Miscellaneous stuff for this week

Here are two very good literature links:


About imagery here

About symbolism here 
(I really like this website.)

Use and review are critical elements of language learning.   I highly recommend you review your irregular verb past tenses  here
and  here 




Homework for Thursday

1. Dead Poet's Society group assignment (remember to print a copy plus e-mail me a copy).
2. Literary Essay Body Paragraph 2 (Draft 1)  Typed and double spaced.  Remember to include a word count.
3. COC -- Read pp.76-82; do activity 14
4. S&S -- Do Characterization & Narrative Structure questions (pp.95-96) and hand in your answers (typed or handwritten).
5. S&S -- Writing -- read and do pp.320-325
6. Types of NGOs and Discussion Question handouts -- please read and be prepared to discuss

And remember there will be a vocabulary quiz next Tuesday.

The pace and quantity of information will increase in the second half of semester.   It is very important for you to keep up.    The key words for these six weeks are energy and organization as you grapple with skill building and knowledge acquisition and integration.

Homework for Tuesday

I hope you have all recovered from your mid-term exams.  Welcome to academic life.  It's a lot harder then.  Some of you seriously need to attend to your weaknesses if you plan to pass AP5.   Learning Centre and possibly even a tutor would be in order.   But first,  you need to know what is wrong.

For Tuesday's class please do the following.

1. COC --  Unit 3 pp.62-71 Read and Do Ex. 2, 4, 6, 7
2. S&S -- Ch.7 -- Read pp.86-94 and Do Close Reading;  Do Vocabulary Part I & II (pp.97-98); Revising and Editing Paragraphs (pp.292-295).   Correction.  You already did this.  My mistake.  I meant for you to do pp. 312-316.
3. Academic Word List -- review old words; study new words adjacent to encounter

Think about the new groups you wish to form for the second half of term.

And remember for Thursday ...

1.   Body Paragraph 2 (draft 1) is due.

2.   Dead Poet's Society group assignment is due.

Dead Poets Society

You can read the script here    (scroll down and click the link on the page)

Here are some good quotes from the movie.

Literary Terms

You need to learn the basic literary terms (not all, but the most common ones) in order to discuss and write about stories and poetry.

A very good definition and example of  connotation can be found  here

Try this quiz on literary terms.  It is a good review before mid-term exams.  You won't know all the terms, but you can guess some of them.   Here   is another one.

Here is a good glossary of literary terms with definitions and examples.   Explore the poetry lesson link on the page as well.

A good online dictionary for learning about words

Merriam-Webster Online   

is a very good online dictionary for improving your vocabulary.   I highly recommend the free app for Apple or Android devices.    You must get away from translation dictionaries and bad dictionaries that give you poor or insufficient information about words.    And you must learn how to use dictionaries correctly.      Study the example above for the information about the academic word, 'passive'.

First, you need to know which form and meaning of the word you are interested in.  For example, with passive it is the adjective, not the noun form you need to learn.

Second,  you need to learn the pronunciation -- the syllabification, the stress and the individual sounds.

Third you must learn the meaning (try via English, not your own language) in this academic context.

Fourth,  learn the other related forms of the word.

Fifth,  see how the word occurs in sentences.  Then you can write your own sentences using the word.


Additionally,  learning synonyms and antonyms is very beneficial.


If you have done well on vocabulary quizzes 1 and 2, then you are studying vocabulary well.   If you have not done so well,  then there is a problem with how you are studying and learning vocabulary.

A great festival to attend this weekend.

If you have some free time this weekend,  I highly recommend bringing some friends and having some food and fun at this annual French Canadian festival at Beban Park.

Academic Word List Sublist 9 Cloze

See how well you know your academic words by doing this gap fill activity on the topic of marketing.

Another blog and an interesting picture

Apropos today's poem.   Look at this bird's eyes.   What do you feel?

http://vancouverislandlife.blogspot.com/2011/04/tonight-dinner-visitor.html

Analogies

 We use analogies to create a bridge between something a learner knows and something else.


An excellent short YouTube video about analogies







And a great game about analogies can be played here

Homework and Essay Schedule

Homework for Thursday's class

1. Academic word list -- study next group of ten words  (mediate to preliminary) and review the previous thirty. There will be a quiz on Thursday the same format as the first quiz.   I recommend using the worksheet I gave you today to organize your knowledge about these words.
2. Choose a topic (from the 9) in your out of class essay assignment and write a thesis.   I will check this with each student on Thursday and give them the thumbs up or thumbs down.   You may want to begin developing your ideas -- the planning process before the organization -- if you are confident your thesis is good.  The outline and body paragraph one are due next Tuesday at which time we will have a writing workshop.
3. COC -- read pp.43-51
4. S&S -- read and do pp.207-209
5. In groups, rewrite (fix)  the student error sentences (#3, 4, 6, 7, 8).   Each group will hand in the repaired sentences.   This is for 5 marks.   Make sure you get the grammar and semantics right.

Out of Class Essay Schedule 

• Thursday, February 9 -- Essay thesis due -- 

• Tuesday, February 14 --  Essay plan/outline and body paragraph 1 first draft due.  Bring your pre-writing and essay plan/outline to class for discussion with your teacher.  Bring your laptop so you can work on it in class.  

• Tuesday, February 21-- Outline & Body paragraph 1 due (final draft for marking)

• Thursday, March 1 -- Hand in body paragraph 2 for feedback (first draft with outline).

• Thursday, March 8 -- body paragraph 2 due (final draft for marking).

The third body paragraph you will write independently and hand in with the rest of your essay on the final due date.

• Tuesday, March 13 -- Hand in introduction and conclusion for feedback (first draft).
• Tuesday, March 27 -- Complete essay due (final draft for marking).

Remember not to rush this.  The focus is on process -- learning how to write a good essay.    It is important not to neglect the planning and organizing of your essay.   Just as a well built house depends on  good materials and a good architectural/engineering design, your essay depends on good support, good grammar and good organization.   Good luck.

Perfect and Past Perfect Tense

Many of you are forgetting your basic grammar.    I am seeing many mistakes in your writing that AP5 students should not be making.   Tense mistakes are common as are errors with articles and relative clauses.

I recommend a quick review of past perfect tense including practice exercises here

I am also seeing many problems in your writing that I think are causes by excessive translation.   Unless you stop thinking in your first language (which is difficult if you always use it outside of class),  your English will not improve very much!

Cause and Effect

The ability to analyse cause and effect is a critical skill for learners.    Notably, it is important outside the halls of academia as well in that successful businesspeople and politicians, for example, are those best able to understand and act on good cause-->effect analysis.

A good on-line grammar practice for cause and effect is here

This is a little harder cause and effect on-line quiz  here

The Economist magazine is one of the best international publications for reading about what goes on in the world on a variety of topics.    The free online version is excellent, and they have a version for iPads etc., that is even better.       I highly recommend it.   You can view it here




One recent article looked at the Canadian economy,  housing in particular, and considered various causes and effects.    Read it here

Coming Apart (The new cultural gap)

Here  is the newspaper column by Margaret Wente in the Globe and Mail about Charles Murray's new book
"Coming Apart".

and here is another similar article in the New York Times by one of my favourite writers, David Brooks.
 I encourage you to read some of the readers' comments on the article.   Remember that we learn how to write by reading.  Notice how these ordinary readers write their comments.    Note, if you access this New York Times page from a regular PC, you need to sign up.  It is easy to do and it is a good website to do for.  The New York Times is one of the best international newspapers.

Here is a recent video interview with Charles Murray from 2009.

A recent news article in the Nanaimo News Bulletin suggests that 34% of students entering Kindergarden in Nanaimo are unprepared.    Might this support Charles Murray's thesis?  I think so.   You can read the article here. 

These ideas are critical to understanding the context in which many of you will be studying this autumn.  I think it is also helpful for other countries to avoid having this happen to them.

Introduction to Poetry

These two clips are most inspiring.




This is from the wonderful movie,   The Dead Poets Society  (one of my top ten).





This is from  the epic Lord of the Rings.    If you want to understand setting, plot, character, and conflict, then consider these stories.


Another of my favourite movies about love and pain is Shadowlands.




I am a great fan of poetry.    Here are some of my own poetry pages from my own old websites:

My Favourite Poems (Western)

My Favourite Korean Poems

Some Favourite Chinese Poems   (Cold Mountain by Han Shan)

Two great poets -- Basho (Japanese)  and Thoreau (American)

Zen Poetry by Leslie Barclay

The Vortex of Life  (A poem by Leslie Barclay)



The poetry app I showed you on my iPad is also available for iPhone, iPod and Android phones.   It is a wonderful tool for enjoying poetry.     You can learn about it here.   This website also provides plenty of poems and information about poetry.


If you want to listen to poems being read, to get the rhythm, then  go here  and explore these websites

An interesting blog that here  has an interpretation of the poem ("When I was one and twenty) we read this week.

You can listen to the poem in different voices here

Enjoy the beginning of the journey into poetry.      Life is too short to be spent doing things only for work and study.     A good poem is like a good cigar or glass of wine.    Miss it and you miss life itself.   Carpe diem!

What's wrong with these questions?

AP5 students shouldn't be writing questions with these kinds of errors.

1. Which part is your favorite part in the movie?
2. Does the movie relevant some parts of your life?
3. Which is the most special impact which make you a deep memory?
4. Why these 10 solders try to save Ruyan?
5. Why the poor man and rich girl full in love?
6. Do you think what you feel most educational?
7. Which plot of the movie you like best?
8. Why the corpse bride gave up marrying?
9. Why you love the main character?
10. Why the father is killed at last?

Part of the reason for these errors is excessive translation.  Another reason is forgetting to check what you write after you write it (sloppiness).   Another reason is that you have forgotten your grammar.  Nonetheless, this is unacceptable.

I suggest you practice some question writing:

Here         and      Here      and    Here

Please explore the above websites beyond the single page I have linked.