(This is A Picture Showing Independent and Reusable Files of Code in one of My Project)

Outcome 2 reflects the ability to analyze complex texts and evidences in order to support our writing claims. Writing is not only an ability to build and demonstrate our own train of thoughts, but also an ability to make our thoughts credible and reasonable by introducing and analyzing already-existing and reliable sources.

According to what I have learned in English 131 classes, in order to let our evidence support our topic sentence, the evidence must be demonstrated, unpacked, and explained clearly and effectively. I am good at explaining evidences to support my claims. For example, I have written an outstanding paragraph demonstrating clear and convincing analysis in my final major paper 1, which was even chosen as an example discussed in the class. In this paragraph (4), I first introduce my topic sentence: “Furthermore, language influences the way we think.” Then I explain how it influence the way we think: “If people replace their language with another one, they may have problems understanding what and how their ancestors think, which is bad for inheriting cultures, knowledge and thoughts.” Because just demonstrating my own opinion is not academically persuasive, I introduce the article Lost in Translation: “In the article Lost in Translation, the author Boroditsky tells us ‘in Pormpuraaw, a remote Aboriginal community in Australia, the indigenous languages don't use terms like ‘left’ and ‘right.’ Instead […] There's an ant on your southwest leg.’’” In order to link my evidence back to the topic sentence, I unpack and explain this evidence for the linkage between language and thinking: “These people use absolute directions to refer to everything, so they have to think in an absolute direction way and have a good sense of direction. […] If these people replace their language with a majority language […] Moreover, if a group of Pormpuraaw people undergoes the language replacement while another group doesn’t, […] Those who don’t have a way of thinking of Pormpuraaw language cannot talk about any direction with those who speak this language even if they have some methods to translate their language into Pormpuraaw language because they don’t natively think about directions in absolute way and vice versa.” In this part of unpacking and explaining the evidence, I explore the meaning of evidence in great detail and depth: I analyze the influence of language replacement on thinking in two dimensions – chronologically and spatially, with great detail. Finally, I add a conclusion sentence to lead me reader back to the topic I talk about: “In this perspective, language replacement is negative because it separates the way of thinking of those who move to another community from their origin, historically and positionally speaking.” In this paragraph, I successfully demonstrate strong linkage between my evidence and my idea – I make smooth transitions from my idea to the evidence and from my evidence back to my idea, and I use clear and reasonable analysis to demonstrate how my evidence proves or reflects my idea.

There are many different forms of evidences. When writing papers, we can use academic journals, periodic, newspapers, and any other different sources that can support our topics. Focusing on only one type of source may deprive the chance to explore the span of the argumentation. My claim of major paper 1 is, people who move from one discourse community to another should undergo language addition (learn a new language without losing their original language) instead of language replacement (replace their original language with the dominant language spoken in the new community). For major paper 1, we are just required to use texts from Acts of Inquiry to support our claims. However, even though I have successfully found texts that can support my argumentations about language replacement from this book, I haven’t found any sources that can prove my claim about rejecting language replacement and accepting language addition. Even the source that looks likely to be able to stand for language addition – Amy Tan’s Mother Tongue, doesn’t talk about how Amy Tan learn Chinese or English as addition, or what bad influence she undergoes because of her lack of language addition. Because Amy Tan is possibly related to language addition, I searched for information about Amy Tan’s language background, and I found an interview of Amy Tan, which involves the fact that her not being able to speak Chinese prevents her from connecting herself to her original country. Because I successfully found this extra evidence, I am able to discover more about the significance or stake of undergoing language addition: Introduction: “Amy Tan, a famous Chinese-American writer who wrote The Joy Luck Club, speaks perfect English compared to her mother who speaks ‘broken’ English, but she didn’t learn Chinese seriously until her adulthood. Because of her racial background, Tan is also regarded as an inspiring person in China. The Tiananmen Square uprising was crushed in 1989, and Amy Tan was asked to speak in Chinese to provide inspiration to the students who underwent this event. But Tan says all she could think of was ‘Turn off the light. Don't make trouble. Go to sleep’ (‘At Home With Amy Tan: In the Country of the Spirits’).” Explanation: “Maybe her words have obscure connotation for the students or maybe not, but what we can see is her being not able to speak Chinese is an obstacle of her to connect to her original discourse community – China. Tan understands the significance of this connection, so she has made an effort to study Chinese as an adult” (7).

When we search for sources to support our claims, we may sometimes find out some sources with problematic argumentations, and some sources that may stand for our counterclaims. For these sources, we can either ignore them or use them in a flexible way. My claim for the major paper 2 is the fairness concern of laboratory animals shouldn’t prevent researchers from performing all animal experiments. When collecting materials for my major paper 2, I have found a journey written by Stanley N. Gershoff (“Animal experimentation – a personal view”). This journey comes up with a very useful point of view that can support my claim – “I also believe that all animals are not equal. I think that sub-human primates, especially the large apes are unique and require special care if they have to be used in experiments” (4; pt. 4).  However, Stanley’s statements for this claim are too subjective, which lacks seeing from the perspective of animals. Even though his statements are not objective enough, I still really want to use his statements because it strongly stand for my claim by completely negate the existence of fairness concern. Thus, I use Stanley’s point of view to complicate the statement about fairness concern instead of totally refute it, and I try to state more for this view by myself instead of quoting too much from Stanley’s journey: “However, whether this concern about fairness actually exists is still doubtful. […] This analogy may be doubtful, because animals and humans are so different. […] Because of the unclearness of the similarity between animals and human beings, it is possible to hold an opposite attitude regarding the fairness problem of laboratory animals – animals are different, so they don’t have equal positions, and therefore it is fair to use lab-level animals for experiments’ need. Stanley N. Gershoff […] stands for this view. In his article […], he says: […] The concern of fairness tries to speak for animal rights from humans’ perspective, while Stanley’s opinion is to group animals into different categories from a high-above point of view. Neither of them is convincing enough because they don’t and philosophically speaking (we are not animals) they are not able to see the problem from animals’ perspective. Thus, because whether using laboratory animals is fair or not is generally unclear, the request that animal experiments be forbidden because of fairness concern is not very convincing” (3).

In addition, every time we quote others’ source, we should clearly point them out in order not to be suspected that we plagiarize others’ works. In all my papers, I clearly point out the sources of my evidences by using MLA format of citation. For example, in major paper 2, I wrote: “Stanley N. Gershoff shows us an example of how animal experiments save countless numbers of dogs’ lives in his article Animal experimentation – a personal view: ‘In 1947, a mysterious disease had killed 75,000 dogs in Chicago […] the famous British scientist Mellanby had associated this disease with the consumption by dogs of wheat flour treated with a protein-maturing chemical called agene (nitrogen trichloride) […] As result of this work, the use of agene in the milling industry was halted and the lives of countless numbers of dogs were saved’ (3; pt. 2).” For this citation, I demonstrate my awareness of MLA format: I use “[…]” mark to omit words, and I put the page number and the location of the original text inside the parenthesis right after the quote.