Elementary Composition – Day

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 Tuesday morning.

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!

Well, everyone, I posted a bunch of comments tonight, finally. A lot of them are comments I could make to many different people, so I hope you all get a chance to read them carefully. Now, please remember what I said in class: if I comment on your post, don’t take it personally. For those whose posts I have not yet commented on, please be patient: I’ll get to yours soon enough, as long as you keep posting.

I am impressed with a lot of what I’m seeing, and enjoying learning about you from the thoughts, ideas, and experiences that you share here. Thanks everyone!

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:

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?

Hi everyone. I thougth I’d make sure the homework was clear, so I am posting about it here.

Basically, you are supposed to write two paragraphs, based on the approach we used in class.

Step #1: Create (or look at) an idea bubble network/mind map.

Step #2: Choose an interesting section of the map — a category with links to interesting ideas or things — and examine the ideas or words connected to the category you’ve chosen.

Step #3: Write a topic sentence that both introduces the category itself, and will let you write a full paragraph using the ideas or things connected to that category. Remember to think about your audience when you write this sentence.
Step #4: Write sentences for the items that are connected to your paragraph (sentences in the body of the paragraph). Try to make sure they fit well with your topic sentence.

That’s it! You will do this two times: once for whichever category you chose in the alcohol mind map that we made in class, and once for one of the topics on the mind map that you will prepare and hand in as homework on Thursday morning.

Any questions?

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!

I was wrong today when I said a post could be made without a title. The software doesn’t like it! So please always use a title for every post. We’ll talk about making good titles later on, so don’t worry too much about it for now.

Hi everyone! Well, it looks like thi site is ready for us to start using! So hey, everyone, let’s get in here and have fun! I can’t wait to see what you have to say. See you soon!