New Course… New website:

Looking for the new course website?

We’ve moved!

Friday, 17th of April

To finish off the course today we met as usual in class, but shared some more Fairtrade coffee and Italian chocolate cream cookies, and we printed and checked the final copy of the booklet.

The booklet is now available for you to pick up from the LEI office. Please go inside the office and turn left. You will see a set of ‘pigeon hole’ post-boxes with the names of the teachers on them. Mine will be among them all. Lift the flap up and look inside for your copy of the booklet. It will have your name on it.

Finally, please go online to the university website and complete the course evaluation form. I would really like to know what you think of the course – whether your views are positive or not – and of course it is all anonymous, so no-one will know who exactly is saying what.

Please email me if you have any final questions or comments about the course that you wish to offer directly.

Finally, thanks again for being good students. I hope to see you all around, studying hard and having fun.

j.w.

Thursday, 16th of April

Today, to help celebrate the end of the course tomorrow (and also to help celebrate the fact that I finished my freshman English mid-term testing AND marking last night, all within two very long, very busy days), we shared some Tully’s Fairtrade fair trade freshly ground, whole bean coffee in class this morning.

We also read through the essay on the other side of the hand-out from yesterday, which was on sports endorsements and the huge amounts of money sports competitors can ‘earn’.

Finally, we discussed where to celebrate share the final class tomorrow, and at what time. The latest suggestion I’ve heard from a co-worker is Dunkin’ Donuts, across from the Chonnam University Hospital. Apparently that is open very early. One of the Korean staff here seem to believe that Paris Baguette is open from 8am though. I’ll go and check it all out, and send out individual messages later, soon, today.

As usual, any last-minute essays are still welcome. I can check them today, and include them in the booklet to give out in class tomorrow. And if you cannot make it to class tomorrow, it will be in the main LEI office, waiting for you to pick it up when ready.

Wednesday, 15th of April

Today we will take a bit of time to reflect on the course so far,

we will decide how to celebrate the end of the course this week,

and I will share a few ideas I have for the next course.

As for the first task, I have certainly learned a lot. This is the first time I have taught essay writing to ESL (English as Second Language) students. I hope you have also learned a lot. Today, I shall hand back the essays you wrote seven weeks ago. You are welcome to give any feedback you like: criticisms, comments, suggestions and complaints!

For the second, I am open to suggestions. We could celebrate with a pizza party (NOOO…!!!), or a quiet coffee down town. We could go to watch the DVD of Whale Rider (perhaps in the big DVD viewing room at Beethoven tea house…?), or you could shower me with praises and expensive gifts. Or, you could just pat me on the back and say: “Bye.”

And finally, my latest idea to make the next course even more amazingly excitifying for you is to introduce themes on which I will be writing essays, and on which you will also be invited, or challenged, to write. You will still be welcome to write an essay on whatever you prefer; however, I will be offering information on topics that I hope are new to you, interesting, and thought-provoking.

One example is World Fair Trade Day 2009. I want to relate this amazingly exciting international trend to our local scene here in Korea. How can we make Korea a part of this fantastic new phenomenon? We need a process essay. But wait: should Koreans even start to be concerned with poor people in other countries? We need at least two argument essays, one for and one against. But then again, just what IS fair trade? We need an explanation essay too!

We will cover many other themes that don’t often make the mainstream news, but should, as they affect us here in Gwangju, too.

We will be brainstorming more in class, and then I will be shutting up and letting you develop your ideas in class time, and then you will find it much easier to complete your writing for homework later that day or night.

Other themes we could cover:

* Monsanto, terminator seed technology, and genetically altered rice,

* alternative education and Gwangju, or at least Korea,

* May 18 in Gwangju, reviews of movies that deal with this topic, and,

*  the new park proposal for the down town area around the old provincial hall.

We can also do fun themes, such as

*  have an in-class taste-test of various brands of ice-cream available in Gwangju, and write about our favourites, as reviews, or personal opinion columns, (a good theme for the heat of summer which will soon be upon us!),

*  have an essay writing competition about which is the best genre of movie, and,

* let’s critique (or discuss in some depth) the TV show, movie, and everything related to Sex and the City.

… Well, those are my ideas for themes, anyway. What are yours?

Tuesday, 14th April

On this happy and warm, though gray and overcast morning we looked at two examples of questions from a TOEFL writing guide book. Both questions asked us to either agree or disagree with the next sentence. The example essays were both, therefore, good examples of ‘argumentative’ or pursuasive essays.

Homework:

Write a ‘rebutle’ or an answering essay supporting the alternative view to one of the two essays looked at today;

or, write your own essay of any style you like, on parents and children in general.

Also, if you have any outstanding essays (not emailed to me yet) then please send them in as soon as possible.

Monday, 13th of April

This morning we started by brainstorming on what we could write about if we were charged with creating an essay on ‘parents and children’. Then, we looked at a brief essay on exactly that topic by one of the first great writers of essays in early modern English: Francis Bacon.

We found his usage of English was quite different in terms of his vocabulary, sentence structure, and essay structure. We could, however, understand the first couple of sentences with a bit more thought and practise of our translation and interpretation skills.

Homework:

Please finish off any essays you have in mind or on paper yet to do, and then email them to me as soon as possible. Please either attach them as word files, or cut and paste them into the text body of the email message. You are also welcome to pick any new topic and practise writing on that topic.

Friday, 10th of April

This morning we did a lot of editing, or in other words practised copy-editing and proofreading each others’ essays, and also some editing exercises from the Blueprints book.

Homework:

Complete, and email, any essays on which you have been working recently;

and, email any essays which have been completed to final draft status (ie. checked by me, and given any final revisions by you);

and, if you received a copy of the Blueprints editing exercise, you are welcome to finish that off too.

Have a great weekend in the warm and sunny weather out there!

Thursday, 9th of April

First up this morning we chatted about how everyone was going with their essays and in class in general. One suggestion was to practise translating limited excerpts of Korean language text into English perhaps once a week, so as to gain more confidence using English language and learn more about formal English phrasing. I like this idea. Next course, we will use text taken from

http://koreabeat.com

After that we read through the essay on coffee, and worked on the answers together.

Homework:

Please email me all your completed essays as soon as possible.

Tomorrow we will talk about publishing online or not.

We shall, however, publish on paper, so you may take a copy of your essays home at the end of the course.

Also, please continue writing whatever essay you are working on currently, whether an argumentative, compare, contrast, compare and contrast, cause and effect essay, or other.

Wednesday, 7th of April

This morning we began by reading the introduction paragraphs, including the thesis statement sentences, to four different essays, all looking at my favourite Korean movie The Way Home (Jipeuroh). We identified which essay was the argumentative one, and which were the comparative essays (in comparison with Whale Rider (Aotearoa – New Zealand, 2002). Another essay was in contrast with Whale Rider, and the last one was an example of an essay which both compares and contrasts.

Following on from those four new essays by your dedicated and enthusiastic teacher, we read through the argumentative essay on vegetarianism in the hand-out, and we checked the answers together.

Homework:

continue writing your own argumentative essay;

read the next essay in the hand-out, on coffee, and complete the answers.

Tuesday, 7th of April

Today we began by having a quick brainstorm session on both fun and serious topics for ‘argumentative’ essays.

Please remember that the most important difference about argumentative essays is simply that you must not present both sides of a discussion, but instead pick only one, and ‘defend’ that opinion with the best points you can find.

Then we read through some more of the new handout on argumentative essays, including reading the essay in the text (by someone else…!) on the reasons why one should become vegetarian.

Homework:

Please complete the questions following the vegetarian essay;

read the next essay in the handout pages;

and write your own argumentative essay.