Ruan Chun Xian

Yes I know what you mean as there are lots of people in a similar situation here at my school in Hong Kong which is an international school. Personally, I do not think that assuming that a person can speak their ‘native’ language is in any way a form of racism. It is merely the product of flawed inductive reasoning in which the person creates a rule in their mind that all ‘Chinese looking’ people can speak Chinese. They are then confronted by an American-born Chinese or British, Australian, Dutch (whatever) Chinese and they automatically assume due to their past experiences that this person is no different form all the other Chinese looking people they have met in the past i.e. they speak Chinese. To me racism is an act of hatred. I am quite sure that these people who assumed you can speak Chinese had no antagonistic motives at all. The shock is understandable too as the ‘rule’ that has been created in their mind somehow doesn’t work anymore. So their confrontation with you, in a sense, has ‘educated’ them.

I do not think the assumption is only made on Asians. It is interesting that you say ‘Asians’ but have only used a Chinese example. Naturally, I personally would expect any person wearing a kippah to speak Hebrew, any person wearing a turban to speak Punjabi, the blond blue eyed gentleman to speak a Scandinavian language ect. My friend is half Finnish half French and he only speaks English. I find it ‘amazing’ if not ‘strange’. The assumption comes not only from the correlation between appearance and language but also from the assumption that some form of your heritage has at least been past on to you (usually through parents) despite you not growing up in that particular country e.g. language (being a common one), food, hobbies, habits ect.

I am Eurasian, mother being Hong Kong Chinese, father being British and fortunately I can speak English, Mandarin and Cantonese. Although maybe its ‘bad’ to assume someone can speak ‘this language’ because their heritage is ‘this’, but I always find that it is good to have some connection with your origins. I can speak Chinese quite well but my reading and writing isn’t great to be honest. But I find that the ability to speak Chinese has led me to understand Chinese culture, history and society. I don’t think being unable to speak a language of your ethnic origins is ‘bad’, you cannot determine the situation you grew up in, but I do think it is a disgrace if someone makes no effort whatsoever to make a connection with their origin, whether it be paying attention to the news in that particular part of the world, learning about its history or watching movies from there ect. (the list of things to connect is endless). I think heritage is very important in determining who you are.

I think it is bad that people create a consequence of the assumption as your SAT trainer has done so. That is outrageous. But I equally have no sympathy for those who are ignorant about their origins in every possible way.

Er.  Stephenie Meyer was coming to my town for a book signing, YEARS ago, I didn't even know who she was but my friend had two tickets, so she gave me her extra copy of Twilight and off we went.  I thought it was cool to get a signed copy, then I read the book, and... eehh.  Then her popularity exploded, and I didn't really understand why.  Her writing ability was rather mediocre (then again, I'm a language snob, I read LotR over and over again because I love his writing style), the plot was kind of dull, and the characters were annoying.  Plus her definition of vampire was rather unsatisfactory for me.  I like Anne Rice better when it comes to vampire literature, both for her writing ability and for her characters (probably a good thing that I like her, since I wrote my extended essay on Interview With the Vampire and Dracula).  

I did reread Twilight a couple of times with about a year's span in between, and my opinion is the same.  Don't like her writing, I just use her signature in my book to tease my rabid Twilighter friends, harharhar.  I started New Moon, gave up after the first chapter, just could not muster the interest.  I *did* read The Host (which I also got signed, at a later signing, dragged there by same friend) which I liked more.  Writing still not that great, sappy love triangles still irksome, but it was an interesting portrayal of aliens, and I just liked the entire plot much better.

I suppose I can just use my younger sister to sum things up.  She was 13 when she read it, and just the sort of category that would obsess over the book.  I asked her what she thought of it when she was done.  "Well, I don't know... I mean, it was interesting when he hated her.  Then they fell in love and it got boring.  Then the other guy tried to kill her and it was interesting again.  Then it was a bunch of love crap again."

I used to be far more outspoken concerning Twilight, I thought it was an atrocity, and still do; but now I can't be bothered.  People will read what they want to read, if I don't like it then big deal, I don't have to read it.  It's a sad thing to admit, but after seeing the first two movies, I feel that the movies were better than the books.  And I've never said that about any movie before.

Whew, that did get to be quite long-winded...

No worries. Just a note, if people are seen asking for rep, then just delete the post. However, we all need to keep in mind that it's virtual rep on a site and it is technically worthless, so don't get angry at people about reputation points!

The functionality to "neg rep" or "thumb down" was present in the past. People, as expected with the continually degrading nature of human society, abused the feature to let people know they had bad posts and made it into personal vendettas against posters. The "neg rep" function was thus removed.

butters, on Apr 20, 2011 - 21:31, said:

Well I suggest you stop asking people and use your time to make sure your grades don't drop. Even the person at McGill who is in a position to tell you isn't able to and unless people here can divine the future, nobody else is going to be able to. If she's saying the lowest offer they've ever given is 35, I would take that as a sign to kick your bonny behind into gear and make sure you get your predicted grades. To me it sounds like code for "I don't know if we ever go lower than that..." so just in case, aim for 36.

Whether you know now or not isn't going to change anything except for how hard you work: so work as hard as you can!

tj14, on Mar 08, 2011 - 16:18, said:

You're on the right track. Try putting Angie and Buddy's positions into a right triangle. Buddy will travel along the hypotaneus, so his x and y coordinates could be defined using the other two sides of the right triangle. Hint: use arctan. Also note Angie's distance traveled along the vertical axis and Buddy's coordinate on the horizontal axis => these are your other two sides of the triangle. To find the distance traveled simply use S=vt.

Hint: Your first theta angle found will be arctan(1/17). Try to figure out your recursive formula accordingly.

Oh and I don't think my orbit looks like a parabola :-/ if Buddy catches up with Angie that means the curve will HAVE to touch the y-axis at one point.

Ruan Chun Xian, on Jan 15, 2011 - 06:46, said:

I can relate to Mrs. Bennet because I have a mother of my own with siilar if not identical traits. I think the perfect word to describe her was with "effusion".

She's just a woman so deep within the practices of her traditions and slave to social convention, that contradicting herself is the only means she can go about living.

One day she was completely hating Lydia for causing the family shame by eloping, decreasing the chance for her sisters to ever marry. The other day she was set again as her favourite daughter because all of a sudden she was Mrs. Wickham. The woman is to be hated, and nothing more or less!

~Julie~, on Jan 14, 2011 - 11:55, said:

At the moment, we don't need money so don't worry about that! Ideas, on the other hand, are always welcome. If you think that IB Survival is missing a feature, or something that could be improved, please let us know!

Just thought I would chime in (because I'm procrastinating again!).

First of all, I want to stress that Elsa (~Lc~) and Hien (Ruan Chun Xian) are the only reason this site really became a reality. It was first created after I spent hours and hours and more hours creating various notes for subjects in order to help students in my class. My year at school were the first to sit the IB so most of the teachers were still a bit dodgy when it came to the details of IB assessments, etc. I took it upon myself to do the research and eventually built up a database of various things (curriculum, notes, samples, etc). I've always felt that people should have access to these things. Initially we were just giving out things for free, but like most things, it costs money to provide certain services. We have almost 5GB of files here and the site takes up quite a lot of bandwidth. In fact, the growth recently means that I will probably have to expand a bit (which I've put some money aside for).

There are still some big ideas I have about further developing the site, but I first have to finish my next set of exams! Then I can spend some more time here and add some new features. If you have any queries or ideas, please let me know!

Alright let me make this clear so that future keenos who want to take on the reigns after the guys we have now can know how to go about doing this.

Hien, Graeme and myself were on a forum called TSR where we met and spent a stupid amount of time helping others with their work. Like ridiculous! Hien and myself might have looked over at least 50 essays that few months. Graeme had an idea of putting up sample works online so students can access them. But it was too expensive, and we didn't have any control over the IB forum on TSR which we ran anyway. So he decided to have a forum of our own instead. We started small, and expanded into all the sub forums you see now!

The philosophy we had, was give a little to receive the help we've provided. So if you want the files, you need to make enough posts to help others before we allow you to access them. If you don't have time, then financial contribution is the way to go.

It's hard to stay motivated to help IBers when it's so far in your own past. So we look into getting IB students on our mod team who we know will be dedicated in keeping the forum clean and always giving out advice. Which is why we got Austin and Desy. They went through a selection processes earlier in the end of September.

If you are keen enough to want to be considered for modship you need to:
1. Show us you know what a good/bad post is by reporting the bad ones
2. There needs to be a need for another member of staff (i.e more traffic)
3. You need to be active enough on the forum.

A moderator should be both sensible in posting, but more importantly active enough to know the in and out of the forum.


Hope that clarifies things

I read the series two summers ago out of curiosity, and it was more than horrible; it was utter rubbish. I gave the first book a chance, since I thought that the author was just 'starting out', but everything just went downhill as the pages progressed. Her diction, structure, vocabulary, and above all, her GRAMMAR. It's horrible, especially in Breaking Dawn. I was just so utterly annoyed by these silly yet obvious grammatical mistakes. You'd think the woman would notice such mistakes after 3 novels (4, counting her science fiction book). The more I read it, the more it slowly killed me inside, but the stubborn fighter in me insisted I go on until the very last page, and I did.

The idea of Edward is not so much appealing as it is comforting. The only logical reasoning I have for why people obsess over Edward so much these days is that he's a very basic guy; when you think about it, he has no specific personality. He drives a Volvo (or was it a Range Rover?), he shines, he has  a cannibalistic attraction to Bella he just happens to control. Of course hopeless girls who only want to be fed dreams will love Edward; he's too obedient to function, and therefore he is a vampire. Every fault in him is represented in the fact that he is a vampire. No, people, vampires aren't cowards. Edward is a coward, lol. I'm sorry if I offend anyone, but he honestly is. He takes no initiative.

If I had to change the ending to a more suitable one, in my opinion, it would be that Bella's personality develops from the empty vessel that she is to a logical woman who ends up defying all she's dreamed of. She would go for Jacob when Edward left her to go to Italy, and she would have an inner psychological struggle in which she would have to choose between the forbidden fruit (Edward) and Jacob, the safer, more logical choice. And it goes on from there. And she would still be impregnated by Edward in what is depicted in my version as the biggest mistake ever, and she makes one of the wolves imprint it or whatever it is to make it seem like it's Jacob's own. Complicated material, as opposed to the predictable ending we all saw before the two even got together.

2.In other words, for your World Lit, IOC, Science Lab Reports, and so on, your teacher sends out a "representative" sample

These components are all externally assessed regardless of the number of students in the class.

• Extended essay
  
• Theory of knowledge essay
  
• Language A1 world literature
  
• Language A1 school supported self-taught oral examination audio recording
  
• Language A2 written task
  
• Music: Musical investigation
  
• Theatre practical performance proposals and research investigations

The rest are called internal assessments (these are marked by your teacher and examiners moderate their marks) such as science lab reports, mathematics portfolios etc.

3.The size of this sample depends on the number of students in your class (I think - this is the one point that needs confirming)

This is indeed true. However, to be more precise:

Students in a class:

• <= 5:  all works
  
• 6-20: 5 candidates' works
  
• 21-40: 8 candidates' works
  
• >=41: 10 candidates' works

Just throwing this out there, because I see a lot of questions and a lot of wishy-washy answers about this...

• Your score in certain subjects is made up of components that are internally assessed and externally moderated
  
• Addition: some components, like your World Literature essay(s), ToK essay, and of course Extended Essay, are not moderated but assessed (i.e. all sent off) [thanks for lynyrd and imopotato for pointing out that the WL is not moderated]
  
• For others, like your IOC, Mathematics portfolios, Science Lab Reports, Economics Portfolio, (and so on), your teacher sends out a "representative" sample
  
• The size of this sample depends on the number of students in your class (imopotato cites the following; students in class : number of students' samples sent off: 5 or less : all | 6-20 : 5 | 21-41 : 8 | more than 41 : 10 |. This sounds reasonable to me.
  
• The sample consists of: the best score(s); the worst score(s); and the score(s) closest to the three quartiles (25%; 50%; 75%)... in other words a sample spread fairly accross the board
  
• The IB responds with a moderating curve, to adjust your teacher's scoring to the IB-school-wide standard This mechanism is not entirely easy to understand, but all you need to know is
  
• Sometimes all of the samples have been marked up, leading to a higher mark for all pieces handed in in the class
  
• Sometimes they are all marked down, leading to lower grades for everybody
  
• Sometimes (often, apparently) the top scores drop 1-2 marks, and the bottom ones gain 1-2 marks (imagine a sinuous sort of curve)

I can't really vouch for the technical accuracy of these statements, because my teachers gave them to me (semi-confidentially), but you can be almost certain that they are correct.

In terms of the implications ... the main one I guess is make sure you don't beg your teacher for marks, because you are putting an entire class' grades into jeopardy. An interesting side note is you can "cheat" in a sense and ensure your pieces of work aren't sent off for moderation, if you have a very obliging teacher. But I wouldn't recommend this; firstly because, as well all know from ToK, induction is not a reliable process (i.e. this could change for next year), and secondly, a teacher that obliging probably will cause the entire grade to be moderated down anyways.

One thing you can do is contact your IB Coordinator if you think your teacher is grading you poorly. Because if he is, and you're still doing top-notch work, your own score might suffer.

Anything to add or subtract from this is appreciated.

Update on external assessment. Turns out your IB Coordinator sends materials directly to the Examiners as told by IBO, who mark a large stack of papers and send a certain sample (following the same guidelines as above) to be remarked by another Examiner. It goes up in terms of seniority, in some way or another, so some papers end up being marked three times (the honour!) and some end up on the Chief Examiner's desk. The mechanism isn't entirely clear either but it seems to be quite close to a foolproof system, and you can also ask for a remark.

Well first of all, I would try and focus on the IB tests. You put two years of your life into IB, so try to put the most of your studying time on this.

You can always retake the SAT and SAT subject tests, and keep your old scores, making it much simpler/easier than IB retakes. Also, check the deadlines for the schools that you're applying to. Many will allow SAT test scores to be sent in  late January (meaning a December/January administration), which will be after the majority, if not all of the IB tests.


For how to manage study time, I would say to spend 90% of the time studying. Then, spend that remaining 10% doing something fun.
You don't want to go insane lol. Try to put the fun time at the time of the day when you feel that it won't interrupt your studies, and when you feel that you won't study the best.

I found a rather interesting blog on Sparknotes. Dan Bergstein reads the books chapter by chapter and then outlines what he thinks of each chapter and of the book as a whole. At this point, he is nearly through book three. A lot of the time, it's pretty juvenile, but he comes up with a couple of interesting insights into why it is ridiculous.
It is called Blogging Twilight.

I love how polarizing Twilight is, because people have extremely strong opinions about it. There are long detailed paragraphs, articles or essays about why people dislike it, find it ridiculous or analyze it to death.

Fun fact: Blogging Twilight keeps a count, and the author has used the word "murmur" 63 times in the first 21 chapters of her third book.

The simple language, plot holes (such as the inconsistencies with Alice's power), hypocrisy (pushing abstinence and then advocating teen marriage and teen pregnancy?), weakness of the protagonist's character, lack of character growth, total lack of intellectual stimulation (except to criticize, it seems) and the blatant insult to vampire literature as a way to reel in a teenage girl audience (feel free to disagree with me here) go against everything I can appreciate in a book.