Analysis of Oral Presentations

Despite of the fact that I had prepared my oral presentation on speaking in a proper way, there were some failures in my performance. First of all, I had a power point document to show while delivering the lesson but unfortunately, there was no internet connection in the classroom. It is really useful both for students and for teachers to show pictures or charts in presentations because it catches the attenttion of the audience as well as it clarifies concepts. Sencondly, I tried to use the right pronunciation and intonation during my performance, however I must confess that I did not pay so much attenttion to the tones I used. Sometimes it is difficult to be concetrated on all the aspects that concern a presentation, such as pronunciation, intonantion, the right use of words and stuctures, eye conctact and other issues as nerves are there to play a dirty trick on you. Thirdly, I think I should have organized my lesson in a better way. My partners and I divided the topic and each one had different concepts to explain. In my case, I made a summary of my topics and I decided to use it as a guide during the lesson, however in a moment during it, I got lost and I could not follow the order I had planned. It is useful to have some kind of guide with key words to help you but I realized that using your notes could be counterproductive. Regardless all of this, there were some positive points in my presentation such as the use of the blackboard as a resource, the help of the teacher and the interest that my partners showed during my presentation. As regards my mates´presentation, they were clear enough to understand and follow. I could take down notes, clarify doubts about what I have read. I could profit from my mates the new concepts through the clear examples they gave us. Mos of them used eye contact and some of them paraphrased the technical concepts. That made the lessons enjoyable. In my opinion, this kind of oral work should be a "must" in every subject of our career. We, as future teachers, have to lose our fear of being in front of a class for that is what we are going to do from now on. For that reason, I think that teachers have to pay a special attention to help students to develop the speaking skill. .

Entry #10

http://prezi.com/qbdczl-8urnw/edit/#10_13415665

entry #8- IMMIGRATION- new version

Immigration in Argentina during the Twenties´

During the decade of the 1920´s many families from Europe and other countries which were hardly affected by the First World War, immigrated to Argentina looking for a better life. One of the main reasons why Italian, Spanish and German people came to this last continental country of South America was an economic one. The war had left their countries devastated and a lot of people suffered from starvation. Apart from that, many middle class people were unemployed, they had lost their jobs and it was almost impossible to find one in a country which was trying to cope with social and economic problems. Fortunately, when they arrived to Argentina they were welcomed and they could find a ray of light here. On the whole, immigrants found in Argentina a comfortable place to live and work and despite the fact that the war in their origin countries had finished, they decided to take their roots in this land.

ENTRY #7

Paragraph 1

Educational Opportunities in Argentina

In my country, Argentina, many are the graduated students who decide to continue a career and become a professional. Despite of the fact that many courses and places to study are offered, students find it difficult to determine what and where to study. For students who are interested in becoming a teacher, there are many Teacher Training Colleges that offer different careers related to teaching. Generally, the courses consist of thirty-two subjects which are attended in a four year period. For those who are interested in obtaining a degree related to social issues, there are several Universities that provide with careers such as Social Work, Social Communication and Politics. For those who want a degree related to engineering many Universities offer careers to become electrical, electronic, chemical, civil or computing science engineer. All these careers consist of a period of six years at the very least. In the case of students who are very fond of dancing, performing, acting or singing; there are Art Institutes that provide degree courses in Dance, Lyrical Singing, Orchestral Academy and Portrayal. The periods of the courses are shorter than the ones from the Universities. They take between two and four years time; except for the Dance course that lasts nine years.

On the whole, Argentinian educational institutions provide a large number of courses and degrees so the decision about what and where to study is up to the student’s choice.

Paragraph 2

Educational Alternatives in Argentina

In my country there are several opportunities for people who procure higher educational degrees. For students who are interested in becoming a teacher, there are many Teacher Training Colleges that offer different careers related to teaching. Generally, the courses consist of thirty-two subjects which are attended in a four year period. For those who are interested in obtaining a degree related to social issues, there are several Universities that provide with careers such as Social Work, Social Communication and Politics. For those who want a degree related to engineering many Universities offer careers to become electrical, electronic, chemical, civil or computing science engineer. All these careers consist of a period of six years at the very least. In the case of students who are very fond of dancing, performing, acting or singing; there are Art Institutes that provide degree courses in Dance, Lyrical Singing, Orchestral Academy and Portrayal. The periods of the courses are shorter than the ones from the Universities. They take between two and four years time; except for the Dance course that lasts nine years.

To sum up, regarding higher education, universities and institutes offer many chances for people who are looking for high degrees in further education.

METACOGNITIVE ANALYSIS

The overall meaning of the paragraphs does not vary much for both are related to high education.
In the paragraph 1, there are two topic sentences but the second one is the controlling idea. It refers to the difficulty that students face with whenever they have to make a choice as regards place and career to study. On the other hand, in the paragraph 2, there is only one topic sentence that tells us that the topic will be about  the opportunities that the country offers to people as regards high education. I believe that both topic sentences reflect the content of the paragraph.
I think that I should have used a synonym for "student" because I have repeated the same word in the first sentences as well as in the conclusion. As regards the paragraph 2, the same stucture is repeated in the first  paragraph and in the conclusion "for people who (procure) (are looking for) high educational degrees". Maybe, she could have reprashed the conclusion sentence in order to not repeat the same stucture and words. Despite these slight differences between paragraph 1 and 2, I do believe that both of them convey in meaning.

#6 Structured Paragraph Writing

THREE ELEMENTS FOR SUCCESSFUL ACADEMIC WRITING

        

• style
• correct pronunciation
• paragraphing

WHAT IS A PARAGRAPH

• a distinct section in a piece of writing with a number of related sentences
• one main idea or topic

PARTS OF A PARAGRAPH

1. TOPIC SENTENCE: an interesting topic with arguments.

2.BODY: should be organized according to the order of importance or order of chronology

3.CLOSING SENTENCE: which reminds the audience what the writer is talking about (restate the message) and let the audience thinking.

ELEMENTS OF A PARAGRAPH

• each paragraph must be easy to identify and start in a new line
• it must be focused on a main idea
• it must be well organized
• all its sentences must be related (cohesion)

THREE QUALITIES THAT MAKE A SUCCESSFUL PARAGRAPH

• unity that must share all the sentences in the paragraph
• coherence that makes all sentence be related
• development that supports the main idea with elements

UNITY

-The topic sentence states the main idea of the paragraph

-Start the paragraph with the topic sentence , which tells the reader what the paragraph is about

The Topic sentence is made up by two elements:

TOPIC (the subject of the paragragraph)

THE CONTROLLING IDEA (specific comment of the theme based on Wh-questions)

POSITION OF THE TOPIC SENTENCE

• first sentence of the paragraph
• elsewhere in the paragraph

COHERENCE

• sentences related to each other
• all the details in the sentence are fixed

HOW TO ACHIEVE IT?

• creating  logical bridges from one sentence to another (coherence)
• repeating key words
• using synonyms
• using pronouns
• using transition words

DEVELOPMENT

-details and evidence to support the topic

-illustrative points with examples to convince the reader

To structure the development : TEE Rule

T: Topic Sentence

E: Explanation

E: Examples or evidences

                                 

                              

INTRODUCING PARAGRAPH

• it states topic of assignment and comment on its importance
• it states main argument to get reader´s attention
• how you intend to answer the question

CONCLUDING PARAGRAPH

• it summarizes the main points
• it states main conclusion
• assures that the question was answered (satisfy the reader)

A CONCLUDING PARAGRAPH MUST NOT :

-INTRODUCE NEW MATERIAL (THIS MUST BE IN THE BODY)

-END WITH A GENERALIZATION

-END WITH A QUOTATION

SOURCES:

Writing Structured Paragraphs. Available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w183qB0KDFg. Retrieved May 30, 2013.

Parts of a paragraph-English Academic Writing. Available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCuExRE6N-4. Retrieved May 30, 2013.

#8 IMMIGRATION- first draft

During the decade of the 1920´s many families from Europe and other countries which were hardly affected by the First World War, immigrated to Argentina looking for a better life. One of the main reasons why Italian, Spanish and German people came to this last continental country of South America was an economic one. The war had left their countries devastated as regards economy and a lot of people suffered from stravation. Apart from that, many middle class people were unemployed, they had lost their jobs and it was almost impossible to find a job in a country which was trying to cope with social and economic problems. When they arrived to Argentina they were welcomed and they could find a ray of light here. Most of them found a job and left behind the bad experience of the war.

#3 bis- CONTEXTS

Context #1

Yesterday, while I was doing the list of guests for my birthday party, special but gloomy news came to my ears.  My mother told me that she had received a letter from Patrick Eggli, my former boyfriend, who had moved to Brazil many years ago.  To my surprise, the letter was addressed to me. I opened the envelope and started reading the letter anxiously. He told me about his life there in Brazil and how enjoyable his job was. By the end of the letter, the words he wrote made me go down. It said : "By the way, I don´t suppose you remember Carine Imhof? She was my first girlfriend... Well... I married her!". Those final words shattered my heart into pieces.

Context #2

Paul: Hi Carla! how are you after the accident with your bike?

Carla: Hi Paul, I´m better, thank you. The doctor told me that I had to be in bed for a few days. I will have to do it if I want to recover soon.

Paul: I see... But don´t worry, you will be fine soon. You won´t be bored these days in bed...you can watch films on tv...

Carla: Yes, I won´t be bored at all...Today I went to the orthopaedic surgeon early in the morning and I spent the rest of the day watching the cycling on television. Taking about bikes, have you got yours mended  yet?

Paul: No, I haven´t... I didn´t have time...Maybe I´m postponing it unconsciosly. After your accident, I started thinking about stop racing.

Carla: Really?...

#5 SHE IS A WRITER

The Danger of a Single Story

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, a famous Nigerian story teller, invites us to reflect about the role of books and literature in our lives. She considers that literature is never just words and that the books we read can lead us to create positive or negative single stories about cultures, people or countries.

When Chimamanda was a little girl, she lived with her parents in a University campus in Eastern Nigeria. Her childhood was invaded by American and British books; that is why when she started to write stories at the early age of seven, her writings talked about white blue-eyed people who played in the snow, ate apples and talked about the weather. The problem was that those books had no connection with her Nigerian reality, simply because they reflected other people’s culture. Luckily, her perception about literature changed when she discovered African books. She came to realize that coloured people like she also existed in literature and though she loved American and British books because they took her imagination to an open new world during her joyful infancy, it was the African ones that saved her from having a “single story” about what books were.

As a young student at an American University, Chimamanda had to cope with people who had single stories about her native country Nigeria. People who thought that Nigeria was synonym of catastrophe and that Nigerian people had possibility of nothing. For example, her room mate at the campus was shocked at hearing her talking so perfect English as she ignored the fact that Chimamanda´s country had English as first language. Also at university, a professor questioned the novel she had written because according to his point of view, it was not completely an African one for its characters drove cars and were not starving!

Adichie asserts that a single story is created by showing people as only one thing over and over again creating stereotypes which are not true but incomplete. She considers that the role of literature is to instruct in the sense that reading help us to know about other people’s cultures and to delight because it leaps our imagination. When she was invited to the fifteenth Commonwealth Lecture Congress, she proposed writing realistic fiction: real human beings living in real places. She believes that writing realistic literature is an exercise of citizenship because it transmits the sensibility of the people of a particular country; it costumes, beliefs and way of living. Chimamanda invites us to reflect about how similar we are and that we are not just a collection of bones but men and women with a particularly story behind. Once she was asked why she wrote to what she answered a moving quotation from Bessie Head, a feminist South African writer who said: “I am building a stairway to stars. I have the authority to take the whole mankind with me”. That is why Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie writes.


Sources

Chimamanda Adichie. The Danger of a single story (2009).Available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9Ihs241zeg. Retrieved: May 26, 2013.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: Commonwealth Lecture 2012. Available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmsYJDP8g2U. Retrieved:May 26, 2013.

<http://chimamanda.com/>

#3 IMPROVED VERSION- I am a writer

Writing is a difficult skill for tertiary-level students to achieve. Many are the reasons why they get stuck whenever they have to write a piece. However, the poor vocabulary and the lack of knowledge about the different models of writing are the most important issues.

It is highly important the use of  synonyms when writing, for there are certain elementary words such as “good” and “bad” that must be definitely replaced. English is an immensely rich Language in terms of vocabulary: it contains more synonymas than any other language. Better still, it has borrowed beautiful words from French, Arabic, German and ten more languages. It is students´choice to use the vast vocabulary that English offers, or not. Another point to consider is the fact that students are taught with just one model of writing. Therefore, it is really difficult for them to take into consideration the appropiate style to a particular kind of writing.
To sum up, writing appropiately is not an easy task for stuedents to do, for that reason there should be a constant feedback from the teachers´side as well as a ´stong students´ will lo learn more and more.

#2 ORIGINAL VERSION- I am a writer

Writing is a difficult task for us, students at the TTC, to achieve. Not only because our lack of formal vocabulary but also because of our poor knowledge about the different kinds of writing. During my years at the Teacher Training Colleage, I could observe that some of my partners  thinking for at least fifteen minutes until they started writing. On the other hand, others, started writing without any problem and had the piece finished in a flash. In my particular case, I whenever I have to write something, I take enough time to think about everything I want to express and it´s just after that that I start writing.

#1 WELCOME

I consider this last year the most important in the career. Not only because it is the last year in which I am going to be corrected by a teacher but also because I will have to take my level of writing to an academic one. Therefore, it is necessary to improve my vocabulary in order to make my writings more formal and to be able to write for different purposes and audiences.