Entradas

#14: Final reflection

I’ve been tasked with writing “a FINAL REFLECTION on HOW a PORTFOLIO is a good record of your writing skills, HOW it can help you study for your final exam, whether you are aware of writing strategies, etc.” and here it is. I think that blogs and portfolios are for creative work. One puts his latest creation in the portfolio, along with the previous and the future ones, with the intention to show the whole portfolio to an employer at some point in the future. I think this because, to me, creative work doesn’t have perfection standards. Academic work, on the other hand, does, so the function of the portfolio here is different. Because of how my memory works I tend not to write summaries. I highlight what is important in a text, and go back to it whenever I need to study. I can usually remember where in the page, or in the paragraph, I found something interesting, especially if it struck me when I first read it. Though I could take that part and rewrite it in a summar...
Publicar un comentario
Leer más

Entry #13: a reflection on my improved writing skills

I've been tasked with writing "a reflection on HOW (my) writing capacity has changed", and this is it. For one thing, I never knew what a “paper” was until now. The structure of the essay clarified that. We have learned how to write a well written paragraph and why most text (even, the academic ones) are not well written. As I tend to write the introduction of a written work after its body, I still find it difficult to write a topic sentence at the end of said introduction. It is still somewhat hard to me to link sentences to make a text cohesive, though I think that I can write coherent pieces of work. I have also learned how to dissect texts in a more thoughtful way by looking at the cataphoric and anaphoric references. I still have a lot to learn (and to practice), but I think that I can see a clearer picture of what a “paper” is now.
Publicar un comentario
Leer más

Entry #12: Three videos and Yule's threory

Imagen
I will take the next three videos and, using Yule’s key concepts, analyze them to highlight the underlying situation. The concepts that I’m referring to are accent, dialect, and regional dialect. In this video, the character from The Pink Panther has to learn to speak in more Standard English accent. He, naturally, produces English with a very strong French accent, because of his place of origin. The difficulty of producing Standard English leads to the comical situation presented in the video. Here, each of the students presents a different problem regarding the correct pronunciation or the grammar of Standard English. The first one, who opens the sketch, states that he has troubles with his grammar. The second student agrees, but he mispronounces the words “grammar” and “spell”. This may be due to his sociolect (he seems to be from the suburbs of some great city, like New York), which in Yule’s terms, is "a type of social dialect in reference to the economic social cla...
Publicar un comentario
Leer más

Entry #11: Notes on "The study of language"

Here is a transcript of my notes on the last chapters of the book "The study of language" by Yule, G. I've tried to respect the order of the tiltles in the original. Some entries contain material written in class. Standard Language It is a natural langue used for educational, political and economic purposes. This variety of langue is the one learned by not native speakers. It doesn’t depend on region. It is an idealized variety of the language. Accent and Dialect Accent is the variety of pronunciation according to region. Changes in accent do not change the meaning or the use of words. It is a myth that some speakers have accents and others do not. All languages have accents. Dialect varies according to where the speaker lives, his social status and age. It describes features of grammar and vocabulary as well as aspects of communication. Dialectology It is the study of different languages. It is the variety of lexis, pronunciation and grammar in a...
Publicar un comentario
Leer más