what we did June 1 Expressive Repetition

Expressive Repetition and Elegant variation

Here we will consider how careful repetition of key words and sentence structures can help to make our writing clear and coherent. As we've seen, an important quality of an effective paragraph is unity. A unified paragraph sticks to one topic from start to finish, with every sentence contributing to the central purpose and main idea of that paragraph. But a strong paragraph is more than just a collection of loose sentences. Those sentences need to be clearly connected so that readers can follow along, recognizing how one detail leads to the next. A paragraph with clearly connected sentences is said to be coherent.

Repetition of Key Words: Repeating key words in a paragraph is an important technique for achieving coherence. Of course, careless or excessive repetition is boring--and a source of clutter. But used skillfully and selectively, as in the paragraph below, this technique can help to hold sentences together and focus the reader's attention on a central idea.

TASK 1: UNDERLINE REPETITION OF KEY WORDS IN KANE’S WRITING:

We Americans are a charitable and humane people: we have institutions devoted to every good cause from rescuing homeless cats to preventing World War III. But what have we done to promote the art of thinking? Certainly we make no room for thought in our daily lives. Suppose a man were to say to his friends, "I'm not going to PTA tonight (or choir practice or the baseball game) because I need some time to myself, some time to think"? Such a man would be shunned by his neighbors; his family would be ashamed of him. What if a teenager were to say, "I'm not going to the dance tonight because I need some time to think"? His parents would immediately start looking in the Yellow Pages for a psychiatrist. We are all too much like Julius Caesar: we fear and distrust people who think too much. We believe that almost anything is more important than thinking. (Carolyn Kane, from "Thinking: A Neglected Art," in Newsweek, 14 December 1981)
Notice that the author uses various forms of the same word--think, thinking, thought--to link the different examples and reinforce the main idea of the paragraph.

Repetition of Key Words and Sentence Structures : A similar way to achieve coherence in our writing is to repeat a particular sentence structure along with a key word or phrase. Although we usually try to vary the length and shape of our sentences, now and then we may choose to repeat a construction to emphasize connections between related ideas.


Here's a short example of structural repetition from the play Getting Married, by George Bernard Shaw:

TASK:2UNDERLINE STRUCTURAL REPETITION IN SHAW’S WRITING:
There are couples who dislike one another furiously for several hours at a time; there are couples who dislike one another permanently; and there are couples who never dislike one another; but these last are people who are incapable of disliking anybody.

Notice how Shaw's reliance on semicolons (rather than periods) reinforces the sense of unity and coherence in this passage.

Extended Repetition : On rare occasions, emphatic repetitions may extend beyond just two or three main clauses. Recently, the Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk provided an example of extended repetition in his Nobel Prize Lecture, "My Father's Suitcase":

TASK3: UNDERLINE EXPRESSIVE REPETITION IN PAMUK’S SPEECH:

The question we writers are asked most often, the favorite question, is: Why do you write? I write because I have an innate need to write. I write because I can’t do normal work as other people do. I write because I want to read books like the ones I write. I write because I am angry at everyone. I write because I love sitting in a room all day writing. I write because I can partake of real life only by changing it. I write because I want others, the whole world, to know what sort of life we lived, and continue to live, in Istanbul, in Turkey. I write because I love the smell of paper, pen, and ink. I write because I believe in literature, in the art of the novel, more than I believe in anything else. I write because it is a habit, a passion. I write because I am afraid of being forgotten. I write because I like the glory and interest that writing brings. I write to be alone. Perhaps I write because I hope to understand why I am so very, very angry at everyone. I write because I like to be read. I write because once I have begun a novel, an essay, a page I want to finish it. I write because everyone expects me to write. I write because I have a childish belief in the immortality of libraries, and in the way my books sit on the shelf. I write because it is exciting to turn all life’s beauties and riches into words. I write not to tell a story but to compose a story. I write because I wish to escape from the foreboding that there is a place I must go but--as in a dream--can’t quite get to. I write because I have never managed to be happy. I write to be happy. (The Nobel Lecture, 7 December 2006. Translated from the Turkish, by Maureen Freely. © THE NOBEL FOUNDATION 2006)

Final Reminder: Needless repetition that only clutters our writing should be avoided. But the careful repetition of key words and phrases can be an effective strategy for fashioning coherent paragraphs. http://grammar.about.com/od/developingparagraphs/a/cohrepetition.htm

tasks for June 15, 22 and 29

Below you will find our last online tasks, to be given to me in class or in my escaninho by the appointed dates. The tasks are due June 15, June 22 and June 29, respectively.

July 6 is our last day of classes and here we will have an essay to be written (for 20 points).

A) Task on paraphrasing (for June 15)

Video by professor Stacy (7 minutes) http://youtube.com/watch?v=c43vCtTLLLs
1)Your task: : Watch video (Prof. Stacy) and show, with arrows , the direct quotes within a paraphrase and the sentences created by Stacy which were not in the original text.

Original:
What killed the dinosaurs: In 1980, Nobel-prize winning physicist Luiz Alvarez and his geologist son Valter rocked the scientific world with their proposal that the dinosaurs became extinct as the result of an impact of a huge rock from space. They found iridium in a thin layer of clay that marked the boundary between the Cretaceous and the Tertiary geological periods, at the same time as the end of the dinosaurs and the appearance of mammals. Because iridium is rare on Earth rocks but abundant in rocks from the space (for example, in meteorites), they theorized that the iridium had come from a cosmic impact. (Sally Stephens, “ It Could Happen to Us”).

Cretaceous = period when the dinosaurs lived; Tertiary= period when mammals came on the scene.

Paraphrase [ for you to work on and indicate the direct quotes ]:
According to Stephens, two scientists named Alvarez made an amazing proposal in 1980. They had discovered iridium, a whitish metal, in some clay that marked the boundary between the time the dinosaurs disappeared and the time the mammals of the earth came forth. “Because iridium is rare in Earth rocks” but common in meteorites, “they theorized that the iridium had come from a cosmic impact” (21). This is sort of like crime detection on the mystery of who killed the dinosaurs. The iridium itself is the evidence and the Earth is the crime scene.

2) Your task: Enter
http://gsi.berkeley.edu/teachingguide2009/academic-misconduct/exercise.html
Say whether the 4 paraphrases are ok or not. Write a small report and tell me how well you did fare in this exercise.

B) Task on the Road not Taken (for June 22) HOME-TAKE ESSAY FOR 20 POINTS
Task – Write a 5-paragraph academic essay (introduction – 3 body paragraphs- conclusion) . Make it well structured. Unless you have developed your own way of structuring your essay, I advise you to use Marine Parks model.

Make sure you watch the videos on the poem, indicated below. Pay special attention to what Kevin Murphy says (23 minutes). Incorporate some of that into your essay. Also watch Stacy (7 minutes).

1) (Road noT taken) lecture by Stacy : http://youtube.com/watch?v=adj-Xd642UY

2) The Road no taken ( read aloud , with English subtitles) : : http://youtube.com/watch?v=SnWU29o2xwA

3)Kevin Murphy, Professor of English at Ithaca College, examines the discrepancy between Robert Frost's popularity during his lifetime and the darker implications of his poetry, as exemplified by one of his most cherished poems. (class in 23 minutes):

http://youtube.com/watch?v=a5140uJOUDE&feature=related


C) Task on Parallelism (which will be useful for your writing skills)
for June 29

Enter : http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/GRAMMAR/quizzes/niu/niu10.htm

1)Go through the 10 items and check your answers online (the site tells you whether you got it right or not)
It starts with “I have worked in Spain and in Ireland”
Your task: Take note of any of the 10 items you did not get right. Copy the item for me, not just the number of it!

2)Then take the second Quiz available at the address below:

http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/GRAMMAR/quizzes/parallelism2_quiz.htm

After you write your suggestion, check with the GRAMMAR’S VERSION given by the website
Your task: Take note of any of the 9 items you had problems with. Copy the item for me, not just the number of it!

3) As some help is needed for this task, watch the video (5 minutes) on parallelism (preparing for the The Graduate Management Admission Test:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=MZ8JkwCbd3o

what we did May 25 ans task for June 8

We had another presential class on May 25.

As a reminder, we saw that for June 1 we have some tasks to be handed in. Do not forget to do the CABRI essay, in case you haven’t done so.

We focused on Capitalization this time, since this appears as a problem for some people.

English can be tricky here and it does not hurt to review something about this.

1.We started by highlighting some differences English/Portuguese:

Os alunos brasileiros : the Brazilian students / a lagoa da Pampulha: Pampulha lake / vi o deserto do Saara: I saw the Sahara Desert / sei que que a terra é um bom lugar para viver: I know that earth is a good place to live in / O sol, a lua e a terra: The Sun, the Moon and the Earth / na 3ª feira: on Tuesday/ o verão: in the Summer/ visitei vovô: I visited Grandfather/ visitei meu avô: I visited my grandfather

2. Then we examined rules found in :

Capitalize this!
http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/capitals.htm

TASK for June 8 (enter the site and do the Quiz. Check your answers as you go. Hand-out was given to you in class. Write a small report about your score. You do not have to hand in the exercise, just the report.

Task a) : Quiz on Capitalization:
http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/cgi-shl/par_numberless_quiz.pl/caps_quiz.htm

Task b) : Enter this powerpoint , go through the slides and the examples on them and write a small report:
editteach.org/special/blackboard6/capitalization.ppt


We saw the video below, to help us :
How to use Capital Letters:
http://www.videojug.com/film/how-to-use-capital-letters

At the end we heard some of your comments on other people’s profiles . This is a task you have, for finding three different kinds of people in the profiles…. If you haven’t done yours, do so asap .

what we did in class May 18 ans task on BH now and then for June 1

May 18 we had another presential class.


We starting by finding out mistakes in 2 paragraphs. In case you want to review what we did, it can be found at

http://www.writing.engr.psu.edu/exercises/grammar4.html


Next, we prepared for a comparison-and-contrast task, by watching a video on BH of old (1st part) and a video on BH of now (they are given below).


TASK for June 1:


Task for June 1: Essay on “Belo Horizonte now and then”
(use the words while, whereas, although, likewise – and others as used in the 2 exercises given below and done in class).



Watch the videos below and use them to contrast the two BHs.
Give it to me June 1. Try to be creative and get some inspiration to talk about BH!

Belo Horizonte in 1946:
(1st part”) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0e2rUTPPxV4

(2nd part ) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UODeUB65LSg

Belo Horizonte now:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVcQJJaScUg

Bonus: Belo Horizonte in a song:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcP-AyffyRw


Finally, also preparing for the Comparison-and-Contrast Essay, we did the exercises I and II below (given to me at the end of class). You can review them and check your answers:


Ex 1: http://lrs.ed.uiuc.edu/students/fwalters/compcontEx1a.html



Ex 2: http://lrs.ed.uiuc.edu/students/fwalters/compcontEx2a.html

what we did May 11 and tasks for June 1

May 11 we had another presential class.

At the beginning of the class we checked fragments from your profiles (for generic/specific reference, use of commas after however, the need for elegant variation etc.) There was a handout with excerpts from your profiles .

In that same track, we made specific reference to NOT joining sentences with commas (unless it is the case of short sentences in a series like “vim,vi,venci”/ veni, vidi,vincit / I came , I saw, I conquered (Julius Ceasar). This is a figure of speech called Asyndeton or No-Ands.


Some of you are doing this (even in Portuguese, I guess). In normal life situations this should be avoided and it receives the name of “comma splice”(= join with commas).


TASK A for June 1 : Watch the following video and WRITE A SMALL REPORT on “being aware of comma splices”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--Rl9ZwlF5s

Then we did some work on how to avoid plagiarism

TASK B for June 1 : Watch the following video and WRITE A SMALL REPORT on “plagiarizing from the internet” ( Internet plagiarism out of ignorance and not because of intent of cheating) :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jemg2dytNjE

TASK C for June 1 : Do the following online exercises and write a small report about your score. Yo do not have to give me the actual sentences from the exercise, just your report.

- 8 fragments of a paragraph to be cheked for plagiarism:

http://www2.gsu.edu/~geotel/plagiarism.html

- 4 small texts to be checked. The first one admits more than one answer. You can mark them all :

https://ilrb.cf.ac.uk/plagiarism/exercise/index.html

aula em 4 de maio etarefas para 18 de maio

Tuesday, May 4, we had our presential class.

1)We checked initially your Mid-term Exams

Main problems observed :

a) People are using infinitive after prepositions. It should be: depois de escrever= after writing ; sem deixar = without leavING;

b) HOWEVER needs a comma after it when it means CONTUDO. Fui lá. Contudo, não achei ninguém = I went there. However, I found nobody.

c) HOWEVER with no comma means “por mais ”: However difficult it may seem. = Por mais difícil que possa parecer

d) People are using article with contexts of generic reference: “O Brasil é um grande país “should be “ Brazil is a big country”.

If you want to use the article you should make it a specific reference, as in: O Brasil de meus sonhos é um grande país = The Brazil of my dreams is a big country.

2) We introduced the online task for May 25 (NEW DEADLINE) :

YOUR TASK:

Another task on Robert Frost : write a 1 – 2 -1 essay, responding to the poem. You may focus on form, comparing both Portuguese and Spanish translations and/or go into more practical considerations about love. NO NEED to follow Marine Parks Model

Some say the world will end in fire;
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

Portuguese translation: Fogo e Gelo O mundo findará em fogo, ouço aqui, Em gelo, ouço ali. Conheço bem o desejo, logo Sou a favor do fim em fogo. Mas se houvesse dois finais, Creio que sei do ódio a ponto De afirmar: ao destruir, o gelo Funciona bem; Não fica aquém.
( tentou-se conservar, na medida do possível, as rimas, as aliterações e as assonâncias. Exemplos: no primeiro verso de "Fire and Ice", a aliteração "Some say..." foi adaptada para "... findará em fogo...". Nesse mesmo poema, o esquema de rimas foi alterado, e há mesmo um verso da tradução, o quinto, que curiosamente rima com o original. ) //
Spanish translation Unos dicen que el mundo terminará en fuego, / Otros dicen que el hielo. / Por lo que he gustado del deseo,/Estoy con los partidarios del fuego. / Pero si tuviera que sucumbir dos veces, / Creo saber bastante acerca del ódio / Como para decir que en la destrucción el hielo / También es poderoso/ Y bastaria //
1)Watch Stacy in his small lecture: http://youtube.com/watch?v=3ZRSIevoc3c
2) Listen to the poem being read aloud by Robert Frost:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBwWkbiO7RE
3) See some comments on Fire and Ice below

Summary Sparknotes http://www.sparknotes.com/poetry/frost/section9.rhtml
Form : "Fire and Ice" follows an invented form, irregularly interweaving three rhymes and two line lengths into a poem of nine lines. Each line ends either with an -ire, -ice, or -ate rhyme. Each line contains either four or eight syllables. Each line can be read naturally as iambic, although this is not strictly necessary for several lines. Frost employs strong enjambment in line 7 to great effect. / Commentary : An extremely compact little lyric, "Fire and Ice" combines humor, fury, detachment, forthrightness, and reserve in an airtight package. Not a syllable is wasted. The aim is aphorism--the slaying of the elusive Truth-beast with one unerring stroke. But for Frost, as usual, the truth remains ambiguous and the question goes unanswered; to settle for aphorism would be to oversimplify. We can attribute part of the poem's effect to the contrast between the simple, clipped precision of its vocabulary and the vague gravity of its subject. The real triumph of "Fire and Ice," however, is in its form. Try writing the poem out in prose lines. Nearly all poems suffer considerably in this exercise, but this poem simply dies:
The language remains simple, but the devastating, soaring anticlimax of the final two lines is lost. Those lines draw their soft-kill power from form: from their rhymes; from the juxtaposition of their short, punchy length with that of the preceding lines (and their resonance with the length of the second line); and from the strong enjambment in line 7, which builds up the tension needed for the perfect letdown. / It is one thing to pull off an offhand remark about the end of days; it is another to make it poetry. Frost masterfully accomplishes both in a single composition. / While I wouldn't call myself a poetry expert, I will admit that that Robert Frost's poem "Fire and Ice" did have me thinking for a while. In the poem, Frost implys that fire represents love (desire), while ice represents hatred. Frost also mentions that he would prefer the world to end in fire rather than ice. I find myself in agreement with Frost in that I also would take fire over ice. I've never been a fan of cold weather, and I'll take heat over cold any day (also it's weird that he likes fire when his last name is Frost). / When it comes to the whole issue of fire, i feel that fire represents love, as I said earlier. When two love really like/love each other, they are said to have a burning desire for one another. I'm a romantic person, so I tend to like fire (though I'd rather not die by it). But ice is cold and harsh, and represents hatred. I'm not a hateful person, so why would I take the side of ice? The whole world is cold when you think about it. There aren't many nice people around anymore, and everyone always gives everyone else the cold shoulder, so to speak. That's why Frost says that ice would be suitable for destruction, because ice does represent a destruction of a friendship, a relationship, or any type of emotional connection. /http://www.english-blog.com/archives/2006/01/poetry_in_the_english_writing_classroom.php#more"

3) We checked your profiles. Make sure you get the handout with me in case you didn’t get yours. There is a task ( a report) about it for May 18.

4) We talked about CABRI project. There is a small essay to be given to me and to be emailed to CABRI people by May 18.

what we did March 30 and Task 5

March 30 we had another presential meeting

We read the essay by Virginia Woolf ‘The death of the Moth’, looking at the vocabulary ( focusing on words which are not part of our productive vocabulary)

We listened to the text being read aloud in English (in a recording)

We listened briefly to the only recording available of Virginia Woolf’s voice:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5V8vkFNrBo&feature=related


Here you find the text, which was given in a hand-out in class:

The death of the Moth
http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/w/woolf/virginia/w91d/chapter1.html

Vocabulary The Death of the Moth: moth = mariposa, ivy = hera, rouse = awaken, hay= feno, fringed= decorated, tassel= short piece of smt tied together at one end of smt as decoration(borla), keener = more intense, plough= (arado), score= mark with lines, share= (lamina do arado), gleamed = shined, rook= black bird (gralha), soar= going quickly up, cast= thrown, utmost= greatest, (3) lean= slim, flutter = move through the air with small, fast movements, queer= strange, zest= enthusiasm, meager= small, downs= low grassy hills in the south of England, steamer = ship, thrust= pushed with force into (4) driving= forcing, bead = small piece of round glass, decking= decorating, down and feathers = penugem e penas, humped= deformity on the back, bossed= told to do things, garnish = decorate (gastronomy semantic field), cumbered= burdened, (5) ledge= small narrow shelf at the end of a wall (saliencia), resume=start again, sill= (peitoril da janela), rouse= awaken, laid= put down (past of lay),(6) brook= small stream (regato), doom= terrible future event, token = (symbol), minute= very small, wayside (fall by the wayside)= stop for lack of strength.

TASK 5: You task , for April 6 ( extended up to Thursday evening, April 8, in my escaninho) is to translate the text of the essay into Portuguese (the translator is the best reader, it is often said).

task 4 (ATTITUDINAL IRONY in a short story by Hemingway) is also due Tued, extended up to Thursd

To help you, when you are not sure about the meaning of an expression, here is a Spanish translation of the same text (also given in class as a handout):
In Spanish:
http://alternativa.blog.com.es/2010/01/02/muerte-de-polilla-7677422/