CT Lounge

Blogs by Students BAA Program Second Semester B

2009-08-23T14:13:00.000-07:00

Hello Everyone:

What follows below is a list of links to the blogs by the students at the Bilingual Administrative Assistant program, Second Semester B. You can find such nice posts and litteracy projects here!

Please visit them and support your peers' and classmates work by posting comments on their writing.

Luz Acosta

Reading Assigment for the 2nd Semester B.

2009-08-03T21:05:00.000-07:00

Hello guys at the Bilingual Administarve Program, 2nd semester B. This is an example of what you have to do for your reading assignment.

1. Prepare a short oral presentation on your reading. Then record it on video (a one-minute long talk should be sufficient), upload it to You Tube, and post it to blog.

Everybody should have his / her own video posted on their blogs. You can use your imagination to record your video any way you like, but don't get complicated. Uploading videos to You Tube is very easy to do. You just need an account.

2. Write a short review on the text you read. It woul be nice if you could write different post mentioning different aspects of the book for each member of your group. below you can find an example of a short review for The Reader, a novel by Bernhard Schlink.

My short review on The Reader by Bernhard Schlink

The reader is a beautiful novel by German lawyer Bernard Schlink, published in 1995 in Germany, and then translated into many languages. It was released this year again because it was adapted to a movie last year. Kate Winslet, who played Hanna Schmitz, won the Oscar for her performance, by the way.

I like this novel because it is an interesting view of the Nazi holocaust. It’s the story of a 15 year old boy (Michael Berg) who fell in love with an older woman (Hanna Schmitz). She helped him once when he fainted on the street on his way home after school: this was a symptom of hepatitis.

When Michael recovered from his sickness, he visited Hanna with some flowers to thank her for her help. After a couple of visits, he saw her taking a shower, she seduced him, and they made love. They had a strange romance for some months, and then Hanna disappeared. Every time, before they made love, Hanna asked Michael to read passages of books to her, but he never understood why.

Many years later Michael became a lawyer and he participated in a trial to a group women from the SS (Adolf Hitler’s police), when World War II ended, for killing a group of Jewish women. Michael was shocked when he saw Hanna in the group of accused women. Hanna was sentenced to life in prison, but their secret was never revealed. Hanna had another secret Michael learned in the trial: she didn’t know how to read and write. So he later sent Hanna recordings of books with his voice when she was in prison.

In my opinion this a great novel that makes us think about the importance of love, compassion, and learning from our mistakes. I recommend it to everybody.

Objectives and Goals of Blogging in English Class

2009-08-02T21:05:00.000-07:00

Hello everybody the following are some objectives and goals some teachers here at the Centro Cultural Colombo Americano have devised for blogging in our classes. We hope they can help you understand why creating and maintaining a nice blog can really help you in your English learning process. Any comments on them are highly appreciated.

Goals

*Improve your fluency when reading, and express yourself better when writing.

*Be aware of new forms to interact with your classmates.

*Get closer to the goal of thinking in English.

Objectives

I. Reading

*Enjoy and get the most out of reading short or longer texts.

*Improve fluency when reading.

*Identify what you like or dislike in a text, what you agree or disagree with, and express it freely in your own words.

*Help, support or give constructive criticisms to your partners when you read what they wrote.

II. Writing

*Become more aware of the steps, process and methods you need to improve your writing skills.

*Be critical to yourself in the process of writing, without being scared to write or express your ideas.

*Apply as much vocabulary and grammar you study when you create your blog posts.

*Apply writing rules (spelling, punctuation, organization of ideas, argumentation, etc) continuously, but with your own ideas and imagination.

III. Interaction with your classmates

*Create blog posts that are interesting and appealing to your classmates and friends.

* Cooperate with your classmates learning by giving them support and helping them improve their understanding of topics.

*Participate constantly in a space that can be more student-centered than the classroom: the web.

Blogs Students Level V Vacation Course June 2009

2009-07-05T17:50:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone!

The following are the links to blogs created by the kids at the level V vacation course 2009. There are really nice surprises here!

Eduard Ávila

Kathya Ariza

Greicy Casas

Hillary Castellar

Ronald Echeverry

Juan Gaviria

Karelya Gómez

Legna González

Lilia Jiménez

Yudis Marín

Noreys Márquez

Olga Martínez

Mariela Mejía

Roberto Meza

María Mercedes Molina

Melissa Oviedo

Jorge Pérez

Jhair Pineda

Giovanny Rebolledo

Gisella Rodríguez

Laura Salcedo

Dolly Sánchez

Oscar Villarreal

How to create your blog

2009-06-23T20:10:00.000-07:00

Hello!

The following are two tutorial videos to easily create your blogs. The instructions are easy to follow and we hope they can help with the process...

An English version

A Spanish version

More tutorials for blogs and websites here

CT Fun: Brain Teasers 1

2009-06-08T18:40:00.000-07:00

They may sound silly, but they need some thought to get the answers. :-)

Answers in the comments..

1. Do they have a 4th of July in England?

2. If there are 7 months that have 31 days in them and 11 months that have 30 days in them, how many months have 28 days in them?

3. How many birthdays does the average man have?

4. What is boiled then cooled, sweetened then soured?

5. A woman gives a beggar 50 cents; the woman is the beggar's sister, but the beggar is not the woman's brother. How come?

About E-Prime

2009-06-07T17:22:00.001-07:00

Wittgentein's gravestone

E-Prime for Dummies

By Miguel Mejía Flórez

E-Prime, short for English-Prime, refers to a simplified version and a linguistic revision of the English language, which tends to eliminate all forms the verb Be (am, is, are, was, were, been, being, and their corresponding contractions and negations) and some forms of the passive voice.

We can track the sources of E-Prime from a broad variety of linguistic and philosophical approaches to language (from Wittgenstein to Korsybski), but we could state in a simple way that thinkers who advocate E-Prime believe that this form of language eases deviations of meaning caused (throughout the last two millennia) by inappropriate application of Aristotle’s Categories —the intrinsic components of any idea or perception we may have of our world.

Supporters of E-Prime say that the way people practice common sense with Aristotle’s Categories of Substance, Quality, Quantity, Relation, Place, Time, Position, State, and Action, through the recurrent use of the verb Be, has led to an era of lower-order thinking and vagueness.

Example 1:

When we say: “Mary is a sad girl”, our brains process the information in such a way that we cannot find a clear and unique connection with it. That sentence may indicate that Mary had, or has, or will continue to have a distressed nature (or the three of them together); when maybe our poor Mary simply experienced a few sad events in her past.

Example 2:

When in a newspaper you read something like: “More control will be reinforced by Immigration Authorities”, our brain does not seem to catch at once what the writer really meant: “The head of the Immigration Authorities (or someone of a higher hierarchy) considers advisable to reinforce controls.” So, E-Prime advocates argue that the passive voice can be a way to avoid personal or civil responsibilities as we speak or write.

According to E-Prime, the use of Be for predicates of attributes (Jenny is irresponsible) and identity (Tom is an engineer), often tends to trick our minds with biased ideas and unfounded conclusions. A list of how some simple sentences can be clarified and improved, so you can track their meaning without any doubt, follows:

Examples of adaptations of simple sentences with BE to E-Prime

Attributes

1. The problem is insoluble.

The problem seems insoluble to me.

2. There is no answer.

There appears no answer to me.

3. Mary is beautiful.

Mary appears beautiful to my eyes.

Identity

1. Be a man!

Tell her what you think!

2. Be a good mother!

Feed your baby when he cries!

3. She is an engineer.

She has a degree in engineering.

4. This is a toad.

English speaking people call this a toad.

Problems of E-Prime

Thinkers and linguists have proposed many discussions on the advantages, disadvantages and problems of E-Prime. The use of Be in continuous tenses, and the case of certain passive structures exemplify two major discussions.

When you say: “Mary is playing in the park.”, you are not expressing any opinion, belief or biased assumption. You are simple depicting a course of action taking place in the world.

The sentence: “My floors were refinished yesterday.” seems dull when changed to active voice, unless you have an interesting subject to mention for that particular action. “A worker refinished my floors” is pointless to say the least.

Exercise 1:

Think about ways to adapt to E-Prime the following sentences:

1. Men are selfish.

2. I want to be self-confident.

3. Bill is my husband.

4. Alice is so sexy.

5. Be objective.

6. It is forbidden.

Exercise 2:

Write a short paragraph in which you describe an event in your life without using was, wasn’t, were or weren’t

Sources

Wikipedia

Robert Anton Wilson

E-Prime English Without the verb to be

Assessment Criteria

2009-06-06T14:44:00.000-07:00

Hello everybody!

What follows is a list of what you might want to take into account to improve your posts, and make your blogs more meaningful to you and your friends.

Blog Evaluation Rubric

Content
· Difficult to understand the main idea, many errors in spelling and grammar. (Poor)
· Many errors but the reader can understand the main idea. (Fair)
· Easy to understand with some errors. (Good)
· Clear, concise and basically well-written, but still has a few errors. (Very good)
· Clear concise and well-written with no serious errors. (Excellent)

Layout
· Layout has no structure or organization. (Poor)
· Text broken into paragraphs and/or sections. (Fair)
· Use headings, sections labeled; some formatting. (Good)
· Organized and consistent, good formatting. (Very good)
· Appearance of the blog looks professional. (Excellent)

Interaction with other blogs
· No comments observed in other peers’ blogs. (Poor)
· Comments are not related to the topic or discussion. (Fair)
· Comments are supportive but don’t provide much help to improve the quality of the peer’s post. (Good)
· Comments are supportive and provide some help/tips to enhance the peer’s writing. (Very good)
· Comments provide help to substantially improve peers’ writing and/or blog layout. (Excellent)

.....................Poor.....Fair.....Good.......Very good.....Excellent
Content........ ...10........20........30............40...............50
Layout.............10........15... .. ..20............25..............30
Interaction.........0.........5.........10............15..............20

..........................................................Total: _____________ out of 100