Blog#15

At New Economics School (my university) we have three mandatory (math, economics and English) and two optional subjects. So, this time I want to tell you about my English course.

I think learning foreign languages is really important in the modern world, because it can help you in your future life. It's hardly to find a student or a pupil, who does not study any foreign language, such as English, German, French and so on.

My English course at NES helped me in many ways of my life.

Firstly, I learned how is better to write different types of essay, for example descriptive, argumentative essay and so on.

Seconly, I have read many texts. As a result, I found out something new for me from them and many new words.

Thirdly, now I have a blog. It is the way to write what I really want and improve my writing skills. This course has many advantages. English is an optional subject, so I have chosen it, because I really like this course. By the way, we will read "Catcher in the rye" in English. It is one of my favorite books and I have read it in Russian two times.

Blog #14

This week I haven’t enough time to write a long meaningful post, so I just want to count my lovely films this time. This list contains not only modern films, there are black-white and silent films.

30 films I really like:

• Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004)
• What Happens in Vegas (2008)
• Across the Universe (2007)
• Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961)
• Titanic (1997)                
• Mr. Nobody (2009)
• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 (2011)
• Collateral (2004)
• Seven Pounds (2008)
• Catch Me If You Can (2002)
• Paris, je t'aime (2006)
• 8 femmes (2001)
• Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2008)
• Sleepy Hollow (1999)
• Romeo and Juliet (1968)
• Hachi: A Dog's Tale (2009)
• Lonely Hearts (2006)
• Remember Me (2010)
• Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (2007)
• Requiem for a Dream (2000)
• The Butterfly Effect (2004)
• Edward Scissorhands (1990)
• Chaplin (1992)
• Interstate 60 (2002)
• Pay It Forward (2000)
• Dorian Gray (2009)
• Get Him to the Greek (2010)
• The Breakfast Club (1985)
• Modern Times (1936)
• Roman Holyday (1953)

A Critique of My Argumentative Essay (Blog #13)

I got my English course homework last week which was to write argumentative essay. The theme of my blog this week is to write a critique of my argumentative essay. So, I should begin…

Pluses of my argumentative essay:

• ·         This essay includes many historical facts
• ·         Theme of this essay is arguable
• ·         There are many quotations of famous people
• ·         You can find out something new, while you reading this essay

Drawbacks of my argumentative essay:

• ·         There are only two arguments
• ·         My essay is less than 2 pages
• ·         There is no works cited
• ·         There are no summaries

How I should improve my essay:

• ·         Add two or more arguments in my essay
• ·         Add works cited
• ·         Add one summary or more
• ·         Reread essay and correct grammar and mechanic mistakes
• ·         Add more quotations and paraphrases

How is this essay different then essays I wrote earlier in the first semester:

• ·         It is longer than my previous essays
• ·         It includes more connections between paragraphs
• ·         It contains less grammar and mechanical mistakes
• ·        My essay will be contain works cited
• ·         Body paragraphs contain mot only my arguments, but quotations of famous people

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

Not so long time ago I’ve read a gorgeous book “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close” by Jonathan Safran Foer, a modern novelist. It was published in 2005.   The plot consists of three life stories of three different people, which are bonded  by one common event – the death of Thomas Shell, who tragically died in 11 September 2001, when the World Trade Center was attacked by terrorists. Author tells us about Thomases family – about his father, his mother and his little son. We get to know about their lives, about their happy moments and moments of grief and misery.
This book is not about what happened after Thomas had died; actually it comprises memories which range from The Second World War to our days.
To be honest, it’s really hard for me to write about the book without spoiling its plot. And I also have to admit that “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close” became on of my most favorite books that I’ve ever read.
The film based on this book came out in July 2011, starring Thomas Horn, Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock. It’s directed by Stephen Deldry. The movie was nominated to the Oscar like “Best Picture” and “Best Supporting Actor”.
I haven’t seen this film, but I really want to. I just saw the trailer, which includes one of my most favorite songs “Where Streets Have No Name” by U2.  I hope that I’ll have enough spare time during my Christmas holidays to watch it.

Unpaid Internship

Today’s morning I read two interesting articles about unpaid internships, “Take This Internship and Shove It” written by Anya Kamenetz and “No Pay? Many Interns Say, “No Problem”” by Jennifer Halperin. These articles are both about the situation in modern America, when young people want to work as unpaid interns before graduating from universities.

Personally I think that unpaid internship has many drawbacks, such as “overidentification with employers”, lowering the demand on the labor market (Why do managers find constant workers, if they can to find interns every time?) and so on. Anya Kamenetz writes, “Web site, found that 84 percent of college students in April planned to complete at least one internship before graduating”, and in the end of her article it’s said that “Interns are like illegal immigrants”. However, in my opinion, students should find a job that would be paid, because they don’t need to get special skills before graduating from university and what’s more, they usually need money for living.

To sum up, I think that unpaid internship has a huge number of drawbacks, and even though it  can’t be called as a major problem in the USA, working with no getting any money for it presumably may have bad consequences for students, therefore, it’s better for them to start getting not only experience but also money for what do they do.

Places I want to go

There are so many interesting places in Moscow, where I can go to, but I've visited only one museum since I arrived in Moscow. It was Vladimir Mayakovsky’s museum, really unusual place, which doesn’t resemble the other museums, where I was.

In this post I will write about places, which I’d like to visit in the nearly future:

• “The Importance of Being Earnest”, the Oscar Wilde’s play, which is put on the Moscow theatre “MOCT” stage

• “An Ideal Husband”. It’s an Oscar Wilde’s play too, but it’s put on the stage of another Moscow theatre.

• Ghost stations in the Moscow metro, for example “Spartak Stadium”. I realize that visiting them is practically impossible, but I really want to go there, because it is seems quite fascinating to me. I think there are not many people who have ever visited these ghost stations.

• The Tagansky Protected Command Point, it’s a Moscow museum, which was an initially bunker, built during the Cold War.

• Grinberg Gallery, which is simply another interesting place I’d like to go to.

To sum up, there is a large number of different places and things to be explored in Moscow. All of them are absolutely unique and very unusual, they attract me and I hope that I’ll be able to visit them all.