Video readings of our Final Class in English 109.01

Hello students, friends and families--

Today, I am working to convert and upload the videos so that you will be able to see these readings, and follow along with the text that the students have posted here on the Blog.

I am really proud of this class and I had a great time teaching this group this quarter. I feel very blessed to have been able to get to know these terrific young people, and share in their hopes, dreams, and challenges. The work of this group has reminded me of how important it is to hear from many different points of view to get a more accurate portrait of what life is like in this busy world. To me, this has a calming and optimistic effect.

I hope you will also enjoy the stories, feelings, and ideas expressed here, and I think the students did an admirable job of trying to open windows and doors into the worlds that they have lived in.

Here's a group picture of the whole class. Enjoy!

Mike Lohre
Senior Lecturer in English
The Ohio State University

Li

My name is Huancai Li. I come from China. When I have free time, I like to watch T.V., listen to music, shopping, or clean the house. I am study to being a hospital management or health information management. But I am not complete sure that what I want to do and I am still thinking what kind of jobs I want to do in that department.
The strongest memory from taking 109.01 is doing lots of creative writing. I learn that when you write your finial essay, you need to revise more than one time in the writing process. I think every part of the writing process had grown a little because I had that feel and I am still learning it too.
The piece of writing that I had chosen is the snapshot 2: the characterization of a person for the reading. I pick this piece of writing because I like this one and I think it is nice. The inspiration for it is that I will remember her even when I grow older. She had watch over me when I was little girl.
Characterization of a Person
In this story, I will talk about a girl who was in my life when I grow up. I don’t know how to say in English because this story takes place at China. “3 sisters” is that what I call her and that how you translate from Chinese to English. We call her that because she is the three daughters at that family. I like her the best because she is kind and nice. When I was little girl she took care me when my family went to work. It almost likes a babysitter. But she took care of me for free. She also likes to take care of me when I was little. She lives in the same neighborhood as me. She has short black hair, dark brown eyes, and always ware nice clothes. She treats me like little sister. It felt comfortable when I around her. That it like she is part of the family. She likes to help people.
When she was getting married at age 22 year old, she dresses me up and put make up on me. That it the first time I had put make up on. At that day I felt happy for her because she had met her destiny one and she was very happy too. Later she had a baby girl and it is cute baby. I carry the baby for a while and it is cute when she smiles at me. After she give birth to a baby, she didn’t work and up until now. Even her daughter had already gone to school.

Jia Long Wu

My name is Rex Wu. I am from Canton China. I am studying Mechanical Engineering. I have lots of hobby as long as I interest. I like running and work out.

This class is interesting. I did have a good time in this class. The most memory in English 109.01 is the beginning of reading “Ordinary Resurrection”. I don’t like read books except for comics. I did not finish any Chinese book when I was in China. When we start read the Ordinary Resurrection was torturing me. I did spend an hour to finish five pages. I don’t like the homework on Tuesday, because we usually have to read book and write a snapshot on Wednesday. I was like racing horse. The homework yelled to me: “Hurry up! Read the book and write snapshot! Go! Go! Go!” However, it helps me improve my writing skill, such as analyze the paragraph and creative sentences. I did never write an essay more than eight hundred words. In high school I did write some essay for English class but teacher’s respond is: “I don’t understand what you write.” I am glad the reader can understand what I wrote.

I would like to pick “My first job” this snap shot. It is my first article which was read in class. I want to introduce Chinese cultural by writing essay. That is my inspiration. This experience is interesting. It let me learn how to collaborate with my friends and I understand It is important to catch opportunity.

First Job

Three days before Chinese New Year, the government will occupy a six traffic lines street and make booths in the middle of street. It is a traditional in my hometown, lots of people will rent a booth to sell flowers or something interesting. I had my first job in here when I was twelve.I did buy some fluorescent stick and sold with my friend on street. At seven o'clock we began walk on the fair and found a big concrete for standing I could see peoples head moving in front of me. Tons of people walks in the same direction, it looks like a black stream which runs slowly. Radios were barking on the side of street. The fair is very noisy, voice of the radio, people's talk, some owner of booth yelled for getting attention, all the voice mix together feels like I was standing in front of a waterfall. We should people’s attention too, we yelled “fluorescent stick! One for 50cent, three for 1yuan.” In a day the most people traveling the fair is at eight to eleven o'clock.As the time pass there were more and more people traveling on the street. The crow would like to walk on the traffic lines than side walk. Peoples tried to hustle into the crow, the stream becomes a moving cube and moved slowly. I found lots of people sold fluorescent stick. For getting more customers everyone dropped their price. We even drop our price to 2cent per stick. But we cannot earn any money by selling this price. Luckily my partner found his friend who sold spray snow. Nobody sold spray snow in the fair at that night. That is an opportunity to raise our price. He sold spray snow 8 yuan per can. But we yelled “Spray snow 10 yuan per can get 5 fluorescent stick for free.” We combined our goods together and try to build up our price. Our price was getting lots of attentions from the crow. They throw their curiosity look to us. All the fluorescent stick and spray snow were sold out before eleven o'clock. Yelling against to all the people is the deepest impression of my first job. Though it just temporary job, it is interesting, because it is special experience.

Tyler Stauch

My name is Tyler Scott Stauch. I was raised in Dublin, Ohio and currently still live there. Recently I graduated from Dublin Jerome High School and now I attend The Ohio State University Delaware Center. I plan on applying to the Fisher College of Business at the end of this school year to earn a business degree in aviation management. During my free time I enjoy doing anything outside like riding my dirt bike, fishing, and playing backyard sports, and hanging with friends. I love comfort food, but I am not a big fan of seafood.

Looking back after taking English 109.01, my strongest memory would have to be the class environment. The class environment is a great memory because it was small so everybody got to know each other and it really helped provide one good discussions on the material. The writing process has always been a struggle for me threw my educational career, but this class really helped me break down and brainstorm before drafting. I learned that brainstorming is very essential to writing a good paper because it helps you get all your thoughts out on paper, which therefore helps you pick the appropriate thought that best fits the prompt. In English 109.01 I learned to become an active reader. Before taking this class I hardly ever annotated the book that I was reading, but now this is no problem for me because this is where I have exceeded the most.

The piece of writing that I will be reading is a story of a skunk that was living in our yard. My parents did not appreciate the skunk living in our yard because it caused fear in us that our dog, Tanner, would get sprayed. Therefore it needed to be taken out! I picked this piece of writing because many people don’t encounter a skunk living in their yard. I was inspired to write this story because it is a story that my friend and I won’t forget. If there were a theme that is interpreted threw this story, it would be, “if something needs to be removed, there is always a reason why.”

Stinky

It was only two months ago when I noticed a skunk roaming threw my yard. As weeks passed by, I came to conclusion that he settled into his new home under my barn. After observing that the skunk was not going to move anytime soon, my Dad and I decided that this skunk needs to be shot to prevent it from spraying my chocolate lab, Tanner.

On a nice Sunday afternoon, my friend Jeff was coming over. After finishing the call with him, I went outside and sat on a rocking chair in the yard. As I was waiting, I happened to look over my shoulder. After looking over my shoulder, my eyes grew large because the skunk was twenty yards from where I was sitting chowing down on the green grass. As soon as I was done looking over my shoulder, my buddy Jeff had come steaming down my gravel driveway causing a cloud of dust to appear. I ran over to Jeff’s dusty black car and showed him the skunk. Jeff had brought his .22 caliber rifle over because he can’t shoot his gun in his neighborhood and we wanted to shoot targets in my back yard. As soon as his eyes saw the skunk, he quickly ran back to the trunk of his car and started preparing his gun to exterminate the skunk. He put five bullets into his clip and crept up on the skunk for a better shot. I observed near the car and watch him destroy the skunk. When the bullet first hit the skunk, its face froze and had an expression as if he was screaming. After the skunk was taking out, my Dad came outside and said, “ What’s all this shooting?”

I replied, “We got the skunk Dad!”

“Really? Are you guys going to take it out to the woods so it doesn’t start stinking up near the house?”

“ I think Jeff and I are going to let it sit for a while to make sure it is dead, then we will take it.”

“No. You guys need to take it now.”

“ Ok, I will.” I went and grabbed a scoop shovel out of the barn and went over to the skunk. As soon as I got it on the shovel, it started stinking really badly. The stink was so incredible that it caused my nostrils to get irritated and Jeff and I had to take turns to re-gain our breath. After walking nearly a 100 yards to reach the woods, we flung the skunk in to the woods where it still lies today!

Jimmy reads it and means it

My full name is James Raymond Wall IV. I graduated from Dublin Coffman High School in 2009, I have lived in Dublin, Ohio my entire life. I started classes at OSU Delaware in the fall of 2009, and i enjoy playing video games and ice hockey in my spare time.

My strongest memory from taking English 109.01 is the fact that we would always thoroughly cover the assigned reading before moving on to another activity. In previous classes it was hard for me to keep up with the reading but now i am comfortable with reading assignments in any class. Throughout the quarter i learned the importance of brainstorming several ideas for a writing assignment before beginning the drafting process, learning the writing process allowed me to develop as a writer throughout the duration of the class. It seems to be much easier for me now to develop an essay in any class, over any topic due to my advanced comprehension of the writing process. This helped me a lot as a college student, due to the large amount of essays you have to write in every class you take.

Throughout the quarter, we did many creative writing pieces. I believe that this helped ever member of the class become a more versatile and unique writer. Our final assignment was to write a poem about someone in your life that had a positive influence on you. The following paragraph contains the text from that poem:

Mrs. Miller

She was simply a neighbor.

She was an undoubted friend.

I mowed her lawn,

I trimmed her trees,

spread her mulch,

and charged a fee...

She paid on time with no complaints.

On payday she always had a snack waiting for me.

She offered advice and wisdom without restraint.

Her friendly smile filled me with glee.

She paid her dues in more than currency.

For the tree trimming she paid in wisdom.

For the mulch she paid in smiles.

Sure, her work was an easy buck.

But in my eyes she was more than that.

In my eyes she was a dollar sign.

In my eyes she was a text book.

In my eyes she was a master chef.

In my eyes she was family...

Childhood Paradise

My name is Abdikadar Ali.
Originally I’m from Somalia; I lived in the states for almost two decade.
I’m studying to become a Chemical Engineer.
My hobbies are playing physical sports like football and soccer.

My strongest memory in this class is understands the writing process and ability to writing perfect ten papers. One thing I master in this class is how to write creative paper, use metaphors and other sarcastic expression. In the future, I see myself fitting comfortably in English 110, not struggling with my papers.

For my presentation I choose snapshot Four, because this piece tells the story of my childhood paradise. This place is where I use to shake off the entire stress related problem in less than a month. It was place you socialize with many different people that come from all the corners of country. The animals were the beauty of the place.

Childhood Paradise



As child, I had been travel to many places around the world. I have seen Serengeti, wilderness reservation in Tanzania, and Pyramids of Gaza in Egypt. However, no place that I seen has surpassed the beauty of my childhood paradise the Valley of Daar.
Daar Maalin was a summer camp set deep in the heart of a valley inside the wilderness, river running wild, steep jungle, and animals roaming freely feasting the lash green vegetation. No haunting was allowed, because it would ruin the beauty of the place, which was the animals who occupy the valley. The most amazing thing of the place was the Baboons, who occupy the trees on the bank of the river. They felt that we are threat to their territory by bombarding us with rocks. Regardless of the reasons for this phenomenon, we all had known that these Baboons want to play.
Every morning we collected dozens of rocks, wait for them to show up, than the game begins. Sometimes they chase us back to the river. Sometimes we chase them back to the steep jungle, which was spooky place occupied by Wild Hogs. Walking there, I remember, it feels like someone is breathing down on your neck. Sending chills to our spine, our body would start shivered and we would not know how fast we came out of there. Than the Monkeys go nuts. The spectators were some of the monkeys who were dangling on trees above us, and our parents who were surprise to see this phenomenon. Our parents were enjoying the entertainment without thinking about the danger this might lead to. After long battle under the scorching summer sun, we would postpone the game to take dip in the river, all of us including the Baboons in peace.
The sun had laid itself to rest ending long day, and the moon brightens over the valley. The smell of wood burning mix with sweet smell of lavender fills the fresh air. The children gather around the burning fire to listen the elders tell stories about warriors, who used to gather here long, time ago, which none of us are interested. They perform rituals ceremony usually haunting lions to gain the status of become warrior. Haunting loins with spire, give me a breake. Most of us would be snack for the king of the jungle. When everybody goes to sleep, the predators come reeling in to fight over the spoil leftovers. The Haynes start laughing, the loins started roaring, and parents grew worry. Morning came. After long month in the valley, the fun come to end and the packing begin. Daar Maalin was a place you feel relaxed and comfortable in harmony with the environment. Perhaps the most memorable part was the breathtaking view that the valley offers. However, those times are over now and the dreadful world of stress begins.

Good Times!!

My name is Muna Dirieh. I am 18 years old. I'm originally from Somalia. I speak three languages which are Arabic, English, and Somali.I attend OSU/Delaware Branch. Hopefully if i dont change my mind, i will stick with being a Register Nurse. I chose nursing beause i guess it will allow me to help others in need and i am all about helping others that are less fortunate. On my free time, i like to read, listen to music, go out with freinds to do something creative and fun. I am blessed to be alive and thankful i live in a place where anything is possible.


English 109.01 was a class i wasnt sure i would like it. I told myself this is easy and i dont need any help with my english. But it turns out that i very much needed this class. This class taught me alot of things. It taught me how revise and polish my essays. I learned the more i try, the better of a writer i will be and in the future i wouldnt need any help. As far as where did i see myself growing the most, i would have to say my writing. With the help of this class my writing has definetly improved.


The piece of writing i chose to show is about my dear freind Hadel. Hadel was and still is my closest freind ever. I met her when i use to live back in Saudi Arabia. We would do anything and everything together. Anywhere you saw me, you saw her, and vice versa. This poem is basically about how i am grateful to God that i met her and i will always cherrish those memories we had together. Whether it was us fighting or us laughing. Nothing will ever change. We are still freinds till this day.

Here is My Poem. I titled it My Dear Friend:

My Dear Friend
Influences are either good or bad or in between
Life is either in black or white with gray in between
Friends can either help me or hurt me there’s no in between
I found a dear friend of mine that would cross the line of in between

Someone who wouldn’t mind being more then helpful and do right by me by all means
Where can I find another friend like mine that is so serine?
Who taught me about life and how to face my fears?
Not only fears but to join me when I needed to shed a few tears.
Someone who would keep near for all these years

I miss my friend of mine who was the tom to my jerry
The best of my friends who wouldn’t mind following me to the ends of the earth and would stay cheerful and merry
My dear friend of mine knew me when I was in my cocoon and when I morphed into a beautiful butterfly
Knew my friend when she was a duck and when she transformed into a swan and was no longer shy
I cannot lie to this day, I still cannot find someone like my dear friend of mine so I just close my eyes and go to the sky to see my dear friend of mine