My reflection

My reflection: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BymNChelF8PHbmlwemlkc2ZLNzQ/edit

More than one element of writing

Can you imagine how language would be if we always used the same words when speaking, reading and writing?

Well, synonyms are words with similar meaning.  

The writers use them to provide interest and variety to the reader.  For example:

George's financial problems were great obstacles and impediments to paying his monthly bills.

If you apply a synonym to a sentence, you do not have to change the register. 

Useful links to practice:

http://www.education.com/study-help/article/synonyms-antonyms-similars-opposites_answer/

http://wps.ablongman.com/long_licklider_vocabulary_2/0,6658,416757-,00.html 

http://www.indiabix.com/verbal-ability/synonyms/

Articles

Articles in English are invariable. That is, they do not change according to the gender or number of the noun they refer to, e.g. the boy, the woman, the children.

"The" is used

1. to refer to something which has already been mentioned.

2. when both the speaker and listener know what is being talked about, even if it has not been mentioned before.

3. in sentences or clauses where we define or identify a particular person or object.

4. to refer to objects we regard as unique.

5. with adjectives, to refer to a whole group of people.

6. before superlatives and ordinal numbers.

7. with names with geographical areas and oceans.

8. with decades, or groups of years.

Use 'a' with nouns starting with a consonant (letters that are not vowels), 'an' with nouns starting with a vowel (a,e,i,o,u)

Useful link to practice:

http://perso.wanadoo.es/autoenglish/gr.an.i.htm

http://www.englisch-hilfen.de/en/exercises/nouns_articles/a_the.htm

http://www.myenglishpages.com/site_php_files/grammar-exercise-articles.php

Comparisons

As we know to make comparisons in English, we have to apply certain rules. For example:

If you compare two things or people with a short adjective, you have to add "er" to the adjective and also you have to add "than" after the adjective.

e.g. : Peter is taller than me

If you compare two different things or people with a long adjective, you have to add "more" and then you have to write the adjective in its positive form and add the word "than" after the adjective.

e.g.: My book is more interesting than yours.

On the other hand, if you want to vary the strength of  your comparison, you can do it by using "qualifying" expressions like: slightly, considerably or significantly.

e.g.:  She's slightly less interested in football than him.

Note: When you use these qualifying expressions in English, remember the rules about using -er. If the adjective is one syllable, or ends in -y, add -er:

Now, to stress similarity in a sentence, you can use expressions like:  "almost as … as", "not quite as … as", "(not) nearly as … as", "twice as … as" and "half as … as" to change the extent of the similarity.

e.g.: She's not quite as confident as Trinidad.

Then, in the case of superlatives, you can use them to show the differences that exist in the group and it follow the same rule like comparisons.  However, if you employ a short adjective you have to add "est" to it and the word "the" before the adjective.  Additionally, when you use long adjectives, you have to add the words "the most" or "the least" and write the positive way of the adjective.

e.g.:   The most interesting book that I read is "Hamblet" by shakespeare.

Useful links to practice:

http://web2.uvcs.uvic.ca/elc/studyzone/330/grammar/regcom2.htm

http://www.englishexercises.org/makeagame/viewgame.asp?id=2070

http://www.usingenglish.com/quizzes/45.html

Organizing paragraphs

At the time of writing a paragraph, you have to keep one idea to one paragraph, maybe you can start with a topic sentence, which means the main idea of the paragraph and then you can develop it through the body of your paragraph, adding relevant details about it, maybe giving reasons for the discussion topic or arguments to it.

Planning a text

Planning is a stage which is focused in formulating your ideas to have a purpose for your essay.  In addition, it gives you a certain order and organization related with the points of the topic discussion.

There are some useful techniques to plan your ideas; one of them is the conception to build up a brainstorm with the possible topics for your future discussion in the essay and it also helps you to refine the research direction that you want to develop.

Combining sources

The idea of writing an essay means to investigate in the specific subject you are suggesting.  So, if you are doing a research about it, it means to let the authors speak about your subject, and in this way you have to select some interesting point of view from them who are absorbed in develop the topic.  It is a wrong decision to consider only one point of view, the idea is to involve an enough quantity of authors to have a good perspective about your subject in order it becomes more attractive for the readers.

Summary writing

Summarizing a text means to be precise and concise with the relevant ideas at the moment you are doing a summary.  To describe full details related with the topic and to repeat the data through the body of your text, could be a waste of time, nobody can read the same topic during huge lapses of time. Nowadays, our society is concerned into be practical, people are not interesting in repetitions and reading full details about something, they need enough characteristics to understand a text, and no more than that.

On the other hand, you have to be careful at the moment of making a good summary; you have to be clear of highlingting the main ideas of the text, read and re read the information you need is a good technique, check the vocabulary, make note about the relevant data to re organize the ideas through the body of your essay and to avoid omitting some ones give you some interesting features to develop a good summary.

Paraphrasing

This is a very useful technique that implies to be creative in writing your text.  In addition it gives your essay a more attractive and personal style when you decide the vocabulary will develop your topic.  It has an interesting value at the moment when the reader is taking his/her decision to read your text.

Note-making

Meanwhile you are developing your essay, you have to search a lot of information which you will only be applied to your essay the relevant ideas of it, and it is necessary for this situation that you take notes about the relevant data in order you can use it in the near future.  

So,  for this reason you have to deal with a personal structured design to manage all the data which should be registered in your own words with a clear evidence where you found it to avoid confusion and to give your investigation your point of view.

Selecting key points

I think this is one of the most important part of your investigation.  You have to be clear with the relevant data that you need to improve your topic.  If you are not clear with the relevant information that you need, the most probable thing is going to happen is you will finish your text with an incorrect direction, a total confusion and a complete disaster.

There are some people who are interesting, at the very beginning, with searching about some specific aspects from a specific subject, but when they are in the middle of the investigation they focus their subject in a different direction, so they changed their subject and they start to research in other topic. 

We have to be clear with our objective, we need to focus our investigation in some specific answers and to demonstrate our capacity to develop a good one.

Understanding purpose and register

In this case, we have to pay attention to the purpose of our essay.  We write to persuade, inform, entertain or describe something.  Each one of these alternatives have a clear objective and the way we are going to present demand a different style, register or tone on the text.  Moreover, it has a different audience, which has to be considered.

Writing an essay has a clear purpose to inform something, a relevant subject, so you have to be careful with the ideas you are going to express.  You have to use a formal language and an academic register.

Evaluating a text

After you have studied the title of the text, you have to search about you topic; and this is the following stage in the writing process, you have to look for trustworthy information which implies to be serious, they must to be facts, no opinions.  Your investigation depends on the seriousness you give your study or how responsible you are in looking for the most relevant information to improve your subject.

Developing plans from titles

This stage is focused on the title.  You have to be clear what is the objective of the title, what is the answer do you have to provide through the body of the text.  Do you need to describe something?, or maybe is it necessary to contrast two ideas?, and so on.  In addition, this stage gives you clues about the development of the body of the text where you are going to demonstrate with facts that the question assigned in the title has been solved.
On the other hand, the text is divided into 4 steps.  the first one is the title itself, the question that you need to solve; the second one is the introduction where you can express the ideas that you are going to develop through it; the next one is the main body where you give some descriptions about the main subject, telling the readers the pro and against the topic or something similar, it depends on the topic; and the final one which is the conclusion where you demonstrate the results of your subject.

Background to writing

At the moment you organize the elements of your writing body is something that, of course, it's difficult.  First, you have to be clear with the purpose of it, with the objective which is involved.  

Second, there are basic elements that help you to clarify your ideas. e.g.:  If you know that you are going to write a paper, you know for sure that it is a text which involves a quantity of words between 5,000 and 10,000.  In addition you know that it is a formal text, because it is going to be published in an academic journal maybe.  
The planning and organizing stages are as important as the final one.  They give clues to the reader if it a serious paper, well-done or it is a waste of time.
Finally, as an advice, I can say that you have to hold on mind the rights words for, taking into consideration the basic elements of the writing process to organize and plan your task.  Moreover, you have to be clear, coherence and effective in your writing assignment.

The writing process

It is a complex process divided in different stages where it must to be considered the following:

• Understand the title of the writing
• Assess the reading texts
• Select relevant areas of texts
• Make notes on relevant areas
• Using paraphrasing and summarizing skills
• Select appropriate structure for essay/plan
• Organize and write main body
• Organize and write introduction
• Organize and write conclusion
• Critically read and re-write where necessary
• Final proof reading.

Writing for different purposes seems to be complicated, because in some cases you have to write for convince people about something, another ones, which you have to write for giving some advice or sharing some extra information about some specific topic, also for telling the people about some episode that you lived in an explicit way, and so on...  The thing is you have to be clear whether your text is argumentative, narrative, expository or maybe descriptive.  

Ed Yong's Article

Dolphins deserve Human Rights

The article relates a quantity of attempts, which has been made by the man to communicate with animals through the history, specifically it mentions the case of Flipper, the dolphin which appeared on tv as the main character of a famous movie.  Moreover, it persuades us to make a reflection about what does communication and language mean? and then it provides us some examples of communication with animals and the intelligence associated with them; finally giving us the opportunity to think about it.

Now, in my opinion I think that animals have intelligence, they have survived for a long time, really I don't believe that it means because their nature survival sense; I think it's their capacity of reasoning.  As Ed Yong tell us there are a lot of studies that announces interesting experiment applied to animals where they could demonstrate their ability to communicate.  To communicate as human beings is a process where many elements take action inside our brain, so it's a complex task, so if animals communicate they possess this kind of intelligence, maybe it's not the same as human beings, but a similar one.

Finally, my personal opinion of communication is related with the idea to express our emotions with/without language.  It could be through verbal communication or with gestures; so in this case if animals have been learning about giving signals, I think it's a way of communication where two or more participants can express their ideas.

Giving my opinion

http://www.santiagotimes.cl/chile/health/23587-chile-has-the-highest-percentage-of-teenage-smoker

Regarding to the article published on the Santiago Times newspaper "Chile has the highest percentage of teenage smokers", I completely agree, I'm part of these statistics, although I'm not a teenager, but that was my reason to start smoking "because you feel the benefit of becoming an adult".   To be a teenager involves some special characteristics, changes are appearing in your body, you are not a girl or a boy, you are growing and most of the teenagers pretend to go further in this belief.

On the other hand, government has no hard rules in our country, you can smoke near a park or more than this, also there are some places where people are allow to smoke inside of them, so women like me, we use to smoke peacefully, without taking care about anything, after that it seems difficult for people who don't smoke.
I hope new regulations comes from the government as soon as possible to avoid smoking, because I hate this idea, although it's really hard to stop doing this.

My expectations for this Course

to write in an accuracy and in an effective way

to describe a situation clearly

to summarize content briefly

to organize my ideas in a better way and in less time

to become more professional in the way I write

to learn a lot 

to have the most interesting class that I've never had