NI Written Communication @ Uninorte

Self-evaluation Questions

2006-05-04T08:09:00.000-07:00

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…..

Improving proofreading skills

2006-05-02T11:12:00.000-07:00

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.

Wrapping things up

2006-05-02T10:49:00.000-07:00

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.

How's it going?

2006-03-30T09:28:00.000-08:00

Building on the reflective writing we started in class, consider the following questions:

In which areas of language use have you improved, in your opinion?
Which areas of langauge use are still a problem?
Which areas of language use do you want to spend the most time on during the rest of the semester?
What type of classwork is most useful, in your opinion?
What can you personally do to increase your rate of progress?
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.

For your next vocabulary quiz

2006-03-27T14:40:00.000-08:00

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!

Expedite
Considerate
Convey
Coalesce
Discount
Esoteric
Gullible
Jargon
Liaison
Legacy
Myriad
Manifest
Nominal
Oust
Placate
Pretentious
Prudent
Quell
Rebuke
Stoic
Tenuous
Corroborate
Trite
Urbane
Viable
Vie
Waver
Prolific
Incessant
Censure

Exercises on Wordiness & Redundancy

2006-03-27T14:35:00.000-08:00

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.

Biased Language Assignment

2006-03-10T09:50:00.000-08:00

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.

My reflections on an article from yesterday's NYTimes

2006-02-16T09:53:00.000-08:00

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.

Arab/Israeli Conflict Ideas

2006-02-13T15:17:00.000-08:00

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

Presentation areas:

The Creation of the State of Israel
The Arab-Israeli Wars
Palestinian Intifadas
Peace Initiatives

Great Hooks

2006-02-13T08:21:00.000-08:00

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!

Describing: Your Favorite Carnival Memory

2006-02-02T08:17:00.000-08:00

Today in the lab you need to:

(1) Open your blog account if you haven't done so already. Go to www.blogger.com and follow the instructions there.

(2) Your in-class writing assignment today is to continue with the free writing exercise we did at the end of class last time on your favorite Carnival memory. You need to revise what you've written, add to it, subtract from it, etc.

What should a description do?

Describe!
Give impressions, not definitions
"Show" the reader
Create a sensory image in the reader's mind (hearing, taste, touch, sight, smell)

Pay attention to:

Organization. Do you have some kind of introduction and conclusion? Does the order of your thoughts make sense? Are there any parts that are confusing? Do you use transitions to connect your thoughts together?
Punctuation, capitalization, grammar.
Word choice.
DON'T worry much about grammar. We'll think about that later.

Post your revised descriptive paragraphs on your blog. Feel free to include pictures if you want!

(3) Comment on one of your classmates' descriptions.

At home: If you haven't already, take the Language Learning Survey so I know more about you and your goals for this class. Click here to take survey.

A Writer's Checklist

2006-01-20T09:07:00.000-08:00

(with thanks to James Houston)

1. Write a lot. Writing is an activity, physical as well as mental, & you learn how to do it well by practice.
2. Read a lot. Fiction, poetry, essays, autobiography. Good writers are your best teachers.
3. Read it aloud. When you have finished something, listen to it.
4. Use concrete & specific language. Look for strong verbs. Be honest.

Language Learning Self-Assessment

2006-01-18T11:54:00.000-08:00

This is your first homework assignment (shouldn't take more the 5 minutes, so don't worry). By completing this survey, I will better be able to understand what your goals in this course are, both of yourself and of me.

Click here to take the survey

Welcome to Ingles III - Written Communication!

2006-01-18T11:36:00.000-08:00

Hi all! This blog, in addition to WebCT, will provide a place for me to convey information to you, for you to comment on what we're doing in class, and as a starting point for creating an electronic portfolio for the writing you create this semester.

Again, welcome, and Happy New Year!

Why blog?

2006-01-18T11:33:00.000-08:00

Here's some reasons for blogging in the language classroom from the BBC Teaching English site.

"One of the best reasons is to provide a real audience for student writing. Usually, the teacher is the only person who reads student writing, and the focus of this reading is usually on form, not content. With weblogs, students can find themselves writing for a real audience that, apart from the teacher, may include their peers, students from other classes, or even other countries, their parents, and potentially anyone with access to the Internet. Here are some other reasons for using blogs:

To provide extra reading practice for students.This reading can be produced by the teacher, other students in the same class, or, in the case of comments posted to a blog, by people from all over the world.
As online student learner journals that can be read by their peers. The value of using learner journals has been well documented. Usually they are private channels between teacher and student. Using a blog as a learner journal can increase the audience.
To guide students to online resources appropriate for their level. The Internet has a bewildering array of resources that are potentially useful for your students. The problem is finding and directing your learners to them. For this reason, you can use your tutor blog as a portal for your learners.
To increase the sense of community in a class. A class blog can help foster a feeling of community between the members of a class, especially if learners are sharing information about themselves and their interests, and are responding to what other students are writing.
To encourage shy students to participate. There is evidence to suggest that students who are quiet in class can find their voice when given the opportunity to express themselves in a blog.
To stimulate out-of-class discussion. A blog can be an ideal space for pre-class or post-class discussion. And what students write about in the blog can also be used to promote discussion in class.
To encourage a process-writing approach. Because students are writing for publication, they are usually more concerned about getting things right, and usually understand the value of rewriting more than if the only audience for their written work is the teacher.
As an online portfolio of student written work. There is much to be gained from students keeping a portfolio of their work. One example is the ease at which learners can return to previous written work and evaluate the progress they have made during a course.
To help build a closer relationship between students in large classes. Sometimes students in large classes can spend all year studying with the same people without getting to know them well. A blog is another tool that can help bring students together."