Do you know what day it is?

On the United Nations' calendar, it's the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, and the beginning of the UN Secretary General's campaign for over two weeks of activism on related themes.

Image source: United Nations
End Violence Day

On the main page about the day, you'll find rationales for international activities and observations, alongs with facts and figures about violence against women and its consequences. There's more info. about the Secretary General's campaign here, including a poster on "school-related gender-based violence (SRGBV) in [the] Asia-Pacific" region:

Image source: United Nations
School-Related Gender-Based Violence
(SRGBV)

On the Orange Day page is a call for business, governmental, institutional and social action. Want to find out what you can do? Grab the toolkit (PDF) and get started!

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Happy Halloween!

The following is a representation of a post from the Language Learner Development Project Blog (LLD Project Blog, Happy Halloween, 2008.10.31), a work licensed "under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License" (LLD Project Blog, License). I am reusing the copyright image in the original post with permission of the copyright owner. You can see the copyright notice if your hover your cursor over the photo below [in the actual Blogger post, not the Feedburner mail announcement], before clicking.

This is a quick, seasonal, website recommendation... for anyone ... interested in customs, history, and traditions: a History of Halloween minisite at history.com. I recommend the articles entitled Ancient History and Around the World, but there's much, much more on the site [including advertisements, games, and videos]. Just click on the link (above), or the picture (below), and go see for yourselves.

If you'd like to compare the Jack-0-Lantern in the photo above with his predecessors from last year, please check out either of last year's Halloween videos (Writing Studio Blog, Welcome Home Hallows, 2007.10.31).

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Revised 2008.11.06
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Orange books and book reviews

What we call the orange book is a required text for Writing III and IV (all sections). It is a log book for extensive reading practice. Please start using it to log your readings for these courses right away.

You can find lots of easy books to read in the English Reading Garden (ERG), in the KGU Library. Please check out Mr. T's comic introduction to the ERG by command clicking on the link above, and then clicking on the image in the center of the comic site. After class, head over to the library to grab yourself a handful of books to read.

In order to promote fluency in your writing, I recommend that you read at least three graded readers a week. Starting this week, you must post a brief written review, in your own words (not copied or machine-translated) of at least one book per week. You should post 12 or more book reviews on your blog this semester.

For more info. about the orange book, please review the post entitled Extensive Reading Logs (2007.05.12). The PUK Library Collection is another place you can look for books to read, and for word counts for books that may not be listed in the orange book.

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