For homework, please complete your next essay, which can be any genre/topic from previous posts you haven't yet produced, a continuation of your portfolio project, or responses to 3 different questions posted on the NY Times' "The Ethicist" page: http://www.nytimes.com/column/the-ethicist
You can of course select three questions from any other advice column page you like as well.
Additionally, please edit and provide suggestions for the poorly-written paragraph featured on the bottom of the sheet distributed in class.
Saturday, May 28, 2016
Wednesday, May 25, 2016
Debating Class (Languge Skills III), Exam Sign-Up Sheets Posted
I've posted the sign-up sheets for the exam on my door in the Institute (Room 2.022). The three dates that Mr. Lowman and I could keep free are the following:
Please sign up for a 15-minute slot on one of these dates, ideally already with a partner. Once you register, your registration is BINDING, so make sure you can really keep that slot free. As the exam dates are on Mondays and Tuesdays, our Thursday classes will meet regularly until the end of the semester.
Have a great day off tomorrow and see you next week!
July 11th 9-12
July 18th 9-12, 13:30 - 17
July 19th 9-12, 13:30 - 17Please sign up for a 15-minute slot on one of these dates, ideally already with a partner. Once you register, your registration is BINDING, so make sure you can really keep that slot free. As the exam dates are on Mondays and Tuesdays, our Thursday classes will meet regularly until the end of the semester.
Have a great day off tomorrow and see you next week!
Friday, May 13, 2016
Writing Skills III, Journalism, Homework for Week 7 (Next Session May 27th)
For homework, please produce your next essay for submission at our next session. This can be 1) an interview that expands on what you did in class today or an interview with a new person that employs strategies and techniques that you observe in the models distributed in class or in the videos below; 2) a piece of feature writing (see more information about this genre below, keeping in mind that interviews can be a great basis for a feature); OR 3) another entry/article/essay for your individual project (you might want to incorporate an interview into this week's piece).
For inspiration for interviews, have a look at the following sites:
http://www.theguardian.com/tone/interview
http://www.nytimes.com/column/magazine-talk
http://www.vanityfair.com/search?rubric=%22Proust%20Questionnaire%22
Some classic interviewers in the Anglosphere include Charlie Rose (PBS), Larry King (CNN), and Jerry Paxman (BBC Newsnight). George Stromboulopoulos from CBC (Canada) has a great YouTube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/user/TheHour
And Conan O'Brien's "Serious Jibber Jabber" features a great interview with the writers from the Simpsons:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtJ28qOEG1g
There is also a trend in the comedy world of stand-up comedians producing interview podcasts and web series, one of the more noteworthy being Jerry Seinfeld's Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee: http://comediansincarsgettingcoffee.com/
Remember that interviews are more than questionnaires: you are looking for the gold in your interviewee and have limited time to get it. Journalists don't last long if they follow bad/dead leads, so you often have to accelerate "finding the good stuff". Be provocative in your questioning, but also be kind to your subject. The best interviewers push, but are never mean or cruel (which doesn't result in truly good material anyway). Put bluntly: lame questions yield lame answers.
On what feature writing is: http://www.media-studies.ca/articles/feature.htm
Good feature writing most often appears in the news magazine format or in the Sunday editions of daily newspapers; great examples in the Anglophone world include the following:
The Atlantic http://www.theatlantic.com/world/
The New Yorker http://www.newyorker.com/
The Times Literary Supplement http://www.the-tls.co.uk/
There were some student questions on the exam: the date will be determined at the break and I will announce this in our next class. You will have 2 hours to produce a piece of journalistic writing of 400 to 500 words. The exam will feature one or two writing prompts that will be extremely general, so everyone will be able to respond using the topics and knowledge they have been focussing on in their individual work over the course of the semester. I don't expect a specific format, but DO expect you to abide by the conventions of the genre you choose to write in (i.e. a piece of straight journalism cannot morph into commentary; a review requires a certain amount of contextualization, a clear and specific thesis, and appropriate detail). There are no specific formulas to follow. Spelling, grammar, syntactic variation, word choice, clarity, coherence, evidence, and paragraph organization are all areas that your exam will be assessed in. What I can most interested in seeing in those two hours is how well you edit your work.
For inspiration for interviews, have a look at the following sites:
http://www.theguardian.com/tone/interview
http://www.nytimes.com/column/magazine-talk
http://www.vanityfair.com/search?rubric=%22Proust%20Questionnaire%22
Some classic interviewers in the Anglosphere include Charlie Rose (PBS), Larry King (CNN), and Jerry Paxman (BBC Newsnight). George Stromboulopoulos from CBC (Canada) has a great YouTube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/user/TheHour
And Conan O'Brien's "Serious Jibber Jabber" features a great interview with the writers from the Simpsons:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtJ28qOEG1g
There is also a trend in the comedy world of stand-up comedians producing interview podcasts and web series, one of the more noteworthy being Jerry Seinfeld's Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee: http://comediansincarsgettingcoffee.com/
Remember that interviews are more than questionnaires: you are looking for the gold in your interviewee and have limited time to get it. Journalists don't last long if they follow bad/dead leads, so you often have to accelerate "finding the good stuff". Be provocative in your questioning, but also be kind to your subject. The best interviewers push, but are never mean or cruel (which doesn't result in truly good material anyway). Put bluntly: lame questions yield lame answers.
On what feature writing is: http://www.media-studies.ca/articles/feature.htm
Good feature writing most often appears in the news magazine format or in the Sunday editions of daily newspapers; great examples in the Anglophone world include the following:
The Atlantic http://www.theatlantic.com/world/
The New Yorker http://www.newyorker.com/
The Times Literary Supplement http://www.the-tls.co.uk/
There were some student questions on the exam: the date will be determined at the break and I will announce this in our next class. You will have 2 hours to produce a piece of journalistic writing of 400 to 500 words. The exam will feature one or two writing prompts that will be extremely general, so everyone will be able to respond using the topics and knowledge they have been focussing on in their individual work over the course of the semester. I don't expect a specific format, but DO expect you to abide by the conventions of the genre you choose to write in (i.e. a piece of straight journalism cannot morph into commentary; a review requires a certain amount of contextualization, a clear and specific thesis, and appropriate detail). There are no specific formulas to follow. Spelling, grammar, syntactic variation, word choice, clarity, coherence, evidence, and paragraph organization are all areas that your exam will be assessed in. What I can most interested in seeing in those two hours is how well you edit your work.
Thursday, May 12, 2016
Debating, Language Skills III, Homework for Week 8 (Next Session on June 2nd)
In the next two weeks, please work on increasing your language skills in terms of debate constructions (red book), topic terminology (i.e. vocab specific to the topic domain, such as homelessness today in class), and adding more specific vocab to your repertoire/replacing simple and frequent words with more precise equivalents. To achieve this end I would recommend:
1. Studying Chapter 5 of the red book.
2. Reading an opinion piece published in an English-language newspaper every other day of the break, jotting down good language used, and revising imprecise language.
3. Finding a "word-a-day" app or website that will suit your language needs (the ones geared towards studying for the SAT and GRE exams are academically-oriented).
Watch the blog over the next two weeks for further resources as well.
1. Studying Chapter 5 of the red book.
2. Reading an opinion piece published in an English-language newspaper every other day of the break, jotting down good language used, and revising imprecise language.
3. Finding a "word-a-day" app or website that will suit your language needs (the ones geared towards studying for the SAT and GRE exams are academically-oriented).
Watch the blog over the next two weeks for further resources as well.
Wednesday, May 11, 2016
Writing Skills I, Homework for Week 8 (Next Meeting on June 1st)
Over the next two weeks, I would like you to produce an essay that is either a revision of one of the first two essays you produced in the class OR your own essay inspired by the "Mann, sind wir weich geworden!" essay you received in class today (you could even convert this essay into a more traditionally argumentative essay, like the ones we've practiced so far in class). I recommend the former assignment if you received a lot of corrections to the essays you've turned in thus far and the latter assignment if your performance has been strong with minimal corrections. To those of you correcting essays from the past two weeks, please DO NOT simply type my corrected sentences into the old document and turn it in anew. The idea is to look at that old work with fresh eyes and make suitable changes to word choice, sentence structure, grammar, paragraph organization, and thesis formulation.
Friday, May 6, 2016
Writing Skills III, Journalism, Homework for Week 5
For homework, please:
1. Complete your second essay of the semester. This can be an entry in your article portfolio, a piece of straight journalism or your own "What I'm really thinking" essay. (I encourage everyone in this class to produce one piece of straight journalism this semester.)
2. Find some good introductory sentences and at least one good conclusion in the journalism you read this week (can be any language). Be prepared to contribute next class.
3. These are more straight-reporting approachs to Cruz topics, but are also not perfect: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/18/us/politics/ted-cruz-conservative.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/30/us/politics/indiana-republican-transgender-rights-bathroom.html
4. In addition, review these two grammatical concepts BEFORE writing:
http://wps.ablongman.com/long_fowler_lbh_12/208/53333/13653479.cw/index.html
https://owl.english.purdue.edu/exercises/3/5/21
1. Complete your second essay of the semester. This can be an entry in your article portfolio, a piece of straight journalism or your own "What I'm really thinking" essay. (I encourage everyone in this class to produce one piece of straight journalism this semester.)
2. Find some good introductory sentences and at least one good conclusion in the journalism you read this week (can be any language). Be prepared to contribute next class.
3. These are more straight-reporting approachs to Cruz topics, but are also not perfect: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/18/us/politics/ted-cruz-conservative.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/30/us/politics/indiana-republican-transgender-rights-bathroom.html
4. In addition, review these two grammatical concepts BEFORE writing:
http://wps.ablongman.com/long_fowler_lbh_12/208/53333/13653479.cw/index.html
https://owl.english.purdue.edu/exercises/3/5/21
Wednesday, May 4, 2016
Writing Skills I, Homework for Week 5
For next week, please:
1. Read chapters 6-8 of the reader.
2. Visit this website and read through its tips for better writing (you need to hover your cursor over each highlighted section to see the commentary on the right-hand margin of the page, so this website might not work on smartphones): http://en.writecheck.com/anatomy-of-a-poorly-written-paper/
3. Pick 5 basic words (like the ones we practiced in class, such as "bad" or "difficult") and come up with more sophisticated and specific options (aim for 5 per word).
4. Have a look at the following two essays:
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2016/04/18/have-comment-sections-on-news-media-websites-failed/get-rid-of-comment-sections
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2016/04/18/have-comment-sections-on-news-media-websites-failed/despite-flaws-comments-are-good-for-public-discourse
Bearing the chapter on paragraphs from the reader in mind, what changes would you make to the paragraph organization featured in these essays? Is there information you would add or edit out to make the essays more cohesive? Would you insert transitions to connect or link some sentences/ideas together?
1. Read chapters 6-8 of the reader.
2. Visit this website and read through its tips for better writing (you need to hover your cursor over each highlighted section to see the commentary on the right-hand margin of the page, so this website might not work on smartphones): http://en.writecheck.com/anatomy-of-a-poorly-written-paper/
3. Pick 5 basic words (like the ones we practiced in class, such as "bad" or "difficult") and come up with more sophisticated and specific options (aim for 5 per word).
4. Have a look at the following two essays:
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2016/04/18/have-comment-sections-on-news-media-websites-failed/get-rid-of-comment-sections
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2016/04/18/have-comment-sections-on-news-media-websites-failed/despite-flaws-comments-are-good-for-public-discourse
Bearing the chapter on paragraphs from the reader in mind, what changes would you make to the paragraph organization featured in these essays? Is there information you would add or edit out to make the essays more cohesive? Would you insert transitions to connect or link some sentences/ideas together?
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