In this semester my writing developed in these ways: putting more transitions between paragraph, improving my thesis statement, and moves.

Usually, I thought I didn’t really need a transition. I didn’t feel the need to use it. I thought it is just making the essay longer. However, with this class, I was able to make the paragraphs more connected by using the transition. For example, at the beginning of a new sentence, I did not use things in the draft essay, but I was advised by our professor and used as many transitions as possible in the final paper.

I could also improve the thesis statement further. When writing the Research Paper, my first draft essay was not specific and only factual. But after hearing from the professor about the thesis statement, I realized that this should be arguable and changed the content to something more specific and controversial.

Finally, I thought it was okay to change the sentence suddenly when I was writing, and I was writing like that. However, after reading a long article in class and studying the moves, I was able to improve my writing.

During the semester, I could learn many things in class and it was also an opportunity to improve my writing style. I was able to learn new things like metacommentary and learn more knowledge that I needed to write. Especially, taking a class in the library so that I can find a peer-reviewed essay will help me tremendously not only now but also later in writing. It also helped me a lot when I took the class and wrote for another class.

JeongsuLee

Naseh Nasrollahi Shahri

WRTG-100-119

Academic performance and Cellphone

Now we are living a comfortable life through the development of many technologies. In particular, it is not too much to say that the development of cell phones, computers, and the Internet plays the most significant role in making a person’s life flourish. Today, many public companies, private companies, schools, etc. have many miserable and unfulfilled lives in dealing with everything without computers and the Internet. How many people around us don’t have cell phones or computers now? And how many people don’t use this kind of information in a day? Maybe it’s rare to find one. Even these days, various smartphones such as the iPhone and the Galaxy have been developed, which can be seen as a good time for many people to do a lot of things on the go using their smartphones. 

Recently, even though students do not have to buy a camera, the camera of a mobile phone has developed so much that they can solve the video production problem with a mobile phone. This allowed students to take particular subjects, such as video production, without spending money. It would be nice if personal devices always give us the best in our lives, but there are serious problems behind the development of these technologies. 

In particular, the biggest problem with personal electronic devices is declining in academic performance. For example, if your phone rings during class, you might be curious if the message or mail came, so you might be nervous rather than focusing on the course. As a result, you will not be able to concentrate fully in class, and the concentration of the class will be greatly reduced. These distractions have a severe effect on academic performance in the long term.

From this perspective, personal electronics have both positive and negative aspects. On the positive side, students can communicate with each other more through various communication programs. For example, in the case of ‘Facebook’ or ‘Instagram,’ students can upload their histories from time to time via personal electronic devices to gain opportunities to interact with more people and more job opportunities. On the negative side, however, students are not able to concentrate fully in class and are adversely affected. Also, some students play games in class through electronic devices, and sometimes they never listen to lessons. These will lead to lower grades for students. 

Based on this background, experts have researched to see if cell phones affect students’ academic performance. Most of these studies claim that electronic devices have a negative effect. I looked at these findings in more detail at the impact of smartphones on students.

Various research studies on smartphones and college students’ academic performance have been conducted on many samples and various groups. Studies show that university students’ cell phone use has a serious impact on their grades and quality of life. According to Felisoni and Godoi, every 100 minutes of using electronic devices would reduce the school ranking by 6.3 points in the range of 0 to 100. Besides, if these measurements were calculated with time in class, there were almost twice as many effects. As we can see from the results, the longer the cell phone is used for any purpose, the lower the student’s school performance is. The reason for this decline in school grades is that students overuse their cell phones (Qaisar et al.). Students spend a lot of time using their cell phones, which in turn results in a delay in their assignment. They spend a lot of time using electronic devices, putting off what they have to do until later, and eventually getting pressed for time and doing their homework, which is why the quality of the task is poor. Based on these research papers, I interviewed two classmates, who also said that they did not have enough time to do their homework because they used cell phones and spent a lot of time on them. And they said that they spent too much time using their cell phones, which made them run out of time to do their homework, and that sometimes they didn’t submit it on time. It led to poor grades.

Then, questions arise about why students spend a lot of time on cell phones. The answer is that students become addicted to cell phones. Students will use social media such as SNS through their cell phones and will not be able to break up from it. The primary purpose of students’ cell phone use is to use SNS. The survey found that most of the 72 students used SNS for 87 percent of their mobile phone usage time (Chiu, Shao-I). They also recognize that students are spending a lot of time using SNS on their own, but they continue to have a constant stream of exciting elements. Furthermore, addiction does not only affect students’ grades.

The stress index also increases as students spend longer using smartphones. Most students hold their cell phones in their hands at the end of the day. Many people keep their cell phones in their hands right before they go to sleep. This reduces their sleep time and has a particularly severe effect on students who have classes in the morning. Students are stressed out because they have to go to morning classes or get up early without getting enough sleep because of cell phone use. This can also be seen as the main reason for lowering their quality of life. The survey of 300 college students showed statistics showing that students are under heavy stress the next morning because of smartphone use. Besides, students are significantly less focused on classes after failing to get enough sleep.

This was also found in two students I interviewed. They try to avoid morning classes as much as possible when applying for courses every semester because they learned from experience that they couldn’t sleep early in the evening. As an example, Yanyan said, she tried to sleep early for the morning class but spent two to three hours by SNS, which she wanted to watch for a while, causing disruptions in class the next day. This happened almost throughout the semester, not just once, so her morning class grades were very low compared to other classes. When I asked why they don’t reduce the time they spend using cell phones, they said they also know that cell phones have a big impact on their academic performance in a bad way, but they can’t quit because SNS is so fun and they can maintain relationships with their friends through this. We can see from this that students are addicted to their smartphones and that they have not been able to control despite the adverse effects on their lives.

On the other hand, some people argue that students can communicate with their classmates faster and more conveniently about their assignments by using their cell phones and expand their relationships. Many people will concede the benefits of using cell phones. Social media has the advantage of allowing students to find jobs that are right for them through the application, such as “LinkedIn” and also to have easy access to what happens in society. However, they should be aware that these benefits can negatively affect their school lives. Their use of social media may be an advantage as they use it, but overuse it takes away the time they have to spend studying. It should also be noted that there are many exciting elements in social media to do just what they originally intended, which is not easy to stop. Therefore, moderate use of cell phones may be an investment for a better future for students, but in reality, cell phone use can only negatively affect their academic performance because they are addicted to cell phones and can’t control their cell phone usage, they will use it for the time they have to study or for the time they need to sleep, so their grades will be lowered.

Therefore, we should recognize the adversarial consequence of cell phone use and regulate ourselves during cell phone use to eliminate the negative impact. For college students, cell phones are not denied to be essential. You may need a cell phone because you need to communicate with your classmates quickly for your homework. However, many university students now own cell phones, which adversely affects their academic performance and grades. Looking at it now, you may recognize that cutting your score is not a big deal. This is not just a problem for now, but it will continue to create a situation in which they become addicted to and overused, heavily dependent on their cell phones, and fail to do their jobs on time. Therefore, students need to limit their cell phone use time on their own or, if that’s not possible, reduce their usage time through usage time limits such as screen time apps. By doing so, students can spend less time using their cell phones. Therefore, students will only use their cell phones for the necessary time, and this will be a good chance to change their habits. By reducing the time spent on cell phones, not just on their grades, they can spend more time on what they need to do and improve their quality of life by doing productive tasks such as sports and social activities. To do this, we will need to apply a time-limited app to our phones so that we can only get benefit from using them by restricting their usage time and using them only when they are needed.

References

Felisoni, Daniel Darghan, and Alexandra Strommer Godoi. “Cell Phone Usage And Academic  Performance: An Experiment”. Computers & Education, vol 117, 2018, pp. 175-187. 2017.10.006. Accessed 30 Oct 2019.

Samaha, Maya, and Nazir S. Hawi. “Corrigendum To “Relationships Among Smartphone Addiction, Stress, Academic Performance, And Satisfaction With Life” [Computers In Human Behavior 57 (April 2016) 321–325]”. Computers In Human Behavior, vol 75, 2017, p. 1016. 2016.12.001. Accessed 30 Oct 2019.

Chiu, Shao-I, “The Relationship between Life Stress and Smartphone Addiction on Taiwanese University Student: A Mediation Model of Learning Self-Efficacy and Social Self-Efficacy.” Computers in Human Behavior, Pergamon, 21 Feb. 2014, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0747563214000296.

Quisar, Shahzada, et al, “Problematic Mobile Phone Use, Academic Procrastination and Academic Performance of College Students.” Journal of Educational Research, 2017, Vol.20(2), pp.201-214. Accessed 11 Dec 2019.

Lepp, Andrewm et al, “The relationship Between Cell Phone Use and Academic Performance in a Sample of U.S. college Students- Andrew Lepp, Jacob E. Barkley, aryn C. Karpinski, 2015.” SAGE Journals, https://journlas.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177.2158244015573169. Accessed 11 Dec 2019.

 Academic performance and Cellphone

Now we are living a comfortable life through the development of many technologies. In particular, it is not too much to say that the development of cell phones, computers, and the Internet plays the most significant role in making a person’s life flourish. Today, many public companies, companies, schools, etc. have many miserable and unfulfilled lives in dealing with everything without computers and the Internet. How many people around us don’t have cell phones or computers now? And how many people don’t use this kind of information in a day? Maybe it’s rare to find. Even these days, various smartphones such as the iPhone and the Galaxy have been developed, which can be seen as a good time for many people to do a lot of things on the go using their smartphones.

Recently, even though students do not have to buy a camera, the camera of a mobile phone has developed so much that they can solve the video production problem with a mobile phone. This allowed students to take particular subjects, such as video production, without spending money. It would be nice if personal devices always give us the best in our lives, but there are serious problems behind the development of these technologies.

In particular, the biggest problem with personal electronic devices is concentration interference. For example, if your phone rings during class, you might be curious if the message or mail came, so you might be nervous rather than focusing on the course. As a result, you will not be able to concentrate fully in class, and the concentration of the class will be greatly reduced. These distractions have a severe effect on performance in the long term.

From this perspective, personal electronics have both positive and negative aspects. On the positive side, students can communicate with each other more through various communication programs. For example, in the case of link in, students can upload their histories from time to time via personal electronic devices to gain opportunities to interact with more people and more job opportunities. On the negative side, however, students are not able to concentrate fully in class and are adversely affected. Also, some students play games in class through electronic devices, and sometimes they never listen to lessons. Therefore, I checked two articles to see how personal electronic devices can affect students’ academic performance.

The first article was ‘cell phone usage and academic performance: An experiment’ published in 2018. Recently, 92 percent of Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 own a cell phone (Pew Research Center Report). Felisoni and Godoi looked closely at the impact of cell phone ownership on their studies.

The experiment downloaded the apps ‘moment’ and ‘app use tracker’ onto the phones of 43 students and analyzed how much they used them. In the study, Felisoni confirmed that every 100 minutes of using electronic devices would reduce the school ranking by 6.3 points in the range of 0 to 100. Besides, if these measurements were calculated with time in class, there were almost twice as many effects. The study suggests that electronic devices have a severe negative impact on students’ academic performance.

The second article was ‘Relationships among smartphone addiction, stress, academic performance, and satisfaction with life’ published in 2015. The article focuses on how these smartphones affect people as they replace their personal computers and various other devices. Samaha and Hawi are said to have allowed smartphones to skip many steps in the process of contacting people and given them a variety of conveniences, such as watching the news and listening to music everywhere. However, they stressed that behind this positive aspect of smartphones, cell phone addiction is a severe problem.

They surveyed 300 random university students to back up their claims. According to the article, they asked students to survey the relationship between the risk of smartphone addiction and the satisfaction of life. The study found that addiction to smartphones can help relieve stress, but also lower life satisfaction, which in addition has a negative effect on academic performance (Samaha and Hawi, p1016).

I totally agree with the above two studies and their arguments. Smartphones are developed enough to replace other devices, providing us with convenience and at the same time, having problems. As we can see from the results of the studies conducted in the first and second articles, we can see that cell phones distract students from their concentration in class. Not only do the grades decrease in proportion to the time spent on cell phones, but the use of cell phones can also lead to cell phone addiction. As a result, students’ grades are getting lower.

On the other hand, I think it would be better if they did a little more careful research into the purpose of students using their cell phones. The first article looked at the time students used their cell phones but failed to find out what purpose they used them for. Further research into whether students used their cell phones to check additional data about their studies or spent time on other social media could have drawn a slightly clearer and more detailed conclusion about the relationship between cell phone use and academic achievement.

Recently, many students use cell phones even though they are in class. Regardless of whether the purpose of using a cell phone is data research or not, it is clear that students’ academic performance is falling in proportion to the time spent using a cell phone. The reason for this is that cell phones have a variety of advertising and eye-catching factors. Therefore, even if cell phones were started for academic purposes, users would be interested in other factors and spend a lot of time on unnecessary things. Thus, although the development of cell phones has given us a variety of positive benefits, it will consequently negatively affect our academic performance, so we need to refrain from using cell phones through such things as the time-limit app.

References

Felisoni, Daniel Darghan, and Alexandra Strommer Godoi. “Cell Phone Usage And Academic  Performance: An Experiment”. Computers & Education, vol 117, 2018, pp. 175-187. 2017.10.006. Accessed 30 Oct 2019.

Samaha, Maya, and Nazir S. Hawi. “Corrigendum To “Relationships Among Smartphone Addiction, Stress, Academic Performance, And Satisfaction With Life” [Computers In Human Behavior 57 (April 2016) 321–325]”. Computers In Human Behavior, vol 75, 2017, p. 1016. 2016.12.001. Accessed 30 Oct 2019.

         We are facing cultures and languages of other countries in a trend that is becoming more and more global. Language is also learned in conjunction with the cultures of various countries, and most schools now teach at least more than one language of another country. Therefore, most students get into situations where they use two or more languages, including their own. In this situation, I also learn Korean and English and have been studying English for a long time. This is because it was obliged to teach at school, but I could not say a word in English to foreigners. However, one experience in the U.S. has completely changed me.

        The first time I learned English was when I was in elementary school. Nonetheless, teachers taught me only the meaning of words and took tests based on them. Because of these things, I knew only words, but I didn’t learn how to pronounce them and use them as sentences. In contrast, when people first learn their own language, the way of learning is completely different from what they learn at school. People all begin to learn their mother tongue from their parents. Especially, when I first learned a language, I started by listening to what our parents say and saying it. Then, I learned how to write and speak in elementary school. But when I learned a foreign language, I learned to use words and grammar first. Therefore, English learned in this way was totally unavailable in practice.

        Moreover, this style of education continued steadily through high school. Hence, I studied English for almost 10 years, but when I had a situation where I could talk in English, I couldn’t speak at all or was in a hurry to run away from it. No matter how much I knew wards or grammar, I had never spoken English out of my mouth. The reason why I felt so skeptical about school education was when a foreigner asked me for directions on my way home from school. He opened the map and pointed to a famous tourist spot and asked me how to get here. Even though I knew exactly how to get there, I told him just to go straight and turn right, which was the wrong information. I had no ill intentions, but the word that came to mind was just so simple that I couldn’t really explain it, so I said anything that came to mind to get out of there. After telling him the wrong way, I felt guilty the whole time I went home. So, I decided to go and study in the U.S. to learn English that can be used in real-life situations.

        A year later, I really had a chance to go to America. Then, I went to America without hesitation and started to attend a language academy in America. But communicating with foreigners still gave me a lot of difficulties. It is not only speaking was not familiar with me due to the Korean education system, but also listening was a problem. The problem was that I have to take English speaking classes and felt that when a teacher speaks, I tried to translate them into Korea and understand them, so if there is any word that I don’t know, I cannot concentrate on listening. My brain’s circuitry was always going back to Korean, so I had to interpret English from my head in Korean to understand it. As a result, I became more and more afraid of English and began to hang out with my Korean friends and speak only Korean.

        While I was using only Korean unlike my first intention, I saw another Korean who was hanging out with foreign friends. He was fluent enough to be considered an American Korean because he was completely unobstructed in speaking English and all the other foreign friends understood what he was saying. I was curious about how he could English so well, so I began to observe him. I saw him smoking every break in class, so I followed him and started talking first. When I first approached him, he was reluctant to talk to me. At first, I was embarrassed by his reaction, but as a result of my tenacious approach, he gradually dealt with me. He said that when he first came to the U.S., he had no knowledge of English. Besides, he said he had to work harder because he was the owner of a business in Korea and came here to trade with foreigners. He also said that the way he could improve his English quickly was not to be afraid of making mistakes when he spoke. It allowed him to talk to many people without hesitation, gain more experience, and grow quickly. After hearing his story, my thoughts on English completely changed.

        When I was speaking English, I was worried that if I were wrong in grammar, people would see me as a fool. These worries are made because I thought grammar is the most important thing. In Korea schools, they focus only on grammar and to cut scores if I am wrong. This was why I didn’t speak, and I didn’t even care what part to stress and how to pronounce. But after listening to him, I tried to speak no matter how wrong my grammar was and when I found out I was wrong, I began to try to correct the part. I am not afraid to speak or make mistakes anymore. Recently, when the store clerk asked me how about the school, I said much better. In fact, I didn’t know much at the time, but I learned later that this word meant disparaging his university. The clerk didn’t look good when I said this and told me it is a bad word. At that time, I didn’t understand what it meant, but then I realized later and then apologized to him. After this happened, we talked every time we met.

        Most people learn grammar and words first when they learn a foreign language. This has been Korea’s education system so far, and another country may be using it as well. However, I believe the best way and ideal way is to listen and speak as you first learn your mother tongue. I can tell from the way I have been taught and the results, I don’t think there is anything better than listening and speaking directly. When you learn a foreign language, if you learn words and grammar first, you will always try to translate it into your own language, so it will be difficult to communicate as I did. Therefore, through experience, I learned that English should also learn the same way as learning Korea.

My name is Jeongsu Lee(Jun), currently enrolled in American University. I am from Korea and I am taking a college writing class with Professor Nasrollahi. I am studying here to get knowledge about writing skills.