The Challenges of Living in a Foreign Land and Speaking New Language - Essay Example

 The experience of living in a foreign land and speaking foreign language is always a hard experience. This is due to the difficulties associated in embracing a new culture and learning a new language. This paper gives a description of my personal experience in living and studying in a foreign land. I can still remember vividly the moment when the airplane I travelled in taken off from the airport. As the plane took off, I had mixed feelings of curiosity and anxiety; I was curious because I was looking forward to beginning my adventure in America, and, on the other hand, I was anxious because of the challenge of living in a new culture and speaking a foreign language; the feeling of anxiety made me to feel like jumping off the plane and going back home. When the flight attendant came round with some cold beverages, I was in deep emotions and felt like crying, but I forced myself to smile so as to create the impression that I was okay. I asked the flight attendant to give me Coca-Cola drink because Coca-Cola was the only name of cold beverage that I knew in English. The freight attendant seemed quite friendly and upon giving me the Coca-Cola drink she started talking to me in English, but, unfortunately, I did not understand what she was saying to me. This incident made me to start imagining how it would be difficult to live in America without being able to communicate in English well. When we arrived in America and my consultant left me in the dorm, I felt so anxious and hopeless. For the first two days in America, I wasn’t feeling so bad, but after the two days, I was overcome with homesickness and I started crying. Home sickness made me feel completely heart-broken. Some of my colleagues, the students, tried to console me and to reassure me that all will be well, but all their efforts to console me were fruitless. But the main problems was with the language, I could tell from our they were talking and how they came to spend time with me with the aim of calming me down, but I really did not understand what they were telling me. To overcome the overwhelming homesickness, my professors advised me to go for counseling, and I actually went for counseling, but, then again because of language barrier, I understood very what of what the counselor told me. The boredom continued for quite some time until one day, one of my professors advised me to go for counseling from one of the Chinese counselors was his friend. I was so excited to hear of a Chinese counselor in America. The professor actually took me to the counselor and the experience was wonderful! On just meeting him, I felt like I had gone back home. Just the experience of talking with the counselor in my mother language made me forget all the challenges that I had.The Chinese counselor gave me very good pieces of advice and ever since, I changed my attitude towards living in a foreign land, and with the change of attitude, I became able to overcome some of the challenges that I thought before were too difficult for me. The reality of the challenges ahead of became clear to me on the first night that I arrived in School and went to the dorm. On the first night when I arrived in the dorm, the dorm supervisors gathered us together and asked us to introduce ourselves. All the other students in the dorm seemed familiar with each, and each of them seemed to have a friend in the group except me, I was the only one alone. For that reason, everyone in the group looked at me like a stranger, and everyone seemed to be waiting eagerly for me to introduce myself. The fear of introducing myself before the foreign students made me remember what my teacher had told me about the American accent; my teacher had told me that American accent is quite different from the Chinese accent. This is because American accent is retroflex while Chinese accent is not. For that reason, therefore, in introducing myself I tried as much as possible to avoid my Chinese accent. That made me to pronounce my name wrongly; I pronounced my name “Belle” as “Bear”. That made all the students to laugh at me for quite a long time, but I did not know why they were all laughing at me, because I thought that I had pronounced my name well. Before I became used to the challenges of living in a foreign land and speaking new language I found myself quite confused. For example, when the classes begun, I could not find my way to the classroom, for that reason, therefore, I was late for class throughout the first week; I did not ask anybody whom I could ask the directions to my classroom. Speaking and understanding English language was another major challenge that faced in my experiences of studying in a foreign land. Sometimes I could not understand even a single word, students speaking English language around me were like a million bees buzzing in my head, it was a big challenge to me. One of my main challenges of studying in a foreign land was that I did not understand my homework. So, at night in the study hall I had nothing to do. I found the methods of teaching in America quite different from methods of teaching in China. Teachers in China taught us in completely different way from how we were taught in America. For that reason, therefore, I became confused and I did not understand what we were being taught. The problem of not understanding what we were taught was confounded further by my problems with understanding English language. I, however, decided to put a lot of effort in understanding English language, and with time, I became a bit fluent in the English language. As time went on, I tried to get more involved in this new community. I started playing Volleyball, a game I had never played before. At first I was afraid that the ball would hit and kill me, for that reason, I ducked and hid every time the ball came in my direction. That made the coach to yell at me, but I did not understand what the yelling meant. I also did not understand the game rules that the coach explained to me, so, I only watched the plays as they played the game and I guessed the rules of the game. After a month, things were slowly getting better, and I had some friends. But, I still had difficulties with the English language; this made me to fail in my first test. I had never, in my entire life, scored such a low grade! That made me to cry when my mum called me on that day. I was “stressed out”, as Americans say. Another awkward thing was that I could not understand the jokes that my friends told me to cheer me up; I found the ways my friends expressed their feelings to be quite different from the way we, the Chinese, express our feelings. I usually express my feelings in an implicit way and that makes my friends to think that I don’t like them. Despite these challenges, however, I eventually became used to living and studying in a foreign land. As the saying goes, “Time heals everything”, in China we also have the same saying. With time, I was able to overcome all these challenges and to fit in the new culture. It’s not easy for many people to understand what it means to leave, not only your home, but your culture and your language also. It’s really a difficult experience, but it’s worth to give it a try. Among the many things I have learnt in America, one important lesson I have learnt is on animal rights. I would really love to share this knowledge with as many people as possible. In an effort to share this knowledge with other people, I am going to summarize, to compare and to contrast two articles on animal rights, and to give my views on the same topic. The two articles that I am going to look at are, first, an article by Heloisa Sabin, and Secondly, an article by S. Plous. We will begin by looking at the Sabin;s article. The ethics of animal research On Oct.6th.2014, a Spanish nurse was tested positive for Ebola virus, at the same time, Excalibur, the nurse's pet dog, was sentenced to be euthanized to prevent it from suffering and from transmitting the virus to other animals or to people. This decision made by the government was strongly opposed by the local animal rights activists; the activists even sparked a protest against the police when they prepared to euthanize Excalibur. In this occasion, it’s not hard to imagine how much those protesters value the life of the dog. Actually they don’t only argue the rights for this little innocent dog, but also the rights for all the animals. In history of mankind, therefore, there are many people who advocate for the rights of animals, and who are of the view that animals should not be used in research. Heloisa Sabin on Animal Rights. In her whole life，Heloisa Sabin was dedicated to persuade the public with the importance of eliminating vaccine-preventable diseases, such as measles and polio, which had struck down nearly 58000 children in the year 1952 alone. Her husband Albert was on the front line of polio research, so the couple knew well that without animal research, this kind of diseases would no longer be eradicated. In the article, “Animal Research Saves Life”, Heloisa Sabin advocates for the use of animals in medical research, so as to save human life from preventable diseases. Sabin argues in this article that, without using animals in medical research, human beings face a real danger of some curable diseases such as polio. This is because use of animals can lead to the discovery of drugs that can prevent these dangerous human diseases. In her article “Animal Research Saves Life”, Heloisa Sabin tells, in such a mild way, the story of human efforts to combat polio in the 1950s. In the article, Sabin also remembers how her husband donated his whole life to the medical scientific research aimed at saving human life. In this article, Heloisa disagrees with the animal rights activists who argue that animals should not be used in medical research. A look this article shows that Sabin strongly believed that animals must be used in medical research for the benefit of human beings. Plous on Animal Rights Plous was used a different approach in making his point about animal research. In his article called” An Attitude Survey of Animal Rights Activists”, S.Plous made a survey of the views and convictions of the animal rights activists and compared this view with the views of non-animal rights activists. In this survey, Plous clearly and directly identified the psychology of the animal rights activists. Though the author didn’t directly give his attitude on animal activists, we can learn his attitude on animal activism from the questions designed in his survey. In this survey, Plous quoted the fact that animal rights activists were referred to as “terrorists” by the secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. This fact shows that Plous had a negative attitude towards animal rights activists. Secondly, Plous portrayed animal rights activists as aiming at eliminating all animal research, and for that reason valuing animal welfare more than human welfare; Plous also portrayed animal activists as advocating for vegetarian diet and eschewing animal products like meant, milk and leather. In this research, Plous found that 85% of the activists endorsed the statement, “If it were up to me, I would eliminate all research using animals”. The statistics in the research also showed that female activists reported more involvement and stronger views against use of animals in medical research than male activists did. Also, sixty-one percent of the activists were personally in favor of medical breakthroughs on drugs for treating animals, which meant that the animal rights activists would endeavor to save the lives of those animals. Though the survey does not give a conclusion on the research, the statistics, however, can be used to make a judgement on whether or not use of animals in medical research is right according to the author of the survey. We have to admit that the author himself didn’t accept the thought of animal rights activism. A comparison of these two views shows that, while, Heloisa used the story of her husband and her own experiences to challenge the animal rights supporters, Plous made his point by providing the substantial statistics meant to portray animal rights activists as people with some psychological defects. This fact, therefore, shows that both Sabin and Plous are agreed that animals should, actually, be used in medical research. The only difference between Sabin’s and Plous views on animal rights is the fact that, the two scholars have used different approaches to explain their discontent with the position of the animal rights activists. A critical look at his issue, however, shows that we have to admit that animals do have the right to live; this is because there is no proof at all, that human being’s welfare is much more important than the welfare of other animals. Animal rights has been a hot topic being discussed worldwide for many years, recently the concept of 3Rs was introduced in UK. 3Rs stands for replacement, reduction and refinement of the use of animals in research. The UK has gone further than any other country to write an ethical framework and made it into law by implementing the Animals Act. UK, therefore, even exceeds the requirements of the European Unions’ directive on the protection of animals used for experimental and other scientific purposes. In the UK Animals Act, details about the use of animals in medical research like the purpose, the procedures and types of the animals used were all required to be reported to the public. For this reason, it seems that UK is the only country with such strict laws in protecting the rights of animals. Although, the concept of 3Rs is a good idea, there are, however, concerns about the UK’s strict laws. Some people doubt whether or not the law would add a level of bureaucracy that is not in proportion to its contribution to improve animal welfare or furthering the 3Rs. Other people are concerned that the disclosed information about animal research would be utilized to target those researchers by the animal rights activists. So what’s the result of 3Rs principle in the end? According to the statistics supplied by the UK government, animal research has obviously become a smaller proportion of overall bioscience and medical R&D spending during the past decade, which showed the commitment of the scientific community to the development and use of replacement and reduction techniques, such as computer modeling and human cell lines. Rome wasn't built in one day. We have to admit that the development of direct replacement technologies for animals is a slow and difficult process, however, we have already successfully marched the first step. Now most of the animal research can be conducted only on rats. Although animals cannot yet be completely replaced, it is important for the researchers to maximize refinement and reduction. On one hand, society should push authorities to quickly adopt successfully validated techniques; on the other hand, people should also realize that pushing for adoption without full validation could endanger human health. So it’s really important to find a balanced point in this dilemma. We know that for some animal rights activists, especially for some female activists, probably because of pity for animals, animal welfare movement is of big concern. Despite these genuine concerns, however, the benefits of medical animal research far outweigh the disadvantages of the same, and for that reason banning medical research on animals would have enormous severe consequence to public health as Sabin argues in her article. Animal research can, however, be done without causing much pain to animals as UK has shown us. Read More