Just Plain English

Class May 18 in room 20…as usual

I can do this — Sat, 18 May 2013 00:46:33 +0000

Hello Writing community,

I am looking forward to working with you once again in our classroom at 8am.

Please be prepared to stay a little bit later if necessary.

See you at class! Ellen

la huelga del SPUM en la Universidad

I can do this — Thu, 09 May 2013 20:24:41 +0000

Lamentablemente ha estallado la huelga del SPUM en la Universidad.

We will not have class until further notice.

HOWEVER, we will continue to work on our second submission to the International Writing Exchange. Since we are participating with another group from another part of the world, I consider that we should continue our writing exchange.

I have been reviewing some of your outlines and sending them back for further work in outline form. Please continue to send them to me by email so I can guide you through the writing process. Some of you are close to drafting.

When you are ready to write your draft, I will let you know on an individual basis.

Remember to post feedback on three or more essays that other members have posted in the Study Buddy groups or especially to the Korean group.
En el momento que se levanta la huelga en la UMSNH les estaremos avisando ya sea por este medio.

Happy Writing.

Writing in abreviated format: now why would anyone want to do that?

I can do this — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 23:23:03 +0000

Hello Writing Community and Writers

As we gear up for this Saturday’s class, I imagine you might be wondering why I asked you to read a chapter on Quantum Writing from the book Quantum Learning. Throughout our careers we will have to summarize, gather our ideas, synthesize, and collect our diversified thoughts and the abundance of ideas and concepts that we expose ourselves to into an understandable mode of writing so we can share with other people. The amount of information we gather is so vast that we need to collect it in such a format so we can access the knowledge readily when we need it.

When we prepare to write a paper, an essay, a composition, an article, a thesis, or a dissertation, we need to organize our thoughts to produce our ideas logically into understandable formats for other people. So, have a look at these cognitive tools which might change us from being product-oriented into process-oriented writers. We will be working with them during our next class and after class you might want to have some for your own….well, here they are!

Be thinking about how you would use these cognitive tools in your daily life. We will share next class.

By this time you should be winding up writing your first composition, the First Impressions essay. When you write this essay, you may want to include something about the Cultural dimensions that you learned and how they might influence your first impressions. Please bring the compositions in printed format that you prepared for our International Writing Exchange so I can have access to them also.

Why is it sooooo difficult to write in English?

I can do this — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 18:47:56 +0000

Here is an article that explains why it is so difficult to write in a foreign language. When we write using a second or foreign language, we are using a different discourse pattern than what we learned in our first language.

Here is an interesting read:

Second language acquisition from Moni Madrigal

Building our writing community.

I can do this — Wed, 12 Sep 2012 15:35:27 +0000

Hello Writers!
I would like to invite you to create a blog so we can consolidate our learning community’ connections. Please go to the side bar on this blog and look for Teacher Challenge activities. This site will walk you through the process of setting up your blog. Use either wordpress or edublogs. WordPress has tutorials for everything in English and in Spanish, so that might be helpful for you.

When you have created and personalized your theme on your blog, send me an email with the URL of your blog. This way I can put you on our class blog and we can become more connected.

If there is a quorum of people who would like to work online, please answer this post with a comment so I know who you are and we can find a way to connect to the online version of the class, which is waht we were going to do during our next class.

The learning curve is steep…but for most of you, it is fun to finally start your first blog. This blog serves to break down the classroom walls, no matter where our classroom is!

Our campus continues to be closed, and Quadratin continues to provide up to the minute coverage of what is happening. Next to all the articles about marches, and plantons, I would like to share this article from Quadratin, which for me, underlines the lack of authenticity in this take-over by “would-be students”

Welcome to the Advanced Writing Course

I can do this — Sat, 20 Aug 2011 09:12:55 +0000

Hello Writers!
Much more than a writing course, in our class we will be building a writing community, growing as people, renewing our English communication skills and communicating with other people around the world.

Our writing community will have visitors from around the world. Please click around this site…you can’t hurt anything. Make sure you ready the guidelines posts in the tabs at the top, they will help you understand how to post and leave comments on these types of pages. Of special interest to you may be Blogging Guidelines and the course syllabus tabs. The tab Lindo Michoacan contains past work of students which we published and tweeted around the world…and which has gotten many responses from people who had previously only heard about Michoacan through the negative aspects reported in sensationalist news stories.

Hello writers!

I can do this — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 23:44:46 +0000

Welcome to Just Plain English, a place to share your thoughts, challenge those of other people and develop as a writer.

Then check out this video about plagiarism, not made by me, found it online,available for download on website http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJn_jC4FNDo

Disney Parody explanation of Copyright Law and Fair Use
Synopsis: Professor Eric Faden of Bucknell University provides this humorous, yet informative, review of copyright principles delivered through the words of the very folks we can thank for nearly endless copyright terms.
***Description taken from website***
Original Video Found at http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/document…

I’m looking forward to working with you. Ellen