Laura's Blog

I believe that in this day and age, advertisements should try to avoid stereotyping. They should avoid stereotyping because they can offend a person and/or their culture. Society is at a point in time where people are expressing their opinions and emotions more than ever through the help of social media. When an offensive advertisement, such as the Mountain Dew advertisement seen in class, is posted online, people have the ability to share, like, dislike, and comment. Although this is a good way of spreading knowledge of the product, it can cause major backlash for the company. For example, in the Mountain Dew advertisement, there are clips of violence against women and segregation of the black and white men through stereotyping. The advertisement is depicting black men to be animals who abuse women and commit crimes, whereas the white men are the "good guys" who arrest the black men. These are stereotypes, and are highly offensive to some people. Women, black men, feminists...

  This advertisement reflects the majority of opinions at this current point in time. Most people these days are all about freedom and individuality. Which perfectly ties in with the 'never follow' text, as people no longer want to follow social norms. This may also follow the idea that this company or band is not a popular one, and so people who do not want to follow the social norms may choose these watches to be different.  It seems that the ad is promoting individuality and freedom. By 'never following', one is not following social norms. This statement reflects the use of casual shoes with a wedding dress. A female would be expected to wear dressy shoes, or heals, with her wedding dress. However, by not following social norms, she can do what she wishes. This also reflects the brand name, "Hour Choice," which is similar to 'our choice', suggesting that whatever you do is your choice. A watch, shoes, a dress, they are all fashion accessorie...

Dhruv, Mohammad, and I, were pitching our ideas for a New York University advertisement within an international context. Our main appeals were the need to achieve, need for aesthetic sensations, and need to escape. We thought these would be the most effective for the following reasons: 1. Need to achieve - the future students of NYU obviously aim to graduate and reach their personal life goals and dreams. By promoting statistics of NYU, we can convince the applicants that they have a chance to achieve, just like celebrities did, whom we will also feature in our campaign. 2. Need for aesthetic sensations - people are more likely to live somewhere that looks appealing. By featuring clips of Times Square and the New York City skyline, we can convince the audience to apply to NYU by knowing they will live somewhere that is aesthetically pleasing. 3. Need to escape - considering that our advertisement aimed towards international students, we want to promote the excitement living in a ne...

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8N1po3s7AJQ The advertisement in the link above promotes ASDA, a supermarket, and it's consistently low prices. It is aimed towards British people of any age who do not yet shop at ASDA. We know this because the advertisement is using current  ASDA customers of all ages to attract new ASDA customers by showing how happy they are to be shopping there. It is also aimed towards families, as we can tell from the children and adults shown in the advertisement. Therefore, the intended audience is families of the British public. The advertisement uses ethos, pathos, and logos, to attract their customers. The evidence of ethos is where the advertisement states that ASDA is Britian's lowest priced supermarket. This will make audience want to shop at ASDA where they can get quality products for less money than other supermarkets. The evidence of pathos is where the customers in the advertisement are always smiling. This is to persuade the audience...

"Thx for the IView! I Wud ♥ to Work 4 U!! ;)" has a lot of valid arguments of which I agree with. The impact of the article on me was the realization of how and when text talk is used. For example, "Then she received the candidate's thank-you note, laced with words like "hiya" and "thanx," along with three exclamation points and a smiley-face emoticon," I reacted negatively to the situation, by thinking that this use of language should not be occurring. Why are students not taught that language should be proper, formal, and professional in places of work and education? This statement, "These incidents typically involve college students and recent graduates, and recruiters say such faux pas can be instant candidacy killers because they hint at immaturity and questionable judgment," reflects my own opinion. Adults using this type of language, from my perspective, does hint at immaturity and questionable judgment due to lack of formal...

Interviewer: And now on the show, we have American, pop-punk band, All Time Low. Hey guys, welcome. All Time Low: Hey/hello/hi/what's up? (in sync) Interviewer: So, let's start with your new album Future Hearts. It's just been released worldwide, how do you feel about that? Alex: Oh man, it's so exciting. I feel like this album really captures who we are as a band, and the direction we want to go in, and our intentions. Jack: Yeah, like, it sounds kinda different to our older records. It's also more meaningful and emotional. Interviewer: Where did your inspiration for this record come from? When you say it's different, do you mean you experimented with your sound more? Rian: We definitely did experiment a lot, yeah. We spent roughly two years in the studio, you know, writing, recording, producing, collaborating, making sure we get the right message across in all our lyrics. I think that since we've worked with so many different people on this al...

Dear Margaret, My name is Laura McEwan and I currently attending Raha International School in Grade 11. I understand that you have never been or lived abroad in a such a setting, so I'm going to tell you a bit about life here. Before I moved to Abu Dhabi, I had never lived in such a diverse place either. However, I was used to moving around and so I felt comfortable adjusting to a new community. Raha is made up of 1,200 students from over 80 different nationalities, therefore you should fit in just fine. There will be plenty of people from Canada for you to make a cultural connection with. You don't need to worry about finding only Canadians though, all the nationalities mix and it's great. My friend group is made up of British, American, German, Scandinavian, Kiwi, Australian, Brazilian, South African, Russian, Indian, etc. I found making friends here so much easier than in my past non-international schools. I believe this is because people here have been exposed to mor...

'Mother Tongue' by Amy Tan explains the implications of speaking different types of English when applied to a real life situation. Amy Tan uses her own life story to express her opinion on this topic. Her family immigrated to New York from China, therefore she had an American education and became fluent in academic American English. Here is already one example of a type of English. Tan explains that her mother was known to speak "broken" English. But is there actually any such thing? Just before, I brought up the idea of American English. There is also British-English and Australian-English, plus more. They are all different variations of English, yet "broken" English is not a proper form of the language? This is the issue I will be discussing in this blog post. I find that I can relate to Amy's story. I spent the first eleven years of my life living in Scotland. I was surrounded by my Scottish father, English mother, and then my sister, grandparents,...

Laura. It is a feminine name, which straight away makes a connection to my identity. My name means 'Laurel tree', which looks like this. By observing this tree, I have noticed that it is somewhat symbolic. The leaves are plain green, which I see as simplicity due to the fact that there is not much else to it. I can link the leaves with my personality as I consider myself to be quite the average, simple person. The Laurel tree is a symbol of victory and honour, as the leaves were used to make victors' garlands in ancient Rome. However, I cannot link this with myself as I don't seem to have the best of luck to result in victory. My middle name, Victoria, I have for a meaningful reason. Google's definition of Victoria, "a light four-wheeled horse-drawn carriage with a collapsible hood, seats for two passengers, and an elevated driver's seat in front" does not comply with the reason for my name. My parents gave me this name as the street they met on ...

I consider myself to be of Scottish culture, since I was born in Scotland and lived there for 11 years, as well as the majority of my family is Scottish. Within this culture, I am part of different communities, such as the McEwan family, and Mill o' Forest Primary School. Of which both places have their own tartan. I feel like tartan is misunderstood in the way that most people consider it to be simply Scottish. However, this is not the case. Tartan represents many different communities within the Scottish culture. Yes, tartan is typically a Scottish symbol, but there are many many different types of tartan. For example, my old primary school had their own tartan, and the McEwan family has their own tartan. (Except the 'McEwan tartan' is actually 'MacEwan tartan', however this is the same thing.) Tartan is worn to occasions such as weddings (kilts), and the school tartan is obviously worn on school days (kilts or ties). There is a different tartan for most Sco...

My name is Laura McEwan and I am 16 years old. I am originally from Scotland, however I currently live in Abu Dhabi, and previously Australia. My main interest is spending time with my friends. I care about equality and keeping others happy. My dreams for this year include staying close with my friends and spending as much time with them as I can to sustain happiness. My ultimate dream for the future is to graduate from Raha, attend university taking a course in music industry management, and in the future work for a major record label.  I would say language plays a big part in my life. The way I use language to text or talk differs depending on who I am talking to. Language can symbolise your feelings towards a person, and how comfortable you are with them. I think it is important to study language for this reason, to understand context. Due to this, I have never majorly felt excluded due to language barriers as I can understand the context of a conversation.