Seminar 7: Literature Review

Today we’ll discuss with you what your literature review should consist of and how to write it. To this end, I’ve collected a number of different resources all dealing with this question. To gain the most from this activity and learn from each other I am going to divide you in small groups, with each of them working with one of the resources listed below. When you are ready you will be asked to share what you have learnt with other groups and also learn from what they read.

1. Introduction to writing your literature review

http://www2.plymouth.ac.uk/millbrook/rsources/litrev/lrabstract.htm

2. Guidelines for writing your literature review

http://www.duluth.umn.edu/~hrallis/guides/researching/litreview.html

3. Writing your literature review

https://www.dlsweb.rmit.edu.au/lsu../content/2_AssessmentTasks/assess_tuts/lit_review_LL/writing.html

Seminar 6: Paraphrasing and summarising

Posted on October 22, 2013 by nataneva Leave a comment

Today we are going to practise paraphrasing and summarising. These are two of the three main ways of explaining something written or said by another person. Why is it necessary? This is what you do when you review smb else’s works for your literature review when you write your course or graduation paper.

We are going to use the materials prepared by the OWL at Purdue. Follow the link  below to the resource we’ll start with today:

https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/976/02/

Read it and answer the questions below:

1. Can you use smb else’s words in your work without acknowledging it? If yes, why? If no, why as well.

2. Why your audience is an important consideration when summarising or paraphrasing?

3. Can you change the meaning of the original when you paraphrase or summarise?

After we discuss the answers to these questions, you are going to practise paraphrasing. I am inviting you to paraphrase the handout prepared by the OWL Purdue authors:

https://owl.english.purdue.edu/exercises/28/12/33/

First, we are going to work together and discuss your versions of the first two passages together. Then you are going to work with another student from your group and discuss your versions of the next 3 passages from the handout.

ICT in Linguistics: Seminar 5 More on resources for linguistic research

Today we’re going to get acquainted with one more possible source of information for linguistic research available on the internet, It is google scholar at http://www.google.com/intl/en/scholar/about.html

First, we are going to have a look at this resource together as a group at http://scholar.google.com/schhp?hl=enand then you will do some more research on your own. The purpose of this class is for you to get acquainted with this resource and get an idea about its affordances.

Some resources for doing research in linguistics

http://www.ipl.org/IPLBrowse/GetSubject?vid=13&cid=1&tid=6979&parent=6978

End of the Year survey

Dear All,

Today I’d like you to reflect on your experiences throughout the year and complete the survey I’ve created. It will help me learn your opinion about the course and improve its content and organisation.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/JVTJXHH

Thank you for cooperation!

Sample Portfolio Layout

First, create your portfolio pages and then link them to this page.

I’d like to share my portfolio with you. It contains the following parts:

1. A cover memo

2. Memo to Essay 1

3. Memo to Essay 2

4. Essay 1

5. Essay 2

6. Course reflection

If you are not sure how to add a page to your blog, you can read about it at http://en.support.wordpress.com/pages/

Semester Task

Dear All–

It’s hard to believe but the academic year is coming to the end and it means you will have to prepare your writing portfolio, a collection of some of your old papers and a couple of new ones. Below is a more detailed explanation of what should be included in your portfolio and how it will be assessed.

Here is the explanation of what a portfolio is, what its content should be and what grading criteria I’ll use to assess your portfolios.

What is a Portfolio?

A portfolio is a purposeful, meaningful collection of works students have written throughout the semester and/or specifically for the portfolio. This collection tells a story about a student’s developmental growth, achievements, and progress over time.

What are the Purposes of a Portfolio?

The portfolio will enable you to demonstrate the range of your writing abilities and your understanding of academic writing generally.

What is the Contents of Portfolios?

Each writing portfolio must include the following materials:

• A cover memo that introduces the contents of the portfolio and explains how the sample papers demonstrate your mastery of the learning objectives of the course. This memo should reflect on the portfolio as a whole, explaining how the sample papers you’ve included illustrate your writing processes.
• Analysis of two old papers

It should be written in the form of a memo, explaining what difficulties you have experienced when writing them. You should also dwell upon the aspects of your essays you worked on in the process of their revision. Then you should single out some aspects of your work you think you have succeeded in writing well and explain what made them successful in your opinion. Finally, you should clarify what additional work on my part could help you improve the quality of your writing.

These are some of the areas you should consider writing about:

a)       Essay content

b)       Structure and organization

c)       Word choice

d)       Mechanics

e)       Style

• An essay How Has My Writing Changed that explains your strengths as a writer, and ways in which you hope to continue to develop your writing and research skills in the future. In writing this essay, you can use the following questions as your guidelines:

a)       How has your writing changed throughout the course?

b)       What do you now see as your strong/weak points and which area(s) for improvement of your writing mastery you see

c)       You can also include a paragraph, analyzing the activities done throughout the course from the point of view of the usefulness and/or uselessness for the improvement of your writing. Try to formulate, which of the activities you took part in as part of this course were useful or not and was there anything missing, i.e., something you think as important was not discussed and done (something that was not necessary was done).

• An essay based on reading an article of your choice from a recent newspaper/magazine publication.
• Overall course reflection in which you should discuss what aspects of the course and tasks you found useful and which of them you had some diffculties with, found problematic and/or unnecessary. Add your reflection about peer-editing: why/why not it was useful or not very useful and why. If you have have any suggestions about the content and/or the organisation of the course, you should also include them into your course reflection too.

Here is a checklist you can use to make sure that you have all the necessary pieces:

a)       A cover memo

b)       Essay 1: all drafts + a memo

c)       Essay 2: all drafts + a memo

d)       Essay 3: A response to a selected reading

e)       Essay 4: How has my writing changed?

f)        Overall course reflection

What is the Format of Portfolios?

• Create a separate Portfolio folder in your folder
• Link the parts of the portfolio which go together: e.g., your essay drafts and the memo discussing their advantages and drawbacks
• The cover memo should appear first.

 How will the Portfolio be assessed?

Criteria for evaluation of your portfolio: points/100

15   General organization. All required materials are included. Paper selection.

50   Paper analysis. Relevant observations. Clear organization.  Insight.

10     Analysis of the writing process.  (Essay)

10     An essay on a topic connected with some article from recent newspaper periodicals

15   Grammar, spelling, punctuation, clarity of expression.

Here is a link to the portfolio Yulya Abramova, one of my students who studied last year, created:

http://acwr604.pbworks.com/w/page/53877642/A%20cover%20memo%2C%20Abramova

Have a look at it and ask me some questions if something is not clear about how to create your portfolio and/or what to pay attention to when working on this assignment.

Week 12: Gun control

Have you been following the news recently? Do you know what happened in Sandy Hook Elementary School? Have you heard about even more recent accidens involving gun use in the USA? In Russia?

Today we are going to discuss your attidude to gun control and your opinion about whether it is necessary. To start the discussion I am inviting you to take a short survey aimed at determining the occasions in which you think using a gun can be justified. Follow the link below to a survey I have created to help us with this:

http://answergarden.ch/view/55688

There are 4 options you can choose from: using a gun for sport/when you are attacked in the street/when your house is attacked/for hunting animals. You should click on the option which is your first priority. When everybody has completed the survey we will be able to see your group’s attitude to gun use.

After you have completed the survey we will read an article about the Columbine massacre in the USA to provide you with some more factual information on the topic.

Next, I’ll invite you to further discuss the points ‘for’ and ‘against’ gun control, some of which you will be able to use later on in your essay discussing the pros and cons of this issue.

Week 8-9: IATEFL conference

Dear All–

today you will have an opportunity to learn about what teachers of English around the world are doing, what they are concerned about and what can help them do their job more effectively. You might ask how? The answer is with the help of visiting the site of IATEFL, which stands for International Association of English as a Foreign Language. If you want to learn about the association and its activities more, read about it at http://www.iatefl.org/iatefl/welcome on the association’s website.

Each year IATEFL organizes a conference which gives its members a chance to meet, share their experiences and discuss a variety of issues of interest and concern to them. I am sure that it will be interesting for you to learn more about some aspects of its work and am inviting you to visit one of the conference forums at

http://iatefl.britishcouncil.org/2012/forum

When you get there you will see a number of tracks, including

Business English area http://iatefl.britishcouncil.org/2012/forums/special-interest-area-forums/business-english-area

Global Issues area http://iatefl.britishcouncil.org/2012/forums/special-interest-area-forums/global-issues-area

Learning Technologies area http://iatefl.britishcouncil.org/2012/forums/special-interest-area-forums/learning-technologies-area

Literature, Media and Culture area http://iatefl.britishcouncil.org/2012/forums/special-interest-area-forums/literature-media-cultural-studies-area

go to one of them and look through some of the discussions in it to get an idea about them. When done, publish a post in your blog which contains a summary of what you have read and the explanation of your own opinion on one of the issues you have written about. Do not forget to include a link(s) to the discussion you write about, so that your peers could easily access them if they want to learn more themselves on the same topic.

Read 1 or 2 posts written by your peers and leave a comment about what you have read on the site after reading your peer’s post.

17 April, 2013

Dear All,

I hope you had a chance to follow the IATEFL Liverpool conference during the past week and will share your impressions with your peers and me. If you missed some of the talks and events, you can still watch them now thanks to the Liverpool Online team work. Here are some links to the sessions you might find interesting:

The opening plenary given by David Crystal:

http://iatefl.britishcouncil.org/2013/sessions/2013-04-09/plenary-session-david-crystal

Plenary by Deniz Kurtglu Eken

http://iatefl.britishcouncil.org/2013/sessions/2013-04-10/plenary-deniz-kurto%C%9Flu-eken

And here is a link to all the conference sessions

http://iatefl.britishcouncil.org/2013/sessions/index

Please, choose something that has attracted your attention, read about the session details and watch it. In your blog, provide a brief summary of the session, explain what you have learned from it and why your peers can also find it interesting.

Week 6 For and against Death Penalty essay

Dear All–

this week in class we read and discussed a couple of articles devoted to death penalty. We also discussed a number of points for and against it. If you wish you can have another look at them at http://www.balancedpolitics.org/death_penalty.htm. This is a quite extensive list of arguments for and against capital punishment, which you need to go over and choose 3 or 4 on both sides that seem to be the strongest to you. You can use these arguments in your discussion of pros and cons of death penalty only make sure you make a reference to their original source.

If you have already written the first draft of your work, reread it and see if the arguments you have provided are persuasive enough. If necessary revise your essay draft, to make it more persuasive.

If you are writing your first draft, still you can compare the arguments you for and against death penalty you have come up with with those on the list I’m sharing with you.

I hope that you will be able to publish your either first or second draft in your blog in time to get some feedback from your peers and give them yours.

Looking forward to reading your essays.