Group 9 - 14/7/2016

This morning, we had another creative writing session in which we had a different approach on writing a story. The teacher John gave us our first task which was to write a short story according to the few synopsis he gave us. We used about 15 minutes to write an incomplete story and he taught us the situation and story. Situation includes the plot, character, setting of the story and the story includes the underlying meaning and emotional truth of the story. We read a short story of about 300 words, in which the writer effectively converted all underlying ideas behind the story. This was the iceberg theory by Hindenburg. It is the theory that a writer can write about only 1/8 of the story background, and the reader could guess the remaining part. The subtext is the part in which the author doesn't tell you directly, but you understand the underlying meaning of it. After that, we composed a poem inspired by chocolates. Our group chose to compare Milky Way bar with peanut butter cups in order to highlight the beauty of the milky way chocolate bar, it was really fun! He even gave us some chocolates to encourage us to speak up. At last, we read an inspirational piece called "Hill like the white elephant". At first, it was quite hard to understand the piece. However, after his detailed analysis on how to observe characters' dialogues and actions, we soon come to understand that the story is about a conflict between a couple on an abortion. Through analyzing, we get to understand the authors purpose of writing a story and truly understand the power of subtexts. We truly improved our ability of writing after this class.

In the afternoon we had an inspiring lesson on Effective Non Verbal Communication. We first learnt how to distinguish in between verbal and non verbal communication. Next we developed profound knowledge about non verbal communication, which consists of kinesics i.e. body language, proxemics i.e. distance, paralanguage i.e. voice , haptics i.e. touch, etc. Such elements are crucial along with verbal skills in a good speech. Moreover we acknowledged a pie chart on the focuses of one's speech. Surprisingly the speaker's words only consume 5% whereas body language occupies the largest proportion. This highlights the importance of non verbal communication, adding on other elements such as dress code, handshake, etc. Finally two volunteers from our class gave 1-minute speeches respectively, whereby we viewed how they exercised the skills learnt. We believe that these skills shall come handy in various occasions in the future, facilitating our ways of communication in our lives.

After that, we had a short admission talk on admitting into Stanford. It was a fruitful day indeed. Goodbye!