Elementary Composition – Night

This site is a group effort by the students in Gord's Elementary Composition evening course at Catholic University!

Blog Lock

Hi everyone.

I’ve just locked the blog, by changing your status to “subscriber”. This means you can’t post anymore, but you still can login and post comments. I’ll be tabulating the post/comment counts later today, and adding this information to your final grades. You should have a clear idea of your final grades on Wednesday evening when we meet for the last time.

I’ve had a great semester with you all and hope you had fun and learned a lot in this class. I’m supposed to be teaching Intermediate English Composition next semester, so if you liked this class, you may consider signing up for that class.

Have a great summer!


Letter-Writing Handout

I’ve added a handout for the letter I wrote. It’s basically the same letter, except that it’s a PDF. This should give you a better idea of how your letter should really look on the printed page.

The handout is here. And yes, there is one typing error in it — can you spot it? — but the main point of this handout is the layout of a letter, so I’m not in a hurry to correct the typo.


Write Me a Letter!

Hi everyone! I said I’d write a letter, so here’s an example. It’s a letter to my sister’s dog.

c/o Department of English Language and Culture,
Catholic University of Korea, Songsim Campus
43-1 Yeokgok 2-Dong, Wonmi-gu
Bucheon City, Gyeonggi-Do 420-743
South Korea
[email
phone number]

10 May 2006

Duncan Sellar
Dog House #5,
Winnipeg, Manitoba M5F 5T6
Canada

Dear Duncan,

My name is Gord. Maybe you don’t remember me, because I left Canada a long time ago. You’re a pretty stupid dog, so I guess it’s possible you forgot me. I am your master’s brother. I was thinking about you and I thought I’d write you a letter.

I was thinking about you because I think you’re very lucky to have my sister as your master. Have you ever realized that? I think you probably haven’t realized that, because you’re even dumber than most dogs! But you really are very lucky, because your master Annie is patient, generous, and kind to you.

First of all, Annie is always patient with you. She doesn’t get angry when you make a mess. For example, you once vomited on her bed, but she didn’t get angry. She just put you outside, and cleaned up the mess. She also never annoyed with you, even though sometimes you disturbed her life. For instance, you often made loud sounds and barked at the neighbour’s dog. However, Annie didn’t mind. She just accepted that as part of your personality, and that helped her to be very patient with you.

Next, Annie is generous to you. She always gives you treats and wonderful snacks. For instance, she bought you tasty dog bones for Christsmas, and last year she even bought you doggy-chocolates! She was also generous with her time. For example, she was always happy to take you for a run, or to play with you when you felt lonely. I think you had a much more generous master than other dogs.

Finally, I think Annie was also so kind to you. I remember her always being gentle with you. For example, when you were a puppy and your legs hurt because you were growing, she would hug you and play with you until the pain stopped. She also never punched or kicked you like some kids do when their dogs are misbehaving. For example, you once knocked her down the stairs. She fell on her head, and she was very dizzy and frustrated, but she didn’t even shout at you! She just said, “That’s okay, Duncan made a mistake.” I think very few dogs have such a kind master, don’t you?

For all of the above reasons, I think you’re such a lucky dog. I hope that you are very thankful for this, and that you remember this fact. Next time you see Annie, wag your tail very hard and give her a nice big lick on the face. She will appreciate it, and you will feel good showing your love to your wonderful master. If you have any questions about this letter or would like to contact me for any reason, please feel free to use the contact information above.

Sincerely,

Gord Sellar

I forgot to mention in class — your letter doesn’t have to be serious. You can discuss the class, but you don’t have to. I’d be just as happy if you wrote about how you feel about school in general, or discussed something else altogether. The exercise is just to write a letter in the format above, using all the writing skills we’ve learned in a slightly new context. One note: it’s important to remember to indent your letter — I can’t indent this because it’s on the internet! Also, please remember to double-space your letter when you type it for me! Any questions?

UPDATE: I don’t want to add pressuring homework to your workload, so I’m going to do the following: as long as the letter shows evidence of real effort, and includes some of the techniques we studied in class, then you get a check mark for it. All that needs to happen is I receive it, and read it, and you get a check mark, which is towards your homework grade. If you write a letter using none of the techniques we studied (and reminded ourselves about), then you get an X and your homework mark will not benefit from the assignment. I think that’s better for you than extra stressful homework. So relax, and have fun with this assignment. You’re very free to write whatever you like.


EXAM TOPICS!

Hi guys. I promised I’d post your exam topics on Monday, and here they are. There are six, and you’ll get to choose from any of them on the exam.

  1. Travel
  2. Advertisements
  3. Studying abroad
  4. Miniskirts
  5. Cigarettes
  6. Compulsory military service

Remember that pre-writing and memorizing paragraphs for the topics will not be useful to you. This is because I will ask you to fulfill certain requirements for each paragraph, like writing a compound sentence with a certain conjunction, or including a list of a certain type.

Good luck preparing! I’ll see you on Wednesday evening!


New Class Time, New Class Room

Hi there!

Last night, I got the information from our Department Assistant for evening courses, Ji-Na.

Beginning 3 April 2006, our Monday evening class will be held at N414 from 6:55pm to 8:45 pm.

Our Wednesday evening class will be held in the regular time and place, ie. in Dasol Building at 7:50pm.

Please remember that this change was made because of students’ preference, and is “secret”. I don’t think it’s a big problem, but you should keep it to yourself.

I hope to see you with happy, energetic smiles since we’re going to be meeting much earlier from now on!


Make Sure!

Everybody! This is a reminder to make sure the paragraph you began writing tonight is ready for class on Wednesday night. You’ll be showing it to a couple of people so it’s important that this paragraph is ready!

I expect to be posting our new classtime on Wednesday afternoon, but I’ll definitely announce it on Wednesday night in class. Take care until then!


Classtime tonight

Hi everyone. Well, I think we have no problems about students approving the time-change for this class — there’s one student left on my list but I figured out who it is and why she’s not in class.

However, the office will need to find a new classroom for us, and unfortunately I took too long to post here, so it’s too late to announce a big change now. So therefore, tonight we will meet at out regular classtime. I hope nobody is too disappointed!
However, I believe that tonight I will be able to tell you good news about next week’s classtime and location. Isn’t that great? More tonight. See you at 8:45pm tonight!


Use Paragraphs, Please!

Everyone, I want to make sure you understand what I said in class when I said that you should use paragraphs. So I’m going to use some Latin text. The meaning of the text doesn’t matter: just the layout, the format. Okay? Just look at how it’s organized and you’ll see what I mean.

Here’s an example of what you SHOULD NOT do when writing a paragraph:

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit.

Nam volutpat feugiat massa.

Integer et mauris.

Donec malesuada mi eget est.

Morbi tortor est, rhoncus eu, placerat sit amet, ultrices vel, enim.

Duis vulputate.

Nullam blandit arcu vitae quam.

Donec vel augue quis enim blandit rutrum.

And here’s an example of what you SHOULD do when writing a paragraph:

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Nam volutpat feugiat massa. Integer et mauris. Donec malesuada mi eget est. Morbi tortor est, rhoncus eu, placerat sit amet, ultrices vel, enim. Duis vulputate. Nullam blandit arcu vitae quam. Donec vel augue quis enim blandit rutrum. Mauris scelerisque imperdiet sem. Vestibulum ante ipsum primis in faucibus orci luctus et ultrices posuere cubilia Curae; Nulla augue nisi, tincidunt sit amet, venenatis vitae, blandit eu, pede. Morbi elit elit, dapibus eget, vehicula eget, mattis eu, justo. Maecenas suscipit vehicula leo. Vivamus interdum. Proin sed dui ac quam pretium malesuada. Duis scelerisque nunc tristique lorem. Mauris sodales. Aenean iaculis aliquet arcu. In sed est quis ipsum consectetuer gravida. Quisque at lacus. Quisque rhoncus.

Nunc elementum lobortis magna. Donec mi. Donec dictum dolor quis ligula. Duis nibh magna, suscipit et, volutpat at, tristique in, urna. Nulla sollicitudin tincidunt dolor. Cras vestibulum neque a ipsum. Morbi sit amet lectus. Aenean odio velit, placerat eu, porttitor ut, vehicula eget, mauris. Vestibulum luctus tempus massa. In urna. Nulla eget quam sed tellus semper ornare. In hac habitasse platea dictumst.

The first example isn’t a paragraph. It’s just a bunch of sentences one by one, which is NOT what I am asking you to write. The second example is of two nicely written paragraphs. Of course, you can’t really indent on this blog, but normally the second paragraph would be indented, if you were printing this text to hand in as homework.

Does that help?


The Homework That I Maybe Didn’t Explain Well

It seemed to me like maybe I was less clear than I thought about the homework I assigned in class, so I’m going to explain it very clearly here. If you have any questions, please leave a comment with the question and I’ll answer it. Sorry this took so long but I had to reinstall Linux on my computer. Windows was killing it.

Okay, so…

Tonight we worked on creating topic sentences for each “category” in the Mind Map/idea bubble network. You created a topic sentence for one part of the map, and started to created other sentences for each of the ideas or items in the category. For example:

There are many kinds of alcohol which are popular among Korean students.  Beer is very common, because it’s cheap. Soju is also common, especially among male students. Wine isn’t so popular, but some people enjoy it. And students with a lot of money to spare sometimes drink whiskey or other strong alcohol.

In the  example above, the topic sentence is in bold, but you don’t need to do that. (You can if you like, if you think it helps, but for now, the topic sentencewill usually be the first sentence in the paragraph, so it’s not usually necessary.)

As for your “homework”, this week you will need to make 2 blog postings, right? So, your next blog post should be the paragraph you started to work on in class, on one of the topics related to alcohol.

Your second blog post of the week should be created in a similar way, but using one of the mind-maps that you worked on before, during the last week.

(Please bear in mind that when I say “homework”, it’s not always something that gets “handed in” during class. Some homework is for a mark, and some homework helps you prepare for the big assignments that will come later on. This week’s homework is mostly the second kind… I won’t collect or mark it, but you need to do it if you want to be able to do what we will be working on next week, and the week after, and so on.)

Any questions?


CLASS TIME CHANGE… NOT YET.

Hi everyone. I know I asked you to check this blog for an announcement about a class time change for our class.

I have some good news, and some not-so-good news. Which would you like to hear first? I guess maybe the good news first will be best: I found out that it is possible to change time. We can do it, IF we are sure that ALL students can attend at the new time.

Which brings me to the not-so-good news: we need to make sure that there’s no schedule problem for ANYONE who is attending the class, including students who were not in class on Wednesday. So I am going to ask the class two more times if there is anyone who has a problem with a schedule change for Monday. I’ll ask Monday and Wednesday this week, and if nobody has a problem, then I think we can move the class time.

So this means that for this week, there is no change in Monday’s classtime. I’ll see you all at 8:45pm this Monday, March 20th, okay?


Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful!

You guys are doing a great job! I’m very impressed. I am waiting before I post individual comments, because I don’t want to make people nervous about posting. But I will make a couple of notes for you guys and the other Elementary Writing Class Blog, just some general notes of things I’ve noticed.

First, a lot of people like to use smilies. Western smilies look like :) or ;) . I know some Korean smilies are different, using Hangeul letters or carets, like this: ^^ … But since we’re practicing academic writing, it’s better to avoid these things. Also, in academic writing, we wouldn’t write kkk (or, in English, Hahaha or LOL). As I said, this is okay in comments, but I know you can find other ways of expressing that feeling in English. Usually, I write something like, “That’s so funny!” or “That’s hilarious!” Try it!

Second: everyone please rememeber, we’re working on paragraphs. You should try to bring all the sentences together in paragraph blocks, like I am doing. Don’t write single lines disconnected. Put your sentences together into paragraphs!

Third: keep blogging! You’re doing a good job and I am honestly enjoying reading your posts!


Hi there everyone!

I’m looking forward to seeing your posts and comments here. Don’t worry, just relax and have fun, and we’ll all learn a lot together.

See you soon!