Growing up speaking English as a second language, I have always struggled with academic writing in school. Although Vietnamese is similar to English in terms of sentence structure (i.e subject + verb + object + adverb), I still struggle to express my ideas in English thoroughly. Nevertheless, in ASTU class, we are studying a book called “An Introduction to Academic Writing” by Janet Giltrow (et al), which outlines the conventions of academic writing. One of the things we learned that I found very intriguing was academic citations. In high school, I thought about citations simply as giving credits to the original author to prove that you got the idea from them and you’re not stealing the idea for yourself. Now I understand that citation is not only about avoiding plagiarism but about referencing previous scholars in that area of study, to allow the writer to then present his/her views/opinions about the area of study as part of the collective group. Scholars communicate with each other through their published works, therefore, by citing other scholars, the writer is integrating himself into the other scholars’ conversation and present his/her views on the topic. This got me thinking about the effects of globalization as the more globalized the world becomes, the easier and faster it is for scholars around the world to communicate. Thus, linking back to the start, for someone like myself who speaks two languages, this allows me to access more “conversations” between scholars and connect ideas between a Vietnamese scholar with an English scholar. Additionally, this helps spread ideas around the world even faster as bilingual students are able to connect scholars from different countries through citations.

Apart from Giltrow, we are also reading an article called “Youth, trauma and memorialization: The selfie as witnessing” by Kate Doughlas, in which she discusses the controversy around taking selfies at historical sites. She argues that although some may view taking selfies at historical sites to be disrespectful, it can also be a way millennials use to spread awareness about the place and show their appreciation. In this generation, people express their emotions and share their experiences online in order to reach out to more people. With teenagers taking and sharing pictures of themselves at historical places, they are not being disrespectful, it is simply a new way of showing that they acknowledge the site and meaning it stands for. Being from the generation where technology dominates all aspects of our life, it can be difficult for one to stop and contemplate about the negative effects of technology. In olden times, people record memories in writing things such as diaries, letters and poems, however nowadays, people take pictures and videos instead. Personally, I believe there is nothing wrong with either ways of reminiscing about the past. However, just because we now record memories differently, it should not be a topic of scorns. Additionally, I believe more scholars should produce work like Doughlas, which shines a new and positive light on topics that earlier raised disdain among people. This gives us a new perspective on something that people did not view as “correct”.