Self-evaluation Questions

Just add your answers (in complete sentences, please!) to your reflections posting.

1. Now that the semester has come to an end, look at your goals you set for yourself at the beginning of the semester. Which of the goals did you achieve? Why did you achieve them?

2. Which of the goals did you not achieve? What could you have done differently to achieve them?

3. Read the competencies list for this level (you can find this in the syllabus on WebCT). Check which of them you could explain without difficulty today? How many did you check? Does this number satisfy your real goal for English?

4. Do you feel you applied yourself to improving your English abilities? Why or why not?

5. Taking into account that at least 60% of our English courses will be content, what activities would you like to see happen with the other 40% of the time?

6. Overall, you deserve a ______________ as your final note in this class because…..

  ¶ 8:09 AM 0 comments

  Improving proofreading skills

Find the three sentence fragments. Correct the fragments by (1) changing the punctuation and creating one complete sentence, or (2) adding new words to make the fragment a complete sentence. Post the corrections on your blog.

There were also several differences between Washington and Lincoln. Washington came from a wealthy aristocratic background. He had several years of schooling. Lincoln came from a poor background and had very little schooling. Another difference between the two involved their military roles. Washington was a general. He was a military leader. Became president. Lincoln never served in the military. He was a lawyer who early on became a politician. When he became president, he took on the role of commander in chief, as all U.S. presidents do. Despite his lack of military background or training. Lincoln made several strategic decisions that enabled the U.S. military leaders to win the Civil War. Finally, Washington served for two terms and therefore had eight years to accomplish his policies. Lincoln, on the other hand, was assasinated. While in office and was not able to finish some of the things that he wanted for the country.

Find and mark the mistakes (tense, punctuation, word order, preposition, word choice, grammar, missing word(s), spelling ) in the following short biography. Post the corrections on your blog.

Jack Friedhamm was born to New York in October 25, 1965. He began school at the age of six and continued until he was 18 years. He then went to New York University to learn Medicine. He decided on Medicine because he liked biology when he was at school. While he was to University he met his wife Cindy. Cindy was a beautiful woman with hair long black. They went along for yeers before they decided getting married. Jack began to work like a doctor as soon as he graduated to Medical School. They had two children named Jackie and Peter, and have lived in Queens since the past two years. Jack is very interested painting and likes to paint portraits of his sun Peter.   ¶ 11:12 AM 0 comments

  Wrapping things up To do in the lab today:

(1) Sentence correction and grammar exercises (see entry above this one).

(2) Survery on blogging. Click here to take the survery.

(3) Work on your portfolio. For your reflections, I want the answers to be in COMPLETE SENTENCES. These sentences must then form PARAGRAPHS. Please EXPLAIN IN DETAIL your answers to the questions.   ¶ 10:49 AM 0 comments

  How's it going? Building on the reflective writing we started in class, consider the following questions:

1. In which areas of language use have you improved, in your opinion?
2. Which areas of langauge use are still a problem?
3. Which areas of language use do you want to spend the most time on during the rest of the semester?
4. What type of classwork is most useful, in your opinion?
5. What can you personally do to increase your rate of progress?
6. Do you have any other comments or suggestions about this class?

Please, be honest and critical. You should post your reflection on your blog by the end of semana santa.   ¶ 9:28 AM 0 comments

  For your next vocabulary quiz These are the words for your next vocabulary quiz (the week after Semana Santa). You need to pick 10 of the words below and (1) give the translation in Spanish, (2) give a definition of the word in English, and (3) use the word in an example sentence. All of this must be done in a comment to this blog posting. These are all words that you might see in high-level business writing, on the TOEFL, or on an exam like the GRE or GMAT, if you decided to get your MBA some day!

1. Expedite
2. Considerate
3. Convey
4. Coalesce
5. Discount
6. Esoteric
7. Gullible
8. Jargon
9. Liaison
10. Legacy
11. Myriad
12. Manifest
13. Nominal
14. Oust
15. Placate
16. Pretentious
17. Prudent
18. Quell
19. Rebuke
20. Stoic
21. Tenuous
22. Corroborate
23. Trite
24. Urbane
25. Viable
26. Vie
27. Waver
28. Prolific
29. Incessant
30. Censure

  ¶ 2:40 PM 2 comments

  Exercises on Wordiness & Redundancy Click here to open exercises on avoiding wordiness and redundancy when you are writing. Once on this website, click on Unit 4: Cause-Effect Essays, and then complete Exercises 4, 5, and 6.  ¶ 2:35 PM 0 comments

  Biased Language Assignment

Individually, you need to make a posting on your blog on the topic "Biased Language." The main information source is the e-book Talking about People: A Guide to Fair & Accurate Language by Rosalie Maggio (see Links, URLS, Biased Language on WebCT), but of course you are encouraged to consult additional texts. You must present a summary and critical reflection of the chapters called "Definitions of Terms" and "General Guidelines" from Maggio's text (pages 1 to 15). This should be no less than 200 words. This should be posted by 8:30 pm on Tuesday.

TO BRING WITH YOU TO CLASS ON THURSDAY: REAL-LIFE EXAMPLES. Find at least 2 real-life examples of biased-language. The examples can be either in English or Spanish and may include not only written texts (newspaper articles, novels, text-books, etc.), but also visuals such as advertisements, cartoons, photos, etc. that illustrate biased-language.

  ¶ 9:50 AM 0 comments

  My reflections on an article from yesterday's NYTimes

U.S. and Israel Deny Plans to Drive Hamas From Power
By Steven R. Weisman

WASHINGTON, Feb. 14 — American and Israeli officials warned again Tuesday that they would cut off aid and transfers of tax receipts to a Hamas-led Palestinian government if it did not renounce violence and recognize Israel. They said, however, that they had no plans to oust such a government.

"The bottom line is that there is no U.S.-Israeli plan, project, plot, conspiracy to destabilize or undermine a future Palestinian government," said Sean McCormack, a State Department spokesman.

He spoke in response to an article in The New York Times on Tuesday in which American and Israeli officials and diplomats said they were discussing ways to destabilize the Palestinian government, with the intention of forcing new elections.

...

The events of the past month and a half in Israel have left me rather confused. I have a general idea of what's going on and what's happened (at least in my twenty-five years of life), but past that, I'm learning right along with you. In general, I can't make myself believe that neither the government of Israel or the US has thought about an ouster. Maybe they don't have plans, but the idea of it all has to be floating around openly. Hamas is branded as a "terrorist" organization by some, and has my country, or at least its president, pledged to cleanse the world of terrorism? I don't think that the Arab/Israeli conflict is going to be going away...ever...so the more informed we are about what is happening, the better.

  ¶ 9:53 AM 0 comments

  Arab/Israeli Conflict Ideas Here's a list of URLs I've been collecting on the Arab/Israeli conflict.

Presentation areas:

1. The Creation of the State of Israel
2. The Arab-Israeli Wars
3. Palestinian Intifadas
4. Peace Initiatives

  ¶ 3:17 PM 0 comments

  Great Hooks

Life changes fast.
Life changes in the instant.
You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends.
The question of self-pity.

Those were the first words I wrote after it happened. The computer dating on the Microsoft Word file ("Notes on change.doc") reads "May 20,2004, 11:11 p.m.," but that would have been a case of my opening the file and reflexively pressing save when I closed it. I had made no changes to that file in May. I had made no changes to that file since I wrote the words, in January 2004, a day or two or three after the fact.

For a long time I wrote nothing else.

Joan Didion, from The Year of Magical Thinking

This was on the New York Times 10 best books of 2005 list. Do you agree that this makes a good narrative hook? Add your comments by clicking below!

  ¶ 8:21 AM 0 comments