Academic Style

For a long time, the book pictured above, "The Elements of of Style" by Strunk and White was considered to be the Bible for native English speakers writing for academic purposes. A summary of the most important lessons from the book can be found here. If you are interested in getting the entire original version, check Amazon. 

As you may have guessed, we will be talking about academic style in class today. An outline for today's class can be found below...

Academic Style 

Objectives: Students will be able to...

1. Understand and explain the different between formal and informal style
2. Understand and use different techniques designed to make their writing more formal
3. Apply the lessons learned in class to their out of class writing

I. Warm-Up

How was your weekend? Anyone do anything fun? How are your other classes going? Does anyone have questions for this class? 

In an effort to get everyone interested and talkative, let's try a couple more tongue twisters: 

1. Father, mother, sister, brother -hand in hand with one another.
2. Three thin thieves thought a thousand thoughts. Now if three thin thieves thought a thousand thoughts how many thoughts did each thief think?
3. The thirty-three thankful thieves thought that they thanked the other thirty-three thankful thieves throughout Thursday.

II. Vocabulary Quiz

I hope you studied! 

III. CAE Analysis Warm-Up 

Each week, I give each of you individual feedback on your homework assignments for class. But, since, "two heads are better than one" (and there are 16 of us in the room for each class), I want to practice making an outline for this example CAE question. 

First, brainstorm your outline (and answers to the questions) within a small group. Then we will discuss the strategies together as a class. Be sure to take notes!

IV. Overview of Academic Style

This presentation gives a brief overview of several tips and techniques designed to help you write more formally. As we go through the presentation, be sure to take notes. After the presentation, you will be given a summary of the information (to complete your notes) and we will do a brief "Academic Style Workshop" using these activities. 

V. Mini-Presentations on Academic Style

If there is time, the class will be divided into four groups. Each group will be responsible for creating and presenting a short presentation on one of the "tips" listed in the presentation (and presentation notes). Groups will be determined randomly using the all-powerful group randomizer

1. Group 1 -> Using Formal Language
2. Group 2 -> Being Concise and Precise
3. Group 3 -> Using Impersonal Language
4. Group 4 -> Being Cautious

Homework for Next Monday (November 24th, 2014)

1). Attend the WEBCHAT FOR ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNERS

In celebration of International Education Week, the Office of English Language Programs will be having a webchat for English language learners on November 20th at 8:00 a.m. EST (16:00 Moscow time). In the webchat “Learn English with US! 15 Fun Tips from American English,” we will share 15 different approaches to learning English.

Instructions for learners to join: 1) Go to http://bit.ly/learnAE 2) Select "Enter as guest.” 3) Type your first name + country (example: Jenny USA)

-----> After you attend the webchat, write a short summary of what was discussed (250-300 words). Do this in your reflection GoogleDoc by Friday, Nov. 21st at 11:55pm.

OR

Write a 250-300 word summary of one of the articles from "Forum" magazine. 

2). Prepare for another vocabulary quiz with these words

3). Respond to the new discussion board topic. Same rules apply as always: one post, one response. Please make sure to complete this by Friday, Nov. 14, 2014 at 11:55pm.