Comments from Proto-Portfolio entries

The table below includes a number of comments that I've left on recent Proto-Portfolio entries for the month of October. I'm sharing them here, so everyone will be able to learn from them right away, before November Proto-Portfolio entries are due (Dec. 1).

Rows	Comments
2-16	Japanese numerals don't work in spreadsheet formulas.
9	Please show and tell me in class on Nov. 7 what you have counted as essays in Oct. Thanks.
10	Please count slides as ¶¶ for Essay 2-01a, and encourage your classmates and peers to do the same. Thanks!
10	Please show and tell me in class on Nov. 7 what you have counted as ¶¶ in essays in Oct. Thanks.
11	Your presentation (Essay 2-01a) includes  graphics, doesn't it?
13	Please show and tell me in class on Nov. 7 what you have counted as (a) post(s) with media in Oct. Thanks.
15	Please show and tell me in class on Nov. 7 what you have counted as (a) post(s) with original video in Oct. Thanks.

Please note that entries in rows 11 through 15 of your Proto-Portfolios should match up perfectly with labels you add to posts that you make each month:

• Row 11: graphics,
• Row 12: links,
• Row 13: media (for embedded presentations, as well as audio and video),
• Row 14: media, original audio, &
• Row 15: media, original video.

If you create new labels for posts that include original audio and original video productions, and apply suitable labels to each post that you make from now on, searching through links in the Labels clouds in your sidebars will make it easy for you to count posts for future Proto-Portfolio entries.

For more info. about labels and kinds of posts to use them on, please review the list and explanations on the Labels and Links page.

[280 words]

Preparation for Audioboo recordings

listen to ‘Prep. for Audioboo recordings’ on Audioboo

The Audioboo recording above introduces the current, three-step homework assignment. Please listen to the recording carefully and completely. It is less than two minutes long.

Next, please open and read "more details" on the Writing Studio Calendar event for October 9. You also can find details in your invitation to that calendar event, and in a Gmail reminder to follow a couple of days before the assignment is due.

Screenshot of Writing Studio Blog:
Calendar of Events page
(Agenda view)

If you have concerns or questions about this assignment, please spell them out in comments on this post a day or two before the assignment is due, and make sure to select the option to receive follow-up comments via Gmail. Then, if your classmates, peers, or I respond to your comments, you will get Gmail notification messages immediately.

Thank you in advance for your cooperation.

[158 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]

Fluency MC does collos!

Just connected with an edu-rapper, Fluency MC (Jason R. Levine), who creates music videos highlighting what he calls "collos" (short for collocations) of English vocabulary. In a recent conversation with Dr. Nellie Deutsch (WizIQ: Conversation with Jase: Teacher, Trainer[,] and Entertainer, 2012.09.20), he suggested that he might come to Japan in the future.

On his YouTube page, Levine defines a collo as "a high frequency CHUNK of language" (About Fluency MC). The following featured video, posted less than 24 hours ago, presents dozens of verb+noun collos to help English-as-an-additional language learners remember ways to use the verbs make and do.

 

If you like that, be sure to check out other videos in his English/EFL/ESL ColloLearn playlist. There are 34 of them as of today.

[125 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]