Group 7  7/14/2016

It was a beautiful morning and we had the first time going to the dining hall by ourselves. We had a lovely breakfast and we were fully energized to begin the day.

We started off the day with a creative writing lesson. After the lecturer introduced himself, he gave us some fiction writing prompts and told us to write a short story in fifteen minutes. It was quite unexpected but we tried our best to write down a few paragraphs. The lecturer then distributed a passage called ‘Reunion’ and taught us about ‘the Iceberg Theory of Literature’. It is a theory that stories should convey more through subtext than through the actual words written on the page. It was a great method as it helped us to write a more interesting story. We also created poems about chocolate in groups and it was a fun experience. We enjoyed this lesson very much.

            

            After lunch, we went back to our residence hall to have Effective Non-Verbal Communication class. It was quite interesting. The lecturer taught us about the importance of gestures and context with people. Besides, he gave us some pictures to analyze the facial expressions of different people. Furthermore, he gave us chances to practice how to tell a sentence with different tones and pitches.  Hand gestures were also being taught in the class. The lecturer told us how to shake hands in a more polite way. At the end of the lesson, he invited two of our group mates to give a one-minute speech.  He recorded their speeches, replayed it and gave them some useful feedback. We think that this lesson could be useful for our group presentation tomorrow.

           

            After a 30 minutes break, we took a long walk to the History Building in which we had a talk about admission procedures to Stanford.  The speaker gave us some really important tips and advice. We hope we’ll be able to use them in the future!

- Joyce Woo, Cherry Suen, Cydney Skinner, Jocelin Kee