Hi! This is Bokyung! I just finished 20% time project. I can’t believe that this project and my 11th grade have almost passed. It seems like never ending to me…. 20% time taught me in many ways and it helped me grow.
My project is about how to read the book, however, through this project, I learned how to love the book, not how to read the book. The way to read the book is too artificial and also it will make you fail even if you know the way to read the book, because you don’t have the true heart toward that book.
If I love to read the book, then the time that I am reading the book will be easier. Then how to love the book? The intention that make you start the book is very important. Not because that teacher forced you to read, you should have interests in that book. Then it will bring you a potential power to read the book. I truly suggest all students to find your interest before you read the book and read the book that you want to read. Even the book is one of your choice that you have to make. I just learned that everything will be so fun and interesting if we want to achieve something by our heart.
Even the time of 20%, I had a hard time to read the book. I was a great procrastinator and I regretted that I start this project. But I am thankful that I started THIS PROJECT, because this project just taught me the most important part of reading. Read the book just like how you make the friend. When you make the friend, you will fined the friend who has same interests with you. If you find the friend who has more knowledge than you, then you will search about something that your friend loves to talk about .Book is really same. If the book is about history or art, then find what the book talks about. Then it will definitely make you feel easier in reading the book.
I am still writing the book and it is so much fun…
I learned that everything has to be working with your joy and excitement. No matter how good the work is, if you don’t have excitement towards that work, then everything will be meaningless! Thank you for giving me this opportunity Mr Ramsey! and thank you for people who saw this blog and wrote comments! I was so happy to read your comment. BYE!
I didn’t even finish writing the book and not a expert at reading. So I am considered what to talk about. Maybe all things I’ve been thinking are wrong. I just realized many things through watching other’s TED talks and it just boomed my heart, because I felt that I missed the most important thing in this project.
Writing and reading is simply called the relationship between readers and an author, and that is the reason that the book is hard to read and write.
I really felt that everything has to be starting from a new point in my project. All difficulties that I was facing are getting hard to break once I begin with the wrong starting point. I just realized that I am in that way right now.
In TED talk, I want to say that all things have to be starting with the right start. I mean,, right intention. Not because you have a test and quiz, Not because your mother tells you to read, Not because your teacher forces you to read, starting with the right intention that will never fail you.
Continue from the last video, I was writing a book.
From the last week, I wrote about the disorder, which make people to have hard times to organize their thoughts. Until now, people usually called it as a disorder, but now it is considered as a good ability to find the better idea. Through reading a book, it will definitely help people to organize their thoughts and to think a lot too. I wrote this topic last week!
This week, I thought about what to write and I just continued to write the second part of my experience in America where I learned English. I wrote how did I start reading the book and what book I read. It was really weird and good to write, because it made me to think about that memory. I just felt thankful to God that I can read and speak English than I spoke in America. I wrote that everything has been improved in Big Heart Christian School. A lot of reading really helped me. When Mrs. Kempfert was here, I read some books that were really hard to read for me. It was a challenge. However, harder books made me to challenge and learn more vocabularies and English. I am really thankful to her too.
Reflection:
I took SAT on Saturday. While reading the passages in the test place, I was really depressed that I couldn’t understand some passage at all. Even though I’ve been writing the book to help people to learn how to read, I am not enough to write the book and I still have to learn a lot. Even for me, this experience of writing the book helps me to learn and realize that I am still in the way of learning. How to be a good writer will be leading to how to be a good reader.
SAT is a big deal for me. However, I felt that like how I learned and grew from 2 years ago, I will be a better person after 2 years. Maybe after 2 years, I will be able to solve SAT problems so easily. I believe that it is also the process of learning and some day I will be able to think that this time was also important and I will be thankful about this too.
I am making a book. The book will be displayed or given to Mr. Ramsey and students on the last day of 20% time. I am really excited when I was writing the book. It was really hilarious and fun. What I plan is!
I wrote 10 pages. What I plan about my book is to make it simple and short, but not boring. I’ve been inspired by the book, TheRights of Readers, which was used by my book report. The Rights of Readers contains the short length of each chapter. Each chapter has really short length, but it still grabs readers’ attention by its uniqueness. My intent toward this book is uniqueness.
The first part of the book will be containing my life through learning English and realizing the importance of the book. I really want to convince readers to know that how important the book is in their life. By the way, I finished half of the first chapter this week!
The second part of the book will be containing tips of reading non-fiction and fiction books. I will write the fiction book based on tips that I used in The Life of Pi. But for non-fiction part, I am planning to read scientific and historical articles. Therefore, I will work on tips of reading non-fiction books later on.
The third part of the book is….I am not sure!
Just to tell the brief description about my book, each chapter will contain really really short content, but it is not childish. This book seems like a book for children, but the content will be meaningful! Promise!
For the book cover, I am still making it with Photoshop!
Reflection-
While I was writing the book, I realized that it is really hard to grab reader’s attention. This day, I’m reading Cane written by Jean Toomer. His book is really ambiguous. Since his book is so ambiguous, it grabs readers’ attention, because readers want to discover the true meaning of each line. I mean each line in his writing contains hidden meaning that deeply related to the theme. I learned that even writing this book is really hard to give the message to readers, but Toomer’s book gives the message within the words and lines. I learned that writers have to be careful to deliver their messages to readers and writers have great passions of writing their books. Not even reading, writing might be harder than reading.
Since this is the project, I really want to make MY book, which contains MY OWN uniqueness. So I tried hard to show my own mood(?) and writing, but it was really hard to write with my own things. Umm… However, I realized that writing a book is really really fun and hilarious! I really can’t wait to write next page!
There is a storm, which frightened Pi, for few days. When the storm calms down, he realizes that he loses oars and life jacket. Pi starts to fix tarpaulin and some parts of the life boat that has been damaged by the storm. Pi just sees seabirds and kills them. He eats parts of birds. One day, a lightening just strikes the boat. Pi is happy to see that Richard Parker is in fear. One day again, Pi sees the tanker on the horizon and he is sure that they will be saved. But the tanker just passes them and mass of trash wanders around the lifeboat. Pi picks the bottle from trash and writes a message. Then he throws back into the ocean. Pi’s physical and mental conditions get worse and worse. Pi thinks that he is near death. Pi starts to sleep many hours and his mental moves into semi consciousness. Pi goes blind and he hears a voice. The voice, which sounds with a French accent, just talks to Pi about food. Pi thinks that the voice is Richard Parker’s. Pi asks the voice about his experience of killing anyone in his life. He said, he killed a man and woman. Pi just feels that the voice gets smaller. The blind man, who has the voice, just climbs to Pi’s boat in order to cannibalize him. But when he climbs up the boat, Richard Parker kills him. Then Pi’s conditions returns. Pi and Richard Parker start to care their health when they land on the island. The island is full of meerkats and dead fish. He has spending his night in his boat and his night in the island. Once, Pi finds a tree, which bears fruit. WOW! But fruit has a human tooth!! Therefore Pi realizes that the island is carnivorous. He starts to put dead fish and meerkats into the life boat and he boards the life boat. The lifeboat reaches to a Mexican beach. Pi slowly steps in the sand and Richard Parker goes to the jungle. He was sad that he loses his buddy. People in Mexico take Pi to a hospital. Pi is really happy even though he doesn’t understand the language
From the Maritime Department two officials hear about Pi, who just survived and stayed in Mexico. The ministry ordered people in Mexico to tell Pi that they want to interview him. While they are coming to Pi, they misunderstand about the place, so it took 41 hours. Two officials get tired before they meet Pi. Then they start interviewing. Two men ask Pi about the trip. He said it was a horrible trip. Pi tells about his horrible trip to men and they don’t believe Pi’s story. They pick something that they cannot believe and Pi explains everything they asked. They ask that people in Mexico have never seen Richard Parker and Pi answers that wild animal including Richard Parker hide from humans. Pi asks them that did they like his story. They said they enjoyed it and they want to know what really happened. Pi says another story, which contains a mother, cooker, sailor, and himself. Pi asks them which one is better story. They said they like the story with animals. After some years, Pi is sent to Martel. Officials write that Pi’s story is surprising and unique.
I used the audio book that I used last week, because I really felt that the audio book is really good way to read the book, since it gives no rest to readers. Even though readers don’t want to read the book, audio book automatically continues the story, so it can reduce the time. However we cannot skim the audio book as we read the book.
Reflection
Wow… I just finished my book. It took a long time to finish the book. Through the experience of reading Life of Pi, which has 100 chapters, it really teaches me the life lesson. What about the life lesson? I just learned reasons why I hate reading and problems of my reading. Why do I really hate reading? Books never give me interests. Black words in white papers. It seems really boring. My problem of my reading is procrastinating. If the due date is just right after the day, then I read the book really fast, even if the length of the book is pretty long. But if the due date is further away, then I never read. So I learned that I should always trick myself about the due date. If I trick my brain about the due date, then I am able to finish the book within a day. Another problem of my reading is that I kept counting the pages that I have to read. It really makes me to lose the concentration.
What I learned through reading Life of Pi… I realized that I have to find the way that can make me to be interested about the book. I will find it during the rest of 20% time.
Now Pi learns how to survive in the life boat. Pi found the lifeboat locker in the lifeboat. Richard Parker made his own territory by marking with urine and Pi also did that. Pi tried to catch fish . but it doesn’t work well. Richard Parker filled his stomach with fish and Pi, who has been a vegetarian, ate fish. Pi leads and manages dorado, because he decided to not kill. Dorado will able to work fresh water. Pi just realized that it’s been a week from the ship wreck. After many days past. it’s been 227 days that he spent at sea. Now he has a systematic schedule to survive at sea.He continued to catch fish and turtles with his hands. He also decided to train Richard Parker. He used the turtle shell as a shield in the training practice and he tried to train Richard Parker. Finally, Richard Parker was able to move by the direction of Pi, when he blows the whistle. Pi wrote the daily diary. Pi trains Richard Parker extremely, so a tiger got scared and nervous. Pi also tried to eat tiger’s feces when he was super hungry. Pi caught some food and threw it to Richard Parker. Then he ate it. Pi started to realize that Richard Parker is eating food voraciously just same as other animals are eating.
Tips! Audio book
Sometimes, you can find an audio book for the book that you want to read. It is really unique and will help you to focus in the book. I used audio book, because I wanted someone to read the book for me. Since the book is really long, I couldn’t ask someone to read the book. So I used the audio book. The audio book is really helpful. If you keep losing your concentration and interest, audio book constantly reads book for you so that you will never lose the concentration. The audio book is really similar to your mother when she read the book for the child in order to make them sleep. It will help you! https://archive.org/details/LifeOfPiPart2
Reflection:
Honestly, I was almost dying, because of 20% time. Even if the book is easier than the book that I am reading in English class, I didn’t want to read. Let’s be really honest. I didn’t even want to open the book. I just really lose the interest and concentration of the book, because I was being lazy to upload the response and do this project every week. Not only my laziness, I was really really busy with preparing my GED and stress almost killed me. Really..
I just learned that it is really hard to manage the time. Reading is such a deal to students who are already busy with doing their homework and own study. We really have to make the schedule to read the book 3 pages per day. It’s really sad that I had a hard time of reading this book, because I have to write the book which is about how to read a book. However it will help me to know how people feel about the book and it definitely gave the life lesson about that you have to choose your decision carefully.
Pi slept in the boat. Some loud noise waked him up and Pi tried to wake Ravi. However Ravi didn’t wake up. Pi saw that it was raining outside and boat was making loud noise from its shrinking. Pi began to run toward the room, where his parent was. But it was dangerous to go near with the room. Pi went back to the main deck and heard animals shrieking. Chinese crewmen gave him the life jacket and threw him outside of the ship. After ship sinks, Pi was in the life boat and he saw a Bengal tiger, whose name is Richard Parker. The Bengal tiger saved Pi during the dangerous moment. Pi was scared of Richard Parker and threw himself into the water to escape. But a shark was around him. So Pi tried to take the ship, where the zebra was in. However he saw another shark and quickly went on the oar. The ship was kept sinking and there was no survivor. Pi climbed up onto the lifeboat, where Richard Parker was in Pi thought the tiger to attack him, but the tiger stayed. Pi also noticed that the zebra had a broken leg. A hyena appears and Pi thought the tiger may be drowned, because the tiger and hyena can’t stay at the same time. So Pi stayed where the hyena was, he was scared. Pi also saw an orangutan, Orange Juice. The hyena whines, but other animals stayed quiet. Pi tried to make his spot to be safe, but there is no barrier, that can stop other animals to approach near with him. The hyena acted weird-jumping on a bench or racing with the zebra. Then hyena vomited and stayed quiet. During the night day, Pi was horrified, because the animals might attack him. Pi heard sounds that animals fight from under the boat. After the day passed, Pi saw that the hyena has bitten the zebra’s broken leg and eating that. Zebra was still alive… Pi noticed that the Orange Juice (Orangutan) did not get bitten by the hyena. So he imagines the peaceful life of orangutan and hyena in the zoo. Around the water, it was full of sharks and other fish. Orange Juice was looking around for her two sons. Pi was also missed his family. Suddenly, the hyena attacked the zebra. Then Orange Juice and the hyena fought for the zebra and it made blood to fall over the side of the boat. Sharks were gathered around the boat Pi was horrified, because of sharks, and sharks went away. The Zebra died next day. After some days, the hyena attacked Orange Juice. Orange Juice fought with the hyena, but she wasn’t enough to fight with hyena; Orange Juice died. Pi cried and ready to fight with hyena; but he saw Richard Parker under the bench. However Richard Parker fell asleep. Pi was always scared, because the tiger would kill him some days. Pi was thirsty and he found the emergency food; ate it. He decided to make some distance with Richard Parker in order to survive. He made ea raft by oars. The hyena and Richard Parker fought and Richard Parker killed the hyena. The tiger approached Pi and Pi threw the rat at Richard Parker, so he was able to escape from him. He drank water by a rain catcher. He couldn’t sleep well because he had to make the distance with Richard Parker. He decided to make ways of killing Richard Parker- Bengal tigers can swim. If Richard Parker gets thirsty->drink seawater. Afterwards, Pi heard some noise from Richard Parker and he decided to tame Richard Parker by using whistles and whip.
7 Week-Finding all vocabularies
I finally got into the chapter, where the life boat comes out. I thought it is the wrong book that I chose, because I couldn’t see the tiger and life boat for 6 weeks. In this week, I checked the vocabularies, if I don’t know about the definitions. During marking all vocabularies, I would briefly read the context of the chapters. Then I found the definitions and then used to be aware of vocabularies. After getting what the vocabularies are, I read again.
Reflection-
When I was in America, I didn’t know any word in the book that my English teacher gave us. She always gave us a test that is based on book in every week. So I really was stressed and had to read the book in a short time. However I didn’t know any word so I couldn’t understand each sentence, even if I flipped the pages quickly. That time, I found all vocabularies and wrote definitions. Then I slowly read the sentence by the sentence. Therefore it really helped me to understand the meaning of what the content tells to readers. I think it will be the best way to readers, who are about to learn English and have learn English quickly. In order to learn English, we have to know about vocabularies. So I think it would be taking long time to read, but it is a good way for people, who feel the necessity of learning vocabularies.
Good things- good to people who want to learn vocabularies
If you don’t understand the content, it would be the good way
After the author meets with Pi, he sits on a café with thinking of his boring life and Pi’s religious philosophies. By the way, Pi imagines about the moment of deathbed of atheist and agnostic. He listed people who would like to be in his deathbed. Pi has told to readers that his parents like the weather when Pi practicd various religions with priest, imam, and pandit. These teachers got shocked when they heard about Pi’s secret of having various religions rather than having one religion. Even his parents got shocked about it. However Pi just wanted to love and believe in God. Pi suspects that people who are doing in violence in the name of Christ misunderstood the religion. Pi wanted the prayer mat and asked to his parent. His mother gave books: Robinson Crusoe and a volume by Robert Stevenson. Pi finally got the mat and spent his time with praying in the yard. Pi describes the devastating political troubles in India and his father was angry at the government. Therefore they decided to move to Canada. The narrator describes about Meena Patel, who is the future wife of Pi. Pi tells us about the atheist biology teacher and the Muslim baker. One day, they went to the Pondicherry Zoo and Pi introduced them to a Grant’s Zebra. They showed the reverence to creatures. Pi started the discussion of zoomorphism(Animal knows the truth-mother->mother/ human->human). Pi prepared to move into Canada. The sailing was excited and his mother shows her apprehension about leaving the place. The author met Pi’s two children-Nikihil and Usha and he said that the life of Pi ends with happiness.
2nd tip: Act like the person in the book
The best way of reading a book is to interpret into the character of the book. This will lead readers to understand the character how was the feeling in that specific situation and what kind of personality did the character have. This time, I read out loud the dialogue of the character and felt anger, sadness, shock, and happiness when characters feel emotions. It really helped me to understand what the content explains about and it helped me to not get out of the concentration.
Reflection:
This tip is the one that I use a lot when I have hardships in reading. Be that person will be the easiest way to readers who are not aware of understanding what the book tells about, because it’s always giving the main verb like shocking or enjoying. As the readers follow the main verbs which describe how the character felt in that passage, readers would easily understand the character’s feeling.
I really want to suggest this tip to readers, but the bad thing about this tip is that you can’t apply this tip into scientific or history book, because their tone is really neutral. So this person recommends to readers to use this tip when they read the fictional novel.
summary: The book starts with the sentence, which is foreshadowing about the coming events that is going to give a suffering to Pi. Pi tells readers about his school lif. He was a good student and studied about zoology and cosmogony theory. He describes about observations of sloths. Pi also tells us that he misses India, Canada, and the person, Richard Parkef. When Pi stays at the hospital in Mexico, people did so well to him. When he was in India, he spent his time in pool, because of Francis Adirubasamy. Francis was usually called as Mamaji and he was a champion swimmer. Pi’s name was originated by Mamji’s favorite pool, the Piscine Molitor. Pi’s father woked in the Pondicherry Zoo and Pi rememberes how wonderful was the life in zoo with hearing alarm clock of the roaring lions and birds. His favorite teacher, Mr Satish Kumar, was an atheist comunist. Pi’s father always told to Pi that the most dangerous animal is man.
When Pi stayed in Canada, he sees many kinds of religions and he kept the Bible. Pi said he was born with Hinduism and he showed his great desire to show his Hinduism spirit. He also tells about the story when he went into the church once. He heard about Jesus’ crucifixion with his great love. And he chose to become a Christian. However Pi also became Muslim when he was fifteen years old. He had a conversation with Mr. Satish Kumar and he chose to become Islam.
one tip: 3 steps of skimming through the book
For this week, I used one of tips to read a book. One tip that I used is skimming through the book in 3 steps. There are 3 steps!! First step is to skim the entire book in general way such as looking the table of contents, cover pages, and the title of each chapters. For example, there is a short story at the back in order to explain the summary of the book briefly-A boy of many faiths and a 450 pound Bengal tiger. A shipwreck. A life boat. The pacific Ocean…storytelling with a profound exploration of ageless themes; faith and truth, fact and fiction, man versus nature, and innocence and experience. Skimming through the entire book helps readers to have a right concept that what subject do readers have to focus on. Like tiger, ship, and pacific ocean, where will be the setting of this book. The first page tells us that “It’s difficult to stop reading when the pages run out”. Through this sentence, we know that this book is pretty fun and interesting.
Second step is skimming through the chapter by the chapter. Readers have to focus on skimming through the chapter really briefly. Just circle words where you are interested or where you think it is the important part. For example, the first chapter of Life of Pi starts from the sentence, “my suffering left me sad and gloomy”. In this part, it would be great to circle the word ‘suffering’ that the author doesn’t explain about what kind of suffering is. Through reading a book, you will be aware of finding what suffering did the author put in the book. From 1 chapter to 20 chapter, the word, zoo, is important, because it is the place where his father worked and it would be related with the Bengal tiger, which was mentioned at the last page, where summarized the entire book.
Third step is reading the book in detail. Readers will get the part where they have to focus on. Therefore third step is to read the part, where is important and where seems interesting, in detail. In this step, you will be succeeded in keeping concentration and interests, when you read the book. When you read a book, it is important to highlight and circle the part, because it will keep you having a concentration and it will make you to remember the book, even if you stopped reading that book for a while.
reflection: I think skimming through the book has a good structural skills. As what the person in the video says, there are always main message that author wants to tell in the chapter. So if we get the main point or important part that we have be focused on, then we would reduce the time of reading a book. By skimming the book, we can understand the content and it continuously gives the concentration and interests to read the book.
The bad thing-takes so much time to go into three steps. It is great tip to read the book structurally, but it requires plenty of time. Also I would rather read scientific or work book than reading fictional novel, because this tip is great to summarize and understand the content. But I liked this way.
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