Download Applying Citation Techniques and Strategies: An Exercise in Quoting from News Articles and more Exercises English in PDF only on Docsity!
ACTIVITY 1
Directions: Search for an online or newspaper article, and quote at least five important statements from it. Apply the different citation techniques and strategies for using quotations. Make sure to also attach a copy of the whole article in your activity sheet (30 pts.).
Taylor Swift’s NYU Commencement Speech: Read the Full Transcript
The pop star was honored with an honorary doctorate at NYU's Spring 2022 graduation ceremony.
If you heard some sort of deafening explosion-type sound emanating from
somewhere on the East coast around 12:30 in the afternoon on Wednesday
(May 18), don’t freak out — it was merely a stadium full of college graduates
cheering with what must have been a record-breaking volume in response
to Taylor Swift taking the microphone at NYU’s 2022 commencement
ceremony to simply say, “Hi, I’m Taylor.”
The 32-year-old singer-songwriter was the official guest of honor at the
university’s spring graduation, taking place this year at New York City’s Yankee
Stadium where tens of thousands of newly diplomaed people welcomed Swift
with high-decibel cheers. Just a couple beats after accepting an honorary fine
arts doctorate, she stepped up to the podium to charge the school’s graduates
with a 20-minute speech in which she urged them to not be afraid to be
enthusiastic and try hard when it comes to the things they love, before
reminding them to accept that they will inevitably make mistakes as they go
forward with their post-college lives.
And in true Taylor fashion, she also spared a couple moments to poke fun at
herself and reference a couple of her most fitting songs.
“Let me just say: Welcome to New York, it’s been waiting for you,” she said
with a smirk at the beginning of her address, and at the end: “So let’s just keep
dancing like we’re … the class of ’22.”
Read Taylor Swift’s full speech from NYU’s 2022 commencement ceremony,
then watch it below, beginning at about the two-hour, 47-minute mark.
Last time I was in a stadium this size, I was dancing in heels and wearing a glittery leotard. This outfit is much more comfortable. I’d like to say a huge thank you to NYU‘s Chairman of the Board of Trustees, Bill Berkeley and all the trustees and members of the board, NYU’s President Andrew Hamilton, Provost Katherine
Fleming, and the faculty and alumni here today who have made this day possible. I feel so proud to share this day with my fellow honorees Susan Hockfield and Felix Matos Rodriguez, who humble me with the ways they improve our world with their work. As for me, I’m…90% sure the main reason I’m here is because I have a song called ‘22’. And let me just say, I am elated to be here with you today as we celebrate and graduate New York University’s Class of 2022. Not a single one of us here today has done it alone. We are each a patchwork quilt of those who have loved us, those who have believed in our futures, those who showed us empathy and kindness or told us the truth even when it wasn’t easy to hear. Those who told us we could do it when there was absolutely no proof of that. Someone read stories to you and taught you to dream and offered up some moral code of right and wrong for you to try and live by. Someone tried their best to explain every concept in this insanely complex world to the child that was you, as you asked a bazillion questions like ‘how does the moon work’ and ‘why can we eat salad but not grass.’ And maybe they didn’t do it perfectly. No one ever can. Maybe they aren’t with us anymore, and in that case I hope you’ll remember them today. If they are here in this stadium, I hope you’ll find your own way to express your gratitude for all the steps and missteps that have led us to this common destination. I know that words are supposed to be my ‘thing’, but I will never be able to find the words to thank my mom and my dad, and my brother, Austin, for the sacrifices they made every day so that I could go from singing in coffee houses to standing up here with you all today because no words would ever be enough. To all the incredible parents, family members, mentors, teachers, allies, friends and loved ones here today who have supported these students in their pursuit of educational enrichment, let me say to you now: Welcome to New York. It’s been waiting for you. I’d like to thank NYU for making me technically, on paper at least, a doctor. Not the type of doctor you would want around in the case of an emergency, unless your specific emergency was that you desperately needed to hear a song with a catchy hook and an intensely cathartic bridge section. Or if your emergency was that you needed a person who can name over 50 breeds of cats in one minute. I never got to have the normal college experience, per se. I went to public high school until tenth grade and finished my education doing homeschool work on the floors of airport terminals. Then I went out on the road on a radio tour, which sounds incredibly glamorous but in reality it consisted of a rental car, motels, and my mom and I pretending to have loud mother daughter fights with each other during boarding so no one would want the empty seat between us on Southwest. As a kid, I always thought I would go away to college, imagining the posters I’d hang on the wall of my freshmen dorm. I even set the ending of my music video for my song “Love Story” at my fantasy imaginary college, where I meet a male model
For example, I had a phase where, for the entirety of 2012, I dressed like a 1950s housewife. But you know what? I was having fun. Trends and phases are fun. Looking back and laughing is fun. And while we’re talking about things that make us squirm but really shouldn’t, I’d like to say that I’m a big advocate for not hiding your enthusiasm for things. It seems to me that there is a false stigma around eagerness in our culture of ‘unbothered ambivalence.’ This outlook perpetuates the idea that it’s not cool to ‘want it.’ That people who don’t try hard are fundamentally more chic than people who do. And I wouldn’t know because I have been a lot of things but I’ve never been an expert on ‘chic.’ But I’m the one who’s up here so you have to listen to me when I say this: Never be ashamed of trying. Effortlessness is a myth. The people who wanted it the least were the ones I wanted to date and be friends with in high school. The people who want it most are the people I now hire to work for my company. I started writing songs when I was twelve and since then, it’s been the compass guiding my life, and in turn, my life guided my writing. Everything I do is just an extension of my writing, whether it’s directing videos or a short film, creating the visuals for a tour, or standing on stage performing. Everything is connected by my love of the craft, the thrill of working through ideas and narrowing them down and polishing it all up in the end. Editing. Waking up in the middle of the night and throwing out the old idea because you just thought of a newer, better one. A plot device that ties the whole thing together. There’s a reason they call it a hook. Sometimes a string of words just ensnares me and I can’t focus on anything until it’s been recorded or written down. As a songwriter I’ve never been able to sit still, or stay in one creative place for too long. I’ve made and released 11 albums and in the process, I’ve switched genres
from country to pop to alternative to folk. This might sound like a very songwriter-
centric line of discussion but in a way, I really do think we are all writers. And most of us write in a different voice for different situations. You write differently in your Instagram stories than you do your senior thesis. You send a different type of email to your boss than you do your best friend from home. We are all literary chameleons and I think it’s fascinating. It’s just a continuation of the idea that we are so many things, all the time. And I know it can be really overwhelming figuring out who to be, and when. Who you are now and how to act in order to get where you want to go. I have some good news: It’s totally up to you. I also have some terrifying news: It’s totally up to you. I said to you earlier that I don’t ever offer advice unless someone asks me for it, and now I’ll tell you why. As a person who started my very public career at the age of 15, it came with a price. And that price was years of unsolicited advice. Being the youngest person in every room for over a decade meant that I was constantly being
issued warnings from older members of the music industry, the media, interviewers, executives. This advice often presented itself as thinly veiled warnings. See, I was a teenager in the public eye at a time when our society was absolutely obsessed with the idea of having perfect young female role models. It felt like every interview I did included slight barbs by the interviewer about me one day ‘running off the rails.’ That meant a different thing to everyone person said it me. So I became a young adult while being fed the message that if I didn’t make any mistakes, all the children of America would grow up to be perfect angels. However, if I did slip up, the entire earth would fall off its axis and it would be entirely my fault and I would go to pop star jail forever and ever. It was all centered around the idea that mistakes equal failure and ultimately, the loss of any chance at a happy or rewarding life. This has not been my experience. My experience has been that my mistakes led to the best things in my life. And being embarrassed when you mess up is part of the human experience. Getting back up, dusting yourself off and seeing who still wants to hang out with you afterward and laugh about it? That’s a gift. The times I was told no or wasn’t included, wasn’t chosen, didn’t win, didn’t make the cut…looking back, it really feels like those moments were as important, if not more crucial, than the moments I was told ‘yes.’ Not being invited to the parties and sleepovers in my hometown made me feel hopelessly lonely, but because I felt alone, I would sit in my room and write the songs that would get me a ticket somewhere else. Having label executives in Nashville tell me that only 35-year-old housewives listen to country music and there was no place for a 13-year-old on their roster made me cry in the car on the way home. But then I’d post my songs on my MySpace and yes, MySpace, and would message with other teenagers like me who loved country music, but just didn’t have anyone singing from their perspective. Having journalists write in-depth, oftentimes critical, pieces about who they perceive me to be made me feel like I was living in some weird simulation, but it also made me look inward to learn about who I actually am. Having the world treat my love life like a spectator sport in which I lose every single game was not a great way to date in my teens and twenties, but it taught me to protect my private life fiercely. Being publicly humiliated over and over again at a young age was excruciatingly painful but it forced me to devalue the ridiculous notion of minute by minute, ever fluctuating social relevance and likability. Getting canceled on the internet and nearly losing my career gave me an excellent knowledge of all the types of wine. I know I sound like a consummate optimist, but I’m really not. I lose perspective all the time. Sometimes everything just feels completely pointless. I know the pressure
… the class of ’22.
Source: https://www.billboard.com/music/music-news/taylor-swift-nyu-
commencement-speech-full-transcript-1235072824/
Swift (2022) believes that being embarrasses when you messed up is part of the human experience. Getting back up, dusting yourself off and seeing who still wants to hang out with you afterward and laugh about it? That’s a gift. According to Swift (2022), losing things doesn’t just mean losing. A lot of time, when we lose things, we gain things too. My experience has been that my mistakes led to the best things in my life. (Swift, 2022) Never be ashamed of trying. Effortlessness is a myth. (Swift, 2022) The times I was told no or wasn’t included, wasn’t chosen, didn’t win, didn’t make the cut… looking back, it really feels like those moments were as important, if not more crucial, than the moment I was told ‘yes.’ (Swift, 2022)
ACTIVITY 2
Directions: Read the sentences and apply the different ways of paraphrasing (2 pts. each)
- Personal profit can serve as an inspiration to businesses to better serve their customers. Personal profit can be an inspiration for the output of a machine by means of electrical overloading.
- Overclocking is a process that is capable of improving a computer’s performance through overloading electricity. Overlocking is a mechanism capable of generating a device by overloading electricity.
- Animation is an activity where you draw several pictures to make it into a film or a comic magazine. Animation is an experience in which you can create a movie or a comic magazine with many pictures.
- In real life, most people disapprove individuals who make mistakes or fail at important duties. People often put these kinds of standards on government officials, teachers, friends, and even parents. In real life, individuals such as government officials, teachers, friends, and even parents who fail at important
duties or make mistakes are generally disapproved of by most people.
- Strategic management denotes the ability to identify objectives, perform the set goals, and generate alternative scenarios for anticipated future events to eliminate business risks and setbacks. It focuses on how an organization will have a competitive advantage in such a way that it will manage ways to outperform its leading competitors. Strategic management means the ability to identify goals, achieve set goals, and create alternative scenarios for expected future events in order to eliminate business risks and setbacks. It focuses on how companies have a competitive advantage and find ways to outperform their major rivals.
ACTIVITY 3
Directions: Summarize the text below (30 pts.) Corporations are owned by a group of people called stockholders or simply stockholders. There are two kinds of stockholders namely: Initial Stockholders and Investors/Stockholders. Major Stockholders are the people who own a large portion of the corporation around 15-50% and above. Corporations are owned by a group of people called stockholders or shareholders. To begin with, there are two kinds of stockholders namely: Initial Stockholders and Investors/Stockholders. Initial Stockholders are the group of people who started the corporation. They are the ones who invested a certain amount of money to start and build the operations of the corporation. Second are the Investors or simply stockholders, who invest money to receive profit from the corporation in the form of dividends. Also, the money invested is used to help and support the business entity and its operations. Likewise, Stockholders like these can be classified into two namely: Major Stockholders and Minor Stockholders. Major Stockholders are the people who own a large portion of the corporation around 15-50% and above. They are expected to be more active with the corporation since they carry a huge weight of the corporation. Next, are the Minor Stockholders, who own a small portion of the corporation which is around 10 % and below. The amount and percentage of ownership can be matched with the number of stocks owned by the stockholder over a corporation. When a stockholder buys a portion of the corporation, he/she will receive what is known as a Stock Certificate. This certificate shows the number of stocks taken, the cost of each stock and other information about the stockholder (Gahol, 2011).
