularly for Facebook and Twitter; he checked "only use occasionally" for Vine and YouTube. Finally, I realized that some of the male students were laughing while they were filling out some of the questions, but I couldn’t figure out why. (SK)

Survey

I started on the survey on Thursday Oct. 16^th.  I worked in Holden Hall building, particularly on the first and second levels. I asked many students around this building. Some students accepted that survey and others rejected cooperation in this survey. I noted females were more cooperative than males, because many males refused to fill out the survey. My strategy in this survey was that I intended to ask students who were free or worked with their phones, because I did want to upset some students who read books or worked with their laptops. My survey included 15 survey papers, 8 American females, 6 American males and me; 7 of them were graduate students and the others were undergraduate students. I did the survey during two days, around one hour for each day.  I noted all of them use social media except one girl; she does not use social media. Each one had different answers from others depending on their method of using them. Finally, this was a nice experience; I benefited from it.     (FA)     

Survey summary

This survey was taken in the geocience department, Texas Tech University on October 21^st, 2014. Five graduate students in remote sensing lab, 10 undergraduate students in spatial analysis lab, three teaching assistants, two faculty members participated in this survey. Everyone was glad to help me do this survey. 

There was something interesting during this survey. One student said he had "killed a few" when taking the ice bucket challenge (question 10) and also described the whole process when he dumped a bucket of ice water onto his head. It was funny and everyone in class laughed loudly. Another boy described his feeling of the ice bucket challenge, that he would rather have had all diseases and autoimmune disorder. One boy said he sometimes checked his Facebook account when he was waiting at a stop sign (question 2). For question 19, one boy said whether to publish his relationship status depended on the site. A few students didn’t care about the “real name” policy of Facebook, so they had such comments as “neutral” for question 7. 

The biggest problem for this survey is that some students just checked their gender but did not select their education level or whether they were American or international. (YL)

Surveys

I was guilty of putting all the demographic information in one line; I thought I was clever to get all the survey into a single piece of paper, but the price was that some people didn't see to check off all the necessary places. I got plenty of surveys, but several were incompletely filled out. One didn't fill out male or female. You never know if they just object to those questions!

I got most of the surveys in the Writing Lab where I work when I'm not teaching. A couple of them were student workers; one of those was an international undergraduate. One woman said "Facebook is the devil!" and told about being forced to tweet in a Literary Criticism class. She hated that assignment and told the teacher so. She also objected to the column "don't know/don't use" because there were several that she knew well, but didn't use. She was one who just crossed out "don't know" because then the answer would be true. To us it didn't matter, if you don't know or don't use it's the same, but to her it was important. In fact I'm interested in documenting the considerable backlash or hostility against social media in certain areas. The survey wasn't really designed to catch it, but I think we caught a little anyway.

One person admitted to texting while driving, but "only at stop signs". I thought that was interesting. There's much more here than this survey could possibly catch. But I think it turned up interesting things. People were all glad to fill it out and were interested in the results, though I generally didn't give them the website. I could do it later, since I work with most of them. (TL)

Data Collection Procedure

To have my surveys filled out, I asked TTU students who were sitting at Starbucks on Glenna Goodacre and University.  I targeted youngsters who looked like they were studying, approached them, and asked them if they were TTU students.  When they confirmed my suspicions, I asked them if they would be okay with taking a survey about social media habits for a class at TTU.  Some accepted readily, some accepted reluctantly, and one seemed very suspicious and demanded more information before she agreed to fill out the survey.  I observed that most people seemed to enjoy the survey because it was interesting to them.  Several of them discussed the questions with other people at their tables.

Most of the participants completed their surveys within 10 minutes, while a couple made a show of nonchalance by setting the survey aside for about 20 minutes, finishing some homework, then filling it out.  In general, they seemed friendlier after filling it out than before, possibly because they realized that I meant them no harm, but actually did just want them to fill out a harmless and anonymous survey.

Collecting surveys

The collecting of surveys was done following the agreement. I collected around 18 surveys, most of them for undergraduate students. The people surveyed were students for biology classes. No people denied to fill out the survey, and most of them were really interested in the study. The first group of surveys had incomplete data, because they didn’t see as separate questions the first line of the survey. In the later groups, I told them to be careful about this issue with the survey.

In general their answers were similar. They thought texting while driving was dangerous, and they rarely or never texted while driving. Also all of the people know about ice bucket challenge, but they have diverse opinions about that. In terms of social media use, people usually have more than one account, but they post more in one or two than the others. In opinions about difference by gender in language use in social media, they also have diverse opinions. (CRB)

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)

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)

I've invited you to fill out the form How TTU Students Use Social Media?. To fill it out, visit:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1dGtHeq1bMcpJsITX4bVgqjQZrwdkOLoS6RVJfpH1Inw/viewform?c=0&w=1&usp=mail_form_link

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