The end of semester draws nigh!

What you do in these last few weeks is extremely important, if you want to earn credit for Writing III this year. This post provides a count-down to help keep you on track for successful completion of coursework.


Today's class: Wed., July 9th

Today was the next-to-last regular class meeting for spring semester. Those of you who were absent should:

• View the two most recent snapshots (class work and homework, 2014.07.09) in the white-board snapshots folder that your instructor has shared with you, and then
• Ask classmates (§1C) or peers (§1A) who attended class today to help you to understand and do what you missed.

Make-up class: Next Wed., July 16th

Next Wed., from 9:00 to 10:30 a.m., is an early make-up class for students from §§ 1A and 1C who will be going abroad before the last regular class meeting (July 23rd, below). Those students will need to attend the make-up class next Wed. 

However, your instructor would like to invite the rest of you to come as well, to use the computer lab. space that he has reserved, so you can work together to catch up on and improve work on all assignments due before final exams. That is, the rest of you are welcome to attend the early make-up session, too, but only if you arrive by 9:00 a.m.


Last regular class meeting: Wed., July 23rd

The last regular class meetings this semester will be Wed., July 23rd, at the usual times. Everyone who is not going abroad on a university-sanctioned exchange program will need to attend. 


Last day of classes: Tues., July 29th

All course work except final blog posts, peer-to-peer comments, and Proto-Portfolio entries for July (below) will be due by midnight, July 29th, the last day of classes this semester. Course work due July 29th includes: 

• Book reviews,
• Corresponding bibliography entries, and 
• Portfolio Elements updates and revisions.

Exam periods for Writing III, §§ 1A and 1C: Wed., July 30th

Semester final exams for students not going abroad on a university-sanctioned exchange program will be on Wed., July 30. Please note that exams periods are on a one-hour time schedule. You should plan to arrive 10-15 minutes before starting times, and have your work stations and browsers ready for use, because exams will begin immediately.


Proto-Portfolio (PPF) entries for July: Fri., Aug. 1st

All PPF entries for July will be due at the usual time: 5:00 p.m., the first of next month; Fri., Aug. 1st.* 


Please talk over this schedule of events with your classmates and peers. Then, if you have any concerns or questions about this count-down to the end of Writing III this semester, please spell them out in comments on this post at least 48 to 72 hours before particular events in the count-down. That lead-time will give your classmates, peers, and instructor an opportunity to share related concerns, questions, and understandings.

 ____________________
* Note: Original blog posts, book reviews, and peer-to-peer comments from Aug. 1st onward will count as fall semester coursework for Writing IV in §§ 1A and 1C.

[495 words]

Dance Mat Typing (BBC, 2005)

Though the BBC developed the Dance Mat Typing site for school-aged children, seven to 11 years old, it also can help older students unfamiliar with touch typing get started (or restarted) typing quickly using all ten digits–fingers and thumbs on both hands. Amusing animated animal characters introduce keyboarding techniques and practice activities in a step-by-step fashion through four levels and 12 stages. Practice activities begin with ten keys in the home row (A-G and H-;), and work up to punctuation and capitalisation (BBC, 2005, About this site). The key to learning to type quickly and well from practice on site is to listen carefully to the instructions, paying special attention to what you see on screen rather than looking at your fingers or the keyboard. 

The animated characters speak (or mimic) different varieties of English, which may challenge learners of English as an additional language. Yet colourful screens show progress through each stage, and there are audio and visual cues to give feedback on mistyping during practice activities. Moreover, there is plenty of review practice–Warm Ups for every new stage, and the site offers printable certificates at the end of each level.

Working your way through each of the stages and levels, perhaps more than once, should make it much easier to complete both typing homework and writing assignments. As the BBC explained, "touch typing is the fastest way to write" (BBC, 2005, About this site, Why learn to touch type? ¶1).

Reference

BBC. (2005). Dance mat typing [website]. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/typing/

[255 words]

BR 1-03: Hairy Maclary (Dodd, 1983)

Another favorite story with animals!

"'EEEEEOWWWFFTZ!' said Scarface Claw" (n.p.).

Hairy Maclary is an animal adventure story from New Zealand (NZ). It was a gift from a friend from . . . , you guessed it–NZ! It's a great story for pronunciation practice because of all of the rhymes. My favorite line from the book, the quotation above (no page numbers), is a bit of a challenge to pronounce. Can you say that big word, and make it sound like a . . .  (a four-footed animal)?

Reference

Dodd, Lynley. (1983). Harry Maclary from Donaldson's Dairy. Wellington, NZ: Mallinson Rendel Publishers Ltd.

[106 words]

BR 1-02: The Cross-with-Us Rhinoceros (Bush & Geraghty, 1988)

Photo of book cover, 2014.04.17

"Poor Tilly was so scared she couldn't speak" (Bush & Geraghty, 1988, n.p.*).

This is a children's book that I've read again and again. It is a great story about four children who went out together and had an adventure. Like the last book I reviewed, BR 1-01: Dear Zoo (2014.04.16), this one features animals. The ending was surprising, but I'm not going to tell you what happened. You'll have to read it for yourself.

Reference

Bush, John, & Geraghty, Paul. (1988). The Cross-with-Us Rhinoceros. London, England: Hutchinson Children's Books.

____________________
* This story doesn't have page numbers. If it did, I'd use "p. #" instead of "n.p." (no page number).

[117 words]

BR 1-01: Dear Zoo (Campbell, 1982)

I wrote to the zoo to send me a pet.... So they sent me a .... He was too grumpy! I sent him back. (Campbell, 1982, n.p.*)

Dear Zoo is a children's book. It is short and easy to read. It tells a story about animals coming from the zoo. There are little windows to open to see surprising things. If you like zoo animals, or easy books to read, I recommend this story.

Reference

Campbell, Rod. (1982). Dear Zoo. London, England: Campbell Books.

____________________
* This story doesn't have page numbers. If it did, I'd use "p. #" instead of "n.p." (no page number).

[106 words]

A Rack of Start-up Labels

Between the hash marks below is a set of labels to add to new posts on individual blogs:

/////

books, brainstorms, drafts, essay prep., essays, fiction, free-writing, graphics, links, media, movies, non-fiction, outlines, quickposts, reviews, revisions, typing, websites

/////

(Source: The Writing Studio Blog, Start-up Labels, 2012.04.22; ...
[used with author's permission])

Some of the labels are required. For example, on book reviews, you will need to use at least three labels during 1st semester, including: "books, ...," PLUS, "fiction, …," OR "non-fiction, …" AND "reviews, …"  (all comma-separated values without quotation marks or ellipsis). You are welcome to use other suitable labels for book reviews as well, such as genre labels like "adventure, ..., " "history, ...," or "romance, ...," as long as they suit the content of your [book review] posts . 

For instructions on using the other labels, please see the Labels and Link Lists page.

Now, to jump-start your own label collections, please:

1. Add a labels gadget to the sidebar of your blog, then
2. Copy and paste the labels between hashmarks in the list above into a new draft post on your own blog;
3. Entitle the new draft post, "My Start-up Labels" (in title case without quotation marks);
4. Copy and paste the same labels into the Labels field on your draft start-up labels post; and
5. Publish your start-up labels post on your blog....

Once you've published your start-up labels post, with those labels in the label field as well as [in] the body of the post, the labels will show up in your Labels gadget. Later, when you label new posts or re-label previous posts, you will be able to quickly choose appropriate labels for required and other posts, rather than typing them all in [by hand].

[315 295 words]

Text Correction in Google Docs

The five-minute video that I've embedded below shows how to use text correction tools in Google Docs. As I mentioned in a previous post, auto-correction functions can help you tidy up texts that you've typed quickly, as you do for typing homework assignments (Using Correction Tools after Typing Trials, March 7, 2013).

Instead of a typed text, for this demonstration, I've started correcting a short passage generated from a graphic by Google's optical character reading (OCR) technology. Yet, as the screenshot below the video indicates, the correction tools don't work perfectly.

Even after five minutes treatment with Google correction tools, a number of errors remained, some still marked by Google (dotted red underscores), but without suitable suggestions for auto-correction. There were others not spotted by Google at all. The latter I highlighted by hand either during the demonstration (yellow backgrounds) or afterwards (blue backgrounds). Those still needed hands-on checking and correction.

To make a long story short, after complete correction, and prettied up a bit for a block quotation, it looks like this:

... A fault line runs through the disciplines concerning culture. On one side are disciplines like history or cultural anthropology, rooted in a historicist logic of seeking local regularities within a bounded milieu. On the other are disciplines like economics, driven by a functionalist logic of seeking transhistorical generalizations. Organizational behavior involves both of these logics.... Yet, the emic and etic perspectives each provide only half of the story. ... / ... [A] richer account of culture can result when an integrative explanatory framework arises. 

(Morris, Leung, Ames, & Lickel, 1999, p. 790)

In retrospect, there seem to have been a number of OCR-generated errors in the passage, for example the two "cx" strings remaining in the second to last line of the first paragraph (one stand alone, and the other in the middle of an underscored word). I had corrected another instance of "cx" to "a" while making the video. If I had used the "Select all matching text" option the first time, I might have been able to correct all three at once.

The string "ol" appears to be another such OCR error, a misreading the word "of", as do the "lo" string, a misreading the word "to", and OCR-generated periods instead of commas (¶1, lines 2 and 7; and ¶2, line 1). For that particular typeface and layout (serif, with full-justification, in the original), Google seemed to have had trouble with commas, and with the letters a, f, and t.

Once you begin to recognize recurring errors, in your typing as well as in optical character read texts, it is possible to use the Find and replace function (Edit menu) to correct numerous errors at once.

For instance, the search shown above would:

• Seek " ol " – with single spaces before and after the letters, to find only stand-alone instances of "ol" – not words like alcohol, oligarchy, or polyphenol; and 
• Replace " ol " with " of " – similarly spaced.

If there are any hits on those search term[s], the buttons across the bottom of the dialog box will become active, and have dark lettered labels.

That fine-tuned search might be a safe bet for the Replace all function (circled in orange, but still grayed out, above). However, if you're not absolutely certain that your search and replacement terms are exact, it will be better to review and replace search strings one at a time using the Next, or Previous, and Replace buttons.

Reference

Morris, Michael W.; Leung, Kwok; Ames, Daniel; & Lickel, Brian. (1999). Views from inside and outside: Integrating emic and etic insights about culture and justice judgement. The Academy of Management Review, 24(4), 781-796. Retrieved November 15, 2012, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/259354

[609 words]

Examples of Quotations and Ellipses

In this post, there are examples of quotations from an article on a website, and from a report published online in portable document format (PDF). Some longer examples include ellipses, or removals of words. There are short references in parentheses in the body of this post, and complete references at the end to point out the sources of the quotations.

Quotation within a quotation

In the passage below that I've quoted from the article on a website, Clark (2012) had quoted parts of the report (EF English First [EF], 2012). I've highlighted in yellow the parts of the report that Clark had quoted, both in my quotation from the website (below) and in another quotation from the original report (farther below).

". . . English will maintain and grow its dominance, moving from 'a marker of the elite' in years past to 'a basic skill needed for the entire workforce, in the same way that literacy has been transformed in the last two centuries from an elite privilege into a basic requirement for informed citizenship'" (Clark, 2012, ¶1, after EF, 2012).

Please note that Clark had combined phrases from two sentences in the original report into a single sentence structure of her own. The ellipsis, three spaced periods (". . . "), at the beginning of my quotation from the website (above) shows where I've shortened Clark's sentence.

However, I have replaced double quotation marks that were in the passage from Clark's article above with single quotations to show the beginnings and ends of Clark's quotations within my quotation (above). Replacing double quotation marks with single quotation marks indicates quotations within quotations.

• Double quotation marks show the beginnings and ends of my quotations from the webiste (above) and from the report itself (below).
• Single quotation marks within the double quotation marks above show the beginnings and ends of the parts of the original report that Clark had quoted.

Long quotation of the original

In the following quotation of the original passage from the EF report, and in the quotations with ellipses below that, please note that there are only double quotation marks.

"Today English proficiency can hardly be thought of as an economic advantage at all. It is certainly no longer a marker of the elite. Instead it is increasingly becoming a basic skill needed for the entire workforce, in the same way that literacy has been transformed in the last two centuries from an elite privilege into a basic requirement for informed citizenship" (EF, 2012, p. 12).

Original with ellipses

In both of the shortened quotations below, please note that ellipsis still shows where I've cut words out, and that I've shortened the quotations in ways that preserve grammatical units. Please also note that square brackets show where I've added words for clarification.

"Today English proficiency . . . is certainly no longer a marker of the elite. Instead it is increasingly becoming a basic skill needed for the entire workforce, . . . [and] a basic requirement for informed citizenship" (EF, 2012, p. 12).

"Today English proficiency . . . is increasingly becoming a basic skill needed for the entire workforce, . . . [and] a basic requirement for informed citizenship" (EF, 2012, p. 12).

Bits of the original recontextualized

In a message for prospective students that I prepared yesterday, I shared EF's assertions that English is not only "a basic skill needed for the entire workforce," but also "a basic requirement for informed citizenship" (EF, 2012, p. 12).

References

Clark, Dorie. (2012). English - The Language of Global Business? Retrieved February 28, 2012, from http://www.forbes.com/sites/dorieclark/2012/10/26/english-the-language-of-global-business/

EF Education First [EF]. (2012). EF English Proficiency Index 2012 [PDF]. [n.p.]: EF Education First. Retrieved February 28, 2013, from http://www.ef.com/__/~/media/efcom/epi/2012/full_reports/ef-epi-2012-report-master-lr-2

[625 words]

Grammarist: resource site for writers

Though plain in appearance, the Grammarist site looks like a rich source of information for writers – on everything from punctuation and spelling to style. The site sports six categories: usage, words and phrases, spelling, grammar, style, and writing (sidebar, left).

There are numerous avenues into the site, in addition to previews of recent posts displayed 10 at a time in the main column. It has an alphabetical index (top left), as well as a glossary (lower left). "The date on each post reflects either the date that post was first published or the date of its last major revision" (About Grammarist: Colophon, ¶3, retrieved 2013.01.25). Colored tags next to previews of posts indicate to which category each post belongs.

[121 words]

WSBulletin 2-02 (Fall 2012): Book Reviews & Revised Essays

A couple of quick comments already this a.m., and follow-ups (reminders), for everyone:

pab said...  Hello R...,  All book reviews this semester need an opening quotation to spark readers' interest, and an APA-style reference at the end.  Cheers, PB  December 13, 2012 ...	Everyone: Please review WSBlog posts with the labels "quotations" and "references," especially: WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 8, 2010 Quotations and references for book reviews
pab さんは書きました... H...,  You and your group mates need to rewrite your essay in the _third person_, without "I," "We," or "You" [in main clauses]. Cheers, PB  2012年12月13日 ...	Example (from 1C, Dec. 12): Version 2-03a (draft): We chose this actress because she ... and .... Version 2-03b (revision): The reasons we chose this actress were she ... and ....

If you have concerns or questions about either the on-going book review assignment, or the current movie review assignment, please spell them out in comments on this post.

[170 words]

Writing Rules! Advice From The Times on Writing Well - NYTimes.com

In Writing Rules! Advice From The Times on Writing Well, my favorites are rules five and nine. Here are a few excerpts from those two rules, and from one of the cross-linked readings.

Rule five, Study Sentences, comprises two related suggestions:

Look for examples of interesting sentence structure and sentence variety in a work you are studying or reading, then write your own "copy-change” versions, in which you borrow another author’s structure and use it to create your own piece. 

You might also consider excerpts from children’s book[-s] to review sound literary devices and explore the music that sentences make.

(Rule 5: Study Sentences, ¶¶4-5, italics added)

A Pomegranate Words page illustrates the "copy-change" process with poetry, if you follow the first link in the passage above. Yet the process of imitating sentence structure–not copying content–applies equally to prose, as does the advice on that page to give credit to your sources:

If there's no trace of the source, you don't need to give anyone else credit. If, on the other hand, evidence of the original structure remains, you should give a nod to the first writer in some way.

(Pomegranate Words, 2008, Poetry: Copy Change (Imitation), ¶2).

Rule nine, Fail, again from the Times, may sound a bit too adventurous–until you read the explanations. Though the subject heading, "Fail," is an attention grabber, the point is to learn from your mistakes by collecting and reflecting on your written work:

Value mistakes, and the successes that grow from them, by keeping a portfolio of your work, including revisions and editing exercises. You might even reflect in writing on how your writing has progressed....

(Rule 9: Fail, ¶2, italics added)

The suggestions that I've highlighted above should seem quite familiar to you by now. If they don't, please ask about them either in class, or in comments on this post.

[312 words]

Pointers to videos from the LLD Project Blog

In this post, I'm replicating a post on the Language Learner Development Project Blog with the author's permission. I want to share, here, the same pointers to a collection of videos for listening comprehension that I did on that blog.

Let’s Have Fun with English: Videos for listening comprehension

Posted by Paul Beaufait in LanguageLearning

Thanks to Larry Ferlazzo for pointing out Ms. Haquet’s Let’s Have Fun with English video collection in one of his posts:

• Excellent Video Site for Learning English (2012.03.26).

Here’s a direct link to Ms. Haquet’s site, and here’s another straight to her menu of videos for listening comprehension. The two videos that I’ve previewed so far represented … [two distinct] cultures, and ranged in difficulty from intermediate to advanced:

• The Crown Jewels, and
• Wolverine.

[70 words]

Tags: activities, cultures, listening, videos, viewing

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 11th, 2012 at 14:57 pm and is filed under LanguageLearning. ...

If you're looking for a bit of variety or a change in pace in video viewing, you should check out Ms. Haquet's video resource collection. I have no doubt you'll find other videos there that are challenging to listen to, as well as interesting to watch.

[85 words, above and beyond the 70+ from the other post]

Incorporating quoted passages

This post presents three versions of a filtering and focusing post that I wrote for another blog (The LTD Project Blog, 2012.06.22). I am posting these three versions here to show how to:

1. Sandwich paragraph-length quotations between personal reflections;
2. Shift the balance of content from quotations to reflections, by:
1. summarizing rather than quoting an interview prompt, and
2. adding further reflections; and
3. Quote short, already quoted passages, using nested quotation marks.

---

Version 1

In an exclusive interview for the Library Thing, for the State of the Thing newsletter (June 2012), investigative television journalist Dan Rather responded to a question about his former teachers.

You write in the book about the important role certain teachers played in your life. Tell us about those teachers and what key lessons they taught you that you've put to use in your life and career.

One common thread for many of my teachers is that they believed in me and took the time to treat me as an individual. They taught me that it is not just about the destination but it is about the journey. However we try to reform our educational system, we must allow for teachers to see their students as individuals.

(Dan Rather: LibraryThing Author Interview)

Among other issues he addressed were tenacious, growing corporate interests in control of conventional media.  At the end of the interview, Rather also mentioned new installments to come out this fall (2012) in a series on education (HDNet: Dan Rather Reports).

[174 words]

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Version 2

In an exclusive interview for the Library Thing, for the State of the Thing newsletter (June 2012), investigative television journalist Dan Rather responded to a question about important roles his former teachers had played.

One common thread for many of my teachers is that they believed in me and took the time to treat me as an individual. They taught me that it is not just about the destination but it is about the journey. However we try to reform our educational system, we must allow for teachers to see their students as individuals.

(Dan Rather: LibraryThing Author Interview)

Among other issues he addressed were tenacious, growing corporate interests in control of conventional media.  At the end of the interview, Rather also mentioned developing new installments to come out this fall (2012) in a series on education (HDNet: Dan Rather Reports).

[141 words]

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Version 3

In an exclusive interview for the Library Thing, for the State of the Thing newsletter (June 2012), investigative television journalist Dan Rather responded to a question about important roles his former teachers had played.

One common thread for many of my teachers is that they believed in me and took the time to treat me as an individual. They taught me that it is not just about the destination but it is about the journey. However we try to reform our educational system, we must allow for teachers to see their students as individuals.

(Dan Rather: LibraryThing Author Interview)

Among other issues he also addressed were tenacious, growing corporate interests in control of conventional [news] media. That was in response to a passage the interviewer had quoted from Rather's memoirs, Rather Outspoken: My Life in the News, about "'censorship masquerading as good business'" (2012).

At the end of the interview, Rather mentioned developing new installments to come out this fall (2012) in a TV series on education (HDNet: Dan Rather Reports). I'm looking forward to following those developments.

[180 words]

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The third version of the post on that other blog is approximately the same length that the first version was. However, in the third version, the proportion of quoted text has decreased from about 56% (98/174) to 36% (65/180). Square brackets around the word "news" in the third version indicate that I added that word after publishing the post.

[642 words]

Suitable Labels for Posts

Here are a couple more comments and follow-up remarks that I'd like to share with everyone:

Comments	Follow-up remarks
pab2012年5月14日 9:02 Hi K..., I note that you've changed your blog title, and started posting frequently.  Now I'd like to ask you to do me a favor. Would you please reserve the label "free-writing" for "essay prep." assignments that I give leading up to composition of complete essay posts?  You can use "homework" or "studies" for a third label on this post. Cheers, PB	For labels on posts, please follow the instructions in the Google spreadsheet in the Labels and Links page on the Writing Studio Blog,
pab2012年5月14日 9:05 PS: Please also share what you learn from this comment about labels with your classmates (1C) and peers (1A). Cheers, PB
pab2012年5月20日 11:58 Hi S..., I definitely recommend getting into healthy eating habits early on. Regarding labels, would you please reserve "essays" and "free-writing" in particular for specific writing assignments that I give in class? Suitable labels for this post would be "food, habits, [and] health" (without the quotation marks or the word in square brackets). Cheers, PB	For labels on posts, please follow the instructions in the Google spreadsheet in the Labels and Links page on the Writing Studio Blog,

I'd like to ask everyone to review and revise their labels, as necessary, especially on:

1. Book reviews:
• "books, reviews, ..." (CSV, without quotation marks);
2. Draft essays:
• "drafts, essays, ..." ( CSV, without quotation marks); and
3. Revised essays:
• "essays, revisions, ..." (CSV, without quotation marks).

Suitable labels on book reviews, essays, and the like, will enable classmates, peers, teachers, and visitors, to browse and find your posts easily, when they click on active labels in labels gadgets in your blog sidebars.

[267 words]

Start-up Labels (2012)

Here are labels you will need to use for required posts on your blogs:

• books, brainstorms, drafts, essay prep., essays, fiction, free-writing, graphics, links, media, movies, non-fiction, outlines, quickposts, reviews, revisions, typing, websites

(based on: pab's potpourri, My Startup Labels, 2011.04.20; 

with additions in bold typeface)

For example, on book reviews, you will need to use at least three labels, including:

• books, reviews, ... (comma-spaced values);

plus:

• fiction, OR
• non-fiction.

You are welcome to use other suitable labels for book reviews, as well, such as "adventure" or "history" (without quotation marks), as long as they reflect the content of your posts. For details on how to use other required labels, please see Sheet 1 in the Labels and Links page on the Writing Studio Blog.

Now, to jump-start your labels collections, please:

1. Copy and paste the labels in the first list above into a new draft post on your own blog;
2. Entitle the new draft post, "My Start-up Labels" (in title case, without quotation marks);
3. Copy and paste the labels in the list above into the Labels field on the draft start-up labels post;
4. Publish the start-up labels post on your blog; and then
5. Add a labels gadget to your blog. 

Once you've published your start-up labels posts, with labels in the label field (as well as the body of the posts), the labels will show up in your Labels gadget. Then, when you compose new posts, you will be able to choose appropriate labels for required posts, rather than typing them in.

[239 words]

Book ref.: Metal Magic (Marcosson, 1949)

I used the Material Search link (also in the Writing Studio Blog sidebar) to get details for the following example reference citation. Please note the:

• Order of the author's names: Family, Given; 
• Sentence-like punctuation of the main elements with periods:
• Author, 
• Date, 
• Title, and 
• Source; and
• Use of italics and Title Case for the title and subtitle.

If you have any questions about how to write references for your book reviews, please ask them in class, or spell them [out] in comments on this post.

Reference

Marcosson, Isaac F. (1949). Metal Magic: The Story of the American Smelting and Refining Company. New York: Farrar, Straus and Co.

[115 words]